La Casa Esperanza, The House of Hope
Our first stop was Casa Esperanza, an orphanage that lived up to its name. We drove down a winding dirt road to a hillside suburb of Tegucigalpa with Dr. Claudio, who helped found the orphanage and has been involved in Rescue Task Force and its new sister organization World Emergency Relief.
I asked Dr. Claudio more about the orphanage. There are currently 26 children living there. Casa Esperanza started some years ago with an initial investment of $320,000 and now costs about $3,000 per month to maintain. That covers all costs, including feeding the children and paying staff. It simply amazes me that more than two dozen orphaned children could be comfortably supported by such little money. The orphanage is currently at capacity, but Dr. Claudio wants to build another dormitory, which would raise capacity to about 50 children and operating costs to about $6,000.
The purpose of our visit, aside from playing with the children, was to survey damage to their dormitory from the recent earthquake. There were several large cracks in the building, but thankfully, the damage seemed to be relatively minor and the building still safe to use (not an expert´s assessment).
I was greeted with a BIG hug from a little boy even before I got out of the truck. We handed out candy and balloons, watched their grammar lessons, and took lots of photos. From that first little boy´s hug welcoming me, I was overwhelmed by the positive atmosphere. To be honest, this magnitude of positivity caught me by surprise since I typically think ¨Oliver Twist¨when I think of orphanages. But to these children, Casa Esperanza is a true home in all senses of the word. Though I know that they have already seen their fair share of hardship, it filled my heart with joy to watch these children enjoying the innocence of childhood, a rarity here in Honduras.
The Dump
Our second stop was the dump. I cannot adequately communicate the desperation and desolation of spirit that I saw there. People live there, they live at the dump: children, women, whole families. Some of them get paid 50 cents per day to sort and haul recyclable materials, while others fight over trash that they can sell or trade or eat.
A garbage truck arrived while we were there. When it dumped its load, a hoard of people descended onto the pile of trash like the hundreds of vultures circling overhead. At the top of the pile of trash was a little boy holding up a recyclable cardboard box for a toy scooter that he would never have, but he smiled with his spoils as if he were holding the actual scooter. Then I saw a little girl, who couldn´t have been much more than 8 years old, lugging a sack of trash larger than herself. It was only later, when I was looking at a close-up of a picture I took of her, that I noticed she only had one shoe and wore just a sandal on her other foot. Such is life for these children, robbed of their childhood and their humanity.
There were vultures everywhere, not just circling above. They hopped in and out of the crowd digging through the trash, and they lined the crest of the hillside overlooking the landfill like bandits waiting for an opportunity. As I was taking pictures, Richard (our Honduran guide who accompanied Andrea and me to the dump) abruptly said that it was time to go. Later, when we were back in the car, he told us that a couple men showed him knives and flashed gang signs at him. Esos no son solamente banditos, son malditos. They are not just thieves, he explained, they´re very bad men who are dangerous in their desperation, and they just wanted us to go away. So we went.
I never felt like I was in any immediate danger, but the atmosphere was unambiguously threatening and guarded: every person living at the dump literally fights each and every day for their life. Andrea showed me the dump because she wanted me to see for myself the base depths to which human existence can sink. ¨This is about as bad as I´ve seen it,¨she says. ¨People just don´t want to know, they don´t want to know that this is happening right now, but it is.¨ I don´t want to know, either, but I feel it is my responsibility to know. What can I do about this, though? What can anyone do about such an atrocity when it´s buried and forgotten as easily as tossing your leftovers from dinner in the trash?
thats so intense!!!
ReplyDeletei think its awesome that you went and did this. i have heard of similar places in Tijuana, although i am sure that this sort of desperate foraging occurs through out the underfinanced world. whats truly alarming is the fact that, despite the such dour circumstances, there are those (banditos) who will choose to add torment to these people. such an existence is a matter of psychology and sociology, however, i cannot understand it.
please post more stories and pictures!