Leaving Honduras

I am a retired schoolteacher. As I collected my magazines, scissors, pipe cleaners and Elmer’s glue from my II Nivel students at the end of the class period on Friday—my last official day in my volunteer teaching position— I was both saddened and relieved that I wouldn’t be hearing the shrill “TEACHER, VEN!!!” (“teacher, come!”) screamed at me across the classroom anymore, or hear the groans and “ay, no teacher!” when I pass out a worksheet. But I’m retiring from teaching with a definite satisfaction that it’s been a reciprocal relationship of understanding and enjoyment, not matter how difficult some of the students could be. Angel, for example, one of the more erratic and fickle boys of the younger classes, summed up perfectly in one sentence to me the tough love that was often revealed in interactions in my classroom: No tienes que irte, he said, looking at me with a half-scowl and half-concern (“you don’t have to leave”). I am taking that as an indication that maybe he enjoyed English class with Daniela, just a little.

There are clear moments when I only just grasp the full significance of what it is to be leaving. Mostly, though, July 31st is a date on the calendar that I am rattling off unthinking to coworkers and kids. I’ve already had my “despedida” celebration with my hogar, the formal planned goodbye that is customary (and I’ll be wearing my corny teal blue Honduras tourist t-shirt they gave me when I step off the plane in mid-August). What lies ahead of me still are those tasks that I want to avoid because they mean that the end is really here: cleaning out my room and packing, cancelling my residency, snapping final pictures, and of course, saying goodbye.

I’ve heard that reintegration is hard, and that it hits you sometimes weeks or months later when something small reminds you of one of your kids or of living in Honduras. There are some things that I am really going to miss, like the slow pace of life, the hilarious and innocent observations that the kids make every day, and the fluidness of sliding between Spanish and English in a matter of minutes. Then there are things that I am really, really going to miss: days like last Tuesday, for instance, where school was cancelled in a Ranch-wide effort to combat the dengue crisis by chopping threatening grass with machetes for five long hours. I just won’t get blisters or aches in my back quite like this in the Unites States.

I imagine that one of the most frustrating things for me in the reintegration process will be the inability to explain my experience to others. It’s not enough to simply say, “It was great. Hard, but great,” although this is precisely the nicely-wrapped answer that I think many will expect. Working on the ground level of a large institution like Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos—with all of its expected institutional flaws—definitely has had me furious and doubtful at times. Exasperation with the attitude of waste that I see sometimes among the kids; frustration that they are spoiled far beyond their ability to give thanks; their obliviousness to the privilege that is education, clothes, food, and time to play; and all of this feeding my own occasional doubts in the management of a well-meaning organization that sustains nine children’s homes throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. I think every volunteer goes through this period of despondency and disagreement, but eventually comes out of it to see the greater merits of NPH and, most importantly, what the alternative would be. At the end of the day, these children still don’t have mothers or a stable nuclear blood family and have come through hardships that, if they don’t excuse their behavior, certainly explain it.

This moment of realization that a life of poverty and insecurity is the alternative to growing up in a large children’s home like NPH only became truly real to me about a month and a half ago when I visited a site thirty minutes from the Ranch in Talanga, a typical Honduran town of dusty uneven streets, stumbling afternoon drunks, loud Reggaeton music streaming from the doors of the one grocery store, and unending numbers of shoeless, dirty children running around trying to sell gum and chips. I went with a few other volunteers to the Comedor Infantil, a children’s soup kitchen of sorts that some American Passionist volunteers opened in November in barrio San Diego, a neighborhood in Talanga notorious for crime and drugs. Each day about thirty-five to forty children aged 3 to 9 flock to this small cement-walled building before noontime to receive what is, for most of them, their one substantial meal of the day. The children are barefoot except for a few; they haven’t bathed for several days; their hair is thin and lice-ridden, their stomachs puffed, and their eyes are hungry and eager for the traditional rice and beans soup to come. But, they are smiling. Some come in school uniforms because their mothers or older siblings were able to find them shoes and several Lempiras to buy a snack at school. One boy, four years old, has gained five pounds since starting to come to the Comedor in January.

After spending several hours with these kids playing jump rope and make-believe with the donation of toys that had come two weeks before, we were invited back to the house of one brother/sister pair. The decrepit wooden home was the size of a small hotel room. The front room and the back bedroom were separated by a sheet strung from some twine. A television and three plastic lawn chairs set up on the dirt floor took up most of the space in the front room. A six month old baby was laying on one of the plastic chairs, naked and incredibly dirty, and was being cared for that day by a thirteen-year old cousin while the mother was out working, a normal situation in both small towns like Talanga and big cities like Tegucigalpa. One of the Passionist volunteers cleaned the baby off, fed her, and put a diaper on her while I went around back to play soccer with the boys in the hot afternoon sun. Later, as we waved goodbye to the kids and walked back towards the town center, passing shacks and more dirty-faced children walking through the streets, a strong sense of thanks and pride came over me for the work that NPH does. My girls in hogar or my students at school could be spending their days barefoot, out of school, hungry, or walking around dangerous neighborhoods. Nothing can ever fully replace losing a mother or make up for being abandoned and taken to the state children’s home; nothing can erase seriously abused sexually, emotionally, or physically. But opportunity, security, love, and a home where all of your siblings live, too, changes lives.

Last night was the Second Annual “Festival de la Canción,” a much-anticipated grandiose four-hour karaoke competition where our boys and girls from ten years old to twenty got up on stage one by one and displayed their sheer courage (and tone-deafness), crooning to such Latin hits as Te Amo and translations of The Backstreet Boys. I sat and cringed as Natalia, a rather new addition to our family, belt out something awful with the microphone too close to her lips. But I was thinking the whole time that any parent sits through these moments in their children’s lives, the necessary moments when they grow and discover themselves and feel what it is to be supported and loved. In contributing to the growth and personal development of the Natalias and Angels, in his or her right to communicate and be understood, we fulfill God’s ultimate goal for each one of us: to love others.

Thank you to all of my incredibly supportive family members and friends for contributing to the growth of these children through sending your support in care packages, letters, emails with kind words, in-person visits, and monetary donations to NPH, and of course by reading my story this year. We are all more interconnected than we can realize, and in showing love to one person, we really reach a dozen more.

Six Weeks and Counting

The rain is pouring down in full fledged buckets. I can almost set my well-worn Target digital watch to these daily afternoon tropical rainstorms. We are officially deep within the rainy season in central Honduras. Just two weeks ago, I sat in a bright, dry kitchen in Spokane reading the news on the internet of the start of hurricane season: flood warnings were high, and school and buses were cancelled as fears worsened that the bridges in Tegucigalpa were going to collapse over the rising rivers. The Ranch suffered minimal damage with just a broken water pipe here and there; but the impact of unceasing heavy rains on the subsistence farmers indicate much more severe consequences.

I am back on the Ranch after a lovely week at home to see my sister, Colette, graduate from G-Prep and to spend some time with my family (and to catch up on sleep). I won’t gush over all the unbelievably wonderful things about the U.S.A. that I rediscovered—dependably clean public restrooms, sushi, and Costco being just a few of the highlights that left me breathless—but I will say that I was surprised by how quickly and often my thoughts settled on my students, my girls, and this endearingly bizarre country that I’ve called home for the last 10 months. I knew I was back when I was in the customs line in San Pedro Sula and three different Honduran women came up to me at different times with a sob story of why they should get to cut in line. I didn’t let them.

Now I’m back on the Ranch after spending several days with two of my best girlfriends on the spectacular Caribbean island of Roatán, Honduras’ touristic pearl. It’s hard to think that two weeks ago I was flushing my toilet paper in the U.S., one week ago I was sprawled on a white sand beach and snorkeling with turtles, and today I am fending off fire-breathing 8th graders with my Expo marker and grade book.

However, it does feel comfortingly good to be back in the classroom with my game face on and #2 pencil poised to strike. As usual, one of my classes has stuck with me all through the day and has made me rethink how lucky I am to have been born in the United States and to have a loving, stable family. In my lowest level class, an especially remedial section with students ages 9 to 13 who have come to the Ranch without any previous educational experience (or only speaking an indigenous language), I was completely caught off guard by the topic that my young students brought up: crossing the border.

Just like any teacher, I've little memory of how we got onto the topic of immigration and what rights and privileges Americans have over Hondurans, but as I was led deeper into the discussion by their questions about passports, the police, and coyotes (the "specialists" who transport illegal immigrants across the border), it dawned on me why the students likely knew so much about border crossing. Angelo had told me weeks ago about his uncle working as a janitor at Sea World in California, and Carmelita and Michell have always boasted about their cousins in New York and Houston. Moises was most persistent with his questions: what exactly happens to you if the police catch you on the border without papers? Do you have to have a passport? What if someone who is already in the United States knows you and can vouch for you? They were more than disheartened with my answers: no papers, not legal.

I did my best to answer truthfully . . . and then Angelo, an 11 year old child with severe ADHD, shot me the million dollar question: why is it so easy for Americans to get passports and enter into Honduras and so hard for Hondurans to get passports and get into the U.S.? Try to explain that one to a group of remedial 11 and 12 year olds who can’t read or write in Spanish, but whose knowledge of the world outside the sheltered walls of the Ranch runs deep. Intelligence in a classroom isn’t everything: these kids have watched their family members experience things that I’ll hopefully only ever see in movies.

On a joyful note, the newest addition to the Ranch arrived several days ago: Scarlet Mirielle Flores is somewhere between three and five months old and is one of those babies who only ever seems happy. Our social work department went to pick her up from the authorities in near Olancho (north-central Honduras) where her mother was trying to sell her on the highway for 500 lempira (roughly $24 US). We are overjoyed to have this beautiful baby girl safely on the Ranch and sure to be loved.

And that's the news from Rancho Santa Fe. In only a few short weeks, the newest group of volunteers will arrive to replace my outgoing group. We’ll take them through orientation, introduce them to the kids in the hogares, and train them in their new jobs. I haven’t fully realized yet how soon to finishing my volunteer year I truly am, though I got a taste of it when I was home two weeks ago. It’s hard to imagine that someone else will be teaching my kids about Dante, alcoholism in Central America, and crossing the border. Oh, and English . . . I do teach English, too, occasionally.

One last note before I end this note: viva los Catrachos! Viva Honduras! Viva World Cup 2010!

For the Love of Literature

Dante saved the day. I’d almost thrown up my arms in desperation at the beginning of class with 9th grade after what had been an especially trying morning with 8th grade and 7th grade. A few weeks ago, the students were moved around into different groups, and my 7th grade grew to a whopping 35 people, with 8th and 9th also growing to more than 24 each. Lately, however, teaching has been a pleasure; I’ve found my groove and can scare any angst-ridden teen into working with a great smack on his desk with my large wooden stick (it’s true, I’ve done this—if the nuns could do it, why not me?). But on this particular morning, it was all I could do to usher them to their seats and stop talking over me. I was relieved that 9th grade would be coming to class after having spent the last two class periods shooting furious looks at those who would not.quit.talking.

I love my 9th graders because, well, they’re competent. There are some genuinely smart kids who genuinely like English, and when I ask them to buckle down and work, they generally do it. The current theme in their English textbook happens to be Israel and the kibbutz (odd, I know; but the least of my complaints with the book are its unexpected themes). Somehow, I got onto the topic of Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy, and from there it was a wild ride for the remaining 25 minutes of class. Each set of eyes was glued to the board as I drew Dante’s different levels of hell and explained a few of the eternal consequences of the sinners. Liars, traitors, adulterers, church leaders gone awry: bad behavior and its consequences—well-matched or not—is certainly one of the most well-known topics on the Ranch, proven by the absolute silence of my students while they listened.

It was incredibly fulfilling for me to see my kids light up about world-class literature. Granted, I love it, too, and I was beside myself with wanting to share all of Dante’s impressive craft. But it made me realize that these kids will go on to high school and hopefully university, and they will have the opportunity to learn about so much that they’ve never been exposed to before. Maybe Maria will fall in love with Dante; maybe Mainor will discover contemporary graphic novels; and Marjorie will realize that a whole world of culture, art and history exists outside of Honduras. I hope all these things for them; but, I am also realistic about the education system here. In just the past few weeks, there’s been talk about shutting down the public university because of strikes or re-opening it as a private institution. I also know that some of my students won’t last through the three years of service to the Ranch that it takes to earn a spot for college.

Dante stuck with me the rest of the day, through arts and crafts with 5th grade and through Mother’s Day cards with 6th grade. It even followed me to my out of control practice with 16 of my 8th graders who are going to read a poem in English at the Mother’s Day celebration. Overall, a very trying day; but, perhaps, next time one of the 9th graders lies to me about his homework he’ll think about the Inferno and where that sin would put him.

Just some other highlights and meaningful events that stick with me from the last week:
1. A hilariously Honduran Ranchero band with three grown men dancing traditional booty-shaking punta at the special employee lunch.

2. Teaching the three little boys in an HIV Support Group that I help to lead about always washing their hands, taking their medicines, and taking appropriate measures when they are bleeding. I can’t explain what it feels like to look into a six year old’s eyes and tell him that even though he has HIV, he can play and run and work like all of the other kids his age.

3. Two rogue kittens who had made a home in my desk at school springing out in the middle of class with 9th grade when I opened the drawers to look for a book. I screamed when I saw something furry that scurried . . . a wild cat chase ensued, with half of the girls up on their chairs and screaming and all the boys trying to catch the poor kittens. They finally did, and threw them out—but not before the whole classroom was overturned.

4. Sitting on the bus behind a Honduran couple, their small son, and their dog and watching, horrified and helpless, while the already drunk husband took huge gulps of Yuscaran (cheap hard liquor) then repeatedly swung at his wife while she blocked his hits with her elbow and shielded her son. The smell of alcohol penetrated the entire bus, and the man was so out of it that he couldn’t even sit up straight. He kept trying to push his dog onto his wife and son. I was absolutely horrified that this little boy was going to grow up in a poor, abusive, alcoholic family and that his mother was likely a daily victim. Just as horrifying was the fact that all the people on the bus simply watched every time the man raised his fist and called his wife vulgar names, as if it were a common soap opera.

5. Satisfying my secret whims by flicking an average of 4 fatty, flying beatles off of my mosquito net at night.

Seventh Inning Stretch

You know it’s bad when even the kids wrinkle their noses at what’s come inside the big red thermos for dinner. Apparently even hungry nine and ten year olds aren’t huge fans of mystery meat hearts and livers (was it chicken? Or leftovers from the lunchtime beef feast?). I know better after seven months than to try to dissect the various murky shapes swimming inside the soup. That seems to be a defining concept for me as I find myself just into the third quarter of my service year: I know better now.

I know better now how to manage and find success within the Honduran school system. I know that when they call a teacher’s meeting, I had better expect that at least thirty minutes will be dedicated to frivolous details, like deciding which day of the week to wear the red polo uniform shirt and which day to wear blue. I know better now than to leave thirty notebooks sitting out overnight on a table near a window in my classroom and expect them to still be there in the morning (they won’t be there, let me tell you). Most importantly, I know better than to force a kid to sit down and participate in English class when he is having an “off day.” Let me explain this one.

Sometimes I wish that there was someone following me around with a video camera and making a movie of my life. I’d watch it again if just to laugh, hard, and shake my head at the ridiculousness of my daily encounters. My classes these last weeks have been exhausting and energizing; successful and mutinous. I think someone could have done a “Dangerous Minds” type film, Honduras style, after one of my classes with remedial 6th grade a couple weeks ago. All of the boys with anger management problems and learning difficulties are in one class together (a brilliant plan), and Fredy , 13, was refusing to stop spitting spit wads and do the vocabulary word-search. After taking away his ammunition and weapon (an inkless pen), he yelled at me and spat out a number of colorful phrases that I won’t repeat here. Naturally, I ignored him and continued checking homework with the other students, so he raised his fist as if he were going to hit me. Without looking at him, I told him that I hoped he would make a good choice. Instead of hitting me, he threw a metal desk across the room, then jumped from desk to desk until he split the wood of one of my chairs. He eventually lost his steam and the other kids lost interest in him, but I remember being surprised with myself at some point that I was not shocked at his behavior. I was more shocked this week that every single one of my 9th graders turned in ALL their homework for the week ON TIME. In one day, I will have wonderfully intelligent students who desperately want to achieve, followed by a volatile, aggressive pre-teen clinic case bordering on bi-polar, and then kids who are either special-ed or age fifteen and unable to read or write in Spanish. Academy Awards material? Perhaps.

The other weekend, I visited another “casa hogar” just outside of Tegucigalpa. It’s a small retreat center where only nine boys live and are taken care of by an older woman, one cook, and one tutor who comes to give them lessons every day. The psychologist on the Ranch, who works at several children’s homes, invited me so that these boys could have some exposure to someone outside of their small enclosed circle. I was pre-warned that these boys were serious cases, often getting in fist fights over soccer games and very fond of using Fredy-type language. I was amazed, though, after spending a Saturday with them at their respect, politeness, and obedience. Each boy, who comes from a serious background of broken families and extensive government-sponsored children’s homes, made an effort to make me feel welcome and to participate in the activities without a single fight. The psychologist told me that it had been an unusual day, and that they were behaving so well just because I was there. NPH, he explained to me, is the largest and best-run of the children’s homes in our part of Honduras, in terms of having a system down and producing capable young adults who can enter into the work world and support themselves. But my experience with these children outside of NPH who come from similar backgrounds as the kids on the Ranch got me thinking about our kids and why so many seem to be so—well—bad. What is the connection between bad behavior and growing up in a rural children’s home where you are just one out of 500 kids; where the same people that are in charge of you in school are in charge of you at “home”; where the attention of two parent figures is divided among 25 children of the same ages; where privacy and personal space are negotiable or nearly non-existent; where everything is provided for you, but shared, and therefore not valued; and where the faith that is taught is made about as exciting as a plate of beans. Perhaps the behavior of the Fredys isn’t so unexplainable.

I’ve observed over the last seven months that without the small, intimate social dynamic of the family, it is inconceivably hard to teach values to children. Without the security of the undivided attention and unconditional love of a good parent, it takes an exceptional child to rise above the overwhelming status quo to develop a strong moral character. Where is my motivation if my reward for doing my chore and completing my homework is to avoid being reprimanded by the tío or tía of the hogar and getting to eat dinner that night? I don’t mean to say that all children on the Ranch are lacking a values system; just like everywhere in the world, there are the numbered golden children who are dubbed prodigies by we volunteers by the mere fact that they’ve been on the Ranch so long and haven’t been turned into Frankeniño.

Today I experienced a purely golden moment where time stopped for me and I was truly happy, truly thankful, truly in love with my girls. We’d been working in the hot sun for an hour watering all the newly planted trees that HSBC bank donated last weekend. All the girls were in a good mood after running around and playing in the water fountains, filling up empty 3 liter Pepsi botles and then dumping it all out over the baby greens. Halfway into our long walk back up to hogar from the school, one of the older boys in his service year pulled up in a big John Deere tractor, pulling a large, empty trailer to the farm. Like most people, he was unable to say no to the kitten eyes of 9 year olds, and he let us all climb up in the back of the trailer to give us a ride back to the hogar. The girls were absolutely ecstatic: a four minute ride in a rickety old trailer was surely the best thing that could have happened to them on a normal Saturday. I watched my grinning, laughing chicas from the back of the trailer, unable to keep from laughing and smiling myself when they cheered and screamed at each jerk of the trailer as the tired balding wheels jumped with each deep rut in the dirt road. For a moment, I was transported back to my own childhood rides with my siblings in our Cub Cadet tractor trailer: dirty and hot from the late August desert sun, but just a happy kid, on top of the world as I’d coast by the golden wheat grasses from my throne of metal and plywood. The four minute spent riding the rough Ranch road today filled me with a familiar golden sweetness: it was spontaneous, simple happiness caught in its most pure moment and condensed into a delicious butterscotch melting slowly on my tongue, the honeyed rays of its sweet richness shooting out and soaking us with gold. The girls descended from the trailer giggling and grinning still, shrieking over and over: “Qué rico! Qué rico!”

So I have just under five months left. That’s still a mighty long time when I consider how thoroughly each day drains me to the bones. I have visions of myself at 50 sitting around a table with friends and sharing stories about our hardest jobs. I have plenty of more challenging jobs in my future, that I do not doubt; yet, it’s hard to imagine one with as many corresponding and conflicting social and cultural aspects. In what other job in my life will I—in one day—catch an entire class cheating on their English homework, serve a lunch that has chickens’ feet in it, embrace an HIV+ child, and explain to another child what chocolate is (yes, there is a new girl in my hogar who had never heard of chocolate before). In five more months, I am sure there will be more Fredy days, but there will also be more spontaneous butterscotch moments, too. I know better now than to think otherwise.

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.