Today is the day we have a meal along with our meeting. The ladies show up early to cook and the teens clean up. Its always a struggle (although mostly a joking struggle) to get the teens to do the dishes. And I don't blame them- the huge sufurias (cooking pots) are a pain to wash! They aren't exactly teflon coated.
Pretty much all of my teens have some way to dodge dish duty. They are "sick". Or "too tired". My philosophy is simple- if you can eat, you can wash. No exceptions. One girl always tries to sneak off- she's easy to catch as she does the same thing every time. One guy argues and stalls and what not until the dishes are done and he gets away without working (so I set aside a stack just for him- he can't leave until they are done- I don't care how long he stalls).
But I've got one girl who is super sneaky. She starts doing the dishes, then finds a reason to walk away and then she "get's pulled into a conversation" and is AWOL. But today I figured her out: she's just like the Mouse in If You Give A Mouse A Cookie!!!
If you give a (student name that I'm not going to tell you) a salama (greeting), she'll want to sit down.
If she sits down, she'll want some chai (tea).
If you give her chai, she'll want to chat.
If you let her chat, she will talk all day!
If she talks all day, she'll miss out on dish duty!!!
If she skips dish duty, there will be a coup d'etat because as much as the teens try to get out of dishes; if they are washing, everyone better be washing too!!
In the end, my super sneaky, chatty teen helped with the dishes (well, after I called her out). And she got to wash the big, nasty, rice sufuria. She complained that it was too big and that she could live in it- and she sure could try, these are crazy big cooking pots!!! But I wouldn't trade dish duty for anything. We are tired and muddy and the teens complain like nobody's business about washing but we have some of the best conversations, jokes and laughs ever. Its worth all the complaints and games they play.
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