day 137

This is a hard post to write, because it was the hardest day in Honduras.

We spent the morning at IHNFA, which is a state-run orphanage in San Pedro Sula. It's extremely over crowded - I think the ratio of children to staff members is something like 50:1. The children there range in age from infants to 13 years old. When the children turn 13, they are simply kicked out of the orphanage to live on the streets.

Driving up to the orphanage felt like driving up to a prison.

(Ironically, it's located next door to a prison, and we were told that a lot of the children who get kicked out onto the streets when they turn 13 just end up right back at that prison.)

The entire grounds is lined with towering concrete walls with barbed wire at the top, and a giant gate that a guard had to open for us to come in.

(That's the gate in the picture...we weren't allowed to take cameras inside.)

When we went in, our group went to the infant room first. The lights were dim in there, and the walls were lined with cribs with a row of cribs in the middle. Babies who are too little to move or roll were placed 2 or 3 to a crib, while older babies had their own cribs. There were at least 12 cribs there, and I would guess 14-17 babies, up to age 2. There were also 7 or 8 cribs in an adjoining room that had older, special needs children. There were only two women in charge of this whole room of babies, one changing table, and a small kitchen. The walls were lined with paper instructions from doctors for each child outlining what types of medicines they need and how many times a day to give it to them. It seemed that almost every kid needed some kind of medicine or special treatment.

I circled around the cribs when we first went in and then Katlyn pointed out a baby in a crib to me. She was the tiniest little preemie I'd ever seen with a head full of soft dark hair. I picked her up and felt her tense up in my arms and then felt her relax when I held her close to me. I found a blanket in one of the cribs and wrapped her in it and just held her for the rest of the time we were there. I just couldn't stop looking at her - all I could think about was how perfect she was. How there is absolutely nothing wrong with her, how she's just this perfect little blank slate with an entire life ahead of her, and how sad and empty that life is bound to be inside of these walls. It was so incredibly overwhelming and depressing and unfair - after a while I had to pass her off to another SHH volunteer and leave the room.

What I found in the rest of the orphanage wasn't much better, though. Rooms that reek of urine and clearly haven't been cleaned in weeks, broken bunk beds and rooms of mismatched, worn down, donated toys.

I thought going outside to the playground where most of the older kids and SHH people were would be better, and for a little while it was. Kids were running around, laughing and playing, getting piggy back rides and drawing pictures, but it didn't take long to realize that these kids are institutionalized. They lack social and conversational skills, some of them don't know or can't write their names, and many of them are violent. And who can blame them? They've all had painful, abusive pasts, and the only human interactions they have are with each other, the few adults there, and the rare occasions when people like us come to visit for a few hours. They were all beautiful and sweet and so happy that we were there, but you could see their pain and their pasts behind their smiles, and that hurt worse than I could ever explain.

I went back up to the baby room before we left to see how that beautiful little girl was. Someone was still holding her which made me happy, and I went around to all of the other babies before we left and made sure they were all wrapped in a blanket. They all cried when whoever was holding them put them down, and I'm pretty sure everyone of us who left there cried as well.

Whew. That was depressing - I'm sorry! But there is good news; here's what SHH is doing to help!

One of the ongoing projects in Villa Soleada is the construction of a Children's Home. The idea is that Villa and SHH will adopt children from IHNFA and they'll live in these new homes. They broke ground on the second home this week, and once all of them are completed they'll each house 12 children and a "house mom" who will be a paid employee and be responsible for the kids in her house. These children will get to escape the orphanage and be a part of the amazing Villa community that I came to know and love this week. How inspiring is that? Just another amazing thing that SHH is doing for the people of Honduras.

Oh! And how could I forget...after the orphanage we lightened the mood and helped the economy of Honduras out by shopping at this really cool marketplace. It was rows and rows of vendors with all kinds of cool products, and I left with some headbands, a bracelet, and a hammock! (Still not totally sure what I'm going to do with said hammock, but hey, it's really pretty!)