New Home/Old Home, Part 2

The Girl began the next chapter of her story in January, when she and nine other girls from the orphanage moved into the newly established "Transition Home" in Tegucigalpa. I'm sure it was exciting (and a little overwhelming) for both the girls and the young staff couple who were their house parents. So much to learn that we take for granted here in the States: how to get around in a large, confusing city; how to get a job (when you've never had one that paid--and in a country where unemployment is sometimes above 40%); how to manage the money you earn (learning to budget when you've never had any money to spend). I know I would have been overwhelmed. I'm guessing you would too.

But most of the girls did quiet well negotiating these obstacles. We were in contact with the staff couple by email, and we were encouraged to learn that the Girl was able to find a job by February. We soon received our first telephone call from the Girl--she had used some of her wages to buy a prepaid cell phone. She gave us the number and said "Now you call me back, understand?" It seemed that her cell plan didn't charge for incoming calls--so she had already learning something about budgeting. She was excited about her job, which was selling coffee on the streets. Now I don't mean she had landed a job at Starbucks. I mean she was a walking coffee pot. She had a big tank of coffee on her back, similar to the herbicide sprayers we use to spray weeds here in the States. She walked the streets of Tegucigalpa nine to ten hours a day like this, selling coffee by the cup. It didn't sound like a very good job to me. But she was excited to have it. And according to the staff couple, she was very successful at it. Her big smile and her friendliness to strangers made her a natural salesperson. We were excited for her, to say the least.

We called her again in early March. But something had changed again. She was moody--refusing to speak any in English. Pretty much refusing to talk at all. I did not "read" too much into the call--after all, I had seen her act this way before. I assumed she had just had a bad day. Her moods usually passed as quickly as a summer thunderstorm, so I thought I'd just call back in a few days.

I never got to make that call. We received an email from the directors of the orphanage a couple of weeks later. The Girl had been expelled from the transition home. There had been some on-going problems since the beginning--problems in getting along with the other girls, disrespectful behavior toward the staff couple, curfews missed, assignments ignored, etc. She had been given chances to "act right" and follow the rules, but she continued to disobey. And so, just that quickly, it was over.

I was able to contact the Girl's older brother who was attending college in Costa Rica. He told me the Girl had moved back to her mother's house in Tegucigalpa. He tried to assure me that she was going to be all right, and that we shouldn't worry. The Girl still had her job. He promised to keep us informed. He would contact us in May when he returned to Honduras to visit and let us know how to contact the Girl (the cell phone no longer worked). We could do nothing but wait.

We received another email from the Girl's brother a few weeks later. It was brief. The Girl was doing fine at her mother's house. She still had the job selling coffee. She now had a boyfriend. And, "Oh, and we think she might be pregnant." Later, he informed us that the Girl was indeed pregnant, and the father was refusing to take any responsibility. Sadly, she did not wish to speak with us.

And so the cycle was made complete. The Girl with the high hopes and dreams, who had wanted to "fly away", had landed right back at her starting point.

I know that you, dear reader, were hoping for a happy ending to the story of the Girl. I know I was. There is something in us all that yearns for the line "and they lived happily ever after" in an underdog story such as hers. But sometimes circumstances and choices make that ending less likely. Maybe sometimes where you begin has a lot to do with where you end.

But to me, this is still a story of hope. Because regardless of how it seems at this moment, the Girl's story has many more chapters yet to be written. And as long as there is hope there will always be a chance of "they lived happily ever after."

My wife will be traveling to Honduras in a few weeks. She intends to re-establish contact with the Girl. I'm betting this story isn't over.