November in Honduras

Info: the Internet didn´t work for the last weeks, so this report is about 2 weeks late!

Heavy rainfalls from the wet season hit the Rancho almost every day. Precipitation measurements would be scary. The weather changed from desert style to lets live below a monsoon. Feeling like getting washed away and brown drinking water lowers everyone’s mood. Good to know that heat and sun will come back soon.
The life in Rancho Santa Fé goes and goes on. No big changes, no big interruptions. At least if you observe the Rancho as a big unit. I feel like riding on the back of a wale through a deep ocean. The wale is the Rancho, the Ocean Honduras. Kids, stuff and volunteers arrive and dig into another world and will leave everything behind again once they have to go.
For some individuals life has changed significantly during the last weeks. New kids have entered. It is a turning point in their life now. Perhaps a decade or more on the back of the wale, passing childhood and teenager time will convert them into young adults. Two little girls just entered my “hogar” (home for a group of children) and I am very proud how well the other children integrate them. They must see themselves in a mirror again. One arrival reflects another. This makes the first days much easier for the newcomers. But how can they have a clue where they just got into it? Yesterday was one new girl’s 11th birthday and this night I brought her with high fever to the clinic. She is having a nasty flu. I can’t even spend a little more extra time with her since the other girls are without supervision while I am gone. One girl is crying when I come back. Memories of her dead mother have come up again. I am not thinking about the sick one anymore. Not till the girls are asleep and I am on the way back to my room. Then I tell myself: The girl has a hard time right now, but it was far worse two weeks ago. This helps, if it is true or not. In addition to the nice and entertaining parts of the day I can kick back and relax. Accepting tragic stories has become scarily easy for me.
I found a healthy mixture of dealing with the children’s problems, spending entertaining time with them and have overall some time for myself. “Pajero” (Bird). That is the name of my new pet. It is a horse. Brown, not too big, but very strong. It feels great to gallop over the highlands with him. We usually go once a week to the next village to buy beer for all the volunteers. I established for that the “Dani’s beer express”. The “Pulperia” (little grocery store) in Laventa is about 15 horse riding minutes away. Passing the Rancho school, the recently burned down forest, small houses and barking dogs make it to an always fun trip. The town itself is little and poor, the store where I stop tiny. You can’t pick up the food by yourself, an old woman serves you. Usually there is hardly anything in stock. I often buy all beers she has and head back to the rancho. We volunteers sometimes walk to the store by night to enjoy some beers with conversation. The nice old lady has some tables and cooks for you. Gun shoots, or an electricity crash may interrupt the mellow hangout.
Meanwhile vacations have started too. I will have to start a vacation course in about one week. But I am still not sure which one I “can” do. But that is how it is: you get the information right before whatever starts. Bureaucratic decisions have also basically stopped my football project to create a team for the girls. I tried to initiate it again and again, but there is no way. No support but high demands put everything down. It is like building a card house on a table which is shacking. Sad, but now I will spend more time for my “hogar” which is far more fun and nicer.