With big smiles, they invite us to split up and go to different Sunday school classes. Melody, the youngest, clings to Mom. The rest of us only look back longingly as we march politely to our separate classes. We know how to look confident and enthusiastic on the outside because we've practiced at a dozen other churches, but on the inside we feel lonely and inept and uncool. I do, talking about Peru, where I grew up with the Machiguenga Indians.
Kids look blank.
At 12 years old, I have had the most interesting life of anyone sitting in the room, riding rafts down wild rivers, helping care for dying Indians, climbing thorn trees in the dark to escape a herd of stampeding peccaries, speaking three languages, teaching a Machiguenga man to read, eating monkeys and macaws, living full life in the Amazon rain forest. But I don't say much about any of that because I know from long and painful experience that these kids don't care very much. In junior high, what they care about are each other's hair and clothes and shoes. Most don't have a clue where Peru is. For starters, let's just admit that it's not easy or natural.