School Start
Before our 27 primary students and one secondary student started school on February 6, we accommodated a new girl. Her name is Anahy, she will soon be five years old, and she grew up in a poor and unstable family, mainly living in the streets. In addition, her mother suffers from a mental handicap and is fatally ill.
School start is always accompanied by a huge amount of organizational matters. All the school uniforms and the shoes have to fit and everybody’s school bag has to be filled with all the necessary things. For the children it also means that they go back to having a daily routine: Getting up at 5.00 a.m., followed by showering and getting dressed, then everybody has to fulfil their little chores (cleaning the bathroom and bedroom, wiping, etc.). 6.00 a.m. is breakfast time, then the children wash the dishes and clean the dining room, and at 6.30 a.m. they leave for school. At noon, they are picked up by bus, they change their clothes, and after lunch they have to do homework from 1 p.m. to about 4.30 p.m. Afterwards, the older girls have to wash their clothes, iron their school uniform, clean their shoes and at 5 p.m. we play soccer every day.
This year, Deyvin is going to the first secondary school in a private school. This is a special experience for us because we can see the results of our daily work.
All the other children are going to the private nun-school Laura Vicuña, where our children enjoy an excellent reputation. We have 3 kindergartners, 2 first class students, one second class student, 5 third class students, 13 fourth class students, 2 fifth class students and one sixth class student.
Dia del Amor y Amistad
In Honduras, the 14th of February is the day of love and friendship. For this special occasion, a school visited us. On the following Sunday, we spent a nice day with our friends from the church Gran Comision. The children were able to play outside the whole day and they could even swim in a pool. For us it was a happy day; not so for the 350 prisoners who died in the flames of a fire in the prison of Comayagua.
Highest homicide rate of the world
According to the article "Im Sumpf von Kriminalität und Korruption" (In the Cesspool of Criminality and Corruption) issued on February 20 in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, our city, San Pedro Sula, is the most dangerous city in the world, followed by Ciudad Juárez and Caracas in Mexico. San Pedro Sula has a ratio of 86 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, with the global average being 10 times lower. What does this mean for our children’s home? Everybody who lives in Honduras is confronted with death, violence and criminality on a daily basis. Thanks to our wall, which isolates us from the rest of the city, we live on a small island surrounded by evil. In the children’s home we are pretty safe and I am sure that we are protected by thousands of guardian angels who look after us.
New Volunteer
On February 15, we welcomed Annigna Hofmann from Oberwil in our children's home. She stays with us and helps us for one month. Her jobs are: Arranging the playing room, sewing curtains for it, arranging the computer room, painting walls, looking after the smallest children in the afternoon, doing English homework with Deyvin, dealing with the godparent’s mail, shopping, etc. She speaks Spanish really well, which is why she got along with everybody from the beginning and was immediately integrated in our „yo quiero ser…“-Family.
Our four smallest children were reclaimed
The IHNFA (governmental family institution) is financed by the government, with 97% of the budget paid out to employees. On February 20, for political and promotional reasons, Darling, Eunice, Ana and Luis were taken back to the IHNFA. We tried everything (psychological reports with illustrated documentation) to avoid that the children were retreived for no reason. Two weeks later, we visited them in the IHNFA; I didn’t recognize “our” little ones anymore. They were, once more, locked up in a crib in pairs. They had lost their vitality and had such a sad and dead look in their eyes. This almost breaks your heart after having coddled them up during 3 months at „yo quiero ser...”.