Semana Santa and 4am Mornings

As I write this, I sit in the pitch black, although it is only 7pm, because the power has gone out yet again. I am trying to keep the bugs from swarming my computer screen, since right now that is the only light in the whole house. Since coming to Honduras, I have a new appreciation for our electrical services and technology back in the states, because over the past few weeks, the power outages here have been a daily occurrence. It is often conveniently while I am trying to serve up dinner to the girls in my hogar, when suddenly I can no longer see a single thing in front of my face. Then the Tias scramble for their cell phones to try to dimly light the mess-hall. Another popular time for the power to go out is right when I am trying to cook my dinner, and then, sorry… no dinner for me until the power comes back on, or there is always the back up of PB&J sandwiches.

If you were to ask me what the best thing about this month is… I would have to say Mango Season. The last few weeks, the mangos have been sweet, ripe, and plentiful. Today, for part of lunch, I got handed a huge mango as the side dish. And they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. On most of them, we just eat the skin and all, a good way to add more fiber into the diet here. The ripe mangos are a big treat around here as most of the kids raid all the mango trees months before they are ripe, when they are still green and hard, called mango verde, and they eat them with salt, oil and vinegar.

The week before last of Semana Santa was quite a fun and exhausting week. The first Sunday was our girls’ camping trip. At 4am we loaded up three buses with sleeping cots and thermoses of food and piled in 100 girls, caregivers, and a few volunteers and headed west toward the El Salvador boarder to a town called Caridad. They say that the devil wears shorts here, and I have found this to be true. Luckily for the early start, the 6 hour ride over was pretty cool. For the three days that we were there, we stayed in an indoor/outdoor sort of community meeting hall. To celebrate Palm Sunday we joined Caridad in a procession that started up a hill by a school and we marched all the way down into the center singing songs and waving our palms. The procession began with mostly just our NPH group, but by the time we approached the church so many community members had joined, we had tripled in size.

The second and third days were by far the most fun, and a relief to get out of the heat. We spent the whole day down at the river swimming and playing on the ‘beach.’ I think we must have looked like an inflatable circus with all the floaty toys we had and the shrieks and splashes of the kids. The river was wide and deep, mostly damned off by a rock bridge so that there was no strong current. We roped off a swim area to better keep an eye on the kids who couldn’t swim, and for the older ones who could swim, there was a perfect multi-tiered rock wall to jump off of. Among the children there was a certain sense of liberation and excitement that came with this vacation, maybe just what you would expect to see with any group of kids on spring break. It was overall a blast to spend time with the kids outside of the Ranch and their hogar and have a lot more unstructured play time.

              

The rest of the week, the clinic was closed, so I spent each day with my hogar. The days were filled with mass almost every day, and a variety of other religious activities. In our free time, we did beading or other crafts with the girls, and they would always ask me to bring my laptop so that we could watch movies. It beats me how they enjoy it so much with 20 girls crowded around the tiny screen and speakers of my laptop. They beg the volunteers to do ‘turno’ (taking a turn sleeping in the hogar and being the responsible adult at night) so that they can stay up late and watch movies. They all pull their sleeping pads off their triple-tiered bunk beds and pile them on the floor, like a giant sleep over. When I woke up in the dim light of the morning and all were still sound asleep, all I could see was a tangled pile of little girls scattered about the floor.

              

Easter morning was another early start, as I dragged myself out of bed at 3:30am and everybody congregated on the boy’s side of the Ranch. We began with a bonfire and some songs and prayers. Each with a candle in hand, we processed toward the outdoor chapel in the blackness of night. It was a neat experience to sit through Mass from about 4:45 to 6:45am as the sun came up. I don’t exactly know why the Ranch has a tradition of early morning Easter mass, but rumor has it that that is when Jesus rose from the grave. Whether that is true or not, it didn’t stop the little girl in the row behind me from snoring through a good chunk of the sermon. As we processed out, every kid received a milk chocolate bar, which is rare here, and a real treat for them. And that was Easter… we were done by 7am. I worked with the girls the rest of the morning until their caregivers came back from vacation at noon, and then had the rest of the day off. I took that time to enjoy a nice Sunday chat with my family back at home and here about their outstanding Easter meal in comparison to the rice and milk that I received for dinner that night. Although I did miss my family traditions back home, it was fun spend Easter with the kids and have some unique experiences like 4am mass.

 Processing into Caridad with members of the community for Palm Sunday.

 Outside of the church after mass in Caridad.

 The view of the river where we swam each day on our camping trip.

 This is where we slept for three nights, with cots sprawled all about the community center.

 Some of the tias and older girls enjoying some watermelon for snack.

 One of our Semana Santa activities, visiting each station on the way to the cross on Black Friday.

One of our young actors depicting Jesus on the cross during "The way to the Cross."

Aldo, a recent addition to the NPH family.