I Say Banano, You Say Minimo - A Day in the Life at Honduran Youth Camp (part 1)

Friday, June 27, 2003

“Jessi!! Hey, we’re here!” I hear Marlia and Teagen call to me from the living room.

“I’m in the back!” I yell as I finish putting the last of the clothes on the clothes line.

As I enter the living room, Katy and Jessica come through the front door.

After spending the morning making a banner for the youth camp, watching TV, and eating Abuela’s little beef patties, Michelle shows up at my house after lunch to hurry us off to Betel. We load all our stuff into the truck and pile on as many camp supplies as will fit with the backpacks and band instruments. Since it looks like it may rain, we go back to Michelle’s house to get a big tarp, then Marlia sits in the back for the 45 minute drive to hold the tarp in place.

As we arrive in the wooded campground that is Betel, we are greeted by a rather large group of young people from Comayagua. They had been there for quite a while already. Michelle talked with the camp owner, handed me a wad of keys and left for Tegus once again. Marlia handled the money and I did name tags and sign-ups for workshops the next day for the Comayagua group. Katy worked on finishing the banner, and Jessica and Teagen showed the girls to their room. I took the boys to theirs.

Soon, people from Copan and La Esperanza showed up. About the time we got them checked in and their bags dropped off in their rooms, a girl from Comayagua comes up to me with a worried look on her face, telling me that her friend broke her ankle. I look around to tell “the person in charge” so they can take care of it. Hmm, I guess that would be me… So I went to the room where broken-ankle-girl was laying down, fully expecting to see her foot bent in some weird position, attached to the leg only by skin, or something awful like that… Worst-case-scenario goes through my head as we approach the room – I’ll need to keep her still until I can find the person who owns the truck that I saw parked at camp, if they aren’t there, I’ll have to drive, and I’m sure it’s a stick-shift, so this will be bad; but hopefully she can endure the pain until Michelle gets back and can take her to the hospital…

So I see the girl lying on a bed, dried tears on her face, and another girl looking at the bare foot… a foot that is not discolored, nor is it in any kind of contorted position. I looked at the ankle, and, although I’m not a doctor, I’m pretty sure that what happened is that when she was playing basketball, she got one of those all-of-a-sudden twists in her ankle – the kind that feels fine in one minute if you just keep walking on it. I gave her one Ibuprofen and a bag of ice from the kitchen, hoping she wouldn’t know that I thought it was lame to have to lie down because of that kind of ankle twist. (I think from now on, I will take “smarties” candy unwrapped and stored in a pill bottle to Honduran youth events, as this was only the first of many times that I was asked for pain relievers by people who really didn’t need them… I’m all about placebos)

After quite a while, the youth group from Guanaja showed up. In getting name tags and workshop assignments ready for them, I realized that not everyone could read and write, which wouldn’t have been too bad as far as the workshops were concerned – I was easily able to just tell them the names of the workshops and they would pick which one they wanted to go to, but me writing their names was a whole different story. Many had names which I was not familiar with, so I felt dumb not knowing how to write the names, and I think they felt weird that I didn’t know how to spell or say their names…

Just at that point of sad frustration, TWO buses from Tegus showed up. Luisa hopped off one bus, came over to me, and immediately saw my dilemma, coming to me rescue. Marlia was pretty backed up in the payment area, and there were a bajillion people trying to get name tags, and all the people from one church wanted to go to the same taller… It was a bit hectic for a while as two gringas were trying to figure out finances, teams, and talleres in a foreign language. God bless Luisa and Ingrid who came to the rescue.

On to sleeping arrangements for the entire population of Baptist young people from Tegucigalpa… I had set my sheet and backpack on a bed in the largest girls’ room. It had gotten moved around a bit in the shuffle of things, and ended up in the small back room with all the other gringas’ things. I had wanted to stay by other girls so I could get to know them, but oh well.

Enter the girls from Germania (my church). “There’s no more beds left!” “I don’t want to stay with people I don’t know!” “We’re going to have to sleep on the floor!” “I’d rather just stand up all night than that!” “Yessica! No one left any beds for us!”

“Well, that’s what those mattresses in the other room are for – we don’t have enough beds, but there are enough mattresses for everyone to have one,” I said.

“We don’t want to sleep on the floor though!”

“Really? I’m going to be staying out here on a mattress, and I’m pretty sure Luisa is too…” I shot Luisa a pleading look. “Yes, I’m staying here too,” she piped in.

“Oh. So all the girls from Germania can stay in this room on the mattresses. We can have like a slumber party!!” An optimistic Germaniana piped in. Wow, I was a bit surprised that all that worked out into a good thing. A slumber party it would be.

The Germanianas slumber party

More to come tomorrow... or later!