Organizing

I hadn't anticpated how hard it would be to organize a wild group of kids who were not used to being bossed around. For the most part they had survived for years without me or anyone else looking out for them. So yes, it was probably fun to follow me around in the beginning - the local gringa que se manda todo - the novelty soon wore off and they began to resist control. Even though they were small in stature, Honduras was a very male-centric country and full of machismo, so trying to coral these kids (who were for the most part all boys) and get them to take any sort of direction was a challenge indeed. It goes without saying that to survive on the street you must possess some ability to manipulate. Some were better than others at this. I sensed that a few of them were almost embarrassed to be on the street, while others were extremely proud of it. The younger kids often just took the lead of the older kids.

There are usually a lot of behind-the-scenes dynamics that take place between street kids and the towns they live in and this group was no exception. As a local traveler or tourist you wouldn't know it on the surface, but the kids often knew where to go for help, for something to eat, or somewhere to sleep. They knew who to talk to make a few centavos - like guarding parked cars, running an errand, hanging around food stalls or begging the local church. One of the boys, Mando, had a small job as a shoe shiner on the side. They were also the biggest purchasers of "resistol,"  which was shoe glue used for sniffing. It consisted yellow-ish looking glue smeared on little thin baggies. They got  got high on these. At that time in the 1990's, the men who sold them the resistol made extra  money on the side by supplying most of the street kids in town on an almost daily basis. Baggies were purchased as many as 20 or 30 times a day by the more addicted kids. So, having me in town - someone who was against the sale of it to the kids was definitely not a welcome development. I often got strange men knocking at the door who would tell me in a angry voices to mind my own business and go home. I knew what they were referring to by their rage - I was hindering the natural supply and demand of the "resistoleros." According to the Startribune (Minneapolis, MN 4 December 1995), "in 1995-96, there were an estimated 40 million to 50 million street children living in Latin America, and many of them became mentally and physically incapacitated  from this type of inhalant abuse."

Local Ceibeños ranged from mildly annoyed to outright indignation of my renting of the house on 12th Street, others thought it was merely peculiar and were completely indifferent to my efforts. Looking back on it, I can see why it would make them nervous. Street kids were such a problem already, and I was just bringing more around to a part of town where they hadn't previously been. Sometimes locals stopped by to knock and would ask me strange questions trying to feel out what was going on, I always told them the truth that I was trying to start a little non-profit working with street kids ... once, a local pastor stopped by and asked if I wanted to send some of the kids down for Bible study, of which I did. They arrived back shortly after telling me they had been kicked out for bad behavior. I was later lectured by this pastor for not ruling the situation with a stronger hand. But I was relatively young at that point, only 24, and wasn't quite sure about how far I could push the kids. 

By and large, the kids wanted to be there and the locals left us alone.