October 09, 2006
Not a dry eye in the house
I spent my first day back from Honduras walking around my neighborhood in Winchester. It was a perfect day. Beautiful fall sunlight and the trees just starting to turn and everything smelled great. Quite a contrast from the harsh, evil smelling city I had just come from. Shanties everywhere, guys with guns, and overwhelming odors of diesel fumes and open sewers.You'd think I'd be happy to be home, but I spent most of the day with a lump in my throat. I missed El Hogar. I missed my team. I had spent 24/7 with them in Honduras for a week, and I kept wondering what they were having for breakfast. Probably not refried frijoles and tortillas, which been our almost constant fare there.
Our last day was very hectic - saying goodbye, getting to the Tegucigalpa airport, changing planes and clearing customs in Miami. There were a lot of distractions, which was good, because we all felt the sadness of leaving a very special place.
Saturday morning, the boys a program to say goodbye to us. They made us cards and gave us hugs.
We played a game where we had to name each other. Several of the boys got all the names right, though "Gauri" gave them fits. Word has it that if you can't name at least five boys, Claudia won't give you your passport back. For this group, it was no problem. We knew almost all the boys' names and their faces still came to me as I walked around Winchester.
Gauri wrote a great entry a few days ago on why we go to El Hogar. To that I would only add one thing. These kids have in one way or another been told that they are worthless. Some have literally been told that by their own mother. Others have been abused or abandoned or starved and gotten the message that way.
But something wonderful became clear as they said goodbye to us. The fact that we were willing to travel from so far away to be with them has miraculously sent them the message that they are special and loved. They made that clear in a number of ways. And I have to tell you that that knowledge was completely poignant and humbling.
To be even a tiny part of redeeming the damage that growing up in a poverty stricken country does makes the entire effort seem obvious. I had always thought I came to this place because it changed me, but it also unquestionably enriches those whose small lives we touch. Not because we are special, but just because the effort tells these boys that they are special. I continue to be amazed by this.
It's all about the boys
I've decided that there are far too few pictures of the boys in this blog. To look at what I wrote you'd think it was all about the virtues of various building materials. Sheesh. I'll remedy that by keeping my own words to a minimum and letting the boys show you themselves what El Hogar is all about.
Kevin and Ricardo negotiate - Pax loses
Wish I could still do that . . . .
Bugs are the best.
Infectious smile!
Marlon swears it wasn't him! Helen had a contact lens driven to the back of her head, though.
Bill's pal Samuel.
Not all fun and games.
Peekaboo! (How do you say that in Spanish?)
I love laundry day.
Mugging for the camera.
Evening Assembly before free play - Merdado and Jonathan are getting impatient.
Pax needed some height.
Beware of Honduran card sharks - never lost so many games of "Go Fish" in my life.
Futbol and dodgeball. No kidding, these kids are good! I think Byron may still be juggling that soccer ball.
Stuart falls for the oldest trick in the book.
Every time we tried to take a team photo, the boys would jump in. We didn't mind.
October 08, 2006
Saying Goodbye and Coming Back Home
It is with great sadness that I saw our week in Honduras come to an end yesterday. I didn't want to leave or say goodbye, but we had to and we did. I found it very difficult. It is incredible how attached I became, in one short week, to the boys, the staff, El Hogar and Honduras. After spending a week there, I also found it difficult to be back here. Everything seems so symmetrical, orderly and luxurious.
I lack the words to express how awesome our journey was! For me, it was eye-opening and life changing. I saw poverty, pride, suffering, humility, strength and hope. I experienced everything from pure joy to deep sadness. I learned a lot about a country and its people. I met truly remarkable human beings. I also got to know the six wonderful MathWorkers I traveled with. As a group, we worked hard and had an incredible amount of fun. We contributed some and received so much more in return.
I came back home with slightly stronger biceps, a ton of wonderful memories, the willingness to go back and the certainty that I want to be involved in the El Hogar project. I also came back with renewed gratitude for all that I have and the opportunities that I've been given.
One last thought. There are many boys and girls who need help in Honduras and there are many countries like Honduras in this world. In the face of that, it is easy to feel hopeless and to say, "What difference can my contribution make?" For each one of the boys at El Hogar, our contributions make all the difference in the world. El Hogar has transformed and saved their lives and that is priceless.
October 06, 2006
Zen and the Art of Concrete Mixing
Ricardo and I were talking about vacations the other day and he was mentioning how he doesn’t usually like them. The idea of sitting on the beach drinking Margaritas gets old after a couple of hours. After a week, he’s officially stir-crazy. I could sit on the beach for a week no problem, but I took his point. He went on to say that this was one of the most fun vacations he’s had. That took me aback, because I don’t really think of these trips as vacations at all. They are intense, joyous, heartbreaking, frustrating, eye-opening, soul-stirring and yes, sometimes a lot of fun, but not vacations.But he went on to say that working construction at the Technical School was some of the most fun he’s had and I have to agree with him. Sounds weird, but working out in the hot Honduran sun moving sand, gravel and cement, mixing it into concrete and pouring it into forms to make a school is, damn it, a whole lot of fun.
I think my favorite part is the human chain we made moving the heavy ingredients to the second floor where they were mixed. Like I said in a previous post, all of this work needs to be done by hand. There are no elevators, conveyors or even a block and tackle. We were armed only with six five gallon buckets. We’d fill them about half-way and move them up, over a plank, and through the framing to the stairway and to the room to be mixed. Here’s how it looked:
Stuart fills, Bill and Pablo hand off to Ricardo, who's standing on a plank spanning a sand pile and a landing. Helen takes the bucket.
Helen turns and hands to Christina on the landing.
Christina hands to Gauri on the steps who brings it to a crew member by a wheelbarrow.
The buckets go down the same way aided by gravity and pinpoint precision pitching.
The really fun part was after the start-up, we got in to a neat rhythm passing the full buckets up and the empties down. We moved an astonishing amout of stuff. We could move about a metric ton in twenty minutes.
Now, when the Hondurans moved it – they would have none of this gringo-style, half-full bucket nonsense. They would fill the thing to the top, hoist it on to a shoulder and manhandle it up the stairs. It was kind of awesome, a lot of these guys looked like they weighed about 150 lbs. soaking wet, but pound for pound were some of the strongest I’ve ever met. I won’t even get into how they never sweat, never even look hot, and only sip water every now and then. Me – I look like I must have jumped in a river about five minutes into the day.
The thing was, Don Gustavo, the maestro of the worksite, confessed to Ricardo that our method was much faster.
Was he trying to make us poor, silly, computer-bound Americanos feel better? Quite possibly, but I don’t really think so. The rhythm was real and we could almost feel the flow through the group.
Of course, our true "butts-behind-computers-all-day" uselessness came back out when the actual concrete mixing began. Nevertheless, mixing concrete is all kinds of messy fun.
Once ingredients are assembled, they must be mixed by turning them over with shovels.
Then, the center is pulled out until the pile is a ring resembling the caldera of a volcano. The ring holds water and we start shoveling the mixture in so it gradually moistens.
Mixing concrete by hand does get you to stop worrying about your usual fashion concerns.
The same buckets used to haul the ingredients are now filled with concrete and carried to the forms.
The Honduran crew also seemed genuinely sad to see us go. I’ve worked with these guys before and never has a team gotten this kind of reaction when it left. They asked to have pictures taken of the whole group.
I’ll spare you the metaphors of the harmony we felt working moving into the space of human relationships, but it certainly did give a special feel to this service project.
And finally, lest we get too heavy, I’ll close with a gratuitous “Fear Factor” moment provided by Stuart who really seemed to need to get down quickly.
First close encounter, seat 32F
Today we took the day off and went to visit a tourist town outside Teguz. On the way out of the city we heard this loud roar. It took me a while to figure out what was going on and then looked up to see a 767 flying about 1500 ft. over our heads. This plane was arriving in Teguz and still had its landing gear up.
Teguz is in a valley surrounded by intricate range of mountains around it. The land is very irregular with high peaks spurting out and high from the ground. Because of this, when you fly in you are decending and taking steep turns all while at some 2000 to 1500 ft. of altitude. If you like that sort of thing it is truly exhilirating, but if you don´t then arm yourself with some shots of tequila before you take a peak out the window.
Turns out only very experienced pilots fly into this city. We are not sure but speculate that the new airport has radar, maybe even an instrument landing strip. If they don´t then there is NO way to fly into this city in a storm or at night.
It will be sad to leave tomorrow. I will miss the people I have met here including Don Raul and his wife Doña Claudia and all the boys of course. I am sure they will miss our futbol lessons (yeah right).
I guess I will see the city one last time from my window seat tomorrow as we roar 2000 ft off the ground and wind around the city to climb over the mountains.
Leaving El Hogar
Today will be our last day for the trip, at El Hogar, before leaving for Bean town tomorrow. Also today, was the team´s day off from work...( although I have started missing working at the construction site ). Raul took us to Valle de angeles, which is about an hour from Tegucigalpa, and is a hub of Hondurian handicrafts, pretty little streets and a must go for shoppers. The drive was scenic with curved roads, going up through the mountains and the weather was just perfect . The shops here have a plethora of handmade hondurian handicrafts, cuban cigars (shhhh...) and coffee. We had a hearty Hondurian meal, in a nice little restaurant and came back to get ready for the pizza party for the boys.
Some boys at El Hogar go home on the weekends. Those who stay back are boys who either do not have a family, their house is too small to accomodate them, there is not enough food for everyone or the situation at home is just too unsafe. Yesterday, most boys left because of a staff retreat day, some stayed back and some joined their teachers, at their home.
It is surprising to see the effect a place has when kids leave. Since the day we arrived , we´ve got used to see the boys playing, the place is complete, with their presence, their games , their talk and it felt very different to suddenly see most of them gone for the day. Most of them will however come back tonight or tomorrow morning and we are all looking forward to seee them before leaving El Hogar. Some of the boys were sad to leave, others who stayed back were sad because they had no home to go to, like the other kids. Over all the energy levels were down yesterday evening, but Helen, Pax, Christina and I enjoyed a game of soccer and dodge ball with Cezar nevertheless.
We will leave tomorrow at around 10:30 in the morning. It has been a great trip...one of the best trips Ive ever been on. Moreso because we came here with a lot of anticipation, and it has been thoroughly satisfying.
I have learned from this trip to El Hogar to appreciate what I have more than I have ever done before. I understand more than ever before the significance of my family, the significance of having a normal childhood and the acccess to a good education. I realize how insignificant my hassles are ( I am not going to post to mw. hassles for a loooong time to come ).
Tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day, leaving the kids and leaving El Hogar. Its sad that some of them wont be here when we leave, but in a way its good because saying good bye is not easy. Well for now....Im want to enjoy every bit of the last night of playing cards with the team.
No place to go
Last night after dinner we came out to play with the boys only to find just a handful of them all watching TV and looking a little down. We learned that because today is the teachers' retreat day, and there are no classes today, the boys that were able to, went home. Just 11 boys remained at El Hogar last night, and I think they were more then a little sad that other boys could go home and they had no place to go. And we felt sad for them too.
Some of these boys will not be back at El Hogar until Saturday afternoon or Sunday, meaning that we won't get a chance to say goodbye to them. It will be very sad to leave. Even though the week went by incredibly fast, our arrival here seems like it was ages ago.
It is still too early to think of our departure. We have a full day here ahead of us today! Some boys will be back here tonight, and I am preparing for more hide and seek, soccer, tackle, dodge ball and whatever other "contact sports" they can come up with.
Calidad Humana
Before coming to Honduras I expected to find a similar situation as that of my own country. There is no question Mexico has poverty to a similar degree as that of Honduras, however it seems to me that it is far more prevalent in the Central American country. Most of the city is covered with colonias (neighbourhoods) that are buit from squatting and irregular construction. The government follows the settlements around providing electricity service and that gives birth and name to a new colonia. Mexico excersizes exactly this type of "urban planning" but it tends to happen in the periphery of cities not so much in them.Similarly to the bonds that the MathWorks´ team is building from living and working hard together, poverty and hard work make Hondureños good natured and very friendly. The boys at El Hogar as well as the group of construction workers that we helped through the week are people that I hope I have a chance to work with again. And more importantly, they make me think deeply about what is important and what is not.
Two days ago just before lunch at the work site, a few kids from the technical school came around and saw that we might need more people to run our human conveyor belt run more smoothly. I am not sure how old these boys are but they looked like they were 10 or 12 years old and were as stong and hard working as we were. At the break for lunch Jason gave one of the kids some Lempiras to buy some sodas. The kids came back, handed Jason the change and the large bottle of coke they had bought. There was no assumption that the soda was theirs, instead they assumed it was for us. Once Jason explained the soda was for them they joyfully ran off show other kids (and probably share with them).
Lunch at the construction site was at noon. We arrived on site at around 10a.m. each morning and worked very hard for two hours. The normal construction crew arrives on site at 7a.m. and are pretty happy to see us. For lunch we would go indoors and have a cooked meal. The crew instead ate outside under a tree. They had some pastries called "Rosquillas" which are like little dognuts about 2.5 inches in diameter. Pablo Enrique a.k.a "la cabeza" held on to a bag of about 20 of these and together with some "salsa" it fed around 12 guys. As soon as I asked what they were, Pablo handed me two of them to try. They were delicious. I was appreciative, ate one and shared the other with the gringo team, then I went inside to eat the cooked meal.
People here are not attached to what they have even though they don´t have much. This for me sums up the high quality of human nature we have found here in Tegucigalpa and Amarateca. I will be back to eat Rosquillas under a tree some day.
October 05, 2006
Down on the Farm
Today, we got the chance to go the third campus of El Hogar - the Episcopal Agricultural School - referred to as "the Farm". It is situated about 70km north of Tegucigalpa in a really nice, bucolic setting. The first thing we all noticed was the quiet. It was really beautiful and peaceful out there. We realized we had gotten really used to all the noise - mostly traffic noise because Hondureños use horns to express every emotion. The farm was a welcome break from that.The Farm is a very interesting place. There, the rural contingent of El Hogar's boys learn sustainable farming techniques and animal husbandry. In a way, what the agricultural school does is even more important that the other campuses. The graduates from here go back to their respective towns and villages and teach what they learn. They help whole communities with that knowledge.
We started looking at the crops. They are irrigating a field for corn.
Then it was on to the livestock pens. The cattle were just lines up, seemingly waiting for us.
Then he convinced Helen to give it a whirl, and she did. Although, she said she would have been better had she not been afraid of hurting the cow.
A Visit from Doctora Barbra
Dr. Barbra McCune is a medical missionary in Honduras. She is a Yale trained doctor who has been working in Honduras going on her fourth year. She lives alone and travels to her clinic, Clinica Medical Episcopal, on transportation she calls a "chicken-bus" every day. She also is a special friend of El Hogar, often taking care of the boys if they need it and going on home visits like the one we went on. She's even been known to help out a sick work team member or two. Though, not this trip, thank goodness!She is an extraordinary woman. She speaks Spanish with a New York accent, and it was fun to hear her talking like the "Coffee Talk" lady on her cell phone to her cab driver. She uses her hands a lot and is an expert in third world health care delivery.
We were lucky enough to corral her into a visit last night where she came and talked to us about the challenges of health care in Honduras. I guess it's no surprise that it's not a pretty picture.
Barbra's clinic, for example, doesn't have electricity. She actually can't quite figure out why. Somebody pissed off the electric company and now the whole neighborhood is out. For three months now. This means Barbra does her examinations using a headlamp like miners wear. She also has no running water. She has fresh water carried in to a cistern where she can use it.
Turns out only 5% of the Hondureños carry health insurance. The rest go to public hospitals where they must pay for diagnostic tests - in advance. So, you've got heart arythmia and chest pains so you go to the hospital and they tell you to go downstairs for an EKG. When you get there they tell you you have to pay half a year's income which you don't have anyway. What do you do? You go home.
An interesting thing is that the diagnostic equipment and techniques do exist in Honduras on a par with the US - there are CT Scans, MRI's, etc. But really expensive therapies like organ transplants just don't happen.
The group was interested in family planning issues because we had seen so many boys will many siblings and one struggling parent. The news there was grim. The average - that's average - age of first pregnancy has dropped from 16 to 14 in the past two years. That means there's 11 year-old girls out there having babies. The reason for this is not the Catholic church's influence, but a combination of ignorance and cultural issues that prevent women from seeking birth control as to not upset their partners.
The AIDS/HIV rate is climbing, as is the incidence of drug resistant tuberculosis. And the other thing to realize is that all the "normal" stuff, diseases that happen everywhere - cancer, heart disease, epilepsy, autism, birth defects, retardation, etc. - also happen here. They are just amplified by the layer of poverty that lays over them.
She finished by telling us about being a single, American woman in Honduras. Basically, it's getting worse for her. She told of four separate close calls she's had recently. The most serious being a hold up in a fake cab that dumped her in one of the worst neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa late at night, after having taken her money, cell phone, etc. And, she was lucky.
Our group reacted understandably to this talk. We were sad and overwhelmed. We know we can't solve the problem. It's too big. That's a hard pill for us engineer geeks to swallow. All we can hope to do is be a small part of the solution. Not giving up and saying, "I can't solve it, so I'll do nothing" is the important thing. Ally ourselves with people and places like Barbra and El Hogar. There is magic happening in these places and they can make a difference in so many lives. Maybe someday, that will tip the balance the other way.
Last Work Day
Today we worked for the last time shifting sand, gravel and cement. Many of us carried bags of cement over our shoulders for about 50 yards and up some stairs. It was the heaviest thing I have ever carried. When the work ended today, I had managed to wear a hole through the new leather work gloves I bought.
Even although we could only carry half full buckets of sand and gravel (and the foreman had to make adjustments to his cement receipt calculation as a result) I think we made up for it with speed and efficiency.
The workmen were a great bunch of guys and it had been fun to work with them.
At lunch time when we left, many of us gave some of our gear (boots and gloves) to the workmen, who appreciated them very much. Many of them wore burst sneakers. One guy who I gave my boots to had most of his toes showing out of his. Pax gave away his work boots and the sneakers he had brought to change into, leaving him with bare feet.
After lunch we went to the agrigultural school which was some distance away. We were shown around the many acres of land they have where the students train for most of each morning. There were all sorts of crops, fruit and vegetables. We sampled (chewed) some sugar cane.
I tried my hand at milking a cow. First of all, it does seem a rather intimate thing to do to a cow but she did not seem to care in the slightest and kept eating. You need to first grab high up on the teat, ringing it with you thumb and forefinger (perhaps to trap the milk?), then you can squeeze the teat itself. There is also the problem that it doesn't squirt directly down. Each of the four teats seemed to squirt off in its own peculiar direction, missing the bucket entirely. I did manage to get into a short rhythm at one point.
The eye, the ear, even the nose
The morning song of horns and gears beyond the walls of El Hogar blends with the joyful shouts of newly awaked boys as the sun climbs, headed straight overhead. Pre-school assembly is a circle of neatly dressed boys listening to a pep-talk and then a sermon or hymn. We volunteers, armed with water bottles and dressed for hard labor glide into the morning rush with Raul at the helm. The views starts with (by our standards) run down shops, mostly seeming to deal with automobiles one way or another. The vista turns upscale briefly at the bottom of the valley, Intercontinental Hotel and McDonalds being examples. Soon we begin the climb out of the valley and away from Teguchigalpa, racing against time with every other vehicle for apparently no reason. The houses (and shanties) crawl up the hillsides all around. Water is hauled up in a truck and dumped into private cisterns. As it turns out, waste water travels down hill, making the higher elevations ever more attractive.
The mountains are small and steep. The soil seems like hard chalk although knowledgeable people say volcanic. There are pine forests and a scattering of semi-tropical brush and lots of long grass. Our fellow travelers are in Chicken Busses, which are cheap, travel long routes, and are dangerous to ride. Some of the cars and trucks are loaded to the point of tipping. Never mind, up the hill they go.
Over the summit into the Ameriteca Valley, the shanties are fewer and industrial establishments dominate. One is Cafe Indo, a major coffee producer. We can inhale the morning shot of caffine as we drive by. Off the paved road we climb to a view point to overlook the Tech School from above. Looks lovely. But, then, to work. In the afternoon all of this is reversed, except the sun is at a different angle. We sleep to the private language of car horns:"Watch out! I'm next! Don´t you Dare! You cheated and here is your earful", and so on.
Como te llamas?
"Como te llamas?" (What is your name?) is a question we've asked every boy. Most boys tell us their names with great pride. Some boys come up to us, pull on our hand or tap us on the shoulder, and test us, "Como me llamo?" (What is my name?). When we get a boy's name right, his face illuminates like he's been made to feel really special. When we don't remember his name or if we don't get it right, he tells us again, sometimes with disappointment, sometimes without, maybe secretly hoping that we'll get get it right the next time.
The boys haven't ask us "Como te llamas?" many times. We were introduced to them once and many boys committed our names to memory immediately. Minor has come up to us a few times and, with the cutest spanish accent, has enumerated our names while counting on his fingers: Yason, Estuart, Helen, Gauri, Christina, Guillermo, Ricardo.
"Como te llamas?" is all that is necessary to start a friendship with a boy. The boys come to El Hogar with a name, a personality and a troubled past and they are given love, nurture, food, a place to sleep, security and an education.
The seven of us came to El Hogar with a name and a personality. If we came with problems or worries, we soon were able to put them in perspective. I have realized that a lot of my "problems" are really luxurious ones to have. Everything else we have and everything we do back home is irrelevant here. It doesn't matter how much money we make, where we live, what we own, what we do for a living... All the boys want to know is our names. All they want to do is play with us.
More than any other experience, this trip has gotten me in touch with what is at the core of every human being. When you strip away material possessions and titles, what are people made of? I have come to realize that I work with extraordinary people and I have gotten to know aspects of my coworkers' personalities that I might not have seen during a regular day at work. I have also gotten a chance to meet really extraordinary people in Honduras: Claudia, Raul, Rosibel, Doña Angela, Dr. McCune, just to name a few. When you look at people who have very little, it becomes so easy to see their strength, their passion, their courage, their perseverence and their pride. And when you look at the boys, you see joy and a huge potential for Honduras' future.
A Day with the Boys
Yesterday, Mierocoles, I was invited by Señora Claudia to stay behind as the work crew left for the brick piles and fresh concrete of the Technical School. My task was to sit in on classes to learn something of the tempo of the teaching. And, a private kindness, get a better chance to work on my español. My first assignment was with Señor Hezar, the math teacher. The boys, 6-7th grade, were reviewing some algebra. The problems involved exponents, multiplication and addition. I will give an example
-3xa-2 + 2xa-2
for which they had to get the expected
-xa-2
and then had to explain the sign, the disappearance of ¨1¨ from the result. The work was done one formula at a time, at the whiteboard. After the selected student had done his best, the whole class participated in a critique, chanting the rules of simplification in chorus. Each exercise finished with applause as the boy returned to his seat. The boys stayed completely involved.
Later, with the youngest students, we did simple sums and word problems. Some of them counted on their fingers. Others placed and erased little marks on the whiteboard. The word problems had to be answered with words also. It was amazing to me to see these very young children intently figuring out carries and borrows.
I then took a break to make a mathematical puzzle (see the MATLAB Soma demo) for Hezar. Don Julio, who should have retired years ago, helped me find wood and saws and glue, and then stuck his fingers into the work at just the right time. It was great fun working with him even though he has no English and my Spanish is primitive, to say the least. I finally collapsed for a 2 hour nap, then joined the English class.
The teacher, Jose, has not been out of Honduras but speaks very well. He corrected my syntax at one point. The final exercise consisted of clearing the floor and laying out an elaborate town of streets and buildings. Jose would pick a student, give marching instructions in English, then ask the student ¨where is the bank?¨ The answer was something like between the park and the post office. The kids spoke English even to answer roll call.
By this time the dusty crew was back and the evening activities, eating and games, commenced. Then most of us ended up in the very complete computer room, downloading pictures, blogging, emailing, and the like.
Why come to El Hogar ?
A question that many people ask, and I pondered over too, before coming to El Hogar was why spend 700$ and go to Honduras, can't you just send all that money and make a big difference ? I am glad that we all came here, to find answers to these, and similar questions.
El Hogar, besides being the wonderful institution that it is, is the home to around 80 boys ranging from the age of 6 to 12. Most of these boys, come from extremely poor families, and what poor means in the global sense, can only be partly perceived by visiting their homes and hearing their stories from people who have been striving to make their lives better.
We have been having some great experiences since the last 4 days, playing soccer with the kids, lifting concrete blocks , mixing sand and gravel and meeting some amazing people, who have the courage of their convictions, and are doing their best to make the lives of the less fortunate, better.
Yesterday, we visited the home of Jesus, who studies and lives at El Hogar. The locality, where his family, which is his mother, his 7 year old sister and his great grandmother live, is a small hut in an alley, which has several such huts and probably several such families. Jesus´ mother had got just got some food after washing clothes in her neighboourhood. Claudia, showed us the food, which was half a cabbage and some tortillas. Jesus' mother has health problems, for which she needs to take some strong medicines, she manages to somehow run the house and wishes to educate her children nevertheless, her grand mother has arthritis, and is over 80 years old. Jesus' sister Rachael, is seven years old, and the good news is that she will be going to the girls school at El Hogar which will start next year.
After visting Jesus' family, we went to see the house where the girls will reside from next year onwards. It is very inspiring to see Claudia, the director of the elementary school here, talk so passionately about the work that she has been doing at El Hogar for the last 17 years. The house is immaculately beautiful for the girls to stay in. It was nice to hear Claudia saying how it was her dream to get a beautiful house for the girls and paint it pink , and it was extremely remarkable to imagine that Jesus' sister Rachael, whom we just saw in her hut sometime back, would be the first girl student to be enrolled at El Hogar and live in this house.
Today ( Wednesday) morning we went to the Technical school, like the last 3 days. Our job was to pull up buckets of sand and gravel, then mix it with water, and then fill it in buckets again and pass it on to the workers. The construction workers , who work with us, have a very humble salary around 100 -200 lempiras per day, and they have been doing this manual job, for the last couple of years without any sophisticated machinery, or conveyor belts or for that matter even the right construction attire, but they are extremely amicable and jolly. They all have smiling faces and just the perfect attitude to get it and us going. It is an unforgettable experience to lift and pass on concrete blocks, fill sand and gravel buckets and work out strategies to do things efficiently as a team, which in a different world solves different problems using different tools.
After coming back from the technical school, we had a game of hide and seek, with the boys, which most of us played after ages!, and then we had the opportunity to meet Dr. Barbra McCune, who has been working with El Hogar and in Tegucigalpa for the last 3 years. Barbra has received her medical training in North America, has worked with non profit organizations, in Boston and Manhattan amongst other places. She told us about her work in Honduras, and her experiences as a single North American woman living in Tegucialpa.
Barbra´s clinic has had no electricity since 25th August, her patients come from backgrounds where they do not have health insurance or for that matter even enough money to pay for their medications, there are women who have no knowledge of family planning, are victims of domestic abuse, there are children who need organ transplants, and have to die because the costs for complete cure are inconceivable for their families. The average age of pregnant women in Honduras is 14 and it has dropped from 16, since the last 2 years.
Barbra has chosen a life in Tegucialpa over Manhattan , here she lives alone, has to face the insecurities of a city where the crime rate is on the surge, but still believes that she is blessed and there's something about her that I cannot explain is very soothing, may be the fact that there are people who can make such choices. Meeting her was a pleasure and so is interacting with all the kids, who seek affection, and attention and deserve a family.
And yeah, we could have just sent money instead of coming here, but it wouldn't have been the same, not even close to the same.
Tag stand-off
We played with the boys again tonight. I think I miss childhood games. We played a "hide and go seek"/ tag game, in which a player could make himself safe by touching the wall where the game had started from. He could do this as soon as the game had started, which was when the counter, with his eyes covered, had finished counting to ten. As soon as the counter had finished, he could tag other players before they touched the wall. I remember at one point, when I was the counter and about to reach ten, there were a couple of boys right next to me, each with their hands half an inch from the wall. They were hoping to keep it together long enough through fits of laugher, to touch the wall just after I finshed. For what seemed like ages, the three of us were there, locked in stand-off, with our heads together focused on one square inch of the green flaky paint covered wall where this very time critical interplay was to take place. I reached ten... a blurr of hand movements... Minor had made it safe, but Wilson was caught...
October 04, 2006
El Hogar takes in girls!
Whenever I talk about El Hogar, I have to explain why it is a "boys school." Sure, getting boys off the street is great - but what about the girls? The history is pretty straightforward. El Hogar was started in 1979, by some North Americans who were walking the streets of Tegucigalpa and their hearts were breaking. They saw many, many children living on the street, digging "food" out of dumpsters, sleeping under cardboard by themselves, and often wearing nothing at all.
Almost all of them were boys. The reasons for this are complicated and not really well understood. The bottom line is that when the family's resources got to the "nobody-in-the-world-should-ever-have-to-make-such-a-horrible-decision" point where somebody had to be put out so others could eat, it was the little boys who went. Theories for this center around the Latin culture that males need to take care of themselves. Also, mothers of these children tended to hold domestic service jobs and while it was fine to bring your daughter to help, it was unseemly to bring your little boy.
Boys are also more susceptable to being recruited by gangs at an early age, and it seemed urgent to get an alternative up and running.
I find none of these explanations entirely satisfactory myself, but the bottom line is that abandoned little boys (we're talking really little, here - 6, 5, even 4 years old) outnumber the girls by a wide enough margin that it seemed a good idea to build a boys school.
Nevertheless, as studies have unswervingly shown, if you want to make lasting social change in a culture, you have to start with the girls. They become heads of household in places like Honduras. They raise the next generation children. Feeding and educating them gives them the tools to raise heathy, productive people.
So, it was with great pleasure that at Jesus' house yesterday (see previous entry) we saw the first girl's application accepted to El Hogar.
Going Home
According to the United Nations, over 50% of Honduras lives in poverty - by which they mean that people subsist on the equivalent of $2 per day. Over 25% live in what they call "extreme poverty", which means they live on less than $1 per day. Jesus, a 5th grader at El Hogar, is one of those in the latter category. Jesus, his mother, his sister, and great, grandmother live in a space about half the size of the Penthouse conference room, and believe me, is not nearly as comfortable. Claudia de Castro, the director of the elementary school, functions more like a social worker for the boys´families. She visits them and checks on their situations. Their well-being is obviously closely tied to that of the boys'. Today, she invited the team to come with her to visit Jesus' home. She mentioned that she knew would be no food in the house and that it would be a good idea to bring groceries. So, we went shopping for her and came with bags in hand, not really knowing what to expect.
October 02, 2006
Making a school
Lest anyone think that all we are doing here in Honduras is going to concerts and playing soccer with little boys, I offer the following evidence of our labors. The work today, as it has been on many of these trips, is to help complete construction of the new technical school campus for the older boys.
El Hogar consists of three campuses: an elementary school, where we are staying; St. Mary's Techncal School; and the Episcopal Agricultural School. The latter two schools are separate tracks for the older boys to take when they complete their elementary school education. The boys who complete these programs are virtually guaranteed employment, although some may go on to university. Thus, the rescue that began when they were pulled off the street as little boys is complete.
The technical school campus has been under construction for about three years now, although the boys moved in two years ago. We are just about to complete it, and the building we are working on today will function as a classroom and dining hall. Check it out:
For monetary reasons, the construction work is done all by hand. There are very few power tools, much less pneumatic, or gasoline powered mixers, compacters, or lifters. Thus, unskilled labor such as your humble work team actually provides a valuable service. We can do the lifting, moving and mixing while the Honduran workers do the skilled brick-laying, etc.
Check out our construction chops!
MATLAB and Simulink make their first appearance in Amarateca, Honduras!
Gauri and Christina mix cement by hand.
Pax removes debris from the upper floor.
Helen makes short work of loose concrete with her trusty pick.
Bill helps pour a supporting column.
Stuart wants more concrete!
Still smilin' - although maybe not tomorrow morning when rigor mortis sets in. Maybe Irene, the massage therapist, would like to come to Honduras.
Moving bytes is much easier than moving 22-lbs cement blocks
Today was our first day of work (really hard work, I might add) at the Instituto Tecnico Santa Maria: the school where the elder boys learn a trade (welding, carpentry or electricity/electronics). We got a nice tour of the campus and then started our construction work. Our first task was to bring a big pile of 22-lbs cement blocks up a ladder to the second floor of the building under construction. Not easy, especially when one of the construction workers joined our line and was passing the blocks to us twice as fast as we can handle them. When we finished doing that, Gauri and I spent some time mixing cement and filling buckets with it. The guys, who we were helping, were giggling quite a bit, especially at first. I am not sure what was amusing them. Maybe it was our cement-mixing skills. I doubt very much that it was that. Maybe it was how protected we came to the work site with our steel toe boots and our gloves. Maybe they thought it was funny that, in our zeal, Gauri and I would volunteer to do the work, when there wasn't enough work for everyone to be busy, and they would just watch. While we did that, the rest of the Mathworks group worked super hard on the second floor. After lunch, some of us moved 400 cement blocks from one room on the second floor to four other rooms . Moving bytes in nice air-conditioned offices is so much easier than moving 22-lbs cement blocks under the Hondurian sun! We had a nice chain going and did things very efficiently. We also had fun. It was great! While we did that, some of us cleaned metal gates that we'll be painting tomorrow. We worked really hard, had a lot of fun and came back "home" (to El Hogar) feeling completely exhausted. Our day is not over yet. After dinner, a fierce soccer match awaits us. The boys, who are very good, play really hard... to the point where Helen and I are almost scared to play with them. More news later. Time for a much needed shower. ChristinaOctober 01, 2006
A few photos, Sunday
We had a little time between breakfast and going to church, which we spent talking to 4 boys: Ibis, Edwin, Dennis and Kevin. Dennis was making a bracelet, while Kevin and Edwin worked really hard to make us believe that they were really Edwin and Kevin.Gauri is showing the boys the video she filmed of them.
Oslin and Christina
First Day in Honduras
Truth be told, the "First Day in Honduras" almost didn't happen for several of us. I started the night before when I couldn't find my passport. We've had construction going on at our house and I was sure it had been hopelessly lost or buried under construction debris. Luckily, my 11 year-old-daughter, who is a lot smarter than me, found it in the backpack I had carried to Honduras the last time I went in July about 11pm. Then I could start packing.
The drama continued at 5am when I found out that arriving in the morning, a team member had forgotten his passport and was having his spouse drive it in from at least an hour away. Next, another member had forgotten important medication, and one member didn't show up until final boarding call, having been out-smarted by the Razer phone's alarm's user interface. Upon arriving in Tegucigalpa, another member's visa was questioned for an anxious several moments.
But that was the end of the trial, as Raul, our host, met us outside of customs and we were safely transported to our home for the next week, El Hogar. We arrived amid some excitement. Some of the older boys and there music teacher have formed a marimba band and have been playing some gigs around town. The also went to the Episcopal Church's General Convention and played there. Anyway, the boys were playing at the Marriot that night opening for a very well-known Central American singer named Guillermo Anderson.
We were invited to come, so after having unpacked, had a tour of the campus, and had dinner, we were driven to the Hotel Marriot were we saw our boys play in front of the Honduras elite, and then enjoyed the tropical music of Mr. Anderson, who is a heck of a guitar player.
Some of us got to sit with the Marimba band members watching the rest of the concert and it was fun to see how happy they were at this big opportunity. Claudia, the El Hogar principal, told me Guillermo may even come to the school for a visit.