End of the first week at Casa Feliz
Trip Start
Dec 18, 2008
1
8
16
Trip End
Jan 11, 2009
La Ceiba, Honduras
Friday, December 26, 2008
I guess the one problem with the orphanage is that they are quite disorganized. But this is to be expected. After all, they don't really have a lot of money to hire more people to help manage the place. The older orphans do help out but most of them don't come from backgrounds where they were exposed to much structure or organization. So in the end the place can be a bit disorganized in terms of how to efficiently use the volunteers that come to assist.
Thankfully, there is a directrice who does impose a structure which is likely why the orphanage has been able to keep maintaining itself. Meals seem to be very well organized too. However it's hard to watch over this many kids with the minimal amount of adult supervision that they have.
In any case, I've run out of things to do and I still have another two weeks of volunteer time here in Honduras. So I've decided to do something a little more useful as I offered to teach English to one of the orphans in particular.
Most of the children are able to go to school but Mayra, who turned 22 today, is paralysed from the neck down so she is basically restricted to bed. She is incredibly intelligent and has a hunger for learning that I think is quite rare. She has a few friends and professors that teach here topics on a wide range of topics however English is one subject that it can be difficult to find help with. So I basically offered to be her English teacher for the next two weeks.
I have to admit I was almost afraid to even talk to her at first because I really didn't know how to approach some one who has been through what she has. But after a couple of days I started to approach her a bit more and that's when it hit me that maybe I could be of service to her.
I felt better just even making the decision to do something a bit more useful with my time. I was already thinking about making lesson plans over the weekend so that after the end of two weeks she would realize concrete improvement. I never taught English before. Heck I've never taught anything before so we'll see how that goes.
So far Keri has continued to join me whenever I go to the orphanage despite having been robbed a few days ago. Her situation got a bit more complex as 2 of the 4 people who were occupants in the car were arrested today. They were arrested for something else but then they were in possession of many of the things that had been robbed from Keri.
I would figure this would be good news but it turns out that this may have complicated matters a bit. First of all it turns out that the family that Keri is staying with actually knows the family where these two boys came from. They are apparently a fairly well-to-do family with 6 sons. Although 2 of the 6 sons are already currently in jail before this particular incident occured.
I'm getting the feeling that it was bad that two of the theives were apprehended because apparently it is not uncommon for remaining robbers to literally take out their victims if they sense that things would work out better that way. Needless to say, Keri is not exactly feeling particularly safe right now. The local news is not helping as recently there have been killings related to robberies and even one vengence murder. I can't imagine what she must be going through. As if it wasn't bad enough that she was robbed at knife point. Perhaps it would have been better if none of them were caught at all.
