Week 3

In high school, before I realized that I could finagle my way onto the golf team, I ran track my freshman and sophomore years. There was one particular practice regimen, referred to only as “repeats,” that I both dreaded and enjoyed simultaneously. This practice called for eight to twelve individual sprints around the track (400m), separated by short breaks. While the exercise was exhausting, I enjoyed the opportunity to fully exert myself with each lap, knowing an intermittent break was awaiting my finish. I cannot think of any better analogy to liken my experience in Honduras to than this because every project is a race against time and I already have many projects lined up one after another to complete. This past week, however, my time counted and the race was real.

Hogares Pedro Atala, a division of Sociedad Amigos de los Niños, sits one block away from where I live. Here, four houses make up a community where up to sixty orphaned and abandoned children are given the opportunities that a child from a typical family life would be given. However, the children of Pedro Atala’s security has been compromised due to recent construction nearby and inadequate funding to make simple changes to the facilities of Pedro Atala to adequately protect the children. While my formal responsibility to Sociedad Amigos de los Niños was to secure funding to expand the kitchen and dining room at Nuevo Paraíso, I made it my personal responsibility to create a solution to keep uninvited people out of children’s homes at Pedro Atala. I was first made aware of the problem on Sunday, February 11, 2007. A formal proposal was sent to potential donors on Wednesday, February 14 and interested people and foundations began contacting me by Sunday, February 18. I strongly urge you to read, or at least glance, through the following proposal by clicking on each page to enlarge the text and pictures.

Please click on each picture below.



While this project rightfully commanded my full attention, I was still afforded the opportunity to attend the Olympia vs. Motagua soccer game. Both teams call Tegucigalpa home and the rivalry was electrifying. The importance of soccer in the daily lives of Hondurans uplifts professional soccer to levels unknown to many people who can turn to diversions outside of family and soccer. To illustrate the depth of commitment a person has to a specific team I offer the following real example: I have chosen to call myself an Olympista, as I support Olympia. One of the cooks in the kitchen, Doña Olga, has refused to cook or even serve me for the past nine days since she found out I had chosen Olympia. However, my food has been excellent because Doña Yolanda, a fellow Olympista, takes extra good care of me partially in spite of Doña Olga. In Honduras, and throughout Central America, soccer is life. Unfortunately, Motagua won.

I was also able to spend Valentines Day at Pedro Atala. The day began with a love songs from Mariah Care, Bryan Adams, Boys II Men, and Michael Bolton being sung primarily by myself to ten or so children, but with the lyrics (in both Spanish and English) in hand, the kids were soon able to sing, or at least follow, along. After lunch, I brought the seventy heart-shaped, cartoon encrusted suckers, which I had purchased the day before, to Pedro Atala for the children. While the nearly every minute of the week was put towards the proposal for the security wall at Pedro Atala, spending Valentines Day and really every day with the children in the afternoon provides a much needed break between ‘sprints.’ While I feel like I have a daily workout of “repeats” I am fortunate to be constantly surrounded by wonderful diversion from the computer screen, such as excursions to by sodas or eggs, playing or teaching at Pedro Atala, or being invited to watch a Mariachi Band wake up a girlfriend at midnight for her birthday; these experiences permit me to fully exhaust myself with my work because I know that I will soon have a break and the opportunity to reenergize myself. The only difference between my time here in Honduras and track practice is that I don’t dread a single moment of work here.