37. Theater-therapy, with children of fishermen and drug traffickers

Like every three months, Máxima visited the school to do an evaluation of the children's health, nutrition, and behavior.

In the village, there were three schools. She concentrated on the largest, the Shirys School. After checking the children, which took three days, 12 children with serious behavior problems and some of the best students were invited, who were interested in theater therapy, which Dr.Maxima considered was the best treatment that could be interesting for children from 9 to 12 years old.

Many of the school children did not have organized homes, since their parents had migrated, most of them to Spain, after an economic crisis that the country experienced in 1999, in which the money from the banks disappeared, the bankers fled, the national currency the sucre, which was replaced by the dollar. That created a wave of migration, which stopped since the new government arrived in 2008, and many of the emigrants returned due to the real estate crisis in the United States, Europe, and especially in Spain and Italy. But the majority continued in those countries, suspecting that the bonanza would not last forever. In Ecuador, the periods of bonanza are temporary, they had already lived it with the boom of bananas, oil, and shrimp.

Among the 12 children who entered the theater workshop, there was the principal's daughter, two of the best students in the school, and the most complicated boys due to their behavior, which was generally hyperactivity and low concentration, usually the result of malnutrition. , chronic malnutrition, anemia, or family instability.

Among the children, the majority did not have one of the two parents, the majority lived only with the mother, or the grandparents.

In the town almost no one was married by the church, they accepted the so-called free union, which in the country was recognized as a civil marriage in fact, but the men had children by several women, or the women had children by two or more partners. . Fishermen believed, like sailors, that you had to have a woman in every port. The fishermen tried to have a woman on each beach or fishing area, to which they migrated when the El Niño or Humboldt currents arrived.

In the first weeks, the boys met with an actress, who had to do her thesis to graduate.

"Boys, she introduced them to Alex, her theater and dance teacher," said Máxima, "the day she started the workshop, in one of the school's classrooms.

-Good morning guys, I'm Alex and for three weeks I'll be her theater and dance teacher.

She began with exercises and dance classes, in which she taught salsa, twist, cumbia, salsa, rock, regatón, bachata, which the boys danced better than the teacher, then they practiced the dialogues and gestures.

_ What are we going to learn today, asked the girls?

- We are going to learn to dance the tango because it is more complicated, it needs better coordination between men and women. Who takes a step forward to be the one who learns with me? Others have to repeat the movements that I do with my partner. I will correct them when I tell them that they have to change partners.

Those classes were enthusiastic about the boys, who began to change their behavior, to change their way of relating to each other because within the school, those who acted as leaders were characterized by being louts, rogues, violent, or thieves. They had a total lack of respect for their companions, who believed they had to have them under constant harassment, make jokes, steal something, touch them or make advances of all kinds, with the insinuating and impertinent invitation, to try alcohol or drugs even to have sex.

- Boys, the first thing we are going to learn is to respect and help each other- were the first words of Dr. Maxima and Alex the theater teacher. But it was very difficult to teach the boys to behave differently.

-Well, now we are going to make a play or rather a short video, we are going to film it and upload it to the Internet, where it will remain forever and people from the country and the world will see it. Here I have the camera and the microphone,

-Fantastic, said one of the girls, we can make a fictitious story about a colleague, who has an accident or that she is very ill and that we have to do a dance contest, to raise money to pay for her treatment.

"It's a good idea," answered Máxima, I can help you by playing the role of a doctor.

- Better let's do the story of some boys who have alcohol and drug problems in school. In town, there are kids who skip school and stay in the park to smoke, drink alcohol, or even get high with H.

-Well we already have two stories to tell. Which do we do first? Alex asked.

"Let's go to the vote," said Máxima.

In the vote, she won the first proposal to make the story of the girl who gets sick and her friends raise money for her treatment.