A Chocolatada for Copitos de Amor

The school term for many schools finished early this year on November 1^st and some schools are taking advantage of the early closing by holding their chocolatadas this week before the feared weather phenomenon El Niño arrives. Last July Karina Suyon, the director of the pronoei Copitos de Amor in the village of Las Salinas asked if we could sponsor a chocolatada and we agreed that hers would be one of two schools we would sponsor this December.

We were there at 10:00am this morning in time to see the mothers finish decorating. The festivities started with Koko Roko the clown. He tried hard but was only able to get about half of the kids to participate. You have to realize that these pronoei kids are 3 to 5 years old, live in remote villages, have never seen a live clown and they’re afraid of him.

None of the kids were afraid when toys were handed out, though trying to get them together for a group photo with their toys was impossible. Karina and we finally gave up. The table in the background is loaded with panetone, cookies, candy, marshmallows and I don’t know what else. We probably over did it but it won’t go to waste. After the toys were distributed there was a meal of chicken and panetone with hot chocolate.

It was a chocolatada enjoyed very much by the kids and their mothers. To Chris Raupe, Clif Brown and the others who contributed, these people know that you donated to their chocolatada. This photo is their way and ours of saying thank you.