Things are constantly changing here at the Farm. There’s
always something to keep you on your toes. For example, right now it’s 9:30 on
a Saturday night. Any other night like this I’d be in the volunteer house,
playing cards, laying around, shooting the breeze and sipping on a cup of
coffee, or maybe, if it’s been a long week, passed out in my bed underneath a
roaring fan that keeps the hot air and angry mosquitoes at bay. But tonight didn’t
turn out quite that way. Tonight I’m on the House 5, the house where the oldest
boys on the Farm live, typing a blog entry that’s three or four months late,
and watching a 12 year old pick weeds out of the garden by the glow of a
flashlight. Odd Saturday night indeed huh? The house parents of this house took
a couple weeks of vacation around Christmas time, and since there isn’t anyone
else around to watch the house and the kids, I got sent over. And as it turns
out, one of the Farms most renowned trouble makers lives here. He’s quite
infamous in fact. And quite often finds himself in a heap of trouble, soon to
be followed by a consequence of manual labor. This time it’s picking weeds, and
as he just couldn’t find the motivation to do it this afternoon, he’s here
tonight, working by flashlight, finishing things up. And so here I am too, on
the front porch, just me and the mosquitoes and the computer.
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| One of the funniest little squirts on the Farm. |
But as it turns out this change isn’t nearly the biggest
that I’ve been rolling with over the last few months. The biggest is that as I
sit here on the front porch of House 5, not only have I moved out of my house,
I’ve also moved out of my job. Harrison is no longer the Encargado de Mantenimiento (Head of Maintenance), he is the Encargado de PAVI (Head of PAVI). Hmm,
that’s an interesting change, but wait a sec, what the hell is PAVI anyways?
Well I’m glad you asked. PAVI is an acronym in Spanish which stands for Puente a la Vida Independiente, or
“Bridge to the Independent Life.” A children’s home in rural Honduras, mainly
run throughout its history by nuns and 20-something-year-old volunteers is an
interesting thing. We have almost forty kids, we run off donations and money
mostly from the states, our school is inside the property. So while this means
we have a great place for the kids to grow up, it also means that they don’t go
outside the fence very often. Then when they turn 18, they have to figure out
how to live life on their own in the real world of Honduras. And if you’ve
lived in a fenced in children’s home the vast majority of your life, that can
be a pretty daunting tasked. It’s a hard thing for me to imagine, as someone
who’s constantly had the support and love of a family to help me along the way
wherever I went, to be thrown into a new world and have to try to make it on
your own. And as it’s probably easy to infer, preparing a child for real world
Honduras while we live inside a gated community very different from that, isn’t
the easiest thing. So it was decided to have a volunteer devote a large
percentage of their effort to this program. They hired a Honduran Head of
Maintenance (also a first for the Farm), and I decided to take on the job of
PAVI, and here we are en la chamba
(in the work). It will definitely be a challenging and interesting task, which
will require every bit of effort I’m willing to put into it I imagine, but it’s
definitely something I find very important and often times invigorating. For
example, I’m researching the idea of raising pigs or planting palatanos here as
a project for the kids. Interesting things that the common Honduran from the
countryside knows how to do. Oh, and as it turns out, I’ll also be teaching
English to 5th and 6th grade starting this February.
Quite a change from hammering nails and fixing flat tires in maintenance…
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| Found a boa constrictor while getting firewood. |
Actually, speaking of maintenance, as I was finishing up my
time there, I got a very cool surprise. Maintenance always works on Saturday
mornings for a couple hours, and on my last Saturday with the crew, they asked
if we could do something a little different than the normal maintenance work.
One of the house dads, Edgar, had gotten up that morning before 6 and started
cooking. Two chickens, rice, beans, tortillas, salad, the whole works. And they
wanted to take the food down to the beach and have a little going away (even
though I’m not exactly going away) party. So all of us went down there, with a
few other friends, and nine liters of coke, and sat by the beach and ate and
drank and had a good time. I have to say it put a smile on my face thinking
that these guys and planned the whole thing, bought all the food, and woken up
early to cook it, just to wish me goodbye. Hell of a crew those guys are. As we
were finishing up the meal, someone stated talking about some of the old heads
of maintenance and how they used to wish them off before they left, and next
thing I know, Marcos and Will have me by the arms and legs and are dragging me
towards the ocean. Turns out they decided to carry on the tradition this year
and give me a nice dunk in the beautiful Honduran ocean as a final goodbye. Good
stuff…
Another change that has come about has been my name, as I’ve
gotten quite a few new ones over the last several months. The first one was
nothing new: Harry Potter. Never heard that one before kids… The next was Harrisona La Pelona which translates to
“Harrison the bald girl.” Turns our I’m neither bald, or a girl, but I guess if
it rhymes, the kids thinks it’s hilaaaarious. Jorge, a 47 year old maintenance
guy here called me Chico Tejano for a
while, but I think that was mostly because Harrison is a hard name to pronounce
in Spanish. Or he just forgot my name. The rest of the nicknames I have gotten have
all stemmed from another stint I had with a beard. This one I let grow for a
solid six months or so, which is significantly longer than any I’ve had before,
and though I’ve had some pretty nasty, gnarly beards in my day, this one was
the nastiest and gnarliest of them all. One of the girls here calls me Oso Peresozo, or Lazy Bear. Maybe
because the beard made my face furry, and yet again, it rhymes. Chavelo, a 13
year old boy, made up one of the best I’ve heard: Barba de Cabra. Beard of a Female Goat. As far as I know being
called a goat isn’t a culturally insulting thing, but these boys just like to
call you a girl in any way they can, and “cabra” almost rhymes with barba I
suppose. Nice one Chavelo. His other friend Jairo also caught on to it and has
been yelling it all over the Farm whenever I walk by his house, so of course I
had to come up with some sort of a comeback. I decided on Bigote de Pisote. This translates to Mustache of a Pisote, which is
a furry woodland creature here somewhat resembling a raccoon, but fatter and
colored slightly different. And I would also like to add that bigote and pisote
actually rhyme, where as barba and cabra don’t. Take that, I win Jairo. However
the best thing I’ve been called yet came from the neighbors who live in the
surrounding communities. They come twice a week to the Farm to play soccer on
the soccer field, and every once in a while I’ll play with them. As my beard
grew and grew, they thought it was pretty funny, and before long Johnny is
calling me Osama Bin Laden. Historical, internationally recognized, and doesn’t
somehow call me a girl. Congratulations Johnny, you win the prize. Best
nickname yet.
Welp, as a couple hours have now past, my little friend just
finished his work. As much as I enjoyed battling the mosquitoes and watching
him pull weeds, I think it’s about time for both of us to hit the sack. So
goodnight, merry Christmas, happy new years, and keep on rollin with the
changes.
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| Boy Scouts milking a cow. Much tastier than the powdered stuff we normally get. |
