Last Monday, on my day off from Los Cachorros, I spent the day volunteering with another organisation. The day involved dressing up as a clown and driving in a van into the mountains surrounding Ayacucho.
After driving through amazingly scenic mountain valleys, we visited three villages. My job was:
- Attract all the children to the center of the village (this was easily done as not much seems to happen in these remote villages, so the sight and sound of a van full of clowns certainly got their attention);
- Join in the games that the "head clown" played with the kids, where the prizes were toothbrushes;
- Once we had all the kids happy and lined up, I put on surgical gloves and a facemask over my painted face and acted as a dental assistant as we cleaned the kids' teeth and gave advice on dental hygiene - and boy did they need it judging by the terrible state of their teeth.
Being a dental assistant while dressed as a clown in remote Peruvian villages is certainly an image I'll keep with me for quite a long time.
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