Clearly I am a Superhero

A few weeks ago, another volunteer and I were painting a mural in the town of Alto Moche, not far from Trujillo. WorldVision (NGO) had asked for volunteers to help, and we agreed, not realizing that we were signing up to design, draw and paint 2 entire murals by ourselves. I was in mural club in High School but I'm not sure that exactly prepared me to try to get something that attractively promoted early childhood education onto a wall using terrible quality paint and brushes. But I was pleasantly surprised with the results:



While we were painting, a lot of people passing by stopped to stare, ask what we were doing (because given the paint brushes in our hands, it really wasn't obvious), or make other comments. Usually it was little kids bouncing around as if they were determined to knock over our paint cans or leave hand prints on the wall, but their parents stopped, too. And on our third day of painting, one old man marble-mumbled (a technical term for how old men with no teeth tend to talk as if they have a mouth full of marbles, obviously) from under his giant sierra-style hat something about how odd it was that 2 women were painting the mural instead of men (??).

But my favorite comment happened on the second day. Two younger kids, maybe 7 years old, were playing around with a skateboard whilst staring unabashedly. About to practically explode with excitement, one of them turned to his friend and exclaimed, "Mira! Mira las gringas! Ellas hablan inglés! ELLAS HABLAN INGLES COMO LOS POWER RANGERS!!!"

(Look! Look at the white girls! They speak English! THEY SPEAK ENGLISH LIKE THE POWER RANGERS!!!)

Clearly, I am a superhero.