While Ravel’s orchestra continues to accompany me discretely on my path, events in Honduras, where I have come to work for the fourth year, happen in breathtaking succession.
I’d only just moved into my home when Dolf knocked on the door. He’s an engineer acquaintance from the Netherlands who has come to do a soil research for the building of a paved stretch of road within the center. To keep the whole area accessible even during the wet season, when torrential rains and tropical storms ravage the region, a few hundred meters of asphalt are essential to allow teachers, children and food to reach their classes and the dining room.
A day later I greet Nicole at the nearest airport. She’s a board member of Homeless Child and has come to visit for the second time, both to check on the current state of affairs and to see how much the children have grown. Construction of a girl’s dormitory is in full swing. With the help of the Dutch government (see www.ncdo.nl), of Wilde Ganzen (a Dutch institutional donor) and Rotary Club Winterswijk, Proniño will soon be able to welcome girls into the program!
Dolf and Nicole have hardly said goodbye, when the roaring engines of another 747 thunder oppressively through the heat haze rising from the sticky asphalt of our local landing strip. A plane like that does not belong here. The contrast between the world’s most sophisticated technology and the humble reality of ramshackle huts and hungry bellies is too poignant, but secretly I hanker for one of those gooey plane meals. Anything but another portion of tortilla and beans would be fine, even a jug of pasta threaded with melted plastic cheese, served tepid out of a Boeing microwave.
Ravel cannot suppress a smile and I cheerfully join him. His stirring sounds lift me up and again I am carried away to that other world, to that world with young people who are doing well. I can now see adolescents who are making music at the highest level and slowly it dawns on me where I am. Finally.
Then my uncle Dirk steps out of the airport and into my line of vision. I come down from my daydream and walk back into reality. Dirk is a photographer. His visualization of the project will undoubtedly serve us in the future and he and I have only seen each other once in the past seven years, so there is plenty of catching up to do as well.
Dirk’s stay overlaps with that of six Dutch people who are guests for two weeks to visit the project and discover Honduras. With their help, the illustrious Dutch traditions of “bite-the-cookie-on-the-cord” and “poop-the-nail-into the-bottle” have been elevated to the levels of true art among the local youth. Our boys can’t get enough of “the-big-bite-poop-and-win-a-candy-relay-race”, until, unavoidably, a war breaks out over which team is to be declared victorious.
The first prize is a can of fruit juice, something our children never have the pleasure of tasting. A simple can of fruit juice is a luxury that isn’t even dreamt of for Christmas dinner and such a trophy is largely worth the fight. Holland looks away in collective embarrassment.
The next day, a painting job is scheduled for our white visitors, for a bit of work is also part of the program. A sickbay has been built at the center where simple medical and dental treatments can be given, to lower the cost of health care. The walls are decorated with colorful fish, corals and even a sunken ship, to offer the little sweethearts a bit of distraction when the umpteenth street-ravaged molar has to be extracted.
The drills and pincers? They were shipped to Honduras in the company of impressive heaps of hammers, socks, balls and sneakers, in a container that we had filled back in Holland.
Whilst the group of Dutchies enjoy their last evening meal, I drive off towards another 747 in the streaming rain, to welcome our next guests, Ineke and Tielke, the Homeless Child president and secretary. In their wake Annette, a pediatric-psychiatrist and a friend, flies in from Denmark.
Like me, Tielke still has the images of the immaculately organized Colombian project fresh in her mind, and she is surprised at the lack of structure in the permanent center. The temporary home where the children stay when they flock in from the streets, is functioning well and the children can flourish, but the situation in the permanent center is cause for worry.
Like many other small-scale projects, Proniño lives above all by the grace of the founders’ enormous drive, but do these projects receive sufficient support? The lack of money is also an eternal enemy. There is a shortage of teachers, of knowledge, of vocational training and sports facilities. Together with the people of Proniño, Annette and Tielke scrutinize the structure to look for possible improvements within the small operational budget.
Meanwhile, Ravel’s music is still running through my head, with happy adolescents making sweet music, increasing my confidence in a solution, until I am cruelly hauled out of from my daydream by a gruesome report from the neighboring city.
A child was murdered in a government run care center. Just kicked to death. The teachers make a half-hearted effort to pin the blame on some other kids, but they don’t get away with that. It quickly transpires that some of the people who have the noble task to watch over these children, have in fact frequently knocked the living daylights out of their pupils and molested them.
The entire country is in an uproar and for weeks the incident is front-page news in all the papers. The most salient detail is that the president’s wife is personally and financially involved in the center, which puts all the more oil on the fire of gossip. The center is temporarily closed. Proniño is bluntly requested to take in twenty of the afflicted pupils. As if it is nothing.
Like in his famous Boléro, Ravel’s melody keeps swelling up and takes me months back in time, until finally the hazy veil in my head fades away to make place for clarity. Proniño cannot match the Colombian successes. It still lacks so much that my heart sinks into my boots at times and I wonder whether our mission will ever succeed.
But then I can see myself standing on a bleak plateau outside Bogota, Colombia, in the biting wind at 2.700 meters (8.500 ft.) altitude. Lucas, Nicky and Tielke, who joined me to visit that wonderful project a few months ago, lead the way into the immense, dim hall. Sixty folding chairs are lined up, but today we are the only guests.
When I look up I can finally see them as clear as crystal! Fifty or so youths with wind instruments, a full string orchestra and even two kettle-drums. Not that long ago, these same children fed on garbage, they had never brushed their teeth and weren’t able to spell their own names.
Now these kids play like angels. They are so good that a few extravagantly rich banks have invited them for a European tour. Madrid, Zurich and Brussels can soon enjoy Ravel by teens dragged out of the gutter.
The fact that our Colombian colleagues have made such stars from street kids deserves a deep bow, but the true heroes are the children themselves. Which Western, developed country, would be able to put together an orchestra out of a population of only 1.000 traumatized adolescents? How developed may a country actually call itself when it’s better at teaching it’s children how to take than how to give, when it forgets to give classes in loving and sharing as well as mathematics and economics?
Each child that has lived in the streets has suffered tremendously. His friends have humiliated him, adults have neglected him, society has chased him out of sight. The pain and the memory will never go away. But with the right guidance these children can flourish to become the most beautiful people you could meet.
It took the Colombians 37 years to come that far. Proniño was only founded five years ago and has been welcoming children only for the last three years. What am I expecting? My own string orchestra in a couple of months?
Within me the Sun starts to shine again and when I lose myself a final time in Ravel’s uplifting music, seated on a rock underneath a spectacular waterfall, grateful to my ancient walkman that has traveled the entire world with me, Ravel’s riddle has resolved itself.
The most important ingredients are love, dedication, patience and perseverance. Proniño has plenty of all those and with the right structure and financial support, I am convinced that Proniño too can one day grow into a true jewel. When I enter the doors to the center after a long holiday, the children hang joyfully around my neck. Suddenly one sprints off with my walkman. Ravel and little José… will they get along? You bet they will!
Thank you Colombia, thank you Mister Ravel
Give a child a chance and offer the world some balance!
