A Merry Navidad

Before regaling you all with timeless Christmas tales, I want to devote a few lines to those who have been affected by the earthquake in Haiti, especially those who are connected with Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos there (Nos Petits Frères et Soeurs). Their facilities have suffered significant damage, and while all of the children there are accounted for, an NPH doctor has died, a volunteer was severely hurt and her brother passed away, and Molly, another volunteer—a friend of mine from college—also didn’t make it. Prayers for her and her family that they find peace in knowing that she is with God, and prayers for all of the Mollys out there who are an inspiration to us.

The Ranch held a prayer service on Wednesday afternoon, and since then, the kids have had mountains of questions: what is an earthquake? Did the ground open up? Is it true that Haiti is the poorest country, and that we are number two? In hogar, my girls were especially distraught, and we spent all of last night talking about tectonic plates, poverty, Molly, and what the people in Haiti are doing now. Their comments and questions touched my heart. They were very worried about the kids in the NPH Haiti home. If Haiti is even poorer than Honduras, then the kids probably don’t have food to eat or water to drink, they surmised; therefore, they should just send all the kids to the other NPH homes to live there. And the rest of the people in Haiti, they asked me, where will they be sent, and how will they get food and water? Are they sleeping on the rocks? I did my best to answer their questions, but nothing satisfied them. “Pobrecitos,” they murmured over and over, which means something like “those poor dears.” Two observations of theirs brought me the comfort and warmth that only a child’s sincerity can inspire. The first, that God does miracles. If we keep praying really hard, there will be a miracle, right, Daniela? We just need to ask God for a miracle and he will protect all the people and make sure that all the kids at NPH Haiti have food. This brought them to their second observation, which Carmelina voiced proudly: “Daniela, if Michael Jackson were alive, he would donate lots of food and water and toys, because Michael Jackson cared about the poor people.” She took my silent nod—more of a stifled laugh—to be a sign of assent. Leave it to the chicas to connect Michael Jackson to a devastating natural disaster.

Now I’ll share just a touch of Navidad on the Ranch. Although I knew back in July that I wouldn’t be spending Christmas in the usual winter wonderland of below-freezing weather, the consumer-chaos of Black Friday, and Starbucks candy cane lattes, I hadn’t pictured myself sweating and huffing the nearly two hour hike to the neighboring pueblo,Tamale y Queso, in 85 degree weather with 75 kids all under the age of 11. But that’s exactly where I found myself on December 25th. I felt like Santa Claus in shorts and sunglasses lugging the big bulky sack stuffed with old toys and clothes that the kids had selected from their few possessions to give away to the grateful families living in the impoverished, rural village tucked back in the mountains behind the Ranch.

We stopped at each cement casita, so small and dilapidated one could barely call them houses, and called over to the curious children watching our noisy herd pass by from the front door. I barely had a chance to set down the sack that weighed heavily on my shoulder before my girls tore into it, whipping out wrinkled, stained t-shirts and dirty plastic toys with missing pieces. They passed their hard-loved treasures through the rickety gate into the eager hands of their new owners. This Christmas tradition could easily have been awkward and depressing: watching my kids hand over their sorry clothing and toys to destitute families was a blatant admission of poverty; yet any embarrassment was erased by sincerity and frankness. The whole process was simple enough for an eight year old: I have a pink shirt with a flowers and pandas on it that I don’t need, and you clearly need a shirt with flowers and pandas; what’s there to be uncomfortable about? It was a Christmas day unlike any I have ever experienced, but it will certainly be one that I’ll think about every year now.

I can only imagine that my chicas’ gift-giving facility was aided by a rather sumptuous Christmas morning. Bleary eyed and tired after a night of delicious tamales, apples, grapes, and a 25 foot bonfire, my girls awoke to quite a pile of booty under the fake Christmas tree in our hogar. Our beloved gigantic Frosty, in all his resurrected glory, witnessed smilingly as 28 ecstatic little girls unpacked their stockings to find neon hair scrunchies, pencils and erasers, a fine tooth comb (look out, lice!), their very own nail polish and lip gloss, a stylish notebook, new socks and underwear (usually no cause for Christmas cheer, but here, a surefire hit), and—oh, the joy!—a small fortune in candy: all the spoils of Daniela’s family hauling two enormous, hefty duffel bags all the way to Honduras from Spokane, Washington (thank you Diane, Keri, Mike, Glen & Chris, and family!).

As if we had to remind ourselves of the bonfire madness of Christmas Eve, New Year’s celebrations consisted of no less than FOUR gigantic burning piles. One would think that there would be numerous serious burn injuries when hundreds of sugar-laden kids are let loose to dawdle in flames, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. At midnight, we all gathered around the mother fire and ceremoniously ignited the Old Year, a scarecrow-like stuffed dummy hung on a tree and then lit with fire—a Honduran tradition I’ll not soon forget. The conclave of wild cheers and raucous dancing to the suspended burning “body” was slightly disturbing and unbelievable, yet so are many of the experiences I’ve had here since July. Festivities continued until the wee hours, but most of my hogar had fallen asleep in the grass far earlier, their new Christmas outfits already singed from flying sparks.

It was a tiring yet wonderful two weeks on the Ranch, but sharing it with my family made it that much more special. Essentially tossed into the jungle since landing in Tegucigalpa one suitcase short and shorter on sleep, the fearsome Jolicoeur Five braved the partly-paved concrete Amazon, dodging racing semis, slow-moving truckloads of soccer teams, empathic crates of potatoes, and suddenly one-way traffic lanes to arrive 9 hours later, exhausted yet triumphant, in Copan. Quaint, narrow cobblestone streets and general cleanliness were hardly training for my parents and siblings to arrive five days later at Rancho Santa Fe. Once cockroaches were accepted as permanent houseguests, though, life continued swimmingly. The kids didn’t care one bit that they didn’t really speak much Spanish, instead making a million astute observations like “your dad is always smiling,” “tu hermana es muy beautiful!”, and “Daniela, you’re the shortest and the oldest?” I think many of the kids were especially interested to see a complete family together and happy. More than once they asked my parents (as I translated): do you love your son? Do you love your daughter? How much do you love them? I think it made all the difference having all of us share such a special time with them.

About a month remains until the new school year starts in February. This month, I am officially halfway through my year of service here. It feels like I’ve been here forever and for moments only. Already I can tell that many of the kids are changing and growing (myself included). I can only imagine that in six months, I won’t be able to imagine the changes that will have occurred from the beginning of the year.

Les deseo un año lleno de alegria y paz. Que Dios les bendiga.
Happy New Year, everyone.

It's December . . . and still piping hot!

Hola a todos y a todas,

In the last four weeks since I have blogged (I know you were all ever so eagerly awaiting my next update), classes in the school have officially ended, graduation and quinceañeros have passed, vacation courses have started, the university and high school students have returned to the Ranch from their schools in the city, and Honduras has turned a political corner (for better or for worse is yet to be seen).
My 147 students finished out the year well, with only 5 really truly failing English to merit staying an extra week with me and making up the grade. Last week I attended the Talleres employee Christmas party, which took place in a tiny, two bedroom casa (an outdoor bathroom was shared by four homes) stacked with a mega entertainment center, jamming speakers and a disco ball to ensure a night of awkward dancing and chatting with coworkers. I learned that my beloved jefe, Jorge, actually speaks English (would have been nice to know) and lived in the States for a while, and that another coworker of mine is 23 and has a 6 year old son. We all exchanged Secret Santa gifts and then, following Honduran custom, took turns making small speeches to express our appreciation of each other (and that the year had ended). In retrospect, the three months I spent teaching in Talleres were one of the most challenging learning experiences I have yet had, and that is not to say that the months were terrible. On the contrary, I have come to really enjoy my job in the Vocational School/junior high, although the vacation until the next school year starts is much needed.
Vacation courses began last week. I am teaching one English course for the first period and then assisting a profesor in ''dibujo y pintura,'' or drawing and painting, which realistically translates to babysitting upwards of ten rowdy 4 to 13 year olds as they wreak havoc on the storage room (our classroom) and on each other. Today I ripped the broom away from Jepherson as he swung it like a baseball bat at Paola's head for stealing his chair; I also saved Adonis from death by falling bookshelf. I said that I am ''assisting'' the profesor, but really, I am babysitting him, too. More stories on that to come, I am sure. Suffice to say that I mentioned to him yesterday that listening to music on his cell phone during class time was probably not helping settle the kids down to draw pictures of Santa and his reindeer.
It is hard to believe that nearly 5 months have passed since I arrived in July on Mel Zelaya's coattails. I feel myself more and more at home on the Ranch, and have come to truly love these children and Honduras's splendid idiosyncracies. I leave Friday for a short trip to Nicaragua, Copan and Tela before the Ranch goes into lockdown mode for Christmas and New Year's (two weeks where volunteers are not allowed to leave the Ranch, but instead work nearly non-stop in hogar).
I hope you all passed a delicious Thanksgiving, and that Christmas is taking its time coming to you. I am slowly finding out how Christmas is celebrated at an orphanage in a country where snow is something that exists in books and movies. I hope this story I prepared will help you see a little bit about how we entertain ourselves on the Ranch during the Advent season.

Christmas is Coming
Last night I was led into the hogar with 3 pairs of sweaty, grimy hands covering my eyes and another 4 pairs clutching my hands and pulling me into the salon. The girls had been whispering and giggling about a surprise in the hogar all day long, and now they were beside themselves to show me. As I waited with my eyes closed inside the salon, I could hear the chicas running around the room, yelling and shrieking, ''Not yet! Don't open your eyes! Turn off the lights! No, don't turn them off yet! Ok now turn them on!'' Finally, they screamed at me to open my eyes, which I gingerly did to the cheers of 29 Christmas-enthused girls.

First I saw the Christmas tree, its twinkling colored lights complemented by nativity decorations and red and gold ornaments, many of which were missing rather large chunks out of their sides or were severly disfigured, no doubt the result of years of abuse in the chicas hogar. ''Daniela! Daniela! Look over here!'' was the next cry. My eyes traveled to the right where the real surprise stood. The girls had been squealing about it secretively all day. Next to the tree was an 8 foot tall blow-up snowman, the kind that you plug in to keep air pumping into it, the kind you see in Costo and K-Mart but could never imagine paying money for, instead choosing to snicker at all those Chevy Chase-worthy houses that actually put it up in their yard (apologies to whoever does have one in their yard right now--it is true that the kids love them!).

After a moment of confusion as to where I actually was, I, too, started cheering and clapping that we had a gigantic ''Frosty'' inside the hogar salon. Then all chaos broke loose in riotous Christmas revelry: Michael Jackson blasting from the boombox, chicas running up and bouncing off of Frosty's bulbous white belly, and other chicas screaming and dancing and doing gymnastics in front of the tree. Suddently, though, the festive squeals became cries of terror as Frosty's huge frame began to deflate, threatening to cover the littlest chica, Genesis, in a pond of white nylon. As Frosty melted away, several girls started to cry----what was happening to our beloved snowman, who seemed to willingly bounce to the smooth rhythms of Billie Jean and Thriller? The big belly quickly gave way to reveal Scolin sitting behind, the cable cord clutched in her fingers and her eyes locked in guilty surprise. The source of such a tragic death soon discovered, 28 angry chicas advanced on the lone Scolin, who held up the cable in dismay: one of the tongs had broken off into the outlet.

This was certainly a travesty, judging by the chicas' reactions. Tía Reina would be coming back tomorrow and she would be furious . . . the girls would all surely be ''castigada'' from doing any fun activies for days, instead charged with mopping the pasillos several times each and sweeping the yard (yes, they sweep their yards here). She might even take away movie priveleges---gasp! No sooner had the girls assessed their potential punishments than they kicked into Ranch Survival Mode, operation: Fix the Frosty.

Their first attempt was to try to fish the other tong from the plug out of the socket using their fingers. The threat of electric shock was apparently not scarier than Tía Reina's wrath. After my repeated pleas to remove all digits from the socket (Julissa received seveal unexpected jolts), someone fished out the tong with a pair of tweezers. When trying to tape the tong back to the plug didn't work, it became apparent that superior wisdom was needed. Hence, our trek in the dark to Casa Suyapa, the hogar for the youngest kids, to find Chele, the chicas' self-appointed god of all things electrical. Since Chele, a soon-to-be university student, works in the electricity taller, surely he could fix our beloved frosty. Entering the youngest hogar was like entering a monkey park---at feeding time. I instantly had a half dozen little mogrels (all kids in my art class) shrieking and climbing all over me, the remains of their tripe soup dinner dripping from their mouths down the front of my shirt.

Somehow we forded our way through mazes of hungry four-year-olds to Chele, seated with a group of even littler chicas. Josselyn explained our dire situation in one exasperated breath. The life of 29 girls --- and a mega Frosty --- where at stake. Chele agreed to come take a look. Back in our hogar, the chicas huddled around Chele as he worked, clutching hands and silent for the first time that night. Their mouths waited open in desperate suspense as Chele fit the makeshift plug into the outlet. The hope of Christmas and all things merry seemed to hinge on whether or not Chele could restore the Frosty to life.

Suddenly, air started blowing into the base and Frosty started filling from the bottom. It took a few moments to register that Frosy was, well, becoming Frosy again. Once it was apparent that their fates weren't to be decided by an angry tía Reina, it was as if there were ten piñatas in the room waiting to be slashed open: the screams of job coming from the chicas were overwhelming. ''Gracias, Chele!'' they chanted, dancing and clapping once again. Frosty's thick awkward arms flapped, applauding his miraculous revival; his goofy smile promising countless more nights of Christmas cheer to the smooth crooning of Michael Jackson, no doubt.

The rest of the night was one grand dance party, made all the more special by the presence of one oversized Frosty the Snowman, formerly dead and now risen to new life. I can only imagine what would have happened should the CD player have broken, leaving us cold and lonely without Smooth Criminal and Billie Jean. I suspect this Christmas will be unlike any I have ever before experienced, one where gifts mean more and family means something completely different than I am used to. I am positive, though, that any Christmas spent with kids who would shed sloppy wet tears, stick their fingers in electrical outlets, and boldly go searching in the lion's den for a prophet to fix their golden bull (or was it a cow?) will be that much more memorable.

Feliz Navidad!

Si, Estoy Viva!

October 30, 2009

After several short but thoroughly busy weeks, finally I’ve found a few moments to write. Contrary to what you might have been fearing, I haven’t been kidnapped and ransomed by the anti-“golpistas” (the coup-haters), nor fatally bitten by venomous cobra snakes (which we do have slithering around on the Ranch, by the way). In fact, I have been buried under mountains of teacher-ish kinds of work, the direct descendent of a politically-imposed premature end to the school year. Thank you, Mel Zelaya.

I’ve a patchwork of thoughts and stories, so your reading may feel a little unorganized, but all the better to feel yourself here in Honduras experiencing life on the Ranch with me.

Part One: The Eye of the Callus

A few nights ago in hogar I had one of the stranger and more hilarious experiences I’ve had with my girls (ages 8-10; remember I changed to the chicas). I was sitting on the floormat taking a breather after dancing to “Billy Jean” for the third time already that night when Paola (pictured above right, with her eyelids turned inside out) came over and sat down next to me. She studied my feet in my worn-down flip flops and asked me why I don’t get rid of the calluses on my two big toes. I explained that since I run nearly every day, it wouldn’t make sense to try to get rid of them, because they’d just come back; also, my pumice stone somehow didn’t make the cut on my list of what to bring to Honduras for a year. “But Daniela,” she lectured me, “you have to take care of your feet. If you don’t get rid of your calluses, they’ll grow so big that you’re feet will get disfigured and you won’t be able to walk.” Paola jumped up and ran into the other room. When she came back, she had a shiny, sharp, small metal file. “I know just what you need. I’ll cut off your calluses for you.” ¿¡Cómo!? Excuse me? Cut off my calluses for me? Not only do I find the concept of other people’s feet disgusting and so expect the same reaction from them, but there was NO WAY I was about to let a 10 year old with a sharp metal file anyway near my feet.

Paola, of course, insisted, grabbing my foot and securing it in her small lap. It won’t hurt, she promised me. Somehow I mentally pushed my “I’m in Honduras, just go with it” button and agreed to let her try. Two other girls, Emy and Belkis, came over to watch. Paola expertly wielded the file, scraping off the dead skin layer by layer as Emy and Belkis peered over. “You have to get rid of calluses and blisters,” explained Paola. “I heard about a woman who didn’t cut them off and her feet got all twisted and she couldn’t walk and she died.” Emy’s eyes grew wide as she gaped at my big toe between Paola’s fingers. “Really, she died?” I asked, eyebrows raised. “Yes,” said Paola solemnly. Trying not to laugh, I volunteered the story of my great aunt Marjorie, who for years squeezed her feet into fashionable heels a few sizes too small for her until one day in her old age (as my own 10 year old memory remembers), she had to sacrifice a couple toes to perpetually pestering bunions. Paola accepted my story as more evidence to her argument.

After a few minutes of filing, we reached the white part of the callus. “There it is!” exclaimed Paola excitedly as she dug deeper. “This is the eye of the callus,” she explained to the girls. Belkis looked mortified. “There’s an eye in there?!” she squeaked. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing; the fact that the immediate fate of my big toe was literally in the hands of a 10 year old with a sharpened file was overshadowed by the hilarious reality I found myself in. Paola, with the file in one hand and her other pointing to her eye, tried to explain that it wasn’t a real eye in there (duh Belkis), but the source of the “badness.” She ushered a few other girls over to inspect the situation, and soon I had a small crowd of fascinated chicas gathered around my poor surrendered foot in Paola’s lap to examine the eye of the callus.

When I bent down to say goodnight to Paola in her bunk before leaving hogar that night, she was keen to lecture me to not go running for a week and to soak my feet in warm water at night to make sure that the callus wouldn’t come back. “Sí, claro, Paola.” And she turned over in her bunk, satisfied with her night’s work.

Part Two: Family Matters

Volunteering at an orphanage obviously raises many questions and discussions about family and what life was like for the kids before coming to live at the Ranch. Some kids here still have both parents living, whether it be separated or married, who are financially unable to take care of their children. In some cases, state programs identify these children and contact the Ranch; in other cases, there may be a parent who works on our farm while his son attends school and gets three meals a day. The majority of the children, though, have lost their mother (many to HIV/AIDS), and their father fled the scene at the beginning (among the poorer population in Honduras, men often start families, but then leave it up to the women to figure out how to sustain a family.)

While the parents in most cases are out of the picture, family still exists: aunts and uncles, cousins, older siblings working in the city, and even grandparents are welcome to come to the Ranch three times a year for the much-anticipated Visitor’s Day. The evening before Visitor’s Day, the children lay out their special outfit for the next day, wash their hair (and get de-liced in the case of my girls), and go to bed early in Christmas-like expectancy, dreaming of what goodies their family members will bring for them. On the other side of the Ranch, all of the volunteers go to bed early, too, knowing they will need every ounce of energy for the full day of work ahead.

On Sunday—my first Visitor’s Day experience—volunteers dispersed at 7 am to all of the dorms to collect the children whose families would not be coming to visit; the rest of the children went down to the school to wait for aunts and siblings to arrive. Volunteers plan and lead an entire day of games, food, and prizes to overly satisfy any family-lacking child, and indeed the kids who would be spending the day with us had plenty of excited energy bright and early on Sunday morning.

The scavenger hunt, games and face-painting, movie, hot-dog feed, lunch, piñatas, cake and candy bags all went well enough, one of the only causalities being myself (I got whacked in the head by a kid swinging the piñata stick trying to get the older kids away from the toddler’s piñata). What was especially interesting to me was the half an hour I spent at the school among all the picnicking families. Halfway through the day, we were radioed that the family of two of the kids we had in our group had arrived. I volunteered to walk Juan and his sister Maria down to the school to meet their family. 11 year old Juan was so excited that he made me sprint with him until we were both out of breath and until we realized Maria, 15, was way behind us. We waited for her to catch up.

“Maria, hurry up! Our family is here! Maybe our brother came, too!” Juan tried to pull Maria down the path to the school, but she sullenly continued dragging her feet. “Aren’t you excited to see our family, Maria?” Juan looked at her expectantly. It had been two years since their family had last been able to come to a Visitor’s Day. Maria just shrugged her shoulders. “They’re probably not really here,” she said. Juan was crushed, and we continued walking in silence until we reached the school. Multitudes of families were sprawled out on blankets on the grass sharing fried chicken, special rice, Pepsi, and cake. I spied several girls from my hogar all dressed up in pink frilly dresses and sitting in the laps of their much older sisters and aunts. They looked so happy, and I couldn’t help but think how unfair it was that these kids had family who either cared enough to come for the day or who could afford to come to the Ranch to see them, when there were lots of children up with the volunteers who had no one.

It took us a while to find Juan and Maria’s family. When we did, Juan rushed up to hug his two aunts, but Maria hung back next to me. “Is that your family?” I asked her. “Yeah.” She stood and watched them, a hard look on her face. Her aunts motioned over to us and finally she trudged over to them, unsure and restrained, then hugged one of her aunts. I could see Maria’s coldness melt in her aunt’s arms, and they both started crying. I watched them for a minute, goose bumps filling my arms and spine, and thought about how odd and probably difficult it must be to have no contact with your family for two years and then to see them—suddenly—for six hours. I also couldn’t help but play over in my mind Maria’s reticence; perhaps for some of the children, seeing their families could bring back pre-Ranch emotions and fears that were carefully folded up and put away in the closets of their minds.

That evening I went to hogar to get my girls in bed and say goodnight before the week. They were all chattering about the food they shared with their families and excitedly displaying their special treasures: new socks and underwear (big hits), cheap plastic sandals, neon hair bands, chips and candy, and for a couple girls, a few Lempiras. Paola was the winner, with a Honduras soccer jersey and two new pairs of earrings. As soon as they got into their bunks, the girls quickly fell asleep clutching their new goodies to their chests, exhausted from the day. I walked home nursing the giant goose-egg on my head, but thankful for a loving, stable family that is just a phone call or an email away.

Part Three: The Saddest Thing I’ve Ever Heard

I’m sorry to end my novella with a downer, but there are some tragic stories that I have to share—if only because they attest to God’s amazing grace and love that creates such resiliency in children and gives some of them another chance in life after unbelievable circumstances.

This week Stephanie, another volunteer, and I had “proyeceto” with a Maria, Juan, and Oscar, their cousin. In “proyecto” (project), a family comes to the volunteer house to cook dinner and play games with one or two volunteers. It’s a chance for siblings to connect and spend time outside of their hogars and get special treatment for a night. I already knew Maria and Juan, but it was my first experience with Oscar, and I question how I ever was able to babysit more than two children at a time by myself after the night with these kids. Maria was fine, engrossed in a cheesy teen magazine for most of the time; and Juan wasn’t too bad to keep track of; Oscar, though, rivaled any monster child you’ve ever babysat.

Oscar is adorable: hardly over three feet tall with big, dark eyes, he is extremely skinny and his un-proportionally large head looks as if it’s about to tip his whole body over. You would be shocked to learn that he is actually 10 or 11 years old; he doesn’t really speak except little indistinguishable shouts and is close to being deaf. He has the energy of about three six-year olds put together; just as soon as he picked out the Legos to play with, he saw a basketball and decided to play with that; but then, oh, how shiny Daniela’s laptop is, and—oh, wait—the microwave is low enough to reach! After about an hour chasing Oscar all over the volunteer house and trying to explain through gestures that putting metal cups in the microwave is a VERY bad idea, I asked Stephanie if she had heard anything about Oscar’s background.

She had heard, as it turns out. Oscar was found in a garbage landfill at a little over one year old, severely malnourished, with rats chewing his hands. The scars on his forehead and the general misshapenness of his head were caused by vultures picking at him until someone found him and somehow contacted the Ranch. They suppose that his near deafness and inability to talk has something to do with being so malnourished, though they are still trying to find treatments for him. It was hard to imagine that this energetic little child sitting at my table with pizza sauce all over his face, obsessed with microwaves and shiny objects, had survived something so awful, so unimaginably horrible. Almost harder to imagine was the person who could ever abandon a child like that.

What is sad, too, is that this is not the only completely terrible story I have heard since being here about some of the backgrounds these children come from. Learning the history of a Ranch child never fails to blow me away, to see the child behaving more or less normally and functioning as well as he or she does. And then to see some of the students I have in Talleres learning a trade and preparing for high school—what some of them must have come from, I wonder; and now they are learning English, math and science, and soon will be graduating. That is not to say that there are not still massive, unresolved problems with these children—because believe me, there are many—but the hope that there is for Oscar one day is reflected in 7^th grader Luis Miguel’s pride after he scored a 49 out of 50 on his English exam and in the tight, sure stitches of the leather boots that Suyapa makes in the shoe shop.

So, I let Oscar put his pizza in the microwave for the fifth time (and his cake; he insisted), and after they all left I finished up the last dishes. I put away the legos and retrieved the basketball from the hammock, all the while thinking of Oscar and the miracle that he is. And maybe it is not the saddest thing I have ever heard—because Oscar is here, and he is running around and playing with toys and eating pizza and cake. And that is something to be happy about.

Lunes, Lunes (Monday, Monday)

Monday, October 05, 2009

I am tired today. There are four weeks until the school year ends, and if I am tired, I am positive that the kids must be tired. They didn’t really have the energy to fight me in class today, until the end anyways, when they were sure to make sure I knew that I was giving them way too much work to do when they have SOOO much work in other classes, too. They are mad with me because they have a final test AND a project to do in my class. “Ay Daniela, no, eres mala. Es mucho.” Whine whine whine, they are in 9^th grade and about to graduate, I told them; they are just going to have to buck up and deal (as my Michiganite roommate Anna likes to say). Several of the 9^th graders used the “vos” form with me in class today, which is a very rude, very informal form in Latin America to address someone unless you are close friends. It would be comparable to saying, “hey you” to your boss or college professor, although even that translation loses a bit of the bite. But I know how far I’ve come from starting this job, because as soon as they tried “vos” on me, I gave them one look and they corrected themselves. And although their whining and complaining about all the work they have to do is obnoxious, I know they’ll do it because they know I’m serious.

As my experience with my 9^th graders illustrates, today has definitely been a Monday: Talleres lived up to its reputation for me to make sure of that. At 9:00 I went to the 9^th grade classroom to teach there, as I have been doing for the last couple months, but today—as has been happening lately for some reason—the teacher told me that I couldn’t use her classroom because she needed it, and that I’d have to find the person with the keys to the extra classroom. Dragging a line of kids with me waiting to get into a classroom, I went from room to room in search of the professor who usually has the keys. After somewhat of a wild rabbit chase, someone told me that that professor didn’t come to school today. OF course. So back the first professor to ask her if I could please use the other other extra classroom. She rolled her eyes and reluctantly tossed me the keys, adding that I need to make sure that no one touches anything. Sí, sí; I know. A few of the kids who had thought they’d be really smart by sneaking away from me in my classroom hunt looked disappointed when I went back out to find them and tell them that I had a classroom and that we’d be having class in two minutes. FINALLY we were able to start class. And commenced the whining, but you know how that ended.

Monday settled into my class with some of the younger kids, too, and made itself quite comfortable. I opened a bilingual book, Puss in Boots, to read out loud . . . and strained to make myself heard over the pounding and yelling going on in the classroom next door, for all 20 pages or so. A quiet classroom is simply too much to ask, I suppose. When the classrooms have no windows, it’s easy to hear everything going on in every classroom. I was glad when I gave the kids their notebook activity for the rest of the class period and they settled into making their own book. But Monday found me again when I accidentally ran into one of the metal desks and pounded my funny bone into it. The three girls at the back burst out laughing and thus ended my few moments of quiet. And my elbow still hurts.

But none of that is as Monday as what happened to Ernesto, the other English teacher here. His Monday is pretty much as bad as it gets. Ernesto is the best teacher in Talleres, in my opinion. He has only been working here since February, but he has more energy than any other teacher and works harder than any others. He is also one of the few teachers I’ve witnessed in Talleres who is not apathetic towards his work; he honestly loves the kids he teaches. And, he has been unfailingly helpful to me in my transition here, whether it be speaking English with me, practicing some French, loaning me movies, or telling me about the teachers’ meetings when we have them. Ernesto called me over today during recess to tell me that he had been fired this morning for not coming to teach classes two days last week and failing to call and notify the office that he wouldn’t be coming. His grandmother was very sick, and he traveled to La Ceiba to care for her. I understand why he had been fired—you cannot just not come to work without calling—but I am furious all the same. I can point to more than several teachers in Talleres who play hooky all the time, who do more sitting and gossiping than teaching, and whose attitudes are about ten years stale. As Ernesto mentioned to me today, there is a hierarchy at the Vocational Center (Talleres): if the teachers who have been there for years don’t like you, you’re out. I guess it’s a good thing that they can’t really fire volunteers. I already work for beans.

Finally, Monday attacked again when I had to cancel my last class of the day in the afternoon when I found out about two minutes before it started that we were having a teachers’ meeting. And it was definitely, definitely a Monday meeting: what are the goals for next school year, what are the founding principles of Padre Wasson (the man who started NPH), what are we expected to show, yadda yadda yadda. My only solace in the drone of the meeting was a little chat beforehand with one of the nicer professors about how my classes are going. She told me that she has never seen the kids so well behaved, doing their work and paying attention for any other volunteer who has had my position. She said that her class is sometimes better behaved for me than they are for her, and that they respect me and like my teaching. For all the pain a Monday brings, that’s all I needed to hear to be able to get up again tomorrow morning.

And just in case some of you are wondering:

We haven’t seen much of a change in the political landscape here since last week, although the 10 day limit that Micheletti gave the Brazilian embassy to figure out something with Zelaya expires on Wednesday. Some of the volunteers who didn’t have to work this past weekend ventured into the city and returned to the Ranch bearing no extraordinary stories of adventure and terror. We are as of today no longer under a suspension of civil liberties (hooray?). The Ranch/NPH as an organization is laying low in all of this and being very careful not to align itself with one side or another. Apparently one of the casualties a couple weeks ago in the tear gas explosions was a woman who was demonstrating with her husband, and she had been a pequeña here at the Ranch years ago. The pro-Zelaya people are somewhat holding her up as an inspirational beacon, as someone who came from poverty and died speaking out against the “golpistas” (the coup-doers). Needless to say, we are all being very careful, but all the same, Rancho Santa Fe is as ever very secluded and cut off from a lot of what is happening in Tegus.

Happy October everyone and congratulations on getting through your Monday!

Caribbean Vacation, Extended Version: Thank You Mel Zelaya

Tournabé is the largest of the Garifuna villages outside of Tela on the north Honduran coast, and we had been there all morning walking among the thatched roof huts, letting ourselves slip into the lazy tranquility of this removed beach pueblo on the Caribbean coast. None of the indigenous Garifuna women, men or children were too surprised to see us, even as we stood wide-eyed watching numbers of half-clad kids and dark women balancing plastic tubs on their heads sidle up to the small fishing boat that brought the day’s fresh catch. Over an hour they spent weighing fish on the scale and bartering prices to take the fish back to their small beach-side “restaurants” and kitchens. Every once in a while, a skinny, dark-skinned child would mosey away from the boat with a string of 5 or 6 shiny ocean fish. I was sipping a delightful lemonade, munching on platano chips, and forking into a freshly-caught head of fish—just off the grill— when I got a text from my mother. “Zelaya returns to Honduras; takes refuge in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.” We took our time finishing our lunch and took another dip in the warm teal water until sauntering off to catch the last bus back to Tela. We stepped off the bus to crowds of people frantically scurrying around to food stalls and gas stations. In all of the commotion a ragged-looking man on a bike shook his finger at us and said, “Toque de queda a las quatro! Todos en casa!” I looked at my watch. It was 3:30, and this man was saying that there was a curfew beginning at 4 pm. Promptly so began our extended vacation/house-arrest in a Caribbean beach town.

I am sure you can well imagine the pros and cons to being stuck on the Caribbean coast indefinitely as the host country wrestles with really important political problems like cowboy ex-presidents stubbornly planting themselves in other countries’ embassies and calling for all troops on deck—and all the while, the majority of the country has to sit in their casas and twiddle their thumbs, watching censored news updates and waiting until they can return to work to make enough money to feed themselves. I had been in Tela with 5 other volunteers for three days already, and we had been snorkeling, hiking through a national park to see howler monkeys, hermit crabs and brown boobies, and of course we had spent plenty of time sunning on white sand beaches and swimming in water that was a hundred times warmer than the showers I take on the Ranch. As you can imagine, I wasn’t too upset that we would have to spend at least one more day in Tela until it was safe to travel back to the Ranch.

The irony was, of course, that I had to remain at the hotel we were staying in without any indication of when the curfew would be lifted. Instead of spending my time swimming and tanning while Tegus worked through its issues, I sat on the deck and stared at the waves breaking on the beach a mere three blocks away. The tortuous hours were only lightened for me by the small book of crosswords I brought and the hope that maybe tomorrow I’d still be stuck here and the curfew would be lifted. As you can see by some of the pictures, we also passed the time by making mature messages out of Scrabble blocks to the country's leaders. Luckily, this cruel irony only lasted Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday and Thursday, I took full advantage of our “misfortune” of being caught in the middle of political upheaval in a foreign country.

Now I am safely back on the Ranch taking cold showers and practicing patience with the children, and it almost feels like I was never sipping $1 beers on the Caribbean coast. Thank goodness I took a lot of pictures. The only indication we have on the Ranch that anything is happening 40 km away in Tegus is news that the curfew still is in place. School resumed on Friday as normal. It appeared that most of the city was also going about their normal business when I drove through yesterday on the way to catch the bus to the Ranch. It was a little thrilling, if not a bit scary, to have our papers checked several times on the bus ride back by men in camouflage uniforms with rather large firearms.

While Honduras experiences major changes in government, I am going through a major change in my volunteer role. This weekend I officially switch hogars from Hermanas de Jesús to Hijas de Maria. I will now be working every night and every other weekend with girls ages 8 to 10. After discussion with the volunteer coordinator here and the arrival of another volunteer to the Ranch, I’ve made the decision to move hogars to ensure that I do not get burned out by having the same kids every day, all day (I teach a majority of the girls in my hogar and see them all day at school before coming to hogar at night), and to have clear separation between my job as a teacher and my job in hogar—more perhaps for the good of the girls I am teaching. The line between being a teacher for my girls during the day and their volunteer at night is easily, and often, blurred—to the point that it interferes with the quality of hogar time and sometimes straining my relationships with a few of the girls. The new volunteer who just arrived will be taking over Hermanas de Jesús, while I’ll be just steps away in a different hogar with the “chicas.” The switch comes at a perfect time: after a week of my absence, no classes, and the arrival of the new volunteer. Although I regret not being able to be with several of the girls in Hermanas with whom I’m especially close—Ana included, though nothing could change our close relationship—I will still see them all in school every day and teach many of them, and I’ll see them every night, too, as I head to the chicas hogar.

Already the differences in my new hogar are obvious. Instead of Shakira and Honduran pop music, we listen to Barney songs translated into Spanish (Michael Jackson, of course, spans all ages). Instead of mowing the lawn with a machete this morning, I swept the cement paths with a broom and picked up trash. The girls themselves are worlds away from the teenager attitude. They definitely have their moody and snooty moments, but for the most part, they are sweet and trusting—and really, really cute. One thing that does come with the young girls’ hogar that I am not too excited about: lice. LOTS and lots of lice. I am incredibly grossed out by it, and though I know I’ll probably get it at some point this year, I still hate the thought of live things crawling around and laying eggs in my hair. The older girls all have lice, too, but not to the extent that these chicas have them. For my first day of work today, I spent an hour and a half threading through Jocelyn’s thick, wiry hair, plucking out 2, 3, sometimes 4 lice eggs on a single strand. I soon learned that Jocelyn is known for having the worst lice in Hijas de Maria. Of course I am the one to de-louse her for my first combing experience. Needless to say, I am getting right back into life here at the Ranch after a week off in Tela.

Safe on the Caribbean Beach

Hola from Tela . . . just a quick note to let you all know that I am safely stranded in the lovely beach town of Tela, Honduras. We have been here on vacation all weekend and were planning on returning to Tegus yesterday when Zelaya slipped in and nestled down in the Brazilian embassy. Curfew restrictions have been pretty constant, although because this is such a laid back beach town, we are able to get out and buy food . . . and even slip over to the beach for a swim. Not a bad place to be under house arrest!

I am not sure what the next couple days will bring, but we are watching the news (sometimes censored) and keeping in contact with the Ranch. Just another day in Honduras, I guess.

Adios y hasta tarde,
Daniela

Happy September 15th! (Independence Day)

Yesterday was Independence Day in Honduras. The kids woke up at 3:30--4 am to get all primped for the big parade in Talanga, a neighboring pueblo (village). There were 12 schools there in total, and this was the first year that NPH participated in the parade. Usually the Ranch just closes a section of dead highway and the kids parade in front of the pine trees, potholes and wild dogs. So this year was definitely special. Besides the couple kids who passed out from the scorching sun and humidity, everyone did a great job marching. The baton twirlers were on their game, even if the kids I was marching with had a hard time figuring out their left feet from their right.

Here are a few photos. Happy Independence Day!