Probably my favorite part about working with kids is getting to hang out with them after the program ends for the day. There’s no schedule to be on, no lesson I have to worry about how to communicate in Spanish, no madness of keeping the peace between kids. When the program aspect is over relationship building can flourish with these kids, figuring out what makes them tick and just having fun.
This past weekend we took out a group of older girls from Camp Hope. I was excited for this trip because there is a butterfly house in town that I’d been trying to find an excuse to visit, and I assumed these girls would be able to share my love for fluttering creatures. The butterfly house itself was rather small and almost disappointing. And one can keep kids occupied with butterflies for only so long, even when they land on you and it’s magical. The best part of the whole event was reading about the hundreds of types of butterflies found in Honduras, some of the rarest can go for $900.
After an hour or so I asked myself two questions. One: What are we going to do with these girls now that they’re bored with this butterfly house? And two: How do I find a $900 dollar butterfly? So I asked the girls. They didn’t know or care about the butterfly, but they did want to go over to Kourtney and Alex’s house. Simple enough, so that’s what we did.
We came up with the idea of cooking peanut butter cookies, but weren’t totally sure how peanut butter would go over with Honduran taste buds. However, the girls were insistent that they loved them. By the time we were finishing the cookies, lunchtime had arrived and we couldn’t just eat cookies for lunch. We hadn’t expected for the day to go so long, so we really didn’t have much to offer them… Except peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Better than nothing, right?
Not according to Hondurans. The girls managed to force down half a sandwich, I think mostly just to not be rude. I was wondering that if they couldn’t handle a peanut butter sandwich, what chance do cookies have? But on the other hand, how can a child not like a cookie? That goes against the secret child code, that they like and will eat anything with sugar in it.
I wish I could describe the disappointment that spread across the faces of these precious girls when they took that first bite of those peanut butter cookies. There are not English words to do it justice. So I’ll use a Spanish word, which is one of my favorites: “Huacala!” Just the sound of that word sounds gross. These poor girls, who were starving, had to force their way through a horrible peanut butter sandwich, to finally get to eat this wonderful cookie they had spent so much time and effort on, only to find it tasted horribly of peanut butter as well. I can just imagine what was going through their heads, “What’s wrong with these white people? All their food tastes like terrible peanuts.”
It’s all good though. They spotted some oranges and nearly trampled each other to gorge themselves on something familiar. After entertaining us with some skits, they left for home. Over all it was a really fun day. When we hang out together its hard to not have fun, even if you have to eat gross and extremely disappointing food.
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