Comedor de niños

Within two weeks a lunch program for poor kids will begin in the diocesan building in Santa Rosa de Copán. We first started talking about it a year ago and it is finally coming to fruition.

We hope to serve between 30 and 50 poor kinds between 4 and 11 years old a substantial lunch five days a week.

Monday a group of the people organizing this went to visit some neighborhoods here in Santa Rosa de Copán where there are poor kids.

The first places we went were near the town dump. As we passed the dump we could see vultures and about twenty people (many kids) scavenging in the trash and rubbish. Some were seeking the plastic bottles so they can get about 5 cents per pound. I saw a kid with something that looked like a toy that he had found. The images still haunt me.

We talked to a women who lives about 100 yards from the dump and enrolled two of her kids and a grandchild in the lunch program. We then went below the dump and met with a few families to enroll more kids.

Then we went to the Colonia Divina Providencia, near the kindergarten where I help out. We met with families who live in shacks right next to the stream that carries some of the rain and sewer water of the city. Later we dropped by another house nearby, where I know the one kid who goes to the kindergarten. The mother was not there but we talked with the oldest daughter. While talking with her, I noted a huge rat just few yards away.

That night while I sat in the base community meeting, I could not get these images out of my mind.

There types of experiences help to put things in perspective.