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Children Violence | January 3rd, 2011

Today was different from the usual construction site. We went back to Villa Soleod to spend time with the kids there. I felt pretty good because I was helping with the mathematics education. Even though my Spanish is poor, I managed to connect with the kid by showing him examples of what he had to do to complete the problems. It also helped that for some reason Spanish words started returning to memory. It felt good that he was able to finish his homework with my help.

After that, we went to IHNFA, which is the orphanage that is state-run in Honduras. This place could be emotionally devastating to many people and can be such a mental stress to someone. The first thing you notice when you walk in is that the whole 200 square yards of land is enclosed in 15 ft. brick walls with barbed wires. The reason for this is because this orphanage is located right next to the jail holding prisoners. These kids are never allowed out, and they have no ability to dream besides leaving these walls.

Our purpose at the orphanage is to spend time with the kids, and as soon as I got there, we unloaded a lot of the donations of coloring books, and supplies. A toy car somehow sneaked in there and one kid took it. This happened when there were just the two kids, and the other kid started crying. Less than 10 seconds later, the kid got up and took a rock ready to throw it at the kid who took the car. Mike took the kids rock and took the car back. It is insane to see how violent these kids already are at the age of eight.

These kids are all so happy though to see us. There are over 100 of them and their all grabbing onto us calling us "tio/tia", which means uncle/aunt. These kids ask us to pick them up and they all want to sit on our shoulders and have fun. Although it is quite strenuous and tiring, it was worth it to see these kids laugh and smile.

A little later, I went up to the infant room and in there is a depressing atmosphere. These infants are never allowed out of that room until they are of age. Why? Because if they are out, the older kids would beat them up. How messed up is that? The door is always locked and these infants desire human contact and attention. One of the volunteers picked up an infant and put him down to pick up another. The one that got put down started crying. It is quite obvious that these infants do not get any attention from the workers there, and that is completely reasonable being that there are maybe at most eight workers in the whole orphanage.

When we left, these kids begged us to take them with us, but obviously we can't and they knew it. We said our good byes and gave our hugs. This was truly a life changing experience. Never have I seen such behavior from kids of such a young age, already with the instincts of a killer and the survival of the fittest approach. It is hard to believe that at the age of 13, these kids are let out of these orphanage, and no one will ever know where they end up, whether it be the jail which is right next to the orphanage, or the streets homeless.

The kid I was helping with Mathematics.

His homework

The computer lab in the education center SHH built for Villa Soleoda

Hung out with her most of the bus rides. Shes one of the smartest from Villa Soleoda. She learned how to say "I Love you", and kept saying it to me today. It was really cute haha. We helped her village, and now she helps us help other villages.

Pictures were not allowed to be taken in the orphanage, which is why I don't have any. But it was bad.

#honduras #studentshelpinghonduras #shh

Day 4 at Honduras

#honduras #studentshelpinghonduras #shh

iFeliz Año Nuevo! | January 1st, 2011

One of the things that I was worried about coming to Honduras was the fact that I started up going to the gym again, and I would have to stop for a whole week right when I started. However, it seems I won't have to worry about that. At the site that we are assigned to work at (El Nunas Elementary School), we continued the previous group's progress of three new classrooms. So far, we are in the stage of setting the foundation of the building. We had piles of dirt/sand that we we moved into the already structured cement blocks. There were people shoveling sand into the bucket, people who moved the buckets, and people who took the buckets and chucked the dirt where it had to go. It was pretty efficient and we actually got twice as much work as anticipated.

It was nice to see the whole community help us out. Mothers of the village helped move buckets filled with dirt, and kids moved empty buckets back to the shovelers to complete the cycle. We worked as a unit, and I thought that was one of the best experiences here so far. Afterwards, we the volunteers went back to the hotel and reflected on our experiences. We did it by telling our roses and thorns. Roses being the best experiences that we have experienced, and obviously thorns for the negative. I said it was nice to see kids being so grateful for everything they had. In United States, the standard of living rather different, and kids are so much more ungrateful of what they have. My thorn was that the method to disposing garbage was by putting it anywhere convenient. I asked one of the villagers for the trash bag, and she just took what I needed to throw away and threw it on the ground. It is a shame that pollution is so disregarded in this country.

The following days are basically going to be the same, we will be cementing, and mixing gravel for the next couple of days. By the way, Happy New Years, it is January 1st, 2011. What is everyone's New Years Resolution? Mine is to increase my GPA on a serious level. Hope everyone had a safe and great one!

In case you didn't figure it out, Feliz Ano Nueva means Happy New Years in Spanish.

Three of the kids that go to the school we are helping.

Working (Right Side)

Working (Left Side)

Finished for the day, the dirt pile disappeared!

#honduras #studentshelpinghonduras #shh

Reeean | December 31st, 2010

Today was day 2 in Honduras, it is also New Years Eve, so everyone, have a safe and Happy New Year. To break down the SHH operation, basically our group of 98 people are broken into four groups, that occupy four different hotels in the area. During the day, we all have a project that we work on, and at night, we have an evening of gathering for a special event. Tonight just so happens to be New Years countdown at a Honduran club.

Driving happened to be on today's itinerary, being on the pimped out speaker high bus for over eight hours of our day. We visited all four locations that we will be helping out. Why we were on the bus for so long is because there is one project about one and a half hour out from our location. In Honduras, the roads aren't all paved, there are maybe 15 total concrete paved roads that travel around the country, so if the weather was bad, the road would be hard to drive on, taking longer. It turned out to be over 5 hours round trip to get to the outside location.

All four places were schools, that we are helping build classrooms. School here is insanely intense. They have school on New Years Eve, and their school consists of basically one or two classrooms for six different grades of kids. So we are here to help build classrooms for schools. Something else about these classrooms are they are not well structured, so when it rains, it goes through and kids basically study in rain and puddles.

I met a lot of the kids here, and a lot of them were very cute. They would read my name tag R-ee-ah-n, because in phonetics, that is how you would pronounce the Y. The directors who spoke to us about our project were very emotional. Some of them broke into tears talking to us and showing their gratitude for us helping out; it was pretty heartfelt. For a lot of them, this is a dream come true: people to come help build more classrooms to make education more efficient and possible.

Finally at the end of the day, we went to Villa Soleado, the home town of the kids that volunteered to help with us. I found out that this was where SHH began, and an education center was built for this village of very nice people. It was an amazing place, I even played soccer with some of these people.

A lot of the women were artisans and made creative purses/wallets out of various baggages of snacks. Although they were extremely pricey, many people bought to support. I actually got to enter one of the house, and the place is pretty cozy, they had a TV, stove, and things you'd find in American homes, but it was all very simple and nothing out of the ordinary. I can see how much SHH has changed the people's lives here, and how tight the bonds were between the villagers and some of the SHH members who have come before.

For all the dog lovers, this is the place for you. There are stray dogs like squirrels in America here. The agricultural aspect is also pretty amazing here. There are pictures.