Life in Honduras: Olga's House

Hello,

So I have been hanging out with Olga's family and am anxious to share the experience with all of you. I have written close to five pages about it, and will attempt to condense them in this email and just give you the highlights. But first, I have some news and business.

News: COCAL GRACIAS IS IN THE SAN DIEGO FILM FESTIVAL! I hope you all heard that, and I hope you all come. The screenings are September 29 and 30 at 2:30 pm at Pacific Theaters downtown San Diego. Please tell all your friends and family about it and come see the show. I will personally be at the screening on the 30 and Joel will be there both days.

Business: I went with pastor Alex to a small business over in the stadium to investigate putting an AIDS orphanage in Puerto Cortes. This is one of the many projects Pastor is thinking of doing. The business in the stadium is run by the mother or the head nurse for public health in Cortes. They have a list of all children orphaned by AIDS. While talking with her, we found out that her business is one of two in Cortes that is willing to give work to infected people. What do they do? They make t-shirts! So, killing two birds with one stone, We are now selling t-shirts for Cocal Gracias and hope to have them in time for the Festival. The money for the shirts with help employ several AIDS victims and the rest will go toward the school project. We are hoping to sell 50 to start if not more, but we want pre-orders, so If you would like one, please email me and let me know how many and what size. The sizes run a little small here, so if you are unsure, order the larger size. We will be selling them for $10. I hope you all buy ten and we can start building the first classrooms. Please let me know by September 2 what you would like.

And now back to Olga….

Before:

Olga has only had all the children for a little over a year. After her daughter, who was living in Guatemala , was robbed and killed, the kids were taken up by the police. After investigating their last name, which was not common in Guatemala, they researched the name banks in Honduras and found Olga. They showed up one day explaining what happened and that being the only family that they had, she needed to take them in. Overnight, she suddenly had five children instead of one. Olga had never met any them before the day that they came to live with her.

I had visited them a few times to say hi and thought, "What sweet kids. They just want to sit in your lap and share stickers with you." Man was I wrong. I don't care what anyone says. All kids are wild and misbehaved and wear you down to the point of contemplating murder! Ok, maybe not murder, but you are certainly glad that they are not your responsibility. In Olga's case, there are too many kids and only one of her. My first morning that I spent with them started off normal, sweet, like the times before. But after being in the house for a few hours, the kids got used to me. I was no longer the stranger who came by every other week, I suddenly became the Jungle Gym! And the target for flying fruit! And the person to poke, hit, tickle, and bite (yes, I have teeth marks); and it all happened so fast!

I visited with the intention of helping them clean the house and maybe organize a thing or two. But after looking around for two hours, I still could not figure out where to start. The sofa looked like trash, but still being used. I was worried that the scraps of t-shirts, the old broken shoes, and the boxes of long-ago eaten cereal that littered the floor were somehow being utilized also. I started folding clothes. The drying lines that cris-cross the small room were full of clothes. I was told they were all clean, though I saw all sorts of garments from the floor being hung up there. I folded one box and then went to put it in the other side of the house where the beds were.

Two beds is all this family of seven use. Olga and two children sleep on the large queen that has no sheets and looks like a muddy truck ran over it. With a two foot gap in the middle of the room and dirty things piled up in it, it is not easy to access the second bed, if you can call it one. The metal frame reminds me of an army cot I saw in a forties WWII movie. The mattress—well there is no mattress. It is foam stuffing from another old sofa, carelessly draped over a plywood bottom. Three children sleep there. I put the box of clothes up on the only shelf that exists in the small shack.

Back in the living room/ kitchen/work room/ the kids were running wild and throwing trash on the floor. I scolded several, getting them to pick it up and throw it away in a small plastic trash bag, which I thought would also probably end up on the floor later. Henry climbed all over the sofa with his shoes and then jumped out the window. He came back later to throw Nanci berries at me that I imagine are still on the floor rotting somewhere. While trying to get him to stop throwing fruit in the house, I ran into the door lock impaling myself in the stomach. I am going to have a scar.

Pretending not to be hurt, and thinking that I need to get out and recuperate, I started making plans to go. But Gisena was trying to manage her siblings, and clean the kitchen to cook. It was then that I noticed that every pot, plate, and cup was dirty from the day before. After scrubbing pots and pans full of uneaten who knows what, we finally started cooking the lunch for the family, Spaghetti with watered down sauce. They wanted me to stay and eat with them, but with such little food, I declined and took my exit promising to return later in the week. I walked the 40 minutes back to the center of town, in the heat of the day, took the 30 minute bus home, showered and changed my clothes and died on my bed. I have never been so exhausted in my life and to think they live that everyday. I slept from 2 in the afternoon till 7 the next day. I did not go back until the following day, after I recuperated. I am never having kids…

After:

I don't know if I can explain this idea well, but it's the strangest thing to clean the house of someone who doesn't even know it is dirty. On my dirtiest day, my house was never anywhere near the disorder and filth of Olga's. You would think that cleanliness was something that we would inherently know, like a bird knows or other creatures of the animal kingdom, but it is not. Humans are filthy. It is only when we learn this, that we clean ourselves up. It does no good to clean the house of a person who already thinks they are clean. It means nothing to them but a lot of fuss. To make the difference, you must show them they are not clean and that there is another way to live. When they finally realize they are dirty, they will then clean themselves to be presentable and clean. But they must know what clean is and strive for that. To be clean is something you either don't know or you were taught. This family saw nothing wrong with living the way they did. They have no concept of the diseases they bring, the danger they are in, the rottenness of the place. They know nothing else, no better way, so they maintain the filth because it is what they know. But they must be taught what is presentable, sanitary and normal or they will never work toward it.

Their situation is sad to see. I learned so much in the two days of cleaning. I thought the children were misbehaved and they are, but only because children do as they are taught. Misbehaving comes from the top down, starting at Grandma. Olga, never learned how to live properly. She is worse than the kids because while they are 4,8,9,11, and 14, she is 70 and acts out worse than them. It does no good to correct the children if Olga is behaving the same when you are not there. They will learn more from watching her that can ever be told to them.

It is amazing that we can allow ourselves to get so filthy that we don't even make the effort to change anymore.

I saw a fourteen year old back hand a 4 year old to tell her to shut up. I saw an eleven year old punch a 9 year old to get him to change the channel on the TV. I saw a seventy year old smack a 14 year old in the face with a rubber hose because she wouldn't give her portion of the food to the tantrum, younger child who had already eaten hers.

To think that I was in a house of six to help clean and organize things and only one helped me. Only one of them noticed the difference a clean house made and wanted to keep it. It was not the seventy year old lady. She did not care what I was doing as long as I didn't throw away the garbage she had been collecting, which I did when she left. She blames the kids for the mess and then throws her dirty clothes on the floor. I am betting she has never cleaned that house and for this reason the children do not clean it either. They do as she does, nothing. I was told that the children were well behaved and clean when they first came there, but a year and a half of un-learning all they were taught by their mother has left them destroyed.

I learned that what I think is trash, is not to someone else. What looked to me like abandoned buttons, nails, wire, foam, and dirt on top of the dressers and shelves, where it had probably been for two years, all of a sudden had value when I was about to throw them away. The buttons, the nails, the old hair tie, the wire that they never knew was there, they saved because it was good and could be used for something. I've noticed that we as humans do let go very well. We save junk, because it makes us feel better, because we think we may need it someday, because we have always had it. We are clutterers. It is the same with our lives, we put in junk and save it thinking that it makes us better, and it really just makes us messy. We need to learn to let go to the objects, the situations, the emotions that really do not matter, that only make us dirty.

There is an economy of trash in every society. In the US and in Honduras , there are people that live off of the waste of the city, that collect garbage as gold. Where is it that we went wrong, that some of us mistake garbage for gold? I guess even gold can be garbage though, if it serves no purpose. If no one wanted gold, no one would value it. If selling old fish tanks is what feeds you, that is what you should sell. I guess if that is all you can get a hold of to sell, then that is what you sell also.

Some of the people who live in absolute horrendous filth here in Honduras and maybe in the states, are the same people who have the jobs cleaning the banks, the stores, and houses of others. Do they think that to clean does not apply to where they live? They do not look and say I want to keep my house in order like that person does. They instead say, may house is not in order because I have no money. They think that it is the wealth that makes the house nicer, cleaner. They do not realize that a rich house still spoils without maintenance. They do not realize that they can never have more unless they learn to take care of the little they do have.

No one really wants to take responsibility. When confronted, most often people want to blame someone else. No one wants to keep the house clean because the next person doesn't. If their shoes are on the floor it is because Tommy's shoes were in the way. There is always an excuse and we as humans are full of them.
Responsibility is the sign of maturity. Not many want to take responsibility, especially when things are bad, and the ones that do, they are the people we respect, because they are as rare as gold.

We like taking credit, even if it isn't ours.

I think many times I am Olga. I got this messy house, messy life, and I am just going along thinking nothing of it. Then somebody helps me; I get all cleaned out, and I am good with everything going right for a day, until I screw it all up again. Before I know it, I am back to the failing Brian and making mistakes all over again. How many times do I get helped, does someone show me the right way to do things, and I go back to my bad habits and what is comfortable?

It is humbling to clean the filth of a family that doesn't even know it is dirty. To know that in a day, your work will all be erased, to know that your difference lasted as long as it took the kids to get home, to change clothes, and eat.

PHOTO TIME

This is Olga in the Living room.

The House.

The Kitchen/Living room. All the stuff on the shelves is trash we threw out later. All the dishes are dirty in the sink. They had rat poinson in with their food saying it kills rats, not humans...

This is the only table in the house, used for sewing, cooking, homework and storage and to put trash on. It is always a mess.

The sofa always has a pile of dirty and clean clothes on it.

The bed that the three children sleep on. Again, the clothes on it are dirty, the clothes in the box are clean, and under the bed is nothing but rotting trash and cocroaches.