Ometepe

I have searched and found some reasons for why the children at the nutrition centre don´t have any toys. The children apparently only end up throwing them around (just like at the orphanage!), hurting others, and if a small group of children is taken to another room to play with the toys, the other children can´t stand being left behind. The director was almost in tears when she explained this, so I don´t doubt that for her these reasons are very real. For me, it only raised more questions, however: Could a volunteer or one of the workers not make sure that the children don´t throw the toys (and are excluded from the toy room if they do)? Would the children not learn very quickly that they, too, will get to go in the toy room in their turn, if they behave well? Another reason we were given was that the children are very prone to diarrhea and other diseases, and that´s why cleaning the toys is a big problem. Still, I don´t understand why a small amount of good toys could not be kept clean enough.

There are two new children at the centre: sisters of five years and perhaps 18 months old. The children always notice my piercing and want to examine it more carefully, opening their mouths wide open to demonstrate what they want me to do. This is how I came to see into the mouth of the new girl of five, and what I saw was incredible. Almost all her upper front teeth were gone - there were only tiny brown things hanging from her gums. She must have been one of those babies that I´ve heard of here, whose mothers regularly put coke in their bottles instead of milk or water. Her teeth had simply been corroded away.

When I think about the reasons, and I often do, why this country seems to be so buried in problems, two issues always stand out in my mind. I know there are countless reasons that interact with each other, but those two I see as some of the most important. The first one is the obvious one, known to everybody and perhaps the main concept that many foreigners associate with these countries: corruption. It works from high levels to the very low, and it assures that subsidies are not paid, criminals are not caught, and when other nations send help to a country destroyed in a hurricane, most of the money never reaches the needy. The roads, bridges, houses and schools remain unrepaired and dangerous.

The second reason are the various foreign, mostly American, companies that started to arrive in Honduras more than 150 years ago and quickly began to overtake the country. The power of these companies - fruit and cafe producers, clothes manufacturers, restaurants - is immense, and it can never be beaten. The companies have written the laws of this country, made themselves tax exempt, negotiated amongst themselves how much workers are paid. They own all the good land, and when the government has tried to enact laws that would force the companies to give some land to the poor to grow their own crops on, the companies have always won the battle. 

All the most popular restaurants even in my small town are American - Pizza Hut, Burget King, Dunking Donuts - even though most people here could never afford eating at those places. They might employ a few Hondurans each, but all the real money those restaurants make is sent out of the country, never helping to build the much-needed schools or to repair the water systems of the slums. When the decision-makers invited the first companies into the country in the 19th century, giving them extreme freedom, they were hoping the foreign money to help give the economy a boost. Instead, the companies ended up keeping the people of Honduras in eternal poverty - but now that that is understood, it`s already too late.

I have settled in the north of Honduras, in a town called El Progreso - 'Progress'. It is a much-promising name.

El Progreso is, however, a very unremarkable town. With its 100,000 inhabitants, and another 100,000 living in the region just outside the town, it is said to be the third largest city in Honduras. It is ugly, dirty, crowded, boring and scorchingly hot with no wind. But I don't care at all if it does not have much to offer in beauty or entertainment; I'm happy just to settle down, not be on the move all the time, and there certainly is a lot of work to be done here. Í'm alone now; Bri is working in France.

Just before leaving Costa Rica, I got a word from some good people here, telling I would be welcome to come and work with their organisations even though I had such little time. I'm now dividing my time with three different projects: a nutrition centre, an orphanage, and a street children foundation called Proniño. The orphanage has about 20 children, from nine months to six years old, and I play with them for a few hours in the mornings. With Proniño, I work in a centre which is the last stage of a boy's rehabilitation process, a permanent home, and I give extra classes in maths and reading for those who have problems at school.

When I first heard about the nutrition centre, I thought it sounded wonderful. For some reason I imagined smily, happy children, eating for the first time in their lives until full, bringing joy to their carers, growing big, strong and healthy. Only when I first visited the centre, the sadness and the unfairness of the situation dawned upon me. There was nothing glorious about the nutrition centre. There were only confused children, taken away from their parents who starved them. The nutrition centre exists because some children here are dying from hunger.

To me, El Progreso does not seem that poor: it has supermarkets, heaps of cars and buses, even traffic lights, and many American fast food chains. In Granada I saw beggars on the streets every day; here I haven't seen one (even though they must exist). That is why it was such a shock to me when the director of the nutrition centre showed me pictures of some of the children when they were taken in. Many were on the verge of death and had to be hospitalised first. The reasons for malnutrition are many: some parents simply don't have money, others have mental problems, some abandon their children and they are found by neighbours, others are too young to care for their children properly, and some only buy crisps and coke, which are not nourishing enough for anyone but certainly not a growing two-year-old. Some children's malnutrition is caused by parasites or a disease, which the parents are either too ignorant or too poor to seek a cure for.

The nutrition centre has about 25 children living in it at the moment. The oldest is nine, the youngest not even a month old; but most are two or three. They live in a nice, modern building which is very clean and has cute curtains on the windows. Still, I have to say, there is a certain gloominess when you step in the room where the children are. The other workers are rarely there with them, so I venture in on my own. There are children lined up next to the walls, a few always lying on the floor crying, and a general sense of insecurity. There is no furniture, and no real toys either: just a box of soft toys, and you can´t really play that much with teddy bears. Some children rush to you to be hugged and to get some rare attention, while others look at you distrustingly from the corners. They are all far too young to have learned never to smile. Some have abnormally thin hair or a big belly because of the malnutrition and parasites. One girl, who must be eight or nine, has so badly developed limbs that she can hardly walk, and she doesn't talk either: when you try to touch her, her reaction is often to start manically biting her own hand. I don't know what her story is.

I don´t know, either, why the workers don't spend more time with the children. Perhaps they are tired of them. There is also a lot of other things which I can't understand and which make my working there more difficult by the day. There is a rule that you can´t hold a crying child on your lap because that would spoil her. There is another rule that the children are not allowed to fall asleep before lunch, because then they won´t sleep after lunch like they're supposed to, and to wake sleeping children up, the workers grab them harshly by one arm and make stand instead of lying, or simply pour cold water on them. This of course makes the little ones cry again; the crying never stops. There also seems to be a rule that the TV is kept on, extremely loud, all morning as the only entertainment for the children, no matter what is on.

All of this I find hard to accept. By everything I´ve learned and by my experiences in life, I feel like instead of being "unspoiled", the children will this way only learn to suppress their feelings, feel alone in the world, be insecure and scared, and never truly feel that there is an adult taking care of them, that someone loves them, that they can explore the world safely. And these children are so small! The other day a two-year-old was refusing to eat because she was obviously horribly tired, and I picked her up. I was immediately told off by the staff; they seemed to think she was being difficult. But how can you blame a two-year-old for her tiredness? How can you blame her for falling asleep early when she is younger than the others? Indeed, how can you blame her for anything?

But as just a volunteer, a newcomer from another culture, I can't express any of my worries to the staff. I doubt it that the workers are being especially thoughtless or cruel; it is more likely that this is the way all children are raised in Honduras, if they are raised at all by anyone. And I fear that most mothers, when they come and pick their children up after six months at the centre, despite maybe having learned by then how to feed their children, will never learn how to show their children love.

Or is it just me who can't see that cultural differences are a richness?

The Rich Coast is another world. All these things that in Granada were unheard of...

Traffic lights! Real buses! Glass in windows! Toilet paper in public toilets! Chinese restaurants! Libraries! Rubbish bins! Non-pirate cds and dvds! Hobbies! (And even untypical hobbies: Tai ji. Anime. Yoga.) Bus stops! Magazines! Organic products! Theatres! Locals who speak English!

As quickly as one learns to live without all of the above, just as quickly one forgets again that such a life is possible.

But along with the traffic lights and the libraries seem to come laws and paperwork and bureaucracy, and more wealth too, and less need. Which is great, but also seems to mean that, without at least a PhD in education and a few dozen recommendations, I will not be able to find work with children, not even though I smile an awful lot and want to work for two months for free.

I´m going to Honduras, folks. The second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere - a draw with Nicaragua - must have some use for me.

Otteita päiväkirjasta, osa II

Illalla menimme käymään pikku saarella, joka on kylämme hautausmaa. Kaistale kivikkoa erottaa saaren rannasta, ja laskuveden aikaan kivikko muodostaa sillan. Olimme aikaisessa, ja saimme kahlata nilkkoihin myöten vedessä, mutta matka ei ollut pitkä. Aurinko oli juuri laskenut, ja saari kuulsi salaperäisessä hämyssä. Astuimme sisään hautausmaan vanhasta portista. Muuria ei ollut, mutta hautausmaata ympäröivät korkeat kookospuut ja pienemmät pensaat. Juuri ja juuri erotimme vielä valkoiset haudat, jotka oli ripoteltu sinne tänne. Kävelimme saaren toiseen päähän ja päätimme uida siellä, koska emme enää pimeässä kuitenkaan löytäisi hyvää uintipaikkaa – saarta  ympäröivät karut kivikot joka puolelta. Vettä oli vain polviin asti, mutta makoilimme lämpimässä vedessä: kuusi vaaleaa vartaloa keskellä pimeyttä.

Paluumatkalla Tommy kiipesi yhteen palmuista ja heitteli sieltä meille kookospähkinöitä: humps-humps, ne putoilivat hiekkaan korkeuksista, humps-humps. Laskuvesi oli nyt matalimmillaan, ja silta maalle oli leveä kaistale kuivaa maata, jonka yläpuolella loistivat pistävän kirkkaat tähdet.

Otteita päiväkirjasta...

Ensimmäisenä yönämme täällä ukkosti. Mökkimme – kaksikerroksinen rakennus ilman seiniä – oli korkealla mäen rinteellä, ja yläkerrasta näki parin kilometrin päähän merelle. Salamat valaisivat merenkannen vähän väliä, ja jotenkin ne olivat erilaisia kuin mihin olin tottunut: pidempiä, kirkkaampia. Ukkonen jylisi vahvana mutta vielä kaukaisena. Suljin silmäni patjallani hetkeksi, ja kun avasin ne taas, huone oli täynnä tulikärpäsiä. Ne olivat tulleet rajuilmaa pakoon, ja mielettöminä ne sinkoilivat sinne tänne, syttyen ja sammuen kipinöiden lailla. Myöhemmin yöllä heräsin rajuun sateeseen, joka jyskytti peltikattoa.

Have I told you about the moon yet?

The moon doesn´t make any sense here. Very well, when it´s full, it looks pretty normal. But that´s just trickery. Just wait until it´s the new moon and you´ll see: the moon is not in its ordinary place. Instead, it´s at the bottom. It just hangs there, as if asleep, instead of standing alertly upright on one side. It´s so wrong. And that´s not even all: there´s the Big Dipper as well (or the Plough, or Otava for you Finns). All my life I´ve looked at the constellation and known what it looks like, and now? It´s not there. The Big Dipper hangs as well, worse: it seems like it´s falling. Its tail is already almost invisible in the horizon. I try to look up to the sky in the evening for comfort, but no: all I get is a falling Big Dipper and a drunken moon. (To further complicate things, the moon decided to go completely black one evening last week. Man, I will never trust it after this.)

The best time to observe these things is when there is a power cut, which is relatively often. In this corner of the world, power cuts make the whole city, quite dimly lit as it is normally, completely dark. When that happens I run outside (or to the garden inside our house) to the darkness and look up. I don´t think I´ve ever seen so many stars in my life.

Some other highly important things about the moon can be learned here.