Wrappin' it up

Now that my time volunteering for the Farm of the Child has come to close, I want to write one last blog post, just for old times sake. As the past three years have gone by, my posts have become more and more infrequent, so I thought leaving a good eight months between the last one and this one would be a fitting way to close it out.

One of my favorite students.

My final day at the Farm was December 3^rd, and the weeks leading up to it were fairly emotional. After almost three years, one can become quite accustomed to a certain place and group of people. I’ve spent many beautiful days walking underneath tall trees and seeing the sun breaking over the mountains, with parrots squawking overhead and a cool ocean breeze blowing across my face. I’ve been fortunate to travel a lot during college and the years after, but I’ve never been to a more beautiful place than the humble rural countryside of the northern coast of Honduras. I’ve also met some of the most beautiful and welcoming people there. Many of the Honduran men and women I worked with and got to know inspired me and taught me many things about life I never would have expected to learn. Just under forty children allowed me to enter their lives and walk with them for a short while, and though myself and our organization are far from perfect and couldn’t always provide them with the love and care they deserved, many of them formed a deep and beautiful relationship with me, and also taught many lessons I hope to never forget. They offered me the most beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen, the most resilient and wild laughs, the most ridiculous senses of humor, and an incredible place to call home. They also gifted me some incredibly frustrating moments in which I wanted to give them a hard smack upside the head, but it turns out that’s frowned upon in children’s home, so from that I guess I reluctantly learned patience and restraint. So on my last night at the Farm, after having visited all of the children and adults, saying our last goodbyes, I fell asleep with full heart. Full of gratitude for the love I’ve encountered and the lessons I’ve learned, but also full of a heaviness knowing this chapter of my life was over. Unfortunately this full-hearted sleep only lasted an hour or two, because I woke up at 4am to get a ride to the bus stop, beginning a two week journey through other Central American countries that would be my, and the other four volunteers leaving with me, last hoorah before heading home.

Those of us who left this December had been planning this trip for months, and once the initial shock of leaving the Farm began to wear off, it turned out to be a great way to end our time in Central America. Our first stop was Nicaragua, where we met up with two former volunteer psychologists whom we had previously worked with in the Farm. We left Nicaragua’s capital city of Managua, and traveled to a smaller town named Jinotega, situated in the mountainous coffee growing region of the country. In this town we encountered a very interesting Nicaraguan tradition called La Griteria, or The Shouting, in English. The name sounded strange, and soon enough we found out its meaning. The Catholic feast day of the Immaculate Conception of Mary falls on December 8^th, and is a highly celebrated holiday in Nicaragua, but the night of the 7^th is when the infamous Griteria occurs. Our Nicaraguan friend with whom we were traveling explained it to us, but we didn’t fully understand the explanation until we were able to experience it for ourselves. After evening mass in the main Cathedral, everyone dispersed and began roaming the streets looking for a house or business that had erected a shrine to Mary. When you saw a crowd of people all pushing and shouting (hence the name) to get inside a certain location, you knew you’d encountered a good one. You arrived to the house and began pushing and shoving until you were able to squeeze your way in the front door. Then you stood there for ten or fifteen minutes with the other fifty people who’d pushed their way in, and half heartedly sang songs about Mary. There were normally one or two middle-aged women belting them out, and the rest of the crowd mooching off of their enthusiasm. After patiently waiting and pretending you were interested in singing, you were rewarded with a small amount of candy, an orange, or a small stalk of sugar cane. Upon receiving the prize for your heartfelt songs of adoration, you left the house to look for another, repeating the process. At the end of the night, after hours of pushing and shoving and singing with the other faithful Catholics of the town, you happily returned home with a sack full of candy and oranges and maybe a few small bags of chips. To me, it didn’t feel much like a religious experience, but I did escape without any bruises or broken bones, and fully understood why they called it La Griteria. 

Jinotega, Nicaragua

From Nicaragua we bused to San Salvador. None of us had ever been there before, and didn’t have particularly high expectations for the huge bustling city, but we turned out to be pleasantly surprised. After leaving the hostel our first day in town, we began navigating the ever complicated, but very exciting, urban bus system. We paid twenty cents to ride the bus route 52 for a while, then hopped off at the corner and paid another twenty cents to ride the 42B. I can’t remember the details precisely, but I believe we then changed to the 103A, got off and walked a few blocks, crossed the street,  got on the 33C microbus, very different from the 33C full sized bus, rode it to the intersection with route 13, then took that north to our destination. One way or another, with lots of help from the locals, and a many twenty cent bus fares, we navigated out way to the University of Central America. Here we visited the site of the murder of six Jesuit priests and two women, which took place during the Salvadorian Civil War. We read accounts of each of their lives, their work with the poor and their calls for justice, during a time when speaking out against those in power, the government and the military, was a risky business. Ultimately, on November 16, 1989, they opened their doors to a US-trained, Salvadorian counter-insurgency force, which entered their home and murdered them in. They died for speaking out against injustice, standing up for the poor, and thus, in the eyes of the military, identifying themselves with subversive movements. Later on we visited the home of Oscar Romero, archbishop of El Salvador during the same time period, who was known for speaking out against the ongoing violence and the oppression of the poor. He too was assassinated, in 1980, while celebrating the mass. During his funeral in the cathedral of San Salvador, the military set of bombs and fired shots into the crowd of the tens of thousands who attended. It was very rattling to know that these types of crimes against humanity were going on during our lifetimes, and especially that the US Government was in many ways involved. Those who were in power, fought to maintain it at all costs, regardless of how many innocent lives it required. Visiting these sites were very sacred moments for all of us. Sobering to know of the atrocities, yet for me it was also inspiring, learning of the six Jesuit priests, two women, and Archbishop Romero, whom tirelessly fought for the rights of the poor and the sanctity of life. We too had been living with and working with the poor of Central America, and learning about the stories of these martyrs inspired me to continue to fight for the poor, and for justice, in whatever way that may manifest itself in the future.

The chapel in the Farm of the Child, Guatemala

Leaving El Salvador, we headed to our final stop: Guatemala. For all of us the journey had begun there, spending several weeks in 2012 studying Spanish before heading on to Honduras. And for many of us the journey was going to end there as well. We went because we wanted to see the sight of an orphanage founded in northern Guatemala, by the same couple that founded our orphanage in Honduras. The original Guatemalan orphanage was begun in the 1980s, and after building it and running it for many years, the couple moved to Honduras to begin another, which would become the Farm of the Child as we know it today. Unfortunately the original Farm of the Child in Guatemala didn’t last long after the founders left, the children were relocated to other homes, and now the site is only ruins. While planning this trip, we talked to the founder, and she told us that no one had visited the site in over ten years, and that there was probably very little remaining. Many more phone calls later we got in touch with a man who said he would take us to the original site and show us around. So from Guatemala City, we got on a night bus, and more or less 15 hours later, arrived in El Naranjo, Guatemala, a city well known for… absolutely nothing. It is close to the Mexican border, so it is a good stop off point for all immigrants heading north, but other than that all the town has is a big river and a lot of cattle. In fact it didn’t even have electricity until it was just recently installed this past November. Our soon to be friend, Victor, a former teacher at the orphanage’s school, met us when we arrived, and took us to the hotel where we would stay. Immediately he began telling us one story after another of the old Farm, one of his favorites being about Pablo, the resident howler monkey who lived in the trees and was constantly harassing the kids. If one of the children attending the school wasn’t playing close attention, he would steal their backpack and carry it up the tree to inspect it for anything he was interested in. He kept what he wanted, and threw the rest back down. He would even steal the babies’ bottles of milk, carry them up the tree, then upon drinking the milk, hurl the empty bottle to the ground. For years it seemed like the children had a love-hate relationship with Pablo, until one day, the German man who directing the orphanage at that time, sent all the kids into town to buy some ice cream. While they were gone, he got out his trusty rifle and ended the Pablo’s mischief once and for all. When the kids began to ask where Pablo went, he replied that he must be off in the forest somewhere playing with his friends. Finally Victor finished with his favorite story of all. The story of how he married one of the English volunteers, who is still his wife today and with whom he has a fifteen year old son. Obviously Victor could never forget the Farm. The next day he put us on a boat, and took us on the short trip down the river to the site of the Guatemalan Farm of the Child. The only buildings really left standing were the chapel and a few chicken coops, but the concrete foundations were all still there, and we were able to vividly imagine the stories Victor explained. Kids making loops on rollerblades in the one room schoolhouse, the female caretaker who they always tried to keep from going to town because she frequently ended up pregnant afterwards, and Vicente, the founder, taking off in his Cessna on the dirt runway, bringing someone to the nearest hospital hours away. Getting to know the original Farm of the Child, and hearing Victor’s endless stories, was a dream for us, and a very fitting way to end our journey.

My three years at the Farm of the Child in Honduras was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. It involved some of the lowest lows, and some of the highest highs, and because of that it urged me to learn and grow in ways I never would have imagined. I encountered a dark side of humanity I’d never known much of before, in the suffering of the children and the struggles they deal with daily through no fault of their own. But I also encountered a force and a resilience I’d seldom seen before, in the way they respond to their demons, and the way the volunteers and employees of the Farm fight their battles with them. And finally I found a real beauty in the landscape and lifestyle of rural Central America, and in the unlikely relationships formed between abandoned children, Honduran adults, and American idealistic volunteers. Those three years were far from easy, but for that I’m very grateful, because it allowed me to learn what I have, and grow into the person I’ve become. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be there, to God, and to each and every one of the people I’ve had the pleasure to meet over the past three years. And I pray that the things I’ve learned and the ways I’ve grown continue on with me as I move forward with life.

Group of Farm boys along with neighbor boys after a 3-1           The fear-inspiring, mustache-wearing Farm male volunteers

And for all of you who’ve lost countless hours of your life reading these far-too-lengthy blog posts, thanks I guess. I enjoyed writing them, so I hope ya'll enjoyed reading them.