Exploring the Mayan ruins of Copan, Honduras.
Exploring the Ranch with the 8 new volunteers.
Me and all my luggage preparing for a 7 hour bus ride.
Saturday, after almost 12 hours of traveling through Honduras, I arrived to El Rancho Santa Fe, and my new home for the next 13 months. There are 8 of us new volunteers who arrived this weekend, one from Austria, one from Switzerland, and the others mostly from Washington state. We join the 14 volunteers who have already been here for 6 months or a year.
The Ranch is big, and out in the country. It bares resemblance to FLBC with the tall pine trees, footpaths criss-crossing between the buildings, and kids everywhere. I often feel like I am walking around on a college campus because of the size of the place, just with pint-sized students instead. The home contains a preschool, grade school, and middle school, trade workshops, two clinics, multiple houses for the kids, volunteers, and staff, a kitchen, a farm, a tortillaria (where all the tortillas we get to eat are made), and various buildings containing all the other departments (social work, visitor coordination, home correspondents, etc.) that work together to keep this giant home functioning.
For the first few months I am sleeping on the top bunk in a small dorm room with the 6 other new female volunteers. Upon arrival we were each issued 2 rolls of toilet paper, a blanket and set of sheets, toothpaste and toothbrush, soap, and a bowl, cup, fork, and spoon. Several times each day I commute to the comedor (main kitchen) to eat, with my own bowl and utensils in hand. The food has proven to be a fairly interesting adventure. It is not uncommon to have beans for several meals a day. Vegetables are scarce, so I am glad that I came ready with multivitamins. Volunteers are provided with a large supply of fruit each week, which is a very nice perk to the job. While I think I will eventually become accustomed to the food here, the take-your-breath-away cold showers are something that I am not so sure I will get used to.
Monday was the start of our training. For the first two weeks, the mornings and early afternoons consist of meetings, orienting our jobs and the many different places, people, and departments on the ranch. Each evening, every new volunteer goes to a different hogar (houses of children based on age group) and we rotate through them all for the next three weeks to get to know all the kids and what age group we would prefer to work with. Eventually we will each be assigned to just one age group that we will spend every weekday evening with, and some weekends for the rest of the year. My first night interacting with the kids, I was assigned to the youngest children's home. Here most of the children are 4-7 years old, with a handful who are still toddlers. It was a little bit of chaos and a lot of fun. In the two hour time period that we spend with the kids at night, you have dinner, help get them bathed, and put them to bed. After climbing into their rows of bunk beds they would call out my name (I'm 'Anna' now, in lieu of my middle name, because very few people in this country can pronounce or remember my name, or it comes out as 'Jeder') until I came over to give them a goodnight kiss. It saddened me to think that it was I, this stranger who they had just met hours earlier, that they wanted to tuck them in, and they would never have the privilege of a parent doing the job.
All of the children here have traumatic backgrounds. Many of their parents have died of AIDS, cancer, or been murdered. For some, their parents could not afford to feed them and they were living in dire poverty conditions. Others were rescued from homes where they were abused physically, sexually, emotionally, or neglected. At NPH the children are provided with everything that they need to live modestly and comfortably, as well as the privilege to attend high school and university. Because of their history, many of the children have a difficult time adapting to life on the ranch and are difficult to manage and teach. However, they are all still just children and they love to be hugged, and hold your hand, and get your attention, and be kissed goodnight. I am so glad to be here, getting to know what will become my home. I look forward to spending the next year with these children, and getting to know many of them individually.
