The Prodigal

Tonight, during the hour and a half each night between dinner and prayer circle where everyone hangs out outside, I played for a long time with a little boy who is new to the hogar. He is eight years old and has a smile that spreads in a long line across his face to light up big brown eyes, a high-pitched voice and a babyish laugh. He called me over to a corner of the porch to sit on the ground so I could watch him proudly assemble a tiny plastic top. He spun it as fast as he could a few times - "Mira! Mira!" - and then handed it to me to try. He was completely content in that moment, spinning his tiny top or watching me spin it, shrieking when it got too close to the edge of the porch, giggling every time it fell over. I could hardly believe that it was only a few days ago that I had sat with the same boy while he sobbed miserably into a plate of pancakes. 

I was one of the group who went to pick him up from one of the state-run children's homes four days ago. We picked up three new children from the home that day and he had been then one I had gotten to know the least on our trip. In contrast to the other two boys, he had been calm and unimpressed during the ride back to Amigos, half-smiling at times, but mostly quietly looking out the window. I don't remember once seeing the wide smile that has come to define his face for me now.

We arrived to the hogar as everyone does here: to the applause of the entire home gathered at the front gate. All three timidly got out of the car and walked through the crowd where they were introduced to the padrinos and madrinas, the caretakers of the boys and girls who live on-site and are with the children full-time.

I didn't see the littlest boy much that evening or the next day. At dinner in the comedor I made a point to sit with him, but he gave me a cold shoulder. At breakfast and lunch the next day I looked around to find him sitting sullenly, not speaking to the other boys around him. 

Late that afternoon, we new volunteers were in the midst of an orientation session when we learned that the boy had run away. It was 4:30 and we learned he had been gone about half an hour. We came out of the session to see search parties assembling. Two of the trucks full of people went out to drive in separate directions and a large group of boys and a few padrinos went out on foot. After night had fallen, the search parties began to return one by one. Staff members assembled a description of the child with photos and dropped them off at local police stations. We had to go to sleep that night not knowing where he was.

Photos of Copán Ruinas

Here are the long awaited photos!

To the right, this was a replica of a temple found at the site and reconstructed inside the museum. They really liked red paint, apparently. We think of the stoney colors that you see in the picture above, but because of paint flecks archeologists have found, we know that most of those buildings actually would have been brightly painted, many of them in this kind of bright red. It must have been really vibrant if you lived there, and really terrifying if you were a conquered visitor! We actually got to see those beautiful parrots (macaws). They were everywhere and with the ruins as a backdrop it made you feel like you were in a movie. The skulls below lined the bottom of where the king's throne would have been. A lot of the Mayan artwork we saw involved skulls.

 

 Finally, this is the coolest thing I think we saw. This stairway protected by a tarp is basically a giant history book. Engraved on those stones from left to right are the names and deeds of the Mayan kings from one of the dynasties. The stairway was like a stoney library. A carving of the ruler in the middle of the stair marks where his section begins. Though other nearby ruins are famous for more impressively large buildings, these are most famous for these stairs and the amazing artifact they are for researchers. Here's a little more info and a better picture. This is another really good picture of it.

¡Trabajos!

We found out about jobs yesterday! Of the six of us, four are working in the school here on site at Amigos. It is comprised mostly of Amigos kids, grades preschool through sixth, and a few children from the outside community. It's pretty necessary that we have our own school. In the neighboring village, there is only a one-room schoolhouse with a single teacher and 44 children. In our school, the student to teacher ratio varies, but some of the classes are as small as 8 or 9 children and the largest are around 18. After 6th grade, the kids go to a colegio, middle school and high school, that is a 30-minute walk away in the larger town of Macuelizo (also where we go to Mass on Sundays).

The school will be where I spend most of my time this year. The other volunteers have more clear-cut jobs, but I'm going to be more of a jack-of-all trades this year. The best way to tell you is probably to list my responsibilities:

• Librarian/ Library Teacher - My compulsive book hoarding finally has a productive outlet! I'm going to be in charge of the Amigos school library this year! The volunteer who came before me got it amazingly organized. A lot of my work will be organizing all the new books that are always coming in and managing check-outs and book returns. I'll also be teaching library classes an as-yet undetermined number of times per week, but I'll most likely have 4th, 5th and 6th grade possibly twice a week.
• 6th Grade English (as a second language) teacher - I'll only have this job through the end of the Honduran school year, which is in November. I'll have a class of eight 6th grade boys possibly up to 4 days a week for 45 minutes. I already love all the students in the class. They are really eager to learn and are all just really good kids. I was introduced to the class yesterday and several of them approached me later in the day to say how excited they were. I know 6th grade boys can be a devious bunch, but for now I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt!
• One-on-one special ed teacher - We have a really special little girl here who just doesn't fit into any of the other classes at the school. She's 12 years old and has special needs, so for two hours a day I'll be working with her one-on-one on basic school objectives and life skills. Over the past few weeks I already fell in love with her. I know this is going to be a big challenge, but I'm really excited to work with her, and I think it'll be very rewarding.
• Pre-school teacher's aide - Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays for an hour an additional 3 young children will be added to the pre-school class taught by another of the volunteers. This is to begin to acclimate these young children to the classroom while they're still too young to be in the class full-time. During that time, I'll be working with the teacher. I'll probably bring my special needs student with me to these classes as well so that she can have a classroom experience. It's all a big experiment, but we'll see how it works.

Beginning Life at Amigos

Sorry it's been awhile, but life since last Saturday has been a total whirlwind as we begin to settle into life at this amazing, terrifying, intimidating, beautiful place. The last week has been orientation for us new volunteers and when there aren't sessions planned we've been trying to use every spare moment to interact with the kids and begin to get to know them, and to get to know each other.

So what can I tell you about life here? As of this week there are 91 kids living at the hogar (home) and that number is going to grow in the next few weeks. They range in age from 1 and a half to mid-20's. They are mostly boys, but in 2012 they accepted their first girl and there are now at least 10 of them. The process has been slow but rewarding as we all try to meet them, and frustrating as we try to remember their names, but I feel like I'm making progress!

The thing that has struck me the most and that I now realize will be a process throughout this entire year, has been realizing just how much these kids have been through. The friendliest, most outgoing, sweetest kid here has been through hell to get to this place. The current volunteers tell us the kids who live at Amigos are here because they were in the Honduran child welfare system, but it's a very broken system in many ways so being "in it" means the situation must have been very bad. It's one thing to hear about or read about abuse, and it's another thing entirely to know a face and a name and the beginnings of a personality and then begin to think about what might have occurred in this child's past (and then add 90).

Adiós a una Ciudad Nueva

The streets of Copán Ruínas are cobbled with multi-colored stones and lined with multi-colored houses. The colors on every street are what stand out the most to me: pinks and lime greens, yellows and light blues. Roofs are sometimes corrugated steel but, more often, are large, red, almost Mediterranean-style concrete tiles. Many of the houses have gates facing the street that open into small courtyards, and often the windows on the street are open, with a thin curtain waving in the breeze.

The second thing you notice after the colors are the trees and plants. There is vegetation everywhere, tumbling out of windows, climbing in vines up walls, filling courtyards and gardens, bursting into more color with flowers. The trees are tropical – there are all kinds of varieties of palm trees – and they all seem to have fruits on them. Mangos and avocados are recognizable, but many of the fruits are new to me: tiny green ones of all different sizes, large green balls the size of a softball or larger.

Dogs wander about the streets and sometimes in and out of the homes. They bark and howl at each other all night. The other nocturnal pests are the roosters who crow continuously throughout the night (and during the day, too) with their ridiculously pompous squawks that still make me laugh – when I’m not trying to sleep. (To talk about the roosters, I’ve used the word for “yell” or “scream” to describe what they’re doing [gritar], but I’m always corrected to use the verb for “to sing” [cantar] – it’s the rooster’s “song” here, not its “squawk.” I love that.)

A Visit to the Mayan Temples

The name of the city where I’m staying is Copán Ruínas, and there’s a good reason for that. Yesterday I visited the Mayan ruins for which this city is famous. Tourists come from all over the world to see them. I have a ton of pictures of my own (the one above is from el internet - though I really did see those birds!), but I brought the wrong cord to Copán with me and I can’t get them onto my computer. You’ll just have to try to imagine and I promise to get the pictures up here as soon as I get back to Amigos!

Apparently the tall pyramid ruins in nearby Guatemala (as in a 20-minute drive) are also very famous, and our tour guide made the distinction this way: The ruins in Guatemala are the New York of the Mayans, with buildings impressive as sky scrapers; but the ruins at Copán are the Paris, the capital of art and culture (sorry to all you New Yorkers who read this).

The story of how we had a guide at all is worth telling. The woman who sold us our tickets around 2:30 said the museum, which had come highly recommended, closed at 4 and the ruins at 4:30, so we ought to see the museum first and then go to the ruins. We followed her advice and at about 3:20 headed over to the make-shift building near the road to hire a guide, but when we got there, we learned that the last guide had left for the day because, in reality, the ruins close at 4.

We were understandably pretty frustrated. All of a sudden this small boy, probably about 10 or 11 years old, materialized near us. He spoke vey rapid Honduran Spanish and said something about helping us find a guide. We politely turned him down and began to walk off in the direction of the ruins to see what we could before they closed.

A Welcome Home - Honduran Style

When I pulled through the front gate of Amigos de Jesus, there was a crowd waiting to meet me, and they were clapping.

One of the current volunteers later said it was a poor showing; usually, new volunteers are welcomed by the entire Amigos de Jesus family, 85-children strong, along with staff. To me, the cheering welcome party seemed enormous. The windows of the truck they had picked me up in at the San Pedro Sula airport were open; to wave made me feel like I was making a pretense of some kind of royalty, but to not respond felt strange too. I think the result was a couple half-hearted hand gestures of some kind, and definitely a lot of awkwardness.

As soon as I stepped out, a little girl ran towards me and, without losing any momentum, right into my arms to hug me tightly. Several of the other young children were not far behind. The whole situation would later resemble many of my experiences on my first night at Amigos. There’s uncertainty and hesitancy, and discomfort too, sometimes painfully so, but the children’s hugs make it all seem worth it. From what I’ve heard from this year’s volunteers, it sounds like that’s an experience that will persist.