La Jefa

Yo soy la jefa.

I am the chief, the boss, the head honcho in my youth group of 30 preteens and teenagers. And unfortunately, that also makes me the disciplinarian when my orders and mandates go unheeded.

With my youth group, I have been lucky in that they know me and respect me, so I can get away with punishing them by simply telling them how disappointed I am in their behavior (the technique more commonly known as the guilt trip) or by making them write apology letters or defining respect and responsibility. I can glare at them and they know to stop whatever bad behavior in which they are currently involved.

But these “alternative” disciplinary methods don’t usually work in the Dominican Republic. This is a culture where the teachers are still allowed to take off their belt in the middle of class to hit a student who is “too stupid” to learn the material. This is a culture where the older siblings are sent to pluck a splintering branch from the closest tree to hit the toddler who is throwing a temper tantrum. Therefore my non-violent disciplinarian techniques often lack the necessary “uuumph” to get the job done.

I realized this today during the town’s celebration of International Youth Day. We loaded up the pickup truck (20 of us total) and headed to the church in the closest large pueblo, Payitas. They had invited youth groups from all over region, so there were about 200 kids total. And 4 adults. Including me. I have no idea how all of the other kids got to Payitas, but it seemed as if their parents threw them all in trucks and told the drivers just to let them off wherever.

The event, which lasted for 4 hours, started off well. We sang a few songs, I did a few silly games and Montreat-like energizers, and then each group gave a little presentation. Some of the kids from my group did a 1 minute drama on how we shouldn’t discriminate against senior citizens; other groups sang, read poetry, and told jokes.

After about 2 hours the kids started getting antsy. And they started leaving the church to play outside, so I had to stand guard. I spent the next two hours interrogating everyone who wanted to leave, then letting them leave one-by-one to go to the bathroom, and then chasing the ones who escaped, leaving through the other 6 doors in the sanctuary. It was a nightmare (and the most annoying part was when of the other adults came over to me after about an hour of me chasing around the little rugrats and said in a sickeningly sweet voice “it would really help us out if didn’t let the kids leave the church.” Um yeah, maybe if she would’ve helped me stand guard, instead of her staying seated, drinking her glass of orange soda, the kids would be under a little more control.) Luckily my group was well-behaved enough that I didn’t have to worry about them. I just had to worry about the other 180 rambunctious kids.