Fires, Food, Lice, and Losa

I am ready for some rain! Right now we are in the hottest and driest months of the year. This also means that forest fires are running rampant, and the sky has been a thick layer of smoke and haze for the last several weeks. When I go running around the ranch, I pass large patches of forest that are now blackened after recent fires have passed through. Today on my journey into Tegucigalpa, I could barely see the hills off to the side of the road because of the poor air quality. This may also explain why my cough from my cold two weeks ago still seems to be lingering.

I can tell I am getting used to the food here because my cravings for my ‘American favorites’ are diminishing, and I actually get excited when some of the better ranch meals are served, such as casamiento (rice and beans mixed together) or a side of salad (cucumber, which I never liked in the states, green tomato, and a few pieces of lettuce or cabbage). However, my love for cooking has also grown, possibly because I take advantage of any opportunity I have to prepare my own food the way I like it, which only comes once or twice a week. Among the volunteer community, we have Cena Amistosa (family dinner) in which we usually have a themed meal where everyone cooks together or brings something, potluck style. This is always a nice chance to spend time together as a volunteer group. Another special meal occasion is Proyecto Familiar, a program started by a former volunteer to enable sibling groups to spend more time together and prepare a true family dinner. Most volunteers take a turn in cooking with the kids a couple times each month. The kids absolutely love Proyecto because they get to cook food and eat as much as they want; two things that they don’t get to do much of otherwise. NPH is a great place for families because siblings can come here together and know they will never be split up or taken away. Family groups of 4-6 children are not uncommon. The problem is that since there are so many families, they only get Proyecto about every 8 months. I really love Proyecto because I get to know the kids as a family unit and in a smaller group.

Here on the ranch, since everyone lives in a community, lice are very prevalent. It is kind of just a fact of life, and not something that any of the kids would be grossed out by or make a big deal of because that is just how they are used to living. I am very proud to announce that after 3 months here, I am still lice free. One of my very least favorite Saturday activities is ‘de-lousing.’ For the girls, they can’t understand that this is a rare and strange activity for me, and that I feel a little bit like a monkey when I do it. What delousing entails is sitting a girl down in between your legs and slowly searching through their hair for little pearly white eggs that are firmly attached to the base of the hair strand. The only way to get them out, since we have only one lice comb to share amongst 22 girls, is to pinch it between your fingernails and slide it all the way down the hair follicle until it comes off the end. The girls generally like to report to the others how many eggs you found in their hair. If there are many, it is likely that there are live lice as well. So, you put a t-shirt or towel over your lap to cover your clothes and try to obtain the fine-toothed lice comb to brush them out of the hair and onto your lap. At this point they are unhappily scrambling around because they have just been evoked from their hairy hiding place, so you have to kill them by squishing them in between your fingernails. Ideally, everyone would partner up, so I would only have to de-louse one person, however, sometimes that doesn’t work and I end up delousing a handful of girls. I’m itching just writing this.

Tableware, or Losa, in Spanish, is a strange thing here on the ranch. Every child is given a plate/bowl, cup, and spoon or fork as their own which they have to present at every meal in order to eat. Even though everybody is supposed to have their own, there is a severe shortage of losa on the ranch. No matter how many times new losa is bought or gifted to a Hogar, pieces seem to disappear shortly thereafter. I think it is a vicious cycle of things being lost and/or stolen, but I am convinced that there has to be a hidden treasure of plastic plates, cups, and spoons here on the ranch at the rate they disappear. Even my own losa got stolen, but was luckily returned to me several days later. To avoid their spoons from being stolen, some children basically guard these items with their life, and you often see many children walking around with them in their back pockets. One evening on our way to dinner, one of the little girls in my hogar, Fatima, pulled me into the garden, where she began rummaging through a lush flower pot. When I asked her what on earth she was doing, she informed me that this was where she hid her spoon after every meal to keep it safe. I couldn’t help but laugh at what lengths the kids will go to to protect their possessions.

This coming week is Semana Santa, or Holy Week, which means a lot of different things here on the Ranch. School is closed and the children who have had good behavior and have family who can come pick them up are able to go home for the week. This will vary for each child based on whether they have any extended family and whether the family can afford the voyage to the Ranch and has any sort of visitation privileges. Some children have the option to go home, but prefer to stay at the Ranch, possibly because of a negative home situation. All the employees here get all or at least part of the week off which means we volunteers step in to pick up the slack, as well as all the NPH high school and university students studying in Tegucigalpa come back here to work for the week. For most of us, we take over working in our Hogars as Tio or Tia. While I know I have an exhausting week ahead of me, I am excited to get an extended period of time with the girls to just relax, play, and get to know them deeper. Tomorrow we leave with all the girls on the ranch who are about 8 years old and up to go camping for three days. For some reason, someone decided we needed to leave at 4am, so I suppose we will be loading up school buses in the dark. I’m not sure what ‘camping’ with 100 people looks like, but I will be sure to let you know how that goes in my next blog entry.

One of my favorite cuties... Fernando.