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!

Why I’m Here (in case you are wondering)

Just had to share this with you all.

Last night I had 5 girls from my hogar over to make pizza. It’s an activity that each volunteer does once a month with kids from their hogar—a chance for a couple kids to get away and spend some more personal time with their volunteer. These specific 5 girls got to come make dinner with me because they are do not have siblings on the Ranch, and some of them have no siblings at all in addition to no real parents. 4 of the girls wanted to watch a video while the pizza was cooking, to which I obliged, but “Ana” wanted to talk with me instead.

If you read my blog, you know that Ana is that girl in my troublemakers class in Talleres who one day changed her attitude, wanting to read to me from her Spanish reader and asking me to teach her more English. She’s known around here as an extremely tough kid; though only 4’6” or so, looking more like a 12 year old than 15, most would say she could beat the crap out of any kid here, including scrawny volunteers. She steals, she lies, and she has no friends. She’s always doing extra chores in hogar, she’s always in trouble, she’s been kicked out of school once already since I’ve been here, and she is indescribably special to me for what she’s taught me already, though I’ve been here only 6 (?) weeks.

I wish I could accurately describe her to you, but all I can do is tell a story. Already, she has taken me aside multiple times to ask to read to me in Spanish since she is still learning. She asks me to teach her English outside of class, like last night when we pointed around the kitchen as I told her, “oven, sink, plate, stove.” Yesterday she was beside herself to tell me that she passed three classes—meaning she might be able to move up to the next grade level, finally. From someone who was kicked out of school for not working at all in class, I have come to know her as a different person. Tonight, Ana showed me more of her heart than I’ve yet seen. I asked her about her family. Ana pointed to the starry sky and said her mama was watching her from up there. Her mother passed away when she was too young to know her, and her dad couldn’t take care of her and her other 5 siblings, all less than a year apart. After growing up sometimes on the streets with her siblings, NPH family services brought her to the Ranch three years ago. She told me that last year she was able to visit a few of her siblings, whom she misses very much, but she hasn’t seen her dad in years. Knowing how much I miss my family, I asked her whether she would rather be here on the Ranch, or living with them on the north coast. “It’s almost the same to me,” she said, “but here, I get an education. If I lived with my family, I couldn’t go to school. It’s too expensive—notebooks, pencils, backpacks, uniforms. They cannot buy that for me. It is better to be learning, so it is better than I am here.”

Her words struck me profoundly. Here is a girl who teachers, other volunteers, and other students think is stupid. They think she hates school, that she sleeps in class because she doesn’t want to be there, that she hasn’t got a chance to get through Talleres with hopes of going to high school. They give her extra chores because she “behaves so badly” in school. But I know her differently: to me, Ana is the girl who desperately wanted a notebook so she could take notes in my class, and she asked me for weeks to get her one. To me, she is the girl who wants to sit and read with for hours because I am someone who will look at her and tell her that she is doing a great job, that she is smart, that “yes, Ana, you CAN read, stop saying you cannot.” Her smile after I give her any type of positive feedback is worth each cold shower, each dinner of rice and beans, every measly paycheck. To me, she is more driven than many of the kids I graduated with from the University of Portland. She knows that she is lucky to be at the Ranch, to be given the expensive materials to go to school, to be guaranteed a high school education, too, if she works hard. Her desire to achieve is evident by her excitement in telling me her passing grades four, five, six times in two days. Ana stretches the definition of “student” to a different level, defining it in its rawest sense: one who simply studies.

Ours is not simply a student - teacher relationship. Since Ana is also in my hogar, we see each other every evening and every other weekend, too, and we’ve shared many a hug and smile as she’s mopping the floor where the girls all live. Last night, while the other girls were watching a movie while the pizza cooked (and the electricity flashed off and on all night, making us wait for over an hour for the pizza to cook), Ana wanted to wash the dishes and sweep and mop the floor. She reminded me of all the women (myself included) who, though they are dinner guests simply cannot sit still, but feel the need to get up and clear the table, wash the dishes, or help cook. And here was this short 15 year old girl who already does all that work because she’s in trouble, wanting to clear our plates and wash them on her special night in the volunteer house. I managed to persuade her to sit down with me and be a guest in my house, and we started talking. Again her words touched my heart.

“Te quiero mucho, Daniela,” she said. I love you a lot, Daniela. Putting her hands to my cheeks and stroking my face, she continued: You will forever be in my heart, and I will forever be in yours, she said. Wherever I go, you will go with me. And when you leave the Ranch next year, I will go with you, in your heart. And when you go up to the sky like my mama, I will go with you, in your heart.

Though the dark evening was stiflingly muggy and I was still sweaty from the day’s slow heat, a thousand goosebumps charged up my spine. How did I deserve this little girl’s deep love already? Why am I the recipient of her complete trust, when so many others have failed her? Perhaps one of my next thoughts was a little bit crude in the glow of Ana’s honest smile, but at that moment, I couldn’t help but think that Ana would probably kill for me, or at least defend me if I was ever threatened by knife blades in a dark Honduras alley. I looked at her, struggling for the right words, and in my best Spanish I could muster, told her that she had una alma bonita—a beautiful soul. I told her that I could see God’s light shining in her eyes. I told her she is special, that she is a gift, that I love her, too, and that God loves her more, no matter what she does. Her hands reached up again to my cheeks, her tiny mouth cracked into a smile to reveal uneven teeth, and she hugged me tightly around my neck.

Then, as if thinking about my words, she paused. Daniela, she asked me, what happens if you get confirmed and then you lie or steal again? What happens to you? I remembered then that only 3 weeks ago, Ana was confirmed with about 50 other kids in Tegucigalpa. This was the 2nd time she has asked me this question, and still I find it odd to be in Honduras explaining this concept that was ingrained in me after 16+ years of Catholic school education. I tried to explain that no matter how many times you lie or steal, God will forgive you if you truly ask for his forgiveness, if you honestly want to be forgiven and are sorry for what you have done. She seemed mostly satisfied with this response the second time around, but I added to my explanation. “Ana, there are too many people in this world who are bad. They steal and they lie, and they cheat. Every time that happens, their souls get a little bit blacker and their light from God gets a little bit dimmer. We need more people in the world who are honest, who do good things for other people, whose souls are bright and strong. You can be one of these good people, Ana, even if you have lied before. I know you are already a good person, because I can see it in you.” The truth of the concept must have overcome my poor Spanish, because Ana took my hand in hers, kissed it lightly, and then looked up at the stars with a quiet, “Si, Daniela.”

Ana reminds me what I am doing here, what my mission is for the year. I get frustrated with these kids, oh yes I do. When they cough on their hands, yell “SWINE FLU!” and then wipe it on me laughing, I feel like I’ll never make it the whole year. The days are long, but my patience is starting to sprout deeper roots. Moments of pure grace, like those I often experience with Ana, are my soul food here. Inevitably there will be kids here who steal, who lie, and who hate school—indeed, I’ve already had some grapes swiped out of the fridge by two of the teens—but they still deserve someone telling them that they can be good and that they are needed. And I’m hoping I can be one of the good guys who can do that. If you get a moment this week, pray for Ana, and for the kids here on the Ranch who are the “bad kids.” Pray that they realize that they have the chance to be good, and pray that someone takes the time to tell them so.

Peace,
Daniela

The Top 10 . . .

. . . Moments of my week.

In not much of a particular order and including the very good, the ugly, the unbelievable but true, and the Oh SO Honduras:

10. Cashing my first pay-check: 2,176 Lempiras! I'm rich! (translation: Literally living on rice and beans . . . and the occasional Salva Vida, the cheap Honduran beer, but only when I really need it, I swear)

9. Sweating through an hour-long meeting with the Honduran school staff debating what we should wear for our Independence Day parade to Talanga. Really, do we want white polo shirts or white dress shirts? Do we want black dress shoes, or black tennis shoes, or is black just too much? Ay yi yi.

8. Waking up this morning to a cold shower and realizing the water was the color of a day-old latte

7. Letting myself scratch my mosquito bites for 3 minutes. Oh please, just one more minute . . . ok, just one more . . .

6. Being asked by one of my worst studetns to help her study for the test, and then having her full attention

5. Leading a spontaneous discussion with 12 year olds about racism, WWII, Hitler, and of course Michael Jackson

4. Squashing an enormous cockroach with my flip-flop before it could reach my bed

3. Luis Fernando's cross-eyed, crooked smile after I congratulated him on scoring a 45 out of 50 on his English test. He is a student in my specials class.

2. Realizing I was being followed by a hefty brown steer while running on the trail. I never knew I could be so agile.

1. Hearing one of my students trying to impress a younger senorita with the cool English phrases he learned in my class. With the right Honduran accent, "What's your favorite food?" suddenly becomes a killer pick-up line. Only on the Ranch.