Hogar Update

I have been at the Hogar now for a little over 3 weeks... What I have learned is that the kids LOVE puzzles, Candyland, and books. My first graders beg me to let them play Candyland (tierra dulce) at the end of class everyday if they all behave (which is rare that they all behave but I usually let them play it anyway). Every night our door, to the volunteer room, gets knocked on about 25 times with kids asking for books and puzzles. It is adorable. There are 20 kids, 10 girls and 10 boys. The oldest girl is 16 while the youngest girl is 6 (but looks and acts 3), the oldest boys are 13 and the youngest boy is 3. The older girls are the hardest to connect with because they are the ones that can remember the abuse whether physical, sexual, mental, and are more reluctant to open up and trust. Many of the kids do not look or act there age due to extreme malnutrition and many of the kids don´t actually know their birthday. There are many siblings, one family of 5 kids and another of 4. Some of the siblings all claim to have the same birthday because they were born in the jungle and then taken on the same day (years later) to the hospital, and given the same birth date.

I do not mean to offend anyone with this next paragraph but if I do please email me and I will try and explain myself a bit more thoroughly... It appears that only the wealthy Hondurans have the luxury of education and the luxury to purchase what an American would consider a necessity. When I first arrived at the Hogar I was appalled with the lack of sanitation and the kids´hygiene. After having been around more Honduran families and seeing more here I am beginning to learn that it isn´t just that the organization is poorly ran, but also there are dramatic cultural differences. The Hogar would be considered a mansion to many Hondurans. It is a very large, one level, modern building. It has a small open courtyard, where the kids bathe and do the dishes, there is a kitchen, 2 bedrooms for the girls, 2 bedrooms for the boys, a bedroom for the couple that lives on site and runs the orphanage (2 Hondurans Julio is 25 and Stacy is 23), a large room for the volunteers, a dinning room, a computer room (not functioning yet, that will be Greg´s job in a couple of weeks), a bathroom for the boys, a bathroom for the girls, 2 bathrooms for the volunteers (only one has a functioning shower), a laundry room, and about 3 poorly ran storage rooms. The building is painted decently, all concrete, with tiled floors. The windows all have screens which is amazing but still makes no sense to me how many bugs make it inside! The last 3 nights I have dreamt about giants bugs crawling through my hair. But thankfully I am the only volunteer at this point whose head has not been infected with lice. Overall after the past couple of weeks I have come to feel lucky for where the kids and I are living. The dogs are still a disgusting issue... But that I will just have to get used to. As far as the kids hygiene it seems to be more of a miscommunication within the Hogar and the organization, everyone says someone else is supposed to be responsible amongst the people who are living on site with paid positions. Two nights ago I told the kids they couldn´t have books or puzzles until they bathed and let me smell them. They each came to me saying they had bathed which of course I didn´t believe because you could see the rings of dirt around their neck. I smelt each one and made told them they couldn´t have a book or puzzle unless they bathed with soap (I found that we do have soap it was just in a locked room that only the director has access to). Last night instead I bathed the 4 youngest boys with soap and put deodorant on each of them. They were clean for about 5 minutes, but that is probably the cleanest they have been in a while. I talked to the other volunteers and we are just going to take turns making sure we get all the little ones bathed properly each night. Oh and we have been brushing their teeth as well. There is a 4 year old whose front teeth are completely rotten brown, luckily it is just his baby teeth... But back to what I was first saying... There is not the education here that there is in the States about hygiene and health. People cannot afford spoons, forks, knives and napkins and as a result people eat with their hands and it is messy. What we consider necessities like cleaning products, soap, shampoo, conditioner, etc are all luxuries to most here. Just having a shower and especially a running toilet here is a luxury. So I will not complain at all about the conditions of the site from now on... There are just some changes that definitely need to be made which should hopefully considering all volunteers, whether they have been on site for 1 week or one year are all in agreement.

Also, it is unfortunate but the people here don´t have the means to become educated on health. Most of the cooked meals have something fried in them with 100% vegetable oil and no one is conscious about working out. The men play soccer, but I haven´t seen one female workout in my almost 2 months here. Also, the wealthier people that can afford food eat lots of it and are largely overweight, while there are many that slave in fields all day and cannot afford food and are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Many families can just afford rice beans and some can afford meat. But fruits and vegetables which are very hard to come by. It is really sad considering the Dole plantations are just about 15 miles away from the Hogar where there are fields of fresh pineapple, but unfortunately most are getting shipped to the U.S. and the locals without money cannot afford them. Also, because you cannot really drink the water here, the majority of people all prefer to spend their money on a beverage with calories considering they are trying to intake as many as possible so they drink coke. With a lack of dentist in the area and with many families here that cannot afford toothbrushes and toothpaste there is another huge issue.

Overall the people here that I have came into contact with have been amazing. A man that works at the gas station saw my friend Bethany and I hitching the other day and offered to help us get a hitch so that we could wait in the shade. We waited with him for about 15 minutes as trucks passed and said that we would go back into the sun. He said he didn´t want us to wait in the sun (it was insanely hot that day) so he took out his wallet and offered to pay for our bus fare. Another family a grandmother and her daughter offered to make me lunch and then take a cab with me insisting they pay. My first time hiking up to my favorite swimming hole with my home stays family, they bought me pan dulce, sweet bread, and wouldn´t let me pay for it. Also, they let Bethany and I stay at their house without charging us for the room. Pretty much every hitch we have had has ended up in us becoming friends with the driver and learning something new about the area and offered to show us around. I have found all this hospitality amazing considering I am unemployed at the moment but feel wealthier than even the richest people I have come into contact with here.

Sorry this is so random. Nothing really interesting has happened in the past 2 weeks, just a lot of hanging out with the kids, trying to make progress with the first graders, helping the cooks in the kitchen, playing soccer with the kids, spending time with the other volunteers, talking with the guards, etc. This weekend we are going to try and cook a meal for the kids or take them somewhere (the other 2 volunteers and I) and go hiking again to my favorite swimming hole.

I hope everyone is doing well.