This is from a friend of a friend who is an ACE grad student at the University of Notre Dame now working in Honduras. There are really no words to describe it. All I can say is it's very long, but very much a MUST READ! It's one of the most inspiring things I've ever read...
Howdy folks!
This email is about my time with one kid.� His name is Alex.� I think the story is worth the seven pages.� I hope those who chose to read it do too.
Farm of the Child does not admit children based on their cuteness.� But you wouldn’t know it, walking around the Finca.� We have a wildly high percentage of adorable kids.� Alex, with his smiling brown eyes and rich dimples, is one of the more darling niños at a remarkably handsome orphanage.� But Alex has an ugly side.� Twice during the first week of December, Alex borrowed the toothbrushes of his housemates and smeared his name with feces on the bathroom walls.�
Every year during the holidays we try to take our kids on a vacation to maintain their connections with existing relatives or support-giving friends.� When our kids are grown, these relatives or friends can help our children find a niche within the adult Honduran world.� These relationships give our kids some sense of belonging outside of Farm of the Child.
Some of our children, kids like Alex, do not have any safe family members or friends to visit.� Instead, they go to town with a volunteer for an ice cream on their Christmas “vacation”.
Alex’s mother drifts around the nation’s capital, co-habitating with various men in the slums of Tegucigalpa.� Severely mentally retarded, she is too unstable to meet with Alex for his vacation.� We believed that Alex has at least two siblings.� Then, a year ago, in an orphanage an hour-and-a-half outside of Tegucigalpa, a former volunteer discovered Juan, one of Alex’s sibs.� Their records mentioned a little sister Victoria who was living somewhere in the capital.
Juan came to the attention of the state as an infant when his abusive father shattered the kid’s arm.� His violent and addicted father and unfit mother were deemed unfit to raise the child and he wound up in an orphanage called Brazos de Amor (hugs of love).� Juan is Alex’s full brother.� � �
Alex is excited.� He stops smearing feces.� For the first time during Christmas vacations, Alex has somewhere to go. � His big brother is just days away!� Although his peers are in 5th grade, Alex hasn’t developed a clear conception of time.� Everyday he asks if today is the day he gets to visit Juan.� Alex can’t tell you the alphabet, but he knows he has a brother out there whom he is wildly eager to know and love.�
Finally, I can happily answer Alex’s question.� “Yes!� Today you get to visit Juan.”� At least the plan is for Alex to visit Juan.� Around here, a lot of things can go wrong.�
The Landcruiser needs to leave at midnight to carry Alex and his chaperones, volunteers Janel and Nicholas, to the bus station.� But rain-swollen rivers haven’t let a night trip get to town all week.� If they do make the bus, nobody really knows how to get to the orphanage.� But if they do find it, there is no guarantee that Alex’s brother is still there.� With no telephones or a mailing address, we’ve had no contact with Brazos de Amor in over a year.� We just have a scrap of paper with some crude directions and an assurance of a former vol. that Alex’s full brother was living a six-hour bus ride away, over the Honduran mountains.� Everyone the Farm has sent busing over the mountain pass during the last two-months has been robbed at gunpoint, including a nun.� Nicholas and Alex were planning to bus around the mountains—a safer 13-hour trek.� But nobody knows how Alex, an emotionally skittery kid with violent fits of anger, will handle the trip.� This sure wasn’t the type of vacation Nick received last year as an accountant for Ford.� But Nick was ready to give finding a family for Alex its best possible shot.�
Then, hours before departure, malaria strikes Nicholas down. � Alex is without the necessary male chaperone.� That’s how I came to delegate my responsibilities for the coming week to spend the next five-days wandering Honduras in search of a boy named “Juan” while holding the hand of the world’s cutest developmentally challenged eleven-year-old, a kid whose every possession reeks of urine and whose bladder lets go almost every day in my winter school class, and only when the timing is completely inopportune.�
Just in case he decided to draw, I packed an extra toothbrush.� Seriously.
Some amazing prophet once donated a box of adolescent-sized absorbent underwear.� If you’re out-there, I love you.� It’s almost midnight (go time) when I remember that we have a box of Big Boy diapers.� He hasn’t worn diapers in years.� Neither have I.� But this kid needs ’em and I’m determined to convince a boy prone to anger that diapers are great, so great that even I am wearing them!� So I’m swishing through the night in my tight new underoos and the giant night toads (I watched six-year-old José Luis get knocked down by the blindsiding power of a massive leaping toad!) are laughing at me as I carry a box of pull-up diapers toward Alex’s house, wondering if I can translate the catchy “…and I can pull ‘em off and on!” advertising jingle into Spanish.�
So it is definitely a little awkward, but I get Alex suited up in his disposable drawers.� The true challenge is tolerating the stench of urine exuding from everything relating to Alex.� � His rotting foam mattress stores enough urine to feed every foul fungus and nasty mold in the tropics.� Alex sleeps in his clothes on the filthy foam.� There is really nothing that any amount of bleach can do.� The kid’s stuff is just plain gross.� � You just have to get passed the stench, and the crusty texture, and the sick discoloration of everything he owns.�
Next to Alex’s world of urine are Freddy’s immaculate things.� Freddy is compulsive, a true neat-freak.� From a safe distance, he was quick to talk me through the packing-up of his fecal-smearing, bladder-bursting roommate.�
We crossed the rivers, bused through the night, and mid-morning found us in the busy rabble of the nation’s capital.� Alex was so bedazzled by the pace of the maddening Central American sprawl that he clung to Janel and me, staring with amazement at the world.� We made our way around, getting conflicting directions and times from everyone, but averaging the variations seemed to work pretty well.� At one bus station, a thief was confronted which turned into a wrestling match which turned into one guy face-down with three different shotguns� pressed against his head and back.� The accused was hog-tied with string and put on a bus in the custody of a twitchy pistol-toting man.� We just sat there, smelling of urine.�
After 13-hours of red-eye travel an old school bus from Elkhart, Indiana dropped us off in Guiamaca and we stepped out into a grand valley of pine trees and meadows.� It reminded me of New Meadows, Idaho sans the smell of the state’s cleanest public restrooms.� Where we were placed along the lone road, there were only five buildings and none of them looked like the orphanage “Brazos de Amor.”� Our directions:
“Toward Tegucigalpa from the Guiamaca bus stop.� There’s two orphanages.� One has a monkey.� The other has Brazos de Amor.� ☺”
We bought some grub at a road-side stand and we started questioning strangers.� Have you heard of Brazos de Amor?…which they hadn’t, or of any orphanages in town?…of which they knew of none…or of anyone around who has a monkey?� “Oh, you’re looking for a monkey.”� “No, I’m looking for an orphanage.”� “An orphanage with a monkey?”� “No, an orphanage without a monkey.”�
Then someone else comes over.� “Who are you looking for?”� “His brother, Juan.”� “Juan who?”� “Alex, what’s your full name?”� Alex just smiles.� “Alex, what’s your last name?”� “Juan.”� “Your last name’s Juan?”� “Juan.”�
Great!� We’re in Guiamaca looking for Juan Juan at the orphanage without a monkey.
One man, certain that we must be using the wrong words, finds a woman who speaks some English.� But in whatever language we spoke, nobody had a clue.�
We get in with Carlos the taxi driver who doesn’t know anything about any nearby orphanages or a monkey or Juan Juan.� I ask Carlos to drive back toward Teguz.� Alex puts his hand down his pants, feels the sealed-in wetness, and then smells his damp hand.� We go a couple of miles without even seeing a cross street, so we decide to start exploring all cross streets between here and the next town.�
We bounced down the first dirt road, following it back a good mile toward the mountains.� I’m about to give up on unmarked Road Number One when, there it is, on the right hand side of the first road we tried, “Brazos de Amor.”� God is OH SO GOOD!
Alex, sensing that we’ve arrived, starts touching my face with excitement.� His hand is still moist.� I use my last sanitary napkin while wishing that we had first found the place with the monkey.
Only one kid is in the driveway.� It’s Alex, only he’s taller than himself.� The very first person we see is Alex’s brother Juan!� Both boys’ eyes are full-moon wide as they watch themselves go by.�
We enter this immaculate American-style house and meet the orphanage director.� She looks and speaks exactly as does the Oracle from the Matrix.� Like Alex and his brother, they are creepily identical.
She explains that we are welcome to their home.� There are 15 high-school-aged kids living here, all raised by an American couple who were dismissed last year.� The Oracle is now in charge.� English is the first language of the children, though they’re proficient enough in Spanish.�
We can’t believe we’re in a place with hot water, hard-wood floors and carpeting, English-speaking children and a television with a huge video cassette collection.� If these kids don’t land sweet jobs with there bi-lingual skills, these spoiled lads don’t stand a chance of Honduran survival.�
And, sadly, many of them won’t receive sweet jobs with their bi-lingual skills.� Take for example, Bert.� So we’re eating our first scrumptious dinner with everyone in Brazos de Amor.� Then the kid next to me starts making shockingly realistic vomiting noises while we’re all trying to eat.� I choose not to look at him.� Then the Oracle yells, “BERT!� STOP REGURGITATING!”
She sweetly explains, with Bert right there, “You see, Bert is self-stimulated by regurgitating his food into his mouth.� His cheeks puff up because they’re filled with his stomach’s contents, which he swooshes around.� Then Bert swallows and regurgitates again.� I don’t know how he does it, but he’ll go on for hours if you let him.”� I just marvel at this skin-and-bones, hairless kid.� Bert is mute.� Bert is weird!� Bert is amazing!� “If you catch him self-stimin’ just yell:� Bert!� Stop regurgitating!� Unless he’s feeling defiant, he usually stops right away.”
Juan has the same developmental challenges as Alex, and our learning from Brazos de Amor will prove invaluable in helping us to best serve Alex.� The brothers’ blissful interaction together was classic.� On our second morning, Juan and Alex see one another for the first time that day.� Alex runs and gives his brother a tight embrace; as they hug, Alex’s radiant, smiling face looks directly upward at the downward gaze of equally smiley big brother.� Continuing to hold one another, the 16-year-old Juan says to me, without looking away from his little Alex, “My brother…he still likes me!� My brother Alex…he still likes me!� Oh my brother, you remember me!”
To have complete responsibility for Alex’s little, fragile life; and to have the complete trust of this complex kid; continues to blow me away.� “Beau.”� “Si, Alex.”� “Buenos noches, Beau.”� “Buenos noches, Alex.”� “Beau.”.� “Si, Alex.”� “Buenos noches.”� It was like caring for my ailing grandma, but only a few months ago, I didn’t know this Alex even existed.
After three days of hiking, playing, and working with English-speaking Honduran orphans and after watching two siblings fall in love, Alex, Janel and I returned to the capital to buy a bus ticket back to our Trujillo on the Caribbean coast.� On the way home a mountain highway collision toppled cars off a cliff.� People on the bus cried as remnants of cars and people were pulled back onto the road.� It was horrible, seeing the accident through Alex’s eyes.
Once in the valleys, a flood had washed some supports out from under the only bridge providing access to a fifth of Honduras, so only one car at a time, and no buses, could cross.� Nobody directed traffic.� All the large vehicles were trying to turn around on a narrow road, while their passengers walked to buses waiting on the other side, while a standoff raged at the bridge, lasting for hours. It started when two cars tried to cross in different directions at the same time.� Neither driver would concede the right-of-way, and hundreds of following cars pressing forward behind each side’s car.� Now neither car could back up off the bridge without first backing up hundreds of other gridlocked cars.� Horns blared and the people yelled.� It was hilarious.� Thousands of bus-travelers and frustrated motorists walked like war refugees through the gridlock and into Ceiba, where, unable to make it home that night, we shacked up in a hotel.�
I’m letting Alex shave my head in the hotel room.� He’s laughing, with Janel’s encouragement, as he carves horrid designs into my scalp.� As soon as my head’s at its worst, Rob Roy’s electric clippers finally died (they had been giving haircuts to every boy at the orphanage).� Alex thinks it’s hilarious until I jokingly tell him that I don’t think he did a very good job.� I said it light-heartedly, laughing at my own comical reflection, but Alex thought I was disproving of him.� Freak man is left comforting the tearful diaper boy late into the night.
Janel left in the morning to fly back to the states, leaving Alex and I to show up in Trujillo a day late.� Alex’s almost out of diapers and I have the worst hair-cut anyone has ever seen.� But our late arrival was a good thing.� A storm had unleashed mudslides, blocking the only road to Farm of the Child.� We’d have been stuck near home, but been able to get there, which would have been harder on Alex.�
We’ve been keeping a Landcruiser at Campamento, so even if our road is impassable due to mudslides or the swollen Mahaguay River, we can walk the beach for a half-mile and get out another way.� But a raging river also washed out our alternate escape route.� All our water pipes bringing drinking, washing, and bathing water from the mountains to the farm were completely washed away.� The metal pipe lain across the bottom of our river was snapped off and bent like a “U”.� As a result of the storm, the banks of our river quadrupled in width.� We were told that the Finca would not have running water for at least a month.� During the storm’s end, people tried to wade toward the river.� Standing in water waste deep, they could just see marching, like Tree Ents in Lord of the Rings, a far away line of trees floating along in the swollen river’s wild current.�
Trujillo’s water is knocked out as well.� Bridges are out and the mudslides have yet to be cleared.� The receding rivers left giant trees on the roadway, far away from any stream.� Guys were hacking with machetes at tree trunks thicker than a car’s length 24-hours a day trying to clear the road toward Farm of the Child.� No car can get Alex and I anywhere near the Finca.� I’m about out of money and have nowhere else to go with Alex.� So I buy a tambo of water (those big water-cooler up-side-down bottles that “glug-glug”) from people that snicker at my haircut.� � I place the tambo on one shoulder, and drag Alex along.� That’s when we reunite Monica, an amazing Farm Volunteer, just returning from Ceiba where she had been making an advanced purchase on everything we need to feed and entertain 200 people for Christmas.� The sun is setting, the wind howls and rain is driving down at a 45 degree angle.� We have 4-5 muddy miles to go on foot.� We pack the tambo and wade across a couple of rivers in the gloom of dusk before giving up on the roads.� We slog along plodding through the ocean surf and the night for the second half of the trip.� The sea was filled with a forest of debris and we didn’t have a flashlight.� Happily, the driving wind, crashing waves, and pounding rain kept all potential bandits off the now eroded and rabble-strewn beach.� We were safe if we could endure the wild elements.
Alex was amazing, so much more trusting and unawares to the challenges of our predicament than any kid could have been with “superior” faculties.� The whole trip he only cried when he gave me a bad haircut, when he met his brother, and when he told his new brother goodbye.� Most kids could not have endured that walk home.� But Alex is doubly special.
Our beach has been completely washed away so we scramble up a sand cliff to the volunteer home, all of us exhausted.� But Alex and I have had an amazing week together.� We struggle into my home to find it filled with friends and a stranger.� Alex showed everyone his diapers and meaningful hugs went all around.�
As I took Alex home to bed, I share with him that his house-parents were not here anymore (they were terminated during his vacation, alleviating Alex of some of the stress that lead to his wall paintings).� Two volunteers are cooking, cleaning and caring for the eight kids in the house.� Kristel and Kirsten are going to be his new house-parents for a few days.� Alex didn’t seem to mind.� He told me about his brother as he snuggled into bed.�
Then it was fellowship time.� Everyone recounted their own fantastic experiences, Nick’s overcoming of malaria, Monica’s hilarious and nightmarish attempts to reserve supplies for a 1st tier Christmas in a 3rd tier nation, even as the others tried to maintain the steady supply of food and drinking water and routine activity to the kids in the midst of the mighty storm.� It was so good to be back and to hear the recounting a united community successfully grappling with challenging times.�
When it was the stranger’s turn to share his tale of the past few days, he unexpectedly handed me a glass of wine.� He says his name is Tom Herman and he’s sure we must have met a few years before.� He’d been working with children in Chile for the past three years and had just visited my friend/brother and orphanage worker Ricky Klee in Bolivia.� Before leaving, Tom secretly snuck a bottle of Chilean wine into Ricky’s room.� Unaware of Tom’s gift, Ricky secretly snuck a bottle of Bolivian wine into Tom’s backpack.� Tom discovered the wine at his next stop, Honduras’ Farm of the Child.
In addition to story swapping, we made plans for the morrow.� The next day I’d behold the havoc wrought by the forces of nature, as Monica and I kayak food through the jungle, down the river Mahaguay, in the aftermath of great devastation, out to sea where the tide will guide Allison’s two-man inflatable, laden with rations, back toward the Farm.� How cool.
I sipped on that blessed wine from brother Klee, and soaked in the sacramental spirit of this cozy living-room reunion, thinking that it is a remarkable pilgrimage, being here, doing what must be done for love of these kids, even as so many friends are on such similarly crazy life journeys working for others so far away.� And how, as a man shares with you the remarkable gift of that cup, you realize that across Bolivian Andes and Caribbean coastal storms, across Europe and USA—we are so closely united in a marvelously mysterious way.� � �
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I wrote this some month-plus ago in response to a question from buddy Brick about what I’ve been up to.� But never, until now, have I had a functional disk to get it to the internet.� Two days ago, Nicholas-the-malarial-victim and I returned to Tegucigalpa.� Unable to complete our intended business, we made an amazingly intended discovery.� 5 minutes after walking away from the home of a Honduran businessman, we saw, standing at the gate of a home for abandoned girls, a female Alex.� We looked at her and then at one other.� We asked her to share with us her name.� Victoria!� Do you have any brothers?� I think I have two brothers, but I’ve never met him.� One’s name is Alex.� Nick and Beau share a high-five.
Two gringos without a lick of Spanish 6-months ago are meeting with the patient directora.� We share our story and our remarkable hunch.� Wow wee!� Their paperwork verifies it; Victoria’s mother is Alex’s mom too. � Alex’s family is now complete!� � This first grade girl is sharp and cute and super sweet.� While she drew pictures for us to give to her new brothers, the directora gave Victoria a big glass of orange juice.� Her wide-eyes flooded even as they soaked in everything I could share about Alex and Juan.� Then Victoria drew two gifts for me to share with Alex and Juan, herself and her two big brothers, holding hands in a big colorful chain underneath a smiling shiny sun.�
She told us good bye, and I turned back to see Victoria give away her glass of o.j. to a little friend who slurped from the big cup held by ten tiny fingers.� I hope Victoria’s shared cup gives all of you a fresh squeeze.� Ha!� Cheesy—but true!� Today Alex gets a new drawing for his wall and a new sister too.� A year from now, as we prepare to welcome Christ into this world, I hope to take both boys to meet Victoria.� Juan once told me, “I hope someday I can take care of my little sister too.� I want to give her a Christmas present and I want to give her friends Christmas presents too.”� Already I look forward to the heart-wrenching miracle of little eyes soaking in siblings’ smiles as they pour away big salty tears.
Blessings,
Beau Schweitzer beauschweitzer@yahoo.com
God Bless,
Jason