This blog is about Honduras and a Ranch called Rancho Santa Fe, 36 km outside Tegucigalpa, where I am living and working for a year. Beginning the blog two months into my time here was probably the second worst thing I could do (the first being never starting one), for already I can see it will be an organizational nightmare of events, people, places, pictures, and whatever else comes up. But I will try to start out with the basics of the story, and we will see where it takes us. A few items of business: the blog is organized thematically, and though the most recent post will appear at the top of the page, all posts are listed in chronological order on the left side. I would encourage readers to add their comments, questions, and general feedback; it will greatly help me to improve the site and to direct me with future postings. EnjoyBackground and Introduction:
In the beginning there was Padre Wasson, and Padre Wasson created Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (Our Little Brothers and Sisters). Even the littlest pequeña can tell you this, for she has heard it since the day she arrived. Wasson started each of the nine NPH orphanages across Latin America, from Mexico to Bolivia, beginning in the 1950s in Mexico City. The oft-recited story goes that Wasson was presented by the police an orphan who had stolen from Wasson’s church. When Wasson offered to adopt the boy into his home, the following day they brought him a half-dozen more orphans from the jail. So began the first NPH home. The ontology is important because the generosity of William Wasson is one of Rancho Santa Fe’s biggest themes, and much of the Ranch’s philosophy keeps the late founder in mind. For example, Casa Suyapa Tias (caregivers for the youngest children, anywhere from toddlers to eight or nine years) can be heard lecturing their charges on the virtues of Wasson and how this knowledge should inform their behavior, while they wait impatiently for dinner. Wasson founded the Honduras branch of NPH in the mid-1980s, and it currently serves 550 children.
The big picture of NPH Honduras, similar to all nine homes, is this: the orphanage takes children, often siblings, out of desperate situations, brings them to the ranch, and raises them more or less until adulthood. As they grow up, the institution has various mechanisms in place to prepare each child as best as possible to break the cycle of poverty and neglect. For example, Rancho Santa Fe has a school that all children (except for the developmentally disabled) attend, giving them the equivalent of about a primary school education. Those with the aptitude and desire can continue their education through high school and university levels, interspersed with required years of service to the ranch. The Ranch also has a system of Talleres, or Workshops, designed to give every child a trade to support themselves in the outside world. There are numerous other NPH departments and programs dedicated to the children, including an Ex-Pequeños office, Social and Family Services, Psychology, Health Clinics, just to name a few.
It is a big place, in both institutional and physical terms, with more than 200 employees and around 30 volunteers working on a mountainous, 2,000+ acre piece of land. This is large enough for stray horses to find their way from nearby farms onto the ranch and make their home here for weeks, converting lots of foliage into smelly sidewalk obstacles (for this, the ranch charges the horses’ owners before they can have them back). It’s large enough to attract forest fires during the dry months of March and April, when the entire Ranch must put down what they’re doing and run to protect the property from encroaching blazes. Because of its size, among other more important reasons, Rancho Santa Fe is in many ways its own little world, and like any other, takes time to get a grasp of. As I learn about the way things work here and in Honduras as a whole, I will pass it on.
