La Defensoria

Today I had class at 9, per usual, with the afternoon free.  Class was at the house of the program director, not per the usual.  Ismael's house is very Asian-themed....the gate has a Chinese symbol on it, there's a  studio Ismael uses to teach his daily Tai Chi classes, there are Chinese and Bolivian things all over the walls...and there are also tons of windchimes and stone frogs, because Ismael likes them.  So we all sat on pillows in the Tai Chi studio and learned about the Bolivian lowlands, aka the east.  And after class we ate vegetarian salteñas and birthday cake for my buddy Ali's birthday.  (We all have buddies so no one gets lost when we go places.)  For those poor souls who have never had a salteña, they are delicious fried cresent-roll-ish dough with veggies/potatoes/mystery liquid inside.  They are AWESOME.  They do tend to end up all over, because of the juice (which always manages to leak out somehow...but WORTH IT.

After class, I went with Allyson and Sophie (two girls in my education reform project group) to the Defensoria de la Niñez (a group that defends children, from things like child abuse).  When Colegio Bolivar went coed, the Defensoria helped protect the girls.  We went in and asked if we could talk to someone about what happened.

We talked to a nice woman there, who told us that the Defensoria got involved to protect the girls' right to education and to not be discriminated against.  The girls entered the school with psychologists and social workers, who apparently also faced some attacks.  One interesting thing she told us was that the girls' parents didn't want them to go because of all the attacks, but the girls wanted to (I think not only because it's a good school but on principle).  Now all the public schools in the city are mixed.  We asked if any other schools had had this type of problem when they mixed (years ago for some of them).  She said that there were some problems, but more subtle, like expelling the girls for not wearing the "correct" (boys') uniform.  At Colegio Bolivar they wanted to make the girls buzz their hair, like the boys have to, but the Defensoria wouldn't allow it, since it violated the girls' right as "little women."