On Tuesday, April 6th, Helping Honduras Kids volunteers and visitors (like me) headed out to visit the displaced village of “Solares Nuevos”. This is a campesino village, consisting primarily of single mothers and their children that was established about three years ago by HHK.
Originally, the campesinos had lived and worked on a large farm but whether it was due to natural disaster or economic failures, they lost their working positions and thus their homes. Thus meaning that they drifted from place to place, hoping for work and housing and being moved on when the work wasn’t available.
David Ashby, with HHK, and Vicki Skelton of White Fields Missions purchased a single manzana of land within the village of La Bomba, on the outskirts of Jutiapa, east of La Ceiba, divided it into 30 lots and the campesinos were given a place of their own to build and live upon. Over time, a communal well was dug, a one room school was built, some road ditching and barbed wire fencing was done and a new community was born. HHK and White Fields Missions still holds the title to the land, to preserve the security of the land but this also means that technically these families are still squatters. Dave told me he actually made 25 trips with his pickup truck, hauling chickens and household goods on that moving day!
Over the past three years, the community has tried to improve itself but it’s a never ending quest. This is the extremity of poverty in Honduras with scraps of wood scrounged for housing, open fires for cooking, no running water, no jobs and basically no men as the men head into La Ceiba or elsewhere for work; sometimes returning home to wives or girlfriends and sometimes not. Girls as young as 11 or 12 years old in the photos are not holding baby brothers or sisters – these babies are holding and raising their own babies!
What electricity there is, is “borrowed” by the process of stringing extension cords or line and simply tapping into a source in the village of La Bomba and running it to separate homes. The area floods terribly during the rainy season with free flowing water running through homes and women attempting to cook outdoors under tarps in a sea of muddy, churning water. Obviously, the mosquito problem is horrendous and there are no windows, netting or screens available, thus disease increased.
There is a teacher, paid by the public school system, who is able to run a “kinder” for 10 children but unless volunteers come and stay, there are no programs available for the older children. And there isn’t the money to pay for fees and uniforms to send the older children to the public school in La Bomba. The school room itself has only 8 desks and fewer than 20 chairs, with a world map, days of the week and various other learning aids painted directly onto the concrete walls. I didn’t see any books, only a couple of small notebooks and simply nothing else – no pencils, paints, arts and craft paper – just nothing. I did notice the pot on the desk at the front of the room, containing the mealtime snack of rice and milk that is given to the kinder kids each day – sometimes, their only food of the day.
Yet, little kids still want to play, young ladies still want to gossip and giggle together and we were very warmly welcomed by the whole community. The school age children gave us an impromptu recital and singing session, with one young girl featured as a solo singer. I heard a story whereby she had almost drowned after falling into the well when she was 11 and seems to have taken to singing as a thanks for her own life.
The fantastic volunteers from San Diego handed out candies and crayons to the school children and helped disperse supplies of beans and rice to the women of the community, with those women with more than 5 children receiving a second portion of each. At least we knew the families would be eating a hot meal that night!
A fast 2 minute lesson on the purpose and use of birth control pills was given and a few of the women accepted packets of them, but sadly, not all of them were ready to “get with the program” so to speak. I don’t know why but I do acknowledge that change of any sort, yet alone radical change, is very difficult to achieve and does take a lot of time. 
Correction: HHK worked with White Fields Missions http://www.whitefieldsmissions.org/ with each group buying half the land in question. HHK built the school room and White Fields has built 6 concrete block houses (some of which are one room duplexes). There is also a similiar campesino village west of La Ceiba near Bonitillo.
No comments:
Post a Comment