Piojos= Lice

So today I spent almost 2 hours helping a girl delice her head. This girl is 26 and lives in a gutter between the highway. Last Friday I noticed that she had lice crawling- I mean I saw multiple crawling- in her hair. I think I mentioned this in my last post. So over the weekend, I looked up some remedies, asked around to figure out how to say lice in Spanish, and went in on a mission with a jar of mayonnaise. I talked to her this morning and talked to Patty (the lady I work with). Patty said she wanted her to shave her head and she freaked out. So we talked her into letting us put the mayonnaise in her hair and figured we'd talk her into the rest of it later. We doused her with the mayonnaise, wrapped her head in a bag, and let it sit for 2 hours. This may sound excessive, but if only I'd taken pictures, you would understand. Not only was her head full of lice (without exaggerating there were hundreds), but she told me (as we were out behind the center trying to brush out her hair) that she hadn't brushed it since she moved to the streets and that had been 12 years ago. She always kept it up in a pony tail so I always knew it wasn't the cleanest hair, but this was to a whole other level. Most of her hair had at least an inch covered in the eggs too. The poor thing said they keep her from sleeping and wake her up. At that I looked at her and asked her why in heaven's name she hadn't done something already?!? We ran out of time tonight but we cut her hair to her chin, and didn't have time to get all of the eggs and everything out. Tomorrow will be round two but at least from what we could tell they were all dead. I'm just hoping she does let us shave her head or at least cut it really short. I still keep feeling things crawling on me lol.
Unfortunately she isn't all there in the head. Everyday I go into this place the more I realize how much all of them are a little off. For example, the girl with the lice is 26 and today had a baby doll under her shirt all day. It was just this random awkward lump. I asked her what it was and she said it was her baby. She has an 8 yr old daughter that lives in some kind of children's home because they took her away. She was calling the doll by her daughter's name. Another girl came into day with a black eye and was just really beat up. I asked her what had happened and she said something to the effect of the guy she was staying with kicked her out because she wouldn't have sex with him. Another girl has all kinds of random stuff with her all the time and she's kind of obsessive about it. She always makes sure that we keep her back in the back room and guard it for her. It if full of random things like headbands and empty containers and notebooks. She always talks about going to the library and just rambles and rambles. I don't even know how to explain it. It makes me wish I had more of a background in that. The couples that work down at La Raza have the biggest hearts for these kids. They have one of the most radically changing testimonies of their lives of any I've ever heard before. They have more patience for these people than anyone. They've taken classes at the seminary and have life experience, but none of them have gone to college and none of them have any kind of background to help these people change unless it's a 180 degree miracle. I'm not saying that can't happen, because it can and has in their ministry, but so much more could be done. The other fact of the matter is that I don't know what other help there is in Mexico for homeless people. I'm still trying to learn and figure it out.

Well that's all I can think about for now. It's been a long long day. 6+ hours on the bus. This morning there was dead stopped traffic on the way to La Raza and then a car hit us. Now this turned some heads haha. Apparently not as normal as the other things I've mentioned. Luckily we weren't really going fast, it was just really loud.