Mary Lynn in Honduras: The day of the dying ants

Friday, May 24, 2013

The day of the dying ants

Ugh. I may not sleep tonight. This is the day of the dying flying ants. A year ago, almost to the day, I came home to find my house covered in ant wings. Last year I was lucky enough not to see how they got there. It is a disgusting process. The flying ants fly around until their wings will no longer hold them up. Then they crash and flop around until their wings fall off. Then they slither away - half ant and half what we used to call "silver fish" when I was a kid. It is repulsive. I have found them inside my undergarments, all over my pillows and covering the floor. I can hear them bang against walls and fall to the ground, buzzing around. Bet you wish you could experience this natural phenomenon for yourself, don't you?

Today was a super good day though. I have lots of photos to share with you. Yesterday was great as well, and tomorrow is promising to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors.

Yesterday I went to a special presentation for people who work with kids. It was given by an international organization called the Good Samaritans. They have volunteers in Honduras who do a lot of things, including offer gifts to really, really poor kids through their local church at Christmas. The idea is that the whole thing is about much more than getting a gift. It is a time for the kids to learn about God and share the blessing with their family. It is a very cool concept even if I don't explain it very well. We can even do community outreach if we want to. The point is that the gifts go to the poorest of the poor. That is certainly the community we serve. (Gosh was that ever apparent today, but I will talk about that later.)

Going to meetings like this with Jairo and his sister Ruth is great. As the presenter stood up to start the program he made a point to welcome Ruth and Jairo individually. They are like celebrities. Everyone knows them. After the meeting Jairo introduced me to a lot of people.

Jairo had just gotten his stitches out from the gall bladder surgery 2 weeks ago. One of the men came up and socked him right in the belly where his stitches had been as he said hello. I cringed. Jairo is still doing well. He is moving about slowly. Getting in and out of the van is not easy. But the area where the stitches were healed very well, especially considering that he has diabetes. It's not even very red.

Today the kids from Pinares (a local private school that is one of the best in the country and very expensive) came to visit the Breakfast Program. The kids were all really great. They seemed to mesh well together. Our kids came early, nicely groomed and dressed in their best. Angelica wore a dress over the top of her soccer jersey. Each Los Pinos kid was assigned a Pinares partner early in the morning. Almost all of them chose to stay with their partners all day. I thought that was so awesome!

While the kids all blended together, the differences were obvious from an adult point of view. The kids from Pinares are much bigger than kids the same age from the Breakfast Program. In fact they are bigger than older kids from the Breakfast Program. I never noticed how small our kids are until they were stacked up against 3rd graders today. Chronic malnutrition. The boys from Los Pinos have very short hair cuts. The boys from Pinares have bowl cuts. Lourdes says Los Pinos kids have shorter hair because of the lice epidemic they face.

One of the girls from Pinares started to ask me in Spanish, then I think she didn't want the local kids to understand what she was saying, so she switched to English. She said, "It's not very safe here." Before I could answer, she asked, "Is it safe here?" I wasn't sure how to answer. I asked if she felt unsafe. She looked around and said no, she did not feel unsafe. But, she said, the outside gates aren't locked and there are no guards at the gates. (I don't know how she noticed that but clearly it seemed strange and unsafe to her.) I told her we do have a guard. That is, after all, Don Juan's official job. Although at that moment he was making cement to hold up a fence post. She didn't need to know that. Don Juan was at the front gate. I told her that no bad people ever try to come in. She asked if this was a school. I said no, it's a church. She said this is a very strange church. She said so none of these kids go to school? I told her all of them who are school age go to school, but they go in the afternoon. I wonder if one of the body guards standing nearby was hers.

Last time the kids from Pinares visited I was amazed at how many men came to accompany the children. I thought they were all fathers of the kids. This time I learned from the teachers that the men who stand along the sidelines (with walkie talkies and FANCY cars) are not fathers to these kids. They are body guards. Famous people in the US have body guards to keep away the paparazzi. In Honduras whole families have their own individual body guards to prevent kidnappings and other bad things. As bizarre as it seemed to me, these kids couldn't imagine it any other way.

A fun time was had by all. The bus left, followed by a caravan of Land Cruisers (apparently the chosen car of body guards) and all of the kids from Los Pinos headed off to their school.

This afternoon Jairo came to the church. Jairo is supposed to be taking it easy still, but he has been going stir crazy since his second day in the house. He has been doing so well on his new healthier eating habits we have to cut him some slack. After all of the kids left we went through the donations they brought for the Los Pinos kids. We separated it all out and labeled bags full of clothes for the kids. They will be excited on Monday!

Two days ago when it started to rain I thought it could be the start of the rainy season. I think I was right. Today we have had rain twice already.

Tomorrow I have to be in front of Lourdes and Jairo's house at 7 a.m. Six of us are going to a conference down in the city for people who work with youth. Jairo keeps saying it is going to be really great and that I will like it a lot. I am interested to see what it will be like. Not so thrilled, however, with the idea of having to get up so early. I have never been a morning person.