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| "Nothing is any good in this house," laments Alba, posing with her children, Yancarlos and Adilia. |
It is a typical Wednesday morning at Children International’s Las Minas (The Mines) community center in Honduras. Giggles and shouts fill the thick morning air as children chase a ragged soccer ball around the large courtyard toward the front of the cheerfully painted building.
By 9 a.m. the sun is already causing a noticeable rise in the temperature, and heavy humidity sets upon us like a wet blanket. Mothers and fathers line up with their children on the covered concrete walk outside of the doctor’s office, families wait in threes and fours to see the dentist, and groups of smaller children take turns on the teeter-totter and swing set.
While several of the Children International staff from Kansas City work in different areas of the community center, Alba watches one of my coworkers the entire morning before she gathers her courage and approaches with a desperate plea. “I want you to take my son,” she whispers urgently in Spanish. “I think he will have a better life with you.”
***
Although I deal with poverty every day, tragic circumstances are something I’ll never get used to. During my occasional travels with Children International, haunting scenes of severely malnourished and sick children, boys and girls in filthy, torn clothes, and families living in savage destitution have found a permanent home in my mind.
As we meet moms who are struggling to keep it together and children who are the innocent victims of almost intolerably cruel circumstances, tears and hugs provide support but little solace. And words can’t express how hurt and overwhelmed we feel when we meet people like Alba.
She is at the community center to finish the sponsorship enrollment process for her 5-year-old son, Yancarlos, a handsome but shy boy dressed in a tidy blue shirt, who is quick to offer us a cautious smile.
With little prodding, Alba joins us in an office with Yancarlos and her 7-year-old daughter, Adilia, and begins to unfold the layers of her complicated and difficult life. I find it hard to look into her mournful eyes as she confesses that the prepackaged cheese and crackers we hand to her children is the first food they’ve eaten all day. I look at the clock…it’s after 2 p.m. “Some days we eat,” Alba sobs, “some days
we don’t.”
***
Alba wants us to see for ourselves what she has described so emotionally for the last hour. We agree, but as we walk the dusty, trash-strewn road to her home there is a certain hesitancy – we fear we’re in for more than we can stomach.
What we find is a tiny home made of sticks and mud, no bigger than 10 feet across, sitting in the middle of a barren plot. A small channel of water behind the house is scattered with debris. The only barrier preventing Alba’s children from falling down the precipitous hillside into the stagnant water is a ragged fence held together by two rusted strands of twisted and broken barbed wire. The pungent odor of human waste mingles with the smell of burning garbage and drifts along the wind that rustles the large shade trees protecting Alba’s home from the piercing sun.
When we step inside her small shack, we fumble around as our eyes adjust from the bright sunshine. When they do, we see how uneven and pockmarked the dirt floor is – where several members of the family sleep – and how some of the crumbling dirt walls are stained black by smoke from a cooking fire just outside the door. There are few belongings strewn about: a badly sagging bed is pushed into one corner, and a handful of dishes sit on a homemade wooden bench.
I’m not sure what to say to Alba – all I can do is stare at the floor in sorrow. She looks at me for the longest moment before she breaks down. “I feel bad about my poverty,” she despairs. “Nothing is any good in this house. There is no door and the tin roof is bad.”
She acknowledges that the rainy season brings night after night of dread. The walls begin to crumble and water streams from holes in the tin roof. She also tells us her husband, a street vendor, provides for an extended family of eight people. A sizeable portion of his precious income goes to mounting hospital bills so her father-in-law can get the care he needs for kidney stones. Her brother-in-law runs a prostitution ring, she says matter-of-factly, and also helps with the hospital bills, but his contribution isn’t much. “This is why we don’t have anything to eat,” she laments.
Alba is grateful for Yancarlos’ new sponsorship, which she says is a blessing. But, she says, her home continues to consume her with anxiety. “I don’t sleep well at night because I lie awake and worry.”
***
As we say our good-byes, our staff in Honduras give Alba a supply of rice, beans, flour, cooking oil and other staples. The gesture causes Alba to cry again and she hugs each of us before we climb into our waiting van.
On my way back to Kansas City, I think of Alba, Adilia and Yancarlos nearly every mile. Like so many other special people I’ve met over the years, they’ve found their way into my heart. And with a shade of guilt, I wonder if there was any more I could’ve done to help them. I also wonder if having two children enrolled in our program will make a difference in such a desperate situation…I hope that it will.
Irene Carballo of Children International’s Honduras project office assisted with this story.
Photo by Jennifer Spaw |
