Love, Joy, and Sunsets

Welp, it’s mid October now, and that means there’s a lot of movement going on down here at the Finca. The school year is wrapping up, a group of volunteers are getting ready to leave, and a new group of missionaries have just showed up. All of the volunteers that came at the beginning of 2012 (myself a little later in April of 2012), will be heading home in December. I decided a little while back, though, to go ahead and stick around for a third year. At the beginning of this year, I started the discernment process of whether to stay or to go, and decided to go ahead and stay. Basically for two reasons. The first is more logical, tangible. There’s a big push in our organization to strengthen the vocational program for our kids, and since I’m the volunteer in charge of this and have a lot of passion for it, I’ve really latched on to it. I knew if I was only going to be here for one year under this position, nothing sustainable would happen, so I decided to hang around for another year.

Photo by Father Mark. Angel David making tortillas.

 

The other reason is a little more lofty. The first year here was one of the hardest years of my life. It was that way for a lot of different reasons, but one of them was because of my relationship with the kids. I came to the Finca expecting to form deep, lasting, loving relationships with the youth, filled with meaningful conversations and a lot of fun. But it didn’t feel that way very much at all the first year. Often the older boys would scowl when I walked by their house, for seemingly no reason at all. I would try to start a conversation with them and they would answer with one word or just walk off. That certainly didn’t give me the feeling of a deep connection, that was for sure. It felt like more of a battle a lot of the time. And the more I began to understand the Finca and the lives of the kids, the more I began to understand why they reacted the way they did. These kids have a lot of reasons to be angry. Their family might have left them or abused them, they were taken from their homes, maybe passed around the Honduran system for a little while, or maybe came directly to the Finca. They got here, lived in houses with nice caretakers or house parents, and met the volunteers and the nuns. But every year or two the house parents and volunteers left and new ones came, and the cycle continued year in and year out. This affects a child. I grew up with loving parents, constantly supporting me and helping me, and there were still plenty of rough times. These kids had everything taken from them. Their home, their family, and their freedom. They get here, and it’s a nice place, but people come, and people go. And that leaves them with the feeling that they’re pretty alone in the world. That no one really loves them enough to stick around. And that can make them pretty bitter. Pretty unsure how to love others, and unsure how to accept love. They make bad decisions, hurt others, and hurt themselves. It’s a very different environment than anything I’ve experienced before. But I think God brought me here specifically to see that. To learn what it means to love a very beat down, broken population. And learn how to accept love from them. And as I sat there thinking about whether or not I should stay for a third year, I felt like I still had a lot more to learn about love. That God still had a lot more to teach me; That he wasn’t done with me here yet, and that I was gonna need a little more time. That this experience in the Finca is very unique one, and one that could teach me things about love that I couldn’t necessarily learn in other places. So here I am, learning a little more, day by day, until December of 2014.

I made that decision to stay a third year, during my vacation back to the states this past March. And after a

Independence Day Parade.

little time to reflect, I came back to Honduras refreshed and ready to get back to work. Part of that work includes fifth grade English class. The fifth grade class in our esteemed Saint Peter Catholic School, has a little bit of a reputation. They’re known to be a little wild, wreck a little havoc, and take teachers to the end of their rope. As much as I’d like to say I’m a young, hip, inspiring teacher who can harness their energy in positive directions and get them excited about and engaged in the English language, that wouldn’t really be true at all. I have to admit I’ve raised my voice more than once or twice in class this year… And the wildest, loudest, can’t stay in his desk, and blatantly disrespectful one of them all, we’re going to call Pedro, has been the target of my glaring looks and raised voice more than most. Pedro’s a small, wiry, wild-haired kid with the energy of a monkey trapped in a barrel. And as soon as I got back from vacation, my first day back in the classroom, Pedro was bouncing off the walls as usual. I probably yelled at him a bit, and made him stay a few minutes after class. I walked into class the next day, though, and I’m embarrassed to say that I was pleasantly surprised to see Pedro’s seat empty. I let out a little sigh of relief, and went to the chalkboard to start writing, but I couldn’t find any chalk. The class eagerly told me the chalk was in the cupboard, surprising me that they were even somewhat excited to see what I was going to write on the board. I walked over to the cupboard, opened the door, and, well, didn’t see any chalk. What I did see, however, was my little friend Pedro, curled up in the second shelf of the cupboard, laughing his head off, thoroughly enjoying that he had duped me again. As short and wiry as this kid is, and as many wild and crazy things as he has done, even I was surprised that he could twist his body into that small crevice in the cabinet. But this time, I didn’t yell at him, and I don’t even think I made him stay five minutes after class. This time I think I laughed actually. He’s a real wild child and normally just makes me mad, but that was pretty funny.

Our community of volunteers is a big group of readers, so there’s always a couple of good books being passed around. One that has been passed around for a few years now, is a book called Awareness, written by a Jesuit priest from India named Anthony De Mello. It’s not incredibly well known, and not very long, but very provocative, and makes you question a lot of your commonly held beliefs. At one point he talks about the Kingdom of God, and how if we stopped worrying about what heaven will be like, and started worrying more about how we can bring His kingdom here to earth, we would do a lot more good in the world. Later he talks about being aware of and really taking in the joys of life. The beauty of a flower, the song of a bird, the taste of good wine, a good conversation with a friend. That if we could take in the full extent of the sight of a beautiful flower, the joy we would pull from that would bring the kingdom of heaven into our lives. A few weeks after reading this, I was sitting on the porch of one of the houses watching Yadira, our pudgy two and a half year old, youngest member of the Finca community play with a coloring book. She was scribbling on it as usual and having a grand old time. At first I thought she was just making a mess of the book, but then I began to watch her a bit more closely. She would take a crayon, strike it on the page making a short mark, stare at it inquisitively, and then burst into uncontrollable laughter. Every subsequent mark was followed by ten second of laughing and screaming for joy. Just the mere act of being able to create color, and put it on a sheet of paper, brought her the most intense joy, the most intense laughter. When Jesus said we must be like a child if we are to inherit the kingdom of God, maybe this is what He meant. If I could look at a color, the beauty of a single color, and my ability to take part in the creation of it, and let it beauty fill me with uncontrollable laughter, maybe then I would be able to feel the joy of the kingdom of heaven here on Earth. Maybe if we all saw the world a little more like Yadira did, we would all understand a little more what the kingdom of heaven on earth could mean.

For the end of this blog post, I’d like to leave you with a few stanzas of one of my favorite poems. It’s called The Invitation, written by Oriah. 

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

Here’s to one more year at the Finca. One more year to learn about love. And one more year to see the world as three year old would.

Kevin and I took the older boys camping on top of the tallest mountain outside of Trujillo. This is a view from the top. Pretty nice sunset...

And one more thing. A group of high schoolers came down this summer to spend some time with us, and one put together an incredible video about life at the Finca. Check it out, it describes us pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVb4lPHYAas&feature=youtu.be

GGGGGGGGOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Practicing for the big leagues.

This is what I was shouting back on the 6^th of February in a small restaurant less than a mile down the beach from the Finca. And I was wasn’t alone either. There were about 4 or 5 of us American volunteers there watching the US vs Honduras World Cup qualifying game. Yeah I know, it probably seems a little strange that I’m watching a soccer game and getting excited. I mean, it’s never really happened before. Football, baseball, basketball. Yeah, sure. Heck I even got pumped up over Olympic swimming and gymnastics more than I did soccer. But when you live in Honduras, a country where the people think soccer is the only sport that really exists, you started getting sucked in. So there were all were watching the match between the motherland, sweet America, and our current home, Honduras. But we weren’t alone. Virtually every kid from the Finca, along with a good number of the house parents, and even one of the nuns, trudged down the beach to watch this epic showdown. Virtually every school and place of business in the country shut down that afternoon as everyone headed for a tv to see if the pride of Honduras could take down the big bad US. And as American scored that first beautiful goal, I started licking my lips. You see, at least a few weeks before the game, I had already started running my mouth. “Hey Carmen (a 24 Honduran care-taker on the Finca), if you’re so confident in your Catrachos (slang for Hondurans), why don’t we just bet on this game,” I smarted off. “Okay, let’s do it,” she says. “A three liter of Coke then.” “Consider it done.” And we shake on it. I mean, how could the US lose? We were considered a much better team than the Hondurans, and throughout the history of the two teams playing, we virtually always won. I was pretty sure I’d be sipping my three liter and bragging to everyone I could find by the end of that game. But sometimes things don’t turn out like you plan… Just a few minutes after I jumped up and yelled goal, every Honduran in the place erupted into cheers as Juan Carlos Garcia flipped around backwards and scored on a bicycle kick. Oops. Well that’s not good. But so what, no way we’re gonna lose this. We’re America. However as the second half of the game continued, the combination of Central American heat and great Honduran footwork proved to be too much for the US to handle, and as the minutes winded down I watched in horror as Honduras punched in another goal and finished the game in a 2-1 victory. And man was everyone excited. Kids jumping up and down, yelling and screaming, and threatening to grab me and throw me in the ocean was just the start. The next morning I had to drive to town to pick up the Honduran school teachers, and for the whole 20 minute drive back they had to retell the story of the game, as if I had forgotten it. That whole week kids were constantly coming up to me and asking me what the score of the game was. “Uh, sorry guys, I forgot,” was normally my reply. As I walked through the neighboring village one of the men asked me if I needed a shot of whiskey to help drown my sorrows, and while it might have actually helped, I passed. And of course, as I promised, I had to buy Carmen her three liter of Coke, which I’m sure she thoroughly enjoyed while replaying that bicycle kick over and over again in her head. 

While soccer is one of the most storied traditions of Honduras, the volunteer house at the Finca has a few of its own customs, although they’re a quite bit stranger. Probably one of the most infamous is the rapid loss of weight among male volunteers. That’s right, if you wanna lose weight, just head down to Trujillo, Honduras, start on the strict diet of rice, beans, and tortillas, and the pounds will soon start falling off. No one can really say exactly why, but basically all male volunteers drop at least a few pounds during their time there, and most drop quite a bit. So while we were sitting around discussing this in the kitchen one day (really thrilling conversation, I know) I thought to myself, why don’t we really put this nonsense to an end and have a weight gaining competition. So I discussed it with Kevin #1 and Kevin #2, the other two male volunteers in the house, and we decided that for the next fifty days, we would stuff ourselves with every parcel of food we could find and see who could pack on the most pounds. The winner could have their choice of an entire chicken and three liter of coke, or a huge jar of peanut butter, both very coveted prizes. And off to the races we went. For the next fifty days we literally ate everything we could find. If there wasn’t much lunch in the volunteer house one day, we would sneak off to one of the kid's houses and beg them for any leftovers. In fact, for quite a while there I had a steady stream of 3 o’clock snacks coming from House 4. And by snack I mean an overflowing plate of rice, beans, tortillas, eggs, vegetables, and possibly a chicken leg if I got lucky. I supplemented my meals with an extremely unhealthy amount of soda, and Kevin #2 supplemented his by doing 3 sets of push presses with the 25 lb steel door to our outdoor oven each night. We even got to take advantage of the Christmas and New Years feasts during our competition. But soon the fifty days began to wind down, and while my pants still fit, I was confident that I had tucked away a couple extra pounds and could come away with a victory. Even at the midnight cut-off before weigh-in, I ate a quesadilla, a plate of rice and beans, a couple protein bars, five eggs, and three quarters of a liter of water (which was what I assumed was the maximum I could drink without having to pee in the middle of the night). So there we were, Kevin, Kevin, and myself, at 6:45 Sunday morning, one by one taking our turn with the scale. And the results? Drumroll please… Kevin #2: +1.5 lbs, Kevin #1: -6 lbs, and Harrison: -1 lb. Wait what. After all that, only one of us was able to pack on a measly 1.5 lbs, while Kevin #1 and myself both lost weight? Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. So the tradition of emaciated male volunteers continues, and I’m looking for a big jar of peanut butter to buy.

"Working"

Just about the time our weight gaining, or rather weight losing competition was ending, another important period was ending at the Finca. Winter. However, winter in Honduras has a little different meaning than winter in the US. There’s no snow, there’s no ice, heck, I don’t think the temperatures ever get below 60. But what they do have is rain. And lots of it. In November and December, I think I could have counted the number of days we didn’t have rain on one or two hands. Some days a little, some days a lot, but pretty much every day there was something. And while that may seem like a little bit of a downer to us, winter is the most joyous time of year for the kids. But not because of the rain. For them, winter means no school. Because of the problems constant rain can cause, the three month break from classes happens from November to January each year. At the Finca, however, winter vacation entails more than lying on the beach or playing soccer all day. It entails work. Each day, all of the kids 11 years and older work at least 3 hours. Work spans all sorts of things like chopping wood, raking leaves, painting, cleaning the school, and distributing food to the different houses, just to name a few. They get a break for Christmas and break for New Years, but other than that, they’re pretty much working. And each day while they work, they’re awarded points based on how hard and how quality their work is. Over time these points add up, translate into money, and at certain times the kids can go into town and buy little things, with the idea being that they learn how hard work pays off, and the harder you work, the more you can gain. So one day I’m sitting down talking to one of the girls about all the points she’s accumulated and what she wants to buy. “Well, after working hard all winter, it looks like you’ve got about 150 Lempiras (Seven dollars) to spend in town this Friday. What do you think you’ll buy?” I ask her. “Hmm,” she thinks, “Well what would 5 chips and 5 juices cost?” I’m sure I gave her a blank stare. I mean, I’ve seen kids spend their money on some pretty dumb stuff before, but this one might take the cake. She works hard all winter break, and wants to spend her money on a bunch of junk food. “I think that would take about all the money you have,” I say, hoping she’ll change her mind. “Okay, then I think that’s what I’ll get.” Well... Okay… At least she’s young. Maybe she’ll get a little smarter as time goes on. But then, right before I walk off, it occurs to me. She has four brothers and sisters here at the Finca. She wanted to buy chips and juice for all of them. She wanted to spend her entire savings from that winter just to buy a little snack for her brothers and sisters.

I think the idea of founding the Finca was for the adults to teach the kids what it means to be loving Christians in a rough place like rural Honduras. But more often than not, I find, they are the ones teaching me what real love looks like. Logically speaking it’s rather dumb to blow all your cash on chips and juice. I think when I was a kid I was always saving my money to buy the next big toy that came out or the next football card to add to my collection. But that was me thinking about me. Me loving me. And that’s not how Jesus loved. Jesus loved wrecklessly, even foolishly by our rational American standards. He roamed around Palestine with his friends. He lived homeless. He didn’t turn stones into bread when he was hungry in the desert. He turned water into wine at the party at Cana. He loved others wrecklessly. Foolishly. Selflessly. Purely. And here I am at 25 years old, a volunteer missionary, being taught that lesson by a 12 year old. 

Kevin #1, myself, and the older boys doing a little swimming.

Rollin With the Changes

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.

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 5^th and 6^th grade starting this February. Quite a change from hammering nails and fixing flat tires in maintenance…

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.

Boy Scouts milking a cow. Much tastier than the powdered stuff we normally get.