Team Reports
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A Village VisitLaurie-Beth Davidson — Etobicoke, ON
Travelling volunteers for Sleeping Children Around the World [SCAW] try to visit the homes of some of our recipients on every trip. This year we went to a small village where five children had received bedkits a year ago. Miguel, an employee from the Honduras Healthy Schools Programme, came along to act as interpreter. We drove through pleasant, rolling hills with green mountains in the background. The paved road soon turned into a very bumpy, mud road with lots of large stones and ruts from recent rains – really unbelievable road conditions. We arrived at a small, isolated village of about twenty homes. Three or four homes of stone and plaster were joined together under terra cotta clay roofs. A few of the wooden homes had open spaces between the boards and corrugated tin roofs. As our two cars arrived, the villagers were curious, but friendly. The children were happy to see us and loved the stickers, flags, and bubbles Judy and Suzanne had brought. Hand-washed laundry was drying on fences and bushes, including a three-inch foam mattress with cotton cover from last year’s SCAW distribution. The mattress was obviously well used but still intact. The mother was very appreciative of her daughter’s gift. The little girl ran into her house to show us her pillow and white towel, both very clean and in very good condition. Behind the row housing, outhouses could be seen at the end of dirt paths. There was no indoor plumbing or septic tank here.
We visited three homes with very small rooms. Each had a general-purpose kitchen and one or two bedrooms. In the first house the clay wood-burning stove was heating the house to a very uncomfortable, humid temperature. Nine-year-old Claudia was doing her homework at her home’s only table near the entrance to provide light on her notebook. There was electricity in this village and one, low wattage light bulb hung from the ceiling in each of the two rooms where Claudia lived with her parents and two siblings. The bedroom was so small that that the two beds filled the entire space. The three siblings slept on a single bed where the SCAW bedkit was spread out. The mother appeared sad. Her husband worked one or two days per week as a security guard, earning the minimum wage of $1 per hour. The rent for this two-room house was $26 per month, so the $30 bedkit was very much valued. Refried beans and tortillas were the staple foods along with locally grown bananas. Our next visit was to a family of seven. They had made three rooms in this small (about 10' by 14') house by using cardboard covered with cloth to divide the rooms. One stuffed animal was the only toy. The bedrooms were shared by the five children in one tiny room and the parents bed was behind the partition in the other small room. Clothing hung from poles across the ceiling as there were no cupboards.
The wooden house with a corrugated tin roof housed a single mother and her two daughters. One of these girls proudly sat on her bed for a picture with her prized bedkit from last year. The boards were not tight together so during rainy season it would be very damp. Here there was a dirt floor, but the beds throughout this village were on frames. Small TV’s were apparent in each home. Water was piped to the village from a reservoir high up in the mountains. In the centre of the village a cement tank about 6' x 6' x 4' with a tap serviced the villagers. They filled buckets of water from here to take to their homes. If the water supply ran out they had to walk to the river a half mile away. The mountains and flowering trees and bushes provided beauty, there was a sense of community, and the children, although poor, appeared happy. We were grateful that a donation of five bedkits had helped more than five children. As we left, we waved to the children. They waved back with new Canadian flags and smiles on their faces. |
