Sometimes, Draconian Measures are the only option

I know that I’m going to get some emotional backlash for this piece but at the same time this is just one of my experiences here, and my personal opinion about it.

Sometimes, draconian measures are the only option…

Up until about 2004/2005 there had been a huge problem with street kids. We’re not talking about children who simply didn’t have a home or were beggars or serviced pedophiles, either. I’m talking about feral little kids, addicted to sniffing glue that had never had any level of home, parenting, nutrition or education and then at the ages of 12 to 15 were reproducing themselves. Yes, babies having babies, with all of the deficits caused by the above factors.

I remember one day in 2004, Kenneth and I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk outside of a good hotel in downtown La Ceiba to visit with a friend from Utila. This is a really typical Honduran thing to do and the pedestrians simply flow around the knots of visiting folks. Well, I wasn’t part of the conversation so was standing less than a foot away from Ken’s elbow when these two little boys came up to me – small (maybe waist height on me), dirty faces and hair with tattered, filthy tshirts and shorts and barefoot. I was still a complete novice here and immediately grinned and nodded a greeting to them. Just as I was doing that, both men suddenly surged in front of me, aggressively ordering the boys away, waving their arms and making a fairly noisy scene. For the first split second I was incredibly shocked. These were just little kids, right?

Wrong!!! Both men proceeded to read me the riot act about not letting street kids get physically close to me as they were incredibly dangerous at times, and once I got over the shock, I believed them. You know why? Because when I looked at those kids eyes, there literally wasn’t anyone there – as if they had no souls. That’s the part that shocked me the most – dull, flat brown pupils with no soul there….

The next year when I came back I noticed that there were very few street kids hanging around downtown and when I asked Kenneth about the change, he told me a story that I refer to as “Cornfield Fertilizer”. The story goes that in order to clean the streets of crime for the safety of Hondurans and tourists, armed forces had rounded up street kids into trucks, drove them out of town and deliberately shot and killed them en masse. Thus the phrase, cornfield fertilizer…

Yes, this is a most terrible human tragedy, and still wrenches my gut when I think or write about it but at the same time, you have to stop and think logically. These poor kids could not be “saved”, they truly were far too damaged from even before birth in many cases and simply didn’t have anything within them to be salvaged or redeemed. So logically what could have been done instead?

No, I’m not a proponent of population cleansing; people do not have the right to make decisions like this for any reason but at the same time I can understand why that choice was made. So that’s my dilemma…. What do you do? And, please, I know I’m going to get a lot of emotional backlash for speaking so bluntly but keep in mind that this is a reality, not just in Honduras, not just in third world countries but absolutely everywhere in the world.

I also want to acknowledge the people right here in La Ceiba and throughout the country, that have dedicated and devoted their lives to doing everything they can to rescue children through establishing orphanages, developing rural schools that provide not only education but a daily meal; individuals who sponsor children’s educational costs and many who are medical missionaries or are involved with community works projects.

I do what I call “charitable donations”; a little money to the blind elders led around by family members, a tipico meal in the market for street friends of all ages, small “loans” here and there to folks who are trying to work and deliberate purchases of items like hair clips, hand towels, peanuts and the like from street vendors I recognize from over the years and understand have no income when the weather is bad like it had been. I do try to help in my very small way but it also has to be balanced with taking care of myself. I’m a gringa who lives here regularly, but by no means am a rich woman!

I’m not informed enough about everything that is being done, but I will admit that even the least bit of effort, if done for the right reasons, does have a chance of some small success. There is true worth to the adage “one person, one effort” that can accumulate to make positive change even when it feels like just a single drop of water in the ocean of life.