Allen & Marcel Volunteer in Honduras

 Every other weekend we get both Saturday and Sunday off and we can choose to spend the time either on the NPH Ranch or take the opportunity to go explore somewhere else. This last weekend we took the employee bus into the city of Tegucigalpa on Friday after work, then took an Uber to a little town called Santa Lucia located in the hills a half hour west of the city. Santa Lucia is an old city, dating back to the 1500s and located high in the mountains west of Tegus. It may have started as a mining town since there used to be veins of silver, gold, and other metals nearby. Now it is primarily agricultural with more focus on tourism.  It is full of hills – even more than Tegus – and the steep stone streets make driving or even walking around the town difficult, particularly if it is raining. Several people on the ranch had recommended Santa Lucia, but none of them had actually stayed there, so we did not have any advice on lodging. Our internet search had shown possibly five hotels, b

Allen’s job at NPH Honduras is Asistente de Mantenimiento (Maintenance Assistant) and even after just a week and a half, he has had some interesting work! The water system on the ranch is drawn from a series of dams that store water from creeks. Water from the dams is piped to different areas on the ranch. Some of the water is treated by filtering and adding chlorine in two different basins, so part of maintenance is to check on water levels and water systems almost every day.  Allen is getting his steps in! Last week he was part of the crew that shoveled out the solids from one of the settling basins, a job that he thinks had never been done before.                                                   Allen After Shoveling Solids from the Basin shown below. A “code red” maintenance issue occurred Sunday night and Allen got a call from a volunteer that coordinates activities for visitors to the ranch. Water was gushing out of a shower head in a bathroom in the visitors’ facility and the c

 The children live in homes (hogars) with “family” groups of 10 - 12 children with Tias (aunts) and/or Tios (uncles) that take care of them. We have been given tours of most of the Hogars and for the rest of this month are on a rotation program to have dinner with and spend a few hours each evening with different Hogars. At the end of July, each new volunteer will be assigned a Hogar to become part of their family for the next year. Like many processes here, it is not clear how Hogars are assigned except that we are asked to put in our top 3 preferences at the end of the rotation (July 28). I have no idea how I am going to come up with a preference.   It feels kind of like asking me who my favorite grandchildren are! ☹ The homes for the younger kids have boys and girls mixed while the older kids (>10 yrs) have separate homes for boys vs girls. My rotation has mostly included the girls and the younger kids homes while Allen has been visiting boys and younger kids. We eat dinner wi

 Our work schedule is Monday – Friday plus every other Saturday. I am not sure what the Saturday work entails, but I think it just means hanging out with the kids.  This weekend was our “salida” weekend which means that we had both Saturday and Sunday off. Our whole group of new volunteers chose to explore Tegucigalpa (aka Tegus) and stay at a recommended hostel there. Iris, one of the new volunteers, created a WhatsApp Group called “Hot Girl Summer + Allen”. The name requires a little explanation: of the eight people in our new volunteer group, Allen is the only male, and the girls other than me are young unmarried ladies. Most are fresh out of college in their early 20s and almost all are from the US. Hot could be referring to the weather, but the girls are also quite attractive and, as we found out this weekend, enjoy dressing up and going to clubs.      New volunteers are the front 8; the 2 at the end are experienced volunteers showing us the ropes. We went into Tegus Friday morn

Our 2-week training period is almost over and we have been given tours of all parts of the ranch from the Cocina, Garden, and School to the medical facilities co-located on the site. We have become acquainted with many of the directors to get the background and philosophy on the ranch as well as introductions and discussions with staff that we (the new group of 8 volunteers) will be working with.                                                       Chapel at the One World Surgical Center                                                            Interesting Plant Outside the NPH National Director's Office We have also been given tours of NPH outlying community reach projects, and there are many! For example, today we went up to the nearby mountain town of Mata de Platano where NPH has a community center that provides nutritional and medical support for the surrounding area where people are remote and live in very rural environments with insufficient resources to obtain adequate he

 The volunteers at El Rancho NPH Honduras are housed in the Casa de San Vicente. It took us a few days to realize that it was named after St Vincent de Paul which is the organization that Al has been involved with for several years now. In some ways the lodging feels more special to us now as we have had high respect for the organization and for St Vincent de Paul who started it.  After not really knowing what kind of lodging we would have and expecting the possibility of shared bathrooms and sleeping porches, we were happily surprised with our own spacious room and bathroom.  Al, of course, has a lengthy list of items to acquire to turn this into a home for the next year. But for my part, I think I have everything I need. We even have a working washing machine for everyone in Casa de San Vicente – at least it is working right now – although we also have back up supplies for hand washing if needed. Our kitchen is shared with the other 11 volunteers, 6 of which are new like us. So far

  We arrived at NPH Honduras Saturday late afternoon and were welcomed by the volunteer coordinator, Sara, and the three volunteers that arrived ahead of us. We were shown our accommodations which are fairly large dorm-style rooms, each with its own bathroom and shelves. There is a common kitchen, library, and laundry area for the volunteers. We were delighted to see an actual washing machine!   We just barely had time to start cleaning and organizing our room when we heard music nearby. We followed it to find the Saturday evening mass which was in a covered arena-type area outside of the church. I am guessing that the church may be a little too small for the group that attended which was just the kids and their caretakers. Apparently on Wednesday morning there is a much bigger mass with much of the other support staff here. A big storm during mass shook the rafters and took out the electricity. NPH has generators which kicked in so that the PA system functioned enough to finish mass.