Saturday, October 4, 2008

The tooth rat

A few weeks ago, Titus lost his first tooth! A big deal of course and especially since he had watched his big sister lose 5 or 6 during the 6 months his tooth had been loose! The next day, he proudly showed our helper his gap in his mouth. With this she replied, "Here in Uganda, we tell our children to put their tooth in a special place and a rat will get it and leave money for it."
Hmmmm. Not sure what that says about each culture. Tooth Fairy in America; Tooth Rat in Uganda. But we all got a great laugh at the difference.

2 comments:

Aubrey said...

Hi you guys! I hope this finds you well. I just thought I would chime in and let you know that one of my students' mothers is from Colombia and they have the same tradition of a 'tooth rat', which I also found interesting, but have yet to figure out the significance or what it says about the different cultures. But, I can tell you that my first grade students regularly receive 5 CHF, which is about 4.50 USD, for every tooth they lose. When I was a kid, I remember thinking a quarter was a lot! Anyway, Blessings!!!!

Caralina said...

That is interesting that it is the same. I'd love to hear other tooth traditions in other countries. The going rate for a tooth here is 100 Ugandan shillings which is about 6 cents.