As many people did, I traveled abroad during our long winter break. However, while most of my friends went on a cruise or to an island resort, my destination was a little different: San Pedro Sula, Honduras; the murder capital of the world. No, I did not pick this destination as a “vacation”. I am a member of the organization Students Helping Honduras (SHH), which was founded in 2007 to build schools and homes for less fortunate children living in terrible conditions all across Honduras. My friends thought I was crazy, my family was supportive but wary, and my grandmother blatantly asked me “Why on earth are you going there?!” But my mind was set and I was excited to go and absorb the Central American culture and give back in the process. However, that week gave me more than I ever thought I’d receive and changed my outlook on life forever.
Everyday, we woke up promptly at 6:45, ate a quick breakfast and hopped in a pimped out old school bus to El Progresso, where we worked from 8am to 4pm. Our work ranged from making cement (we had no machines, just buckets and shovels) to carting sand onto the floors to prevent flooding. I expected the Honduran workers to not talk to us much and to see the children living in the village rarely. On the contrary, I spent the whole week talking and joking with all the workers, seeing the kids left and right everywhere I went, and feeling really connected with the people. A family made us baleadas (a Honduran dish of tortilla, beans, and avocado) and a little boy attached himself to my hip after work and always asked me to play soccer with him. I soon realized that while I came into this thinking I would be giving back to people who couldn’t repay me, they gave me one of the greatest gifts in life: pure happiness, gratitude, and optimism for an entire week. I have never seen people in the United States, who have everything, as happy as the barefoot children I saw in Honduras with practically nothing.
Most of the students who came bonded with the kids or the workers. My bond came in the form of three cocky teenagers: Juan, Jose, and Merlin. Juan, the quiet 14-year-old, was soft spoken and always had a smile on his face as he watched his older brother Merlin joke around with Jose, and followed their example. Merlin, who was 17, was optimistic and always easy to talk to. And then there was Jose, the cocky 16-year-old who flirted with all the girls but had a good heart. These boys, the three musketeers, followed us everywhere we went, be it the hotel or the worksite, and I never realized why until our third night.
At the hotel, all the students and the three musketeers gathered in a room to watch the movie “Sin Nombre”, which displayed the power of gangs in Honduras and their deadly ways, and how kids as young as 12 were recruited and ordered to murder people. Gangs control most of Honduras due to the economic disaster in recent years. Being an optimist, I watched the movie and was sad that it didn’t have a happy ending. But as the movie ended and the lights were turned on, I looked beside me to see Juan, Merlin, and even cocky Jose crying.
It hit me like a tidal wave. They stayed with us the whole time because it was better than being on the streets in a gang. The bus driver always turned the music up loud so that the gangs couldn’t hear that we were American. We always had to keep our windows down so they could look in and see that we weren’t a rival gang. The hardest realization was that “Sin Nombre” to us was a scary nightmare that we could escape in the warm covers of our beds back home, but these boys could not escape it, no matter how hard they tried. They were told that they were “too old” to join the bilingual school that SHH has built for the younger kids. They had to wait. Merlin carried a backpack wherever he went, containing a set of clothes and a tattered old English-Spanish textbook so that he could teach himself things that kids in the United States blow off class and complain about. These boys had so much potential and I saw the danger in their everyday lives that threatened to ruin it at any moment.
I left Honduras with sore muscles, a partially finished library and boy’s home, as well as a heavy heart wishing that I could bring my three musketeers back home with me. They promised to keep learning and to remember me next year. My biggest hope? To come back and find them in school, happy, and thriving. My biggest fear? To never see them again. But that is life in Honduras. You never know what the day will bring you. But if I have learned anything, it’s to take everyday with optimism and even if it rains, to dance in it and take it as a blessing, no matter how hard it pours.