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That same evening I was ordering pizza in a little restaurant, when Carlos and Oscar with their buddy Elvis suddenly appeared in front of the window, wildly waving and gesturing.

They know all too well that the owner kicks them out as soon as they dare step inside, so they made me come over. Smirking and shuffling his feet, Carlos, his voice wavering, asked whether I could possibly buy them a hamburger. They had been told that this was the most glorious food in the world and now they were so curious to try it.

I tried in vain to explain that this was impossible because one eats pizzas in a pizzeria but they had never heard of those things so I simply hauled them inside and invited them to my table. Since I’m one of the family in this culinary palace, the owners could hardly refuse my new friends. Especially little Carlos was quickly overcome by the events..his first time ever in a restaurant, first time in his life that he was in fact served, first time that he could unlimitedly order soda, and, above all, the first time that he could actually horse around with the rich man’s offspring in the specially built playground which on ordinary days he was only able to gawp at jealously from the other side of the unbridgeable fence.

Having the jitters, he rushed from the table to the play area, only to rush back in to gulp some cassis and out again for more play. By the time the desperately longed for pizza was served, little Charlie boy had managed to knock back two half liters of soda, probably thinking that whatever he could put in his stomach couldn’t be taken out of it anymore. It would be impossible for him to eat a single bite, but he had to have a slice on his plate. Quite a job for me. None of them had a clue of what to do with a knife so I was cutting slices for four, and at the same time, answering questions about all the exotic delicacies (mushrooms, onion, ham.) on those strange fake tortillas. All the leftovers were neatly put in a doggy bag, because they had decided their mother too definitely needed to know what pizza tasted like. The next day Carlos enthusiastically jumped on my neck, whereas Oscar had once again hidden safely behind his inaccessible wall, playing dumb.

This is part of the young clique we play football or watch TV with, and who dive into the sink for a bath every day, albeit with no soap. These boys and two girls are not addicted to glue and try their best to lead ordinary lives.

The older crowd are paralyzed by the drugs, apathetically seated at the table waiting for food, to run off for their much-needed ration of glue as soon as the meal has been wolfed down. Some are at the surface still, like twelve year old Sami, who got hooked only months ago and whose eyes sparkle with fire when we play football, even though he disappears within fifteen minutes to sniff. Jonatàn is a few years older and by now totally numb and hopeless. Once, in a rare moment of clarity, he stroked my hair, exclaiming: ‘how wondrous, such a different color than all of ours’, but when he tried to participate in the soccer game five minutes later, he stumbled after the first missed shot and could hardly scramble to his feet again. This is a fifteen year old kid!

Every day Gluey Lewy, with his little emaciated body, clasps his bony arms around me like a contortionist and lifts his legs off the ground, forcing me to embrace him and keep him in the air. A fleeting moment of relief.. Then he looks at me with his deep hazelnut eyes and I always get a lump in my throat because of what I see there. The un-focused, dazed look of addiction, with underneath it, the screaming despair, the loneliness and above all the immeasurable distress that is so profound that the depths are further than I am allowed to see. All youthful fire and passion have been extinguished in those eyes. There is nothing left of the happiness I imagine he has once known. ‘I cannot walk anymore, hold me tight or I’ll fall!’ is his invariable game and I play along, keeping him briefly off the ground. It is a perfect expression of the fear that devours him, for how could he, indeed, at that young age, stand on his own legs?

When I hold him, I can sense his desperation and his powerlessness cutting through my own body like a razor and I become as desperate and as powerless as him. I feel despondent, and the only thing that keeps me upright is Luis himself, for if I do not keep standing we will both fall over and I cannot do that to him.

Dear Luis, I have no clue what I can possibly do to save you right now because I lack the money, the strength and the knowledge to help you. When I’m in my bed at night and one of those tropical rainstorms rages through the town, I often think of you and I wonder where you are. At least twice a week the tears trickle down my cheeks, when I think of how much cruelty there is in a world which permits six year old girls to sleep in the streets, while only a plane-ride away in Washington or in Paris someone is asking herself whether she should accompany her poodle, Fifi, to the beauty salon today or whether it would be better tomorrow, when the sun will be shining again.

Dear Luis, I love you and though I can hardly do a thing for you I take it as a tremendous honor that a brave child like you considers me strong enough to use as a pillar. I promise you that for the time I am here you can hang on me as often and as much as you wish. I shall hold you with all the strength and love that I can offer. That is merely a trickle in a river of hopelessness but in the fever of your despair, it may be a temporary cooling.

These chapters about tiny Toddlers, Monchichis and Gluey Lewy I dedicate to all the children and especially to those I am with now.

We grown-ups tend to think that you cannot teach us anything, but that is untrue, because even if your world is as tough as ours, it is far more honest. You haven’t yet learned how to lie so smoothly. You haven’t yet had the time to disconnect from your own hearts, as so many of us have, and therefore you have a much more intimate contact with yourself and find it easier to find balance.

Dear Isaac, thank you for shouting out ‘te amo Bas’, or ‘I love you Bas’, the other day in the classroom. Being only six, you simply say whatever you feel so you meant it. Dear Teresa, thank you for all the hugs and your childlike trust.

The job I hold here is the hardest I have ever had. I can never take a coffee break because you don’t know what a break means. At nine in the morning I’m entangled in dirty diapers and at six in the evening I’m still busy keeping stone throwing youths off each other’s backs.

On some days I am incapable of getting up because I simply cannot gather the strength to lift five toddlers above my head while numerous others tear at my arms or jump on my legs. Then I lay in my bed, groggy and with a sticky night-old teardrop closing my eye, feeling guilty because I lack the courage and the strength to get going. Sorry, I am too weak to give more than I do.

At the same time this is the best job that I have ever had, because even though all your pockets are empty, your hearts brim with love and you generously share it with me. That is the greatest reward for my efforts that I could have been given and I am aware how special a privilege it is that I may be here and spend time with you. It is thanks to you that I learn to live better every day and that I slowly grasp the truth of what I have secretly always known: the more you give, the more you are given back.

And even though I am sometimes sad, often when I’m daydreaming I see flashes of all those marvellous moments. Flashes of that delicious Chechnyan Yuliza, her bulky body fully stretched all over me, Oscar’s delighted look when he was given the necklace, Norma’s beautiful face glittering with happy tears from a tickle fight. When I cry alone, I am confused so that it is beyond me to know whether they are tears of sadness or of joy, or, who knows, of a magical mixture. Thank you, I love you all.

When I’ve finished at the orphanage, I go on to the Patio. Those who clearly bring up the rear are the street urchins. Just like any other poor city in the world, our El Progreso has it’s share of children who can’t call on anyone and find themselves roaming the streets. Some of them have a place to stay at night to sleep on a rag that serves as a bed, but where food is too scarce and education nonexistent. The others live in the park or in a doorway and have no parents or other family to rely on. Usually things work out well until they’re ten or eleven years old but by then the world has become too cruel and they discover the joys of the glue pot.

For those among you who are tempted: take a pot of fluid glue, preferably shoe-glue, and put a teaspoon of it in a small plastic bag. Then blow into the bag until it’s fully inflated and inhale the air as deeply as possible, taking as much of the narcotic glue into your lungs as you can. This process quickly takes you into a better world, but each time when you come down, reality obviously becomes a bit harder to bear and you forward to the next time and the next. Within a couple of years your lungs are so devastated by the glue residue and your brain so wrecked that it kills you. Glue can do in years what cigarettes bring about in decades but they say it’s much more thrilling so I might try one day and report my experiences.

From the moment I arrived here I couldn’t pass through the park without being harassed by a few of those glue sniffing lads, who think of a westerner as an easy pocket to pick or at least a small financial injection to make it through the day. The first one pulling on my arm like that was Luis. All skin and bone with hollow eyes staring into a void. He’s sixteen years old and a regular customer at the glue shop since time immemorial, so I silently call him Gluey Lewy. My first encounter with him went something like this:.

GL: got a dollar?
B: no, we’re in Honduras so I don’t carry dollars around.
GL: some lempira’s maybe?
B: some, but none for you
GL: why not?
B: ’cause you’ll carry them to the glue trader right away and that’s your own business but I’m not gonna help you with it
GL: then buy me some food
B: what do you wanna eat?
GL: chicken and chips
B: wouldn’t some rice and salad be good?
GL: why?
B: well, that’s way better for your health
GL: you just said I’m sniffing myself to death anyway!

Luis has a good point there and I remember that I always wanted chicken and chips for my birthday when I was a kid myself so we walk to the nearest restaurant for a meal and as a little extra I buy him a real coca cola.

I’ve been working with boys and girls like him for a week now. As soon as a family lands in a precarious situation, the children are irrevocably forfeit. They can easily fall victim to mistreatment and sometimes, sexual abuse. If they have any parents at all, often they are forced by them to beg. A child will not persevere for long. Relief structures being all too few, they soon end up on a bench in the park when they are too terrified to go home. In the park they will automatically bump into older kids who are more seasoned in the street life and who will teach the newcomers where to find a dry spot to sleep and which bins contain the best leftovers. These children, mostly boys, are the dregs of society. Part of the community shows no interest in them and would rather see the back of them, as the following quote cruelly indicates:

While the vast majority of the murderers of these children and youth remain “unknown” the children themselves have names. They were children such as, Gerson Edgardo Nuñez Calix (16); Esteban Varela (16) and Gabriela Bonilla (13), all shot through the head three blocks from the police station in the city of El Progreso, Department of Yoro at approximately 1pm on August, 28th, 1999. The three youth had been released 30 minutes earlier by the police after having been illegally detained in the police station for 24 hours. The principal suspect is a policeman.

The above extract is taken from a Casa Alianza statement. This organization works to improve the fate of street children in several Latin-American countries and reports to the United Nations about the violation of the fundamental rights of these totally abandoned young people. According to Casa Alianza figures, since 1998 some fifteen hundred of them have been killed; police officers, gang members, private security guards, random adults, who consider these children’s presence in society undesirable, have all ‘played the game’. In March 2003, the policeman in the fore-mentioned quote has been condemned to twenty years of imprisonment, a surprising turn in a lengthy sequence of acquittals, offering a first glimmer of light for a better future.

A few good and loving people in our town have had the luminous insight that these street youths are as good as any other children and that they too have a right to care and love, that they may even after their hard start, find true happiness one day if only they are given the chance. These people are setting up a project to create just that chance and among other things they have rented a small site baptized ‘Patio’. They have constructed a kind of sink that serves as a bathtub, threw in a toilet, bought a fridge, installed a twin-burner and that is how it became the place where the kids are welcome to have a warm meal, watch TV cartoons, play soccer and take a bath in the sink. The main aim is to build up a relationship of trust with the children, each of whom has suffered dreadfully under the treatment of the adults in his or her direct environment. Ernesto, who in the morning teaches in a high school and also has a degree in psychology, is ready every afternoon to receive all who want to come. Ernesto is a teacher, a father, a social assistant and a baby-sitter at the same time, assuring that the children will find a safe haven as an alternative to the dangerous street life for at least a few hours per day.

The pathetic group that gathers here is a shame on humanity. The youngest is six and her home is a porch in the vicinity of the church. She has no parents to tuck her in, no shoes, nothing to wear except for the rags on her body. She has never brushed her teeth, what teeth she has, but fortunately she is a skillful pilferer, always scraping enough for a daily meal. The oldest is around fourteen, for in adolescence they become unbearable, too numb from glue and alcohol, totally insusceptible to reason and literally capable of murder, if they haven’t died yet of their addictions.

The law of the strongest reigns in their rock-hard milieu, as in ours, but they use physical violence to impose their will, not complicated manipulative tricks like we do in our society.

On my first day I almost ended up in hospital when I tried to intervene in a stone throwing fight, which I later understood is an everyday event here. He who is mad picks up a nice little rock to chuck as hard as possible at his target’s head. One throws to hit, not to threaten. Everything and everybody is put to the test, even that white fool who thought he could create some happiness here with a nicely wrapped box of love.

It is in this rough milieu, stripped of all the frills, that I am at my best. Tough but fair, every fifteen minutes there is a scuffle that ends with tears, every hour someone is thrown out for having committed an unacceptable action, but everything is clear and open here.

To identify better with Gluey Lewy and his mates, I am dressed in my very oldest and dirtiest t-shirt and filthy shorts, and obligatory walk around with bare-feet on the shingle and stone strewn field. During our first soccer match I attempted to protect my poor delicate feet by keeping my sandals on, but being the only one enjoying the luxury of wearing shoes, the others quickly managed to strip me of my footgear. I feebly objected that whites have no calluses but that remark was brushed aside as a ridiculous argument and as a result I now stumble around moaning and groaning like a drip behind the rest.

The youngest soon surrender to the child that remains within and want to be tossed in the air, grab a hug or cling to you for a while. But one grows up quickly here and at eleven one is too old to be a child. Distrust towards adults is even fiercer than at the orphanage, which isn’t surprising when you witness how these children are being treated as dirt.

There is eight-year-old Carlos who merrily climbs on my shoulders for a ride on the rocking horse and who chatters away in his unintelligible Spanish, whereas ten-year-old brother Oscar would never dream of doing that. Each time when I make a sudden move, the boy ducks away like a dog with his tail between his legs and I suspect that back home – because these two do have a roof above their heads – he intercepts some blows for his younger brother when his father gets back drunk.

Sometimes he relaxes and laughs about a joke, but always to hide within seconds behind his own secure fence, and only after days of warily hanging around me he suddenly grabbed the chain I was wearing around my neck. I had bought it in Guatemala and it has many blue and purple palm tree beads which apparently were to his liking, so when he couldn’t hold out any longer, came the big question: “Can I have it please?”

That was fine with me so I spontaneously put it around his neck and the boy was so astonished with such a kind gesture from an adult that his jaw dropped and he stared at me as if I had gone insane. A minute later he ran out of the Patio, supposedly of fear that I would change my mind.

When I’ve finished at the toddler’s department, I catch a bus to Copromé, the orphanage that houses 39 girls and boys. The youngest sometimes arrive directly from the nutrition centre, if the parents have not shown up to take them home, and consequently Terrecita, The Mother Superior, stubbornly bearing the heat under her authentic convent cap and a pair of thick support stockings, is regularly saddled with six years olds who haven’t learnt how to utter a word yet. This woman, clearly resurrected from an English boarding school in the fifties, is strict but luckily also fair, and despite herself she does love children, so within weeks the first words are squeezed out, willingly or, if unavoidable, unwillingly. That is why I am teaching my little Alfredo to start to chatter, to provide him with a comfortable head start before he ends up in sister Terrecita’s wicked hands!

The first question that came from all those 39 little mouths was: ‘How long will you stay? Because all their surrogate mothers and fathers are as white as I am and each of us abandons their offspring after a while, so they are on their guard against loving or attaching too much to another adult. I suppose that you don’t think much of any individual older than twenty if your parents aren’t there and much of the staff only spends a limited length of time with you.

‘Will you stay over for the night?’ went the next question that was repeatedly asked during the first days, and I only understood it after six year old Isaac excitedly jumped into my arms one afternoon and, his eyes radiating fear, solemnly declared: ‘Electricity broke down’. I could hardly conceive why that posed a problem because in this country electricity fails at least once per week and even in my own luxurious apartment water is cut off during the night for economical reasons, but when I stared at him questioningly, he indignantly complained, ‘Don’t you know how many ghosts wander around here at night and how scary that is?’

Isaac, by all evidence, is a descendant of an African family of slaves that ended up in the Caribbean some 150 years ago and that has since then blended with native Indian blood, resulting in a deeply tanned colour, straight Indian hair and extremely round cheeks converting into Negroid lips in the centre.

Recently he urgently needed to go to the loo but due to a huge play fight in the bathroom that got out of hand, Terrecita and confederates have put the toilet paper under lock and key, obliging the needy to appeal to the officiating lady for a one person ration. Unfortunately, no lady was around and desperately he came rushing along, one hand pointlessly clasped around his black bottom and his hamster-like cheeks even rounder than usual. Could I help him, please? Well no, of course I couldn’t, I had no access to the toilet paper safe, but I did learn from the event to carry a roll around continually, in case I should ever be in Isaac’s shoes.

Scary ghosts, so that’s what brought up the sleeping over question. At night only one woman is present here and she sleeps in a little room far away from the dormitories. After inquiring with the oldest children I understood that even they fear the night, but I’m afraid playing ghost night watchman for 39 orphans is one job too many for me.

Like the nutrition centre, the orphanage was built with a fat donation. The result is a roomy structure containing a refectory, a reading room, a dormitory for the younger girls, one for the older girls, one for the boys, a huge kitchen, a laundry – with stone sinks, not with washing machines! – and this all in an enormous meadow, full of mango, lime and banana trees, that serves as a giant outdoors playing room.

I have nicknamed these kids Monchichis, after the little plush monkeys that were so popular in the Netherlands fifteen years ago. Those dolls are exact copies of the beautiful boys and girls that walk around here, with the same hollow, slightly protruding ears, the snub nose and the cinnamon coloured complexion. When they were first created, I am convinced, Mister Monchichi himself must have visited a Honduran orphanage to gain inspiration. No day goes by without a Monchichi proudly showing the catch of a seven centimetre (three inch) tall disabled cockroach, a legless grasshopper of a size that would shortlist it for the Guinness book of records if it were found in my own country, or a tailless chameleon radiating a dozen different colours from fear. No matter how hard and relentlessly I try to explain that all of these animals are really better off without their well-intentioned interventions, the hunt goes on. I strictly and formally forbade them to go after snakes, which immediately unleashed a true witch-hunt for these animals, because obviously the greatest challenge now is to scare the big white man.

Often it’s good fun and play fights, sometimes it’s more like grin and bear it.

There is eight-year-old Army whose front teeth don’t come through, maybe due to milk shortage. Despite his age he can still not speak and regularly I observe him going around frustrated, furiously gesticulating to make himself understood, to no effect of course. Then in frustration, fuming, he plonks himself down on a little seesaw to make the same repetitive motion, up and down, harder and harder, until inevitably it goes wrong and he gets thrown off and ends in the dust. Every day again I try to make him say the word ‘lima’ because he likes that even though it never comes out in the correct way, until he runs off, red with impotent anger, or until he stares at me weeping helplessly, boiling because of my persistence which he interprets as cruelty. Well I say! Compared to Terrecita, I’m a rather soft one!

Or what about nine year old Teresa, cuddling up against me at one moment, asking for attention and hugs, chattering merrily, to lay down on the floor the next moment, stiffly staring at the ceiling without responding to tickles, to words, hugs or a nudge, hermetically sealed from the big scary world.

And then there is Felipe with his club foot, smaller than the other, but with no money to afford adapted shoes, stumbling through life, his left foot dragging the floor so much that the sole is torn and by now his toes as well. Without socks he steps into these ill-fitting shoes with those damaged feet. Recently I could only make him take the shoes off with a tremendous power of persuasion and, I reluctantly admit, that persuasion was sometimes unpleasantly physical. The odour that was set free stank like untended wound and old blood, but there is no money for a salve or a doctor, let alone a decent pair of shoes. I ended up obliging him to wear socks and warning Terrecita and her confederates, but they sighed with a shrug: ‘Yes, we’re willing but what can we do?’

Both in the nutrition centre and here, I would like to be in several places at one time, in order to give enough attention to each child but I cannot. One wants to play cards, while number two would prefer to check his maths, the third simply wants to rest her head in your lap and the fourth is looking for a little chat about what happened yesterday or that far away, mysterious place called Europe, and it is impossible, I cannot offer what they ask for. There is only one Bas and 39 of them.

We need a doctor for Felipe, a speech therapist for Army, a psychologist for Teresa, but above all a little more adult love and guidance.

Here, as elsewhere, I have wandered around hopelessly, helplessly and despondently dazed during the first days, shocked by the shortages and the staff’s continuous and unfailing cheerfulness. Slowly I learn to make shift with what we have. Whereas in Europe you fix a problem by throwing some money at it, here you simply learn to live with it and try to lighten the burden with the few resources at your disposal.

Note: The orphanage is not part of the Proniño project. It belongs to another charity program in El Progreso.