So, I’ve had lice scares before,
mostly at Pecometh. By “lice scare” I mean that someone else had
lice and I helped take care of it. Somehow the news would spread that
a camper had lice, and from the “fight or flight options” my
brain would choose “fight.” The camper would be waiting to go
home (usually in the health center, looking sad) and we’d
systematically check every head on the property. I remember the
summer of 2006 when a couple staffers got lice from the campers and
Pecometh bought all the available RID in Kent and QA counties so our
whole staff could take preventative measures against getting it. I
even had lice myself for the first time at the age of 23. I don’t
know where I got it but I felt humiliated and dirty. I was a teeny,
tiny bit consoled to find out that lice like clean hair…blah blah
blah. At the time I had been living in Louisiana for 2 weeks with a
friend of the same age. Bless her, she checked and combed through my
hair twice, which was almost to my waist at the time. I got rid of
the lice after 2 weeks and couldn’t talk about it for a long time
afterward.
These kids are were invited into Oaza by the director. Her vision is that with some socialization, clean clothes, a good washing, some good food, and time and attention, that their parents would see that they are smart enough to be enrolled in school in Arad.
Well, when you invite kids in off the
streets, however adorable they might be, there’s a chance that they
might have head lice. A few days later, when we were told one of the kids had it and we might
want to take measures to prevent ourselves from getting it, we
decided to just go with it and put that jet fuel right on our heads
as well. That’s right, jet fuel! Anyway, we waited out our 30 minutes
over coffee, washed it out, and jumped right back into the
activities. I was kind of proud of myself for not getting freaked
out. It helped that the director of Oaza didn’t overreact either. She
just chatted calmly and played with the kids while her head was in a
treatment wrap. These kids however, happy and uneducated, thought
nothing of it. They smiled, played with cars, dolls, trains, coloring
books, spoke Romanian with us, tried some English, and played hide
and seek like it was any other day. I love how we were from such
different backgrounds and yet the rules of playing together were
still the same.
On the bright side, the most enjoyable
part of it all was having Robin check, treat, and rinse my hair.
Having someone play with my hair makes even preventative lice
treatments bareable. To date, neither of us have turned up with head
lice 🙂
Enjoy this video of us playing hide and
seek with our new friends!
