Our second weekend in Salluit was tiring and exciting! We were pumped to set up a table at the garage sale on Saturday at Pigiurvik, with info about QHO, Canada’s Food Guide, food labels and more. Sadly, as beautiful as our posters were, there were only three families to see them. Apparently the garage sale was not as happening a place as we’d expected…however we were very excited when one of the parents looked at our posters, and even took home a food guide. Success! We’re hoping to set up our table at the Co-Op (the grocery store) this weekend, which we expect will have a better turn out, since it is one of the only two grocery stores in town.
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| The garage sale was an epic fail, at least our table looked good! |
The rest of the weekend involved playing pool with the kids at the Youth House, preparing our Sexual Health lessons, and hiking to the airport for a beautiful view of the valley and surrounding mountains. Sunday night was spent attempting to put together a dance for our first hip-hop class on Monday- having never choreographed anything before this was a bit of a struggle to say the least! Fortunately, when we had our class on Monday there was a huge turn out, and the kids loved it. They’ve been asking us about the next practice all week!
On Monday we also took a quick trip to the nursing station, and returned with a full stash of Sexual Health treasures, including a plastic penis, a breast for practicing breast exams, tons of different contraceptives and a HUGE box of condoms. Sexual health week began with lots of silent classes (this is usually very hard to achieve!), wide eyes, diagrams, and great questions! There was a bit of an awkward moment in one anatomy lesson when Mel held up a female reproductive system poster in front of her lower body for the kids to see better…it took her a while to understand why even Kathryn was laughing. In another rowdier lesson Kathryn bribed the kids to stay quiet by threatening “If you don’t listen we won’t tell you about penises and vaginas.” That got them listening pretty quickly!
On Tuesday, we had our first lesson at Sapumivik, the rehabilitation centre in Salluit. The boys loved our lesson on hygiene, physical activity and nutrition, and we loved the delicious dinner with them afterwards. After dinner a heated game of floor hockey began at the elementary school gym, and we quickly realized knowledge of Malkin and Staal was the way to these boys hearts! When we offered to play music, the boys asked for Fireworks by Katy Perry – they even knew all the words! We’ll be returning to Sapumivik for three more lessons, and we can’t wait to get to know the boys better and have more Katy Perry dance parties. Even though we were exhausted after hockey, we couldn’t resist waiting around until open gym time at the elementary school. The local basketball star Abdula (from Tanzania’s national basketball team) had asked us to come by, and we were glad we did! All the older students were there, and we loved the opportunity to hang out with them outside of school.
As the weeks go by we keep adding more and more stuff to our giant “to do” list (those who know us well will not be surprised that this list exists). We hope to host a second girls night (our first is tomorrow!), have a school dance, continue hip-hop classes, teach a women’s health lesson at the adult education centre and meet with more community members to hear their ideas on health initiatives in Salluit. Oh yeah, and teach too…
Wish us luck!!
Salluit Sistazz
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| Mel carrying Nathan in an amotik, the traditional coat worn by Inuit women |
Even though the garage sale was a fail you girls sure look cute doing it! Love the matching tee's!
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