Fire Ants, Cookie Dough, and Neighbor Kids

Catchy title, huh? Unfortunately the fire ants are not related to the rest of the title. I just want to tell that story because I don’t want the pain to be in vain.


Upon arriving home from Lima, we discovered that our house had been taken hostage by ants, but not just any ants... fire ants. However, these ants aren’t the most obvious about their work, either that or we weren’t the most attentive. In a short time, as I would sit in our living room with my feet on the ground, it wouldn’t be long before something was stinging me. Looking down, I hardly noticed anything; but looking closer, I realized a small ant had decided my foot had gotten in the way of whatever it was doing. NOT FUNNY!

As we began to look around the room, we noticed lines of these little guys, marching in order on about 4 different trails through the living room, into the study, and back outside.

The climax of my fire ant story was when I was almost taken down by a whole army of them. We have a towel on the floor in front of our sink because the sink tends to splatter water in every direction when washing dishes. I went to do dishes one evening and in a matter of seconds my feet were on fire! Top and bottom! I looked down, but couldn’t see anything, because I was only lending the light from our window. I went over and turned on the light in the kitchen to find the towel was COVERED with fire ants! Never had I seen so many gathered in one place. I promptly grabbed the bleach and made a counter attack, successfully defeating the majority of the army in one swift pour of bleach.

It took me at least a day before I mounted enough courage to return to the kitchen sink.

So Cookie Dough and Neighbor Kids? Those two are related.

Several months ago, in the first trimester of pregnancy, I was craving sweets. It dawned on me that I had all the ingredients to make cookie dough; except, I didn’t (no brown sugar or baking soda). So I just improvised and it came out alright. Not my favorite, but it did the job. Considering the fact it wasn’t the best in the world, I stuck it in the freezer and let our guests try it as they wanted. 

Time slipped by and I sort of forgot about it. UNTIL Sunday, when we received four suitcases from home, delivered by a friend who was coming down with another mission. One of the suitcases was filled with chocolates, candies, cookies, goodies, cooking ingredients, etc.

That suitcase is the sole reason I feel like we are running the Peruvian branch of the Willy Wonka Factory. I do love it, because I always have something on hand to share with neighbor kids, or unannounced visitors (a daily occurrence). Admittedly, it is a little comical as sweets aren’t a real big thing here, so most people can hardly handle one bite-size candy bar.

Of course, in this climate, the chocolate needs to be stored in the freezer, which was when I ran into the cookie dough. I made it all fit snugly, until we went to the grocery store and bought a whole chicken for all our guests this week. I had completely forgotten about our lack of freezer space, and was forced to laugh when I got home to put away groceries and found no room in the freezer, rather heaps of chocolate. 

Well, when deciding what to remove, it’s no doubt that the not so great cookie dough was the first to go. When my nephew came later in the day, I tried ponding it off on him, but he wasn’t hungry and only wanted cool aid. So I stuck it on the counter and figured if I didn’t get rid of it by the end of the night, I’d just throw it out.

Now the link...

In the last newsletter, I wrote about the possibility of getting a kids ministry with our neighbors rolling. Well, we certainly did it. We are at once a week, but they would love it if we did it all day everyday. 

Anyway... our big thing is game night with them. They come over, play games for about an hour, then we give them some sort of treat and they go home. We are slowly incorporating a Bible time of sorts, which started last night (more on that in the next newsletter). 

For our games, we try to give the winner of the game a special prize in addition to the treats everyone gets. Last Tuesday, we remembered the tub of cookie dough. So I gave it to the winner, relieved to be rid of it, and wondering if they would even like it.

Well, five minutes later a string of 6 kids were marching right back into the house with gobs of cookie dough sticking to their fingers, led by the proud winner of the loot, Elio.

“Senorita Betanya [for some reason, they all still call me “senorita” -miss-, although I have rightly earned the title “senora” -mrs.-],” he starts, “I gave some of this stuff to all the kids, my mom, and other people at my house. Senorita Betanya, it’s DELICIOUS! We all want to know, what is it? Where is it from?”

Admittedly, I was a little shocked and slightly embarrassed that it had made it that far around the neighborhood... let alone so quickly. Even still, how do I even explain what cookie dough is in a culture that doesn’t really eat cookies, and if they do, it’s just packaged snacks. So I just called it some sort of sweet and that I made it.

“Senorita Betanya,” all the other kids chiming in at once, tongues clicking as they lick their little fingers, “do you have more of this stuff? Can we have some? We love it! Will you make more?”

As they filed back outside to spread the wealth, I just stood at the kitchen sink over a pile of dirty dishes, laughing. The whole scene was just comical as they all burst right in without knocking, walked right past Nelton and the two guys in the living room, until they reached the goal of the gringa in the kitchen to inquire about the new tasty treat that had reached this land. It was as if they owned the place.

When I thought the cookie dough hype was over, it got funnier later that night when Nelton came home from running some errands. I was in the bedroom, getting things straightened out, but was quickly filled with curiosity at the sound of his laughter as he entered the room.



“You’re not going to believe this,” he told me, “as I was coming home Paulo (our other neighbor I wrote about in the newsletter) stopped me and asked me where that jam was from.”
-Stopping him there, I burst out laughing, but had to clarify, “Jam?” I asked.
“Yeah, your cookie dough, he had no idea what to call it, so he called it jam. Anyway, he said ‘IT WAS SO DELICIOUS! The kids just gave me a nibble and I tasted it and wanted to grab the whole tub from them and send them away. Why haven’t you ever offered me any before?’” As if to imply that we were wasting it on the kids.

Nelton’s relaying of the incident with Paulo was filled with imitations of his facial expressions, hand gestures, and voice inflections, which made it that much funnier.

Oh, the random things that catch me off guard everyday in this culture. Such a mess-up of cookie dough would have never drawn such a positive response in my culture. My only hope was not to hear anything more of it after it left the door, but am so glad I did.

Although I’d love to draw a lesson from these experiences, or at least make a valid point, I don’t feel inclined. Maybe this will just give you a peak into some of the events of everyday life in another country.