Head, Shoulders, Knees, & Toes Kills it Every Time

Daytripping with Project Sophia’s Mobile Library

To clarify, this is not what I came here to do.  But it is a nice way to start exploring and engaging with the Poso communities.

Not sure I’ve ever come across a game as crowd pleasing as a jovial speed-round of Head, Shoulders, Knees, & Toes.  A couple of years ago I babysat for a 2-year-old Norwegian girl named Susanna and she couldn’t get enough of it.  She knew that I’d only start singing with her after my prompt of, “ready?” (she’d respond, “okay!”), and after a few days she began blowing past me altogether—ready-okaying herself.  It was cute.  Anyways, it didn’t take long here to discover that HSK&T is an ice-breaker not exclusively enjoyable to Western, highly industrialized societies. 

Examples: 

The girl in blue is named Rinda.  She ruled.  She found out about Lian through the thriving Indonesian blogosphere (not sarcasm) and now she volunteers on these Sophia runs.  She’s studying to be a teacher and was such a natural in the classroom it’s hard to imagine her doing anything else.  Except maybe becoming an extremely highly paid manicurist.  This girl’s nail art was off the chain.  I wish I had gotten a picture.  She told us that she changed it every morning to match her hijab of the day.  Every morning.  I can barely manage to brush my teeth every morning let alone spend an hour intricately bedazzling my hands.  Caro, you would’ve gone crazy for it.  Rinda told us she’d come back to our hotel in Poso where we were staying later that day to do our nails for us, but then Jaime and I both fell asleep.  


My napping schedule gets in the way of everything.

Here are some more pictures of the morning.  And of our efforts to read and translate the first half of Dr. Seuss’s Red Fish, Blue Fish.  Most of the credits for these photos do not belong to me. Again, please see the Sun Super Dreams contest post to vote on some extra funding for this lovely initiative!  

In the background, you can see Sam, he's Lian's driver.  But he's also just sort of learning to drive so the car stalls a lot.  His nails are extraordinarily long.  Everyday Jaime and I are like, Sam, cut your nails.  But he doesn't speak English so I think our words are falling on deaf ears.

Flocking to the book table.