Educating about Dental Hygiene

12-30.
Today we had our first education day, during which we emphasized dental hygiene. The beginning of the day was spent scrambling for supplies (and searching for Collin) in the Big Bazaar near our apartment. Although much of the time was admittedly spent fooling around with Ankit and Sandeep we ended up getting 30 toothbrushes for 15 rupees each (30 cents), toothpaste, a cricket bat, and hand sanitizer. Believe it or not, I ran into one of Didu’s old friends at the Big Bazaar from about 10 years ago in the Vedanta Center in Boston! For some reason I spoke to her in my broken Bengali when I realized later that English would have probably sufficed. What a small world….
When we arrived to the classroom in the slum (which was actually a small hut), I was struck by the lack of physical light entering the dark room and also the gravel and brick-laden floors. At the same time, I also had never seen such excitement and eagerness to learn from children in my life. It's too bad they are given so little opportunity to succeed, but hopefully we can plant some seeds for a future rise out of their current conditions. Each of the students stood up and said their name and age proudly in English, and some of them even recited poems and nursery rhymes they had been taught. To break the ice further, we went outside and played some physical games outside with the kids. Here we were able to really bond with the children. Many of the girls immediately gravitated to Niyoshi and were clinging on to her. Collin and Ankit provided some entertainment to everyone with their pseudo-sumo/ape wrestling followed by Collin’s Chad OchoCinco touchdown celebration while playing “dog and the bone” which is a simple version of capture the flag. We went back inside and started our lesson on dental hygiene. We came well equipped with Western supplies and Western knowledge that we were adamant about imparting on to our students. First we gave them kind of an informational lesson on the importance of brushing and what happens if you do not brush (accumulation of plaque and bacteria which the students called insects in Bengali). We then split up into groups of two-three Pratit members each and about 8 kids each to dive into some more interactive lessons that we planned before coming here. Our first activity was a flossing lesson, where one of us put on a rubber glove and doused it with peanut butter, where our fingers represent the teeth and the peanut butter represents bacteria in your mouth. The other member demonstrated how to get rid of this "bacteria" by using his finger as a brush to get as much of the "bacteria" off of the "teeth". As you can imagine, peanut butter got stuck between our fingers even after the brushing so we got a string to get the stuff between our fingers. Here we demonstrate the importance of flossing, since the string collected a lot of the peanut butter/bacteria. The kids were absolutely fascinated by this, and even more so when they tried it on their own teeth with the flossers we provided them. We continued with a demonstration of how to use the Listerine product Agent Cool Blue. Basically you rinse your mouth with this stuff and it turns your teeth blue where there are supposed to be bacteria. Who knows if it's actually legit but I guess it proved the point. Hopefully their mothers won't be too upset when they see their kids with blue teeth. Finally we gave the kids each a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a flosser, and called it a day. I'm glad we're coming back to continue all our education programs here.