Hope in Honduras
*2014 Scholastic Silver Key Winner
by Lydia Estes
(Art by Anna Lippert)
Street lights blurred into one golden streak as our taxi, affectionately known as a “tuk-tuk” in Honduras, zipped up the cobbled streets toward our hotel. The pool, glistening with the light of the stars, welcomed us back. My friends and I walked up the stucco stairs and turned on our bedroom lights. I stood by the balcony, which overlooked the reflective pool, and peered up at the bright night sky; the lights of downtown Copán allured me while I contemplated the harsh reality of all I had witnessed and experienced in the past week. Slowly, my thoughts grew heavy and burdensome. Months later I read of a similar story, told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary legends; His New York City is my Copán.
The guilt of enjoying a lavish night “on the town” was immense, because over the past six days, my fellow missionaries and I served in Cerro Azul, an impoverished village in Honduras. After a six hour bus ride to Copán, I straddled two vastly different lifestyles. Copán and Cerro Azul are as disparate as the East and West Eggs of Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby; like Carraway- a native of the Middle West but living in New York City- I “was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life” (Fitzgerald 35). It was difficult enough to adjust from my life in America to my temporary home in Honduras. To begin to comprehend first and third world--the former found in Copán and the latter found in Cerro Azul--lifestyles existing within the same national borders was another challenge.
We traveled home to America the next day. I slept in my three story house with running water, my own bedroom, and many commodities. It felt as if the fluoride was replaced by guilt in the tap water. I was drowning in shame. For all of my life, I had justified my wants as needs, subconsciously covering up my greed like I conceal a pimple with makeup. As I read Fitzgerald’s novel, I continued to find an inexplicable connection between Carraway and myself. He understood that “it is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment” (Fitzgerald 104). Although I was brokenhearted to accept my disdainful perspective of my own life as reality, my trip to Honduras blessed me with a new appreciation for everything that I have.
Recently I have desired definitive answers: How can a place so impoverished exist a mere six-hour bus ride away from a sparking city buzzing with activity? Why did God send me to Honduras to only leave disheartened?
As Carraway’s story came to a close, I still found myself drawing parallels with every page. His cousin, Daisy, wanted her life shaped; she sought clear answers like I have been ever since that night in Copán. He watched her struggle to settle with the uncertainty ahead- the same uncertainty I feared in my own future.
A month or so after returning from Honduras, I was given the option to undergo major surgery in order to have children of my own. Born with a genetic syndrome which prevents me from conceiving, I could not believe medical technically could make it possible. I stood at an intersection, lost and unsure of which direction to take. My decision-to accept or deny-would direct my future from there on out: no turning back. Strangely enough, despite my fear of making the wrong choice, my hands longed to begin turning the wheel. Each day that passed increased my anxiety. Like a sketch artist ready to outline her work with a permanent marker, I returned to Hershey Hospital with my decision to decline. After falling in love with the children of Cerro Azul, I realized foregoing the surgery was truly the right decision. I now plan to adopt from third world nations when the time comes.
It was a humbling sensation to be amazed yet troubled by the way of life in Honduras. Each day I was impressed by the villagers’ strong character; hope was abundant where it was least expected, their houses were bleak but the streets alive with color, and they had little but lived as though they had everything they needed. The people of Honduras taught me that, most importantly, traveling to new places, as Carraway might agree, teaches us not just about the world around us, but who the person is inside of us.
*2014 Scholastic Silver Key Winner
by Lydia Estes
(Art by Anna Lippert)
Street lights blurred into one golden streak as our taxi, affectionately known as a “tuk-tuk” in Honduras, zipped up the cobbled streets toward our hotel. The pool, glistening with the light of the stars, welcomed us back. My friends and I walked up the stucco stairs and turned on our bedroom lights. I stood by the balcony, which overlooked the reflective pool, and peered up at the bright night sky; the lights of downtown Copán allured me while I contemplated the harsh reality of all I had witnessed and experienced in the past week. Slowly, my thoughts grew heavy and burdensome. Months later I read of a similar story, told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary legends; His New York City is my Copán.
The guilt of enjoying a lavish night “on the town” was immense, because over the past six days, my fellow missionaries and I served in Cerro Azul, an impoverished village in Honduras. After a six hour bus ride to Copán, I straddled two vastly different lifestyles. Copán and Cerro Azul are as disparate as the East and West Eggs of Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby; like Carraway- a native of the Middle West but living in New York City- I “was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life” (Fitzgerald 35). It was difficult enough to adjust from my life in America to my temporary home in Honduras. To begin to comprehend first and third world--the former found in Copán and the latter found in Cerro Azul--lifestyles existing within the same national borders was another challenge.
We traveled home to America the next day. I slept in my three story house with running water, my own bedroom, and many commodities. It felt as if the fluoride was replaced by guilt in the tap water. I was drowning in shame. For all of my life, I had justified my wants as needs, subconsciously covering up my greed like I conceal a pimple with makeup. As I read Fitzgerald’s novel, I continued to find an inexplicable connection between Carraway and myself. He understood that “it is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment” (Fitzgerald 104). Although I was brokenhearted to accept my disdainful perspective of my own life as reality, my trip to Honduras blessed me with a new appreciation for everything that I have.
Recently I have desired definitive answers: How can a place so impoverished exist a mere six-hour bus ride away from a sparking city buzzing with activity? Why did God send me to Honduras to only leave disheartened?
As Carraway’s story came to a close, I still found myself drawing parallels with every page. His cousin, Daisy, wanted her life shaped; she sought clear answers like I have been ever since that night in Copán. He watched her struggle to settle with the uncertainty ahead- the same uncertainty I feared in my own future.
A month or so after returning from Honduras, I was given the option to undergo major surgery in order to have children of my own. Born with a genetic syndrome which prevents me from conceiving, I could not believe medical technically could make it possible. I stood at an intersection, lost and unsure of which direction to take. My decision-to accept or deny-would direct my future from there on out: no turning back. Strangely enough, despite my fear of making the wrong choice, my hands longed to begin turning the wheel. Each day that passed increased my anxiety. Like a sketch artist ready to outline her work with a permanent marker, I returned to Hershey Hospital with my decision to decline. After falling in love with the children of Cerro Azul, I realized foregoing the surgery was truly the right decision. I now plan to adopt from third world nations when the time comes.
It was a humbling sensation to be amazed yet troubled by the way of life in Honduras. Each day I was impressed by the villagers’ strong character; hope was abundant where it was least expected, their houses were bleak but the streets alive with color, and they had little but lived as though they had everything they needed. The people of Honduras taught me that, most importantly, traveling to new places, as Carraway might agree, teaches us not just about the world around us, but who the person is inside of us.
We Grow On
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We are the children of technology, drowning in a sea of plasma and Plexiglas. Sunday news replaced Sunday cartoons, and we learned from an early age that the world cries for help that we are expected to give. We are the wizened warriors, growing up far too quickly in an age where life has become a race to a goal that no one can truly identify or put into words. We are the prisoners of the mirror, accustomed to seeing dissatisfactory images reflected back to us. We press our hands to the glassy surface, hoping to smudge our flaws away with fingertips moist from tears that obscure the edges of our vision. We are the self-conscious generation, drowning in doubt and insecurities that threaten to claim us in the end.
We are the scapegoats. We are the generation of fear; adults worrying what the world will become when it is left in our hands. We are perceived as the dissociative children, eyes glued to a screen or a station, blamed for embracing conditions and social pressures that no other generation has ever faced. As we hide our pockmarked faces from the world in a vague effort of anonymity the world demands more and we stumble towards its call to arms.
We are the liberators, we see and we judge in new ways, not simply in black and white, but in shades of rainbow and in actions of justice and love. We are seen as talentless and lacking, while we compose sonatas and imbed words and phrases into our souls behind closed doors.
We are the weighed-down children, burdened by expectation and forced to imagine a plan for a future we cannot foresee or comprehend before we can even count. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, we are the ticking time bombs. We are volatile and changed, so people say, and yet we are the generation whose imagination and creativity is constantly stifled due to the mistakes of those older than us. We are the children who once plucked dandelions from playground parks and questioned the meaning of life while gunshots rang out in the background: the soundtrack to the film in which we play a starring role.
We are desensitized. Though we are seen as being cold, even unfeeling, we have had to grasp the concepts of life, death, war and hatred along with our ABC’s. Fear is our hydration and stress our daily bread. We dance through a wave of blood and regrets and have learned how to wipe away the damage. As much as we are feared, secretly we fear. We see the world for the cold and unfeeling place it has become, sweating out achievements for the sake of achieving, no longer creating for the joy and the freedom it gives us. It is not that we do not see what is happening around us; we see too much. The tears and the heartaches can only last for so long.
We are the prisoners of Time. Every minute of every day is regulated and constrained: eat, drink, school, work, sports, studies, sleep, repeat. The monotonous saga of lost childhoods. We are the curse. The reason “teenager” has become a profanity bitten out in low tones when no perceptive ears are listening. And yet we do listen. One ear is always open, because we never know what dangers hide in the dark and lonely places of the world. We are the generation of sympathy, seeing and understanding what others are going through in the name of survival. We carve prayers into our wrists and tattoo dreams under our clothes, keeping them close to remind us of what we have to live for. We are the threatened children, running as fast as our legs can carry us while explosives detonate around us and attempt to break our spirit beyond repair. We are the survivors, bruised and damaged, but never truly beaten.
We are the children of circumstance. We are held responsible for crimes we have not committed, blamed for words we have not said, and judged as a whole for the actions of a select few. We witness the unjustness of the world, we see the starvation and the violence and the corruption, but we recognize that we are powerless. No one listens to the children of the world. No one catches the wisdom in our wide-eyed gazes. No one remembers that we too have watched the world fall and have been helpless to mount a resistance. We are children with minds and knowledge far beyond our age. We are the future. But what can children do against such reckless hate? We pick up the splintered pieces, and we move on, holding the shards close to our hearts as precious memories. We are the children conceived in hope and born in fear. We evolve, and we dream of the day that we will be seen as what we are, and not discriminated for what we are perceived to be. We grow on.
