Squalor Calling and Catholicism at NPH-G

I guess it’s the same everywhere: poor kids with cell phones. When I made plans to come to Guatemala, I envisioned a kind of poverty that would not be “contaminated” in ways I think happen when the poor live side-by-side with the extremely wealthy.

The bread-and-butter of financial support of the NPH homes comes through individual sponsorship of children. If you go to the NPH website (www.nph.org) you can learn more about becoming a sponsor. The kids each have up to ten sponsors (though most have only a few), who each pledge a certain amount of financial support that helps pay for their room, board, education, etc. The relationships often become more personal, as sponsors can visit and write the kids, and the kids write back.

Sponsors provide love and contact with the outside world. It is a joy to witness the pleasure the kids get out of receiving cards and letters from their sponsors. And the visits I have seen have also made clear to me just what an important role the sponsors play in the children’s lives. In addition to helping to support their room, board and education, sponsors also seem to find ways to provide personal gifts (financial and otherwise) that allow the children small luxuries. I am told that the good intentions of generous sponsors sometimes have to be held in check, as what appear to them to be modest gifts are actually over the top to a poor child. Here we need to combat the threat of exposure to materialism and the values that it can foster, values that are inconsistent with the NPH mission. But it is not just the sponsors who give gifts- extended family members who have access to the kids here can give gifts as well; and I understand that cell phone bills are sometimes paid for by extended family members. (Why these extended family members are not expected to pay to cover NPH’s cost of caring for their child is something I do not understand.)

The reality is that even though many of the high school kids have cell phones, they are basically living in squalor. The girls sleep several to a room, and share a living room the size of a small bedroom. This is equipped with an old fashioned television, and all thirty of them cram in to watch TV. The door to the outside of their compound is locked at 8pm, and a guard is posted there for protection. Yes, they have food to eat- but the condition of the kitchens and the buildings they all live in are worse than anything I have seen in the US. Since I eat regularly with them, I have to constantly work to suppress my gag reflex. The kids don’t know how to eat with knife and fork- they use a spoon and their hands. In addition to a spoon, each is supplied with a plastic bowl and plastic cup, which they use for every meal. Nothing is cooked in an oven- all is cooked in large pots on stoves, some gas and some wood-burning.

The conditions at the main home are much better (though they have the same spoon/plastic bowl/plastic cup). The homes for the high school kids (boys in one home; girls in another) are fairly appalling from my standpoint. But money is an issue, and at least by this point, they are older and presumably better able to deal with the squalor.

So I don’t want to begrudge them their cell phones. But it seems a strange juxtaposition, given the conditions and circumstances they are living in. And I cannot help but wonder whether the combined value of what is spent on these devices might be put to better use.

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Despite being a Catholic institution (not under canon law, but through its bylaws), there is no religion budget at the NPH Guatemalan home. (Obviously, I will insist that this change in the next fiscal year). In recent years, a couple of generous donors have provided funds to cover the salaries of two people who do their best to teach religion in the 40 minutes/week allotted to each class and to provide youth ministry opportunities for the kids. These donors also covered the cost of flying in the priest from the Honduran home once every four or five weeks so that the kids might have some pastoral care and Mass here. I am grateful that they have promised to provide funds for this year’s youth ministry program, as well as for my assistant who also serves as a catechist at the school. My salary is being paid by the NPH International organization. I have found only four crucifixes on the grounds here- two of which I brought from home. I have found about ten bibles. Given what appears to be a dearth of commitment to religion, I am actually impressed by the level of devotion and faith among the kids and the staff here. It also gives me great hope that with a little kick-start, we can be launched to greater heights.

Devotion to the founder, Rev. William Wasson (1923-2006), continues to be strong. Pictures of him are everywhere, and the kids remember him in their prayers almost every time they fold their hands. They have had to work to a bit to tone down the cult that has developed around him, but there are some clear advantages. For one, when I walk around wearing my clerics, the kids make an immediate connection between me and him. (Some of the youngest ones actually call me, “Padre Wasson.”) While his idea was to staff his homes with “graduates” from NPH homes, many of the staff and volunteers have had no prior experience with NPH, and many are not Catholic. Even among the children, many are not Catholic- although some of them choose to become Catholic later. Children who come here under the age of seven are baptized and raised Catholic. All who live here practice as Catholics to the extent possible, and those who work here but are not Catholic are expected to support the Catholic aspects of the home and may not do anything that might confuse the children from a faith standpoint.

Teaching religion in the school is a challenge, as the environment of the school in general is not conducive to good learning. (more about that in another post) Forty minutes/week of religion class is hardly sufficient for communicating the catechism. There is no established curriculum, and so at this point we are basically teaching “by the seat of our pants.” I am not skilled at curriculum development and catechist training, but will clearly have to work to develop these skills. I am grateful to Cathy Crino, with whom I worked at St Alphonsus, for her help with this. But it will probably take a year or more to get some kind of system into place. Most of the kids seem to have only the most basic understanding of Christianity.

Fortunately, they like going to Mass! In addition to community Sunday Mass, we have Mass with smaller groups on weekdays. I am pleased to see how many come on their own to the Thursday evening liturgy (forty or more), and I am busy hearing confessions the whole time during the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament that follows that Mass. The confessions are heartfelt and solid- kids living this closely together understandably struggle to maintain the charity towards one another that is necessary in these conditions. I am impressed by their ability to recognize their faults, and their willingness to confront them. I am also touched by their contrition, and by their desire to do better.

The kids (as well as the adults on staff) are excited by the prospect of our building a chapel here. Having seen in parish assignments how a well-appointed church can serve both catechetical and spiritual goals, I trust that once this is established the catechetical and spiritual development of the children will really take off. As of now, donors I know already have given $65,000 to build the chapel (all still in the St Alphonsus bank account until we are ready to break ground). I hope to have some plans in place by late Spring and drawings put together by the summer so that we can begin construction as soon as possible. My colleague, Fr Ron Hicks, built a chapel at the home in El Salvador some years ago for around $120,000- which is why I feel that an initial goal of $150,000 for the one here will be in the ballpark.

24 Intense Hours

Saturday evening found me at the local parish for their evening Mass. The church was full. People participated well and the priest did a great job. It was a beautiful reverent Mass, and am thrilled that I will have the opportunity to celebrate here on the weekends (he is alone and overloaded with Masses, and so I will help him out- we only have the one Sunday mass at NPH). One of the things that will take some getting used to is the women’s outfits: there is a traditional dress that they wear, and many also wear what appears to be a folded up towel on their heads. (Some wear more traditional veils, but the folded up towels remind me of the stories of pre-Vatican II women who had to wear veils or beanies, and if they found themselves without those, would sometimes just put a piece of Kleenex on their heads for Mass.)

Afterwards, as I was leaving, I was invited by a man from town to accompany him to his house for dinner. I knew that his 16-year-old daughter had died about a month ago, and so my assistant and I agreed to join him. What I didn’t realize until we were a couple of blocks into the walk was that we were leading a procession of about 300 people who were also coming over for dinner. It is tradition here that 40 days after the death of a loved one, the Mass intention is for the deceased, and the family then holds a dinner. At the entrance to the house (which was cement floor, concrete block walls and some pieces of corrugated steel for a roof), they had build a shrine with a large image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Onto the image was taped a photo of the girl who had tragically died (brain embolism). The image was surrounded by numerous candles, flowers, and so much incense was burning that as we approached I actually thought that there might be a fire.  It was a great meal, and everyone was sitting in rented white plastic chairs like those we buy at Home Depot- many were out on the street.  All throughout the dinner time, various groups of people took turns going into the area where the shrine to the girl was to pay their respects and pray in song or just in words.

I was back at church by 5:30 am (after a good night’s sleep- I have been going to bed by 9:30 or 10, as everything here pretty much shuts down after the sun goes down) to help hear confessions before the 6am Mass. The church was full for Mass (I figure it seats at least 800 or so people).  It was another nice Mass and afterwards I headed back to NPH for Mass at 8 with the kids here.

It is going to take a while to get the kids used to participating in a meaningful way at Mass. They all like being there (they ask me all the time about when the next Mass will be), but they are at a very basic level from a catechetical standpoint. We had more go to communion, since I was able to get around and hear a decent number of confessions over the past few days. The key will be to get the adults and the older kids on board.

After Mass I went with a group of about 20 older kids who are part of a leadership group to some of the poorest areas in the outskirts of town. They loaded up a microbus and pickup truck with all sorts of donated clothes as well as dolls and balls. (I think that they have more clothing donated here than they can use, and so they make trips out to give it away to those who are worse off than they are.) We made two different stops, and the areas we went to reminded me of scenes I have seen in National Graphic magazine. The poverty was extreme- dirt roads, of course. Few cars. Horses and donkeys used for transportation and for transporting goods. Women walking around carrying large pots and other items on their heads. A large communal concrete clothes-washing area (concrete washboards and communal pool for rinsing). Thin cows in the street munching on weeds. Women in their traditional dresses (I’ll have to find some pictures of these).  Once we stopped our vehicles, word got around and suddenly we were surrounded by what must have been a hundred kids all longing for the candies and toys and clothes that were to be passed out. Kids were all very polite and excited to receive what they were given. We also had some items for mothers to use with their kids. It reminded me of scenes I have seen on television where the United Nations goes into refugee camps and tries its best to maintain order while being swamped by those desperate for the items being handed out. One of the cornerstones of the NPH philosophy is sharing- and having the kids participate in this hands-on experience with others in much worse shape than them was, I think, important for them.

After I got back from that, a group of us went to visit one of our high school boys who was in the government hospital because he had not taken care of a soccer injury, and it had gotten badly infected. Visiting hours are only one hour/day- and so when we arrived, there was a line of people waiting to get in. We found his room- it reminded me of the hospital ward from the television show M*A*S*H- four to ten people to a room, not what I would call sanitary conditions, various kinds of sheets and blankets on the beds. No lights on- only the natural light coming in from the open windows. He is going to be fine, but it was amazing to see the way the hospital was basically “invaded” by hundreds of visitors paying their visits for that short window of time- many brought food for their loved ones, as the food provided there must be even worse than our own hospital food. I had been there earlier in the week to visit a woman who had had her gall bladder removed (the cousin of my assistant).  The recovery room where we saw her reminded me of the basement of an old house.

Then I spent some time at the house of the girls in the college prep program- they live on a separate campus (as do the boys for this program, in their own house which I will write about at a later date). Their facility is a rundown concrete building with a small courtyard. This is also something I’ll need to get some pics of- 36 of them live together with an adult to keep an eye on things. They are all lively and animated and happy to get a visit. We are going to spend time together on Friday evenings, and we talked about where we might find a place to meet  (inside or outside) where there is electricity and a working light bulb.

 Finally, in the late afternoon, I thought I would pay a visit to the “baby house.”  At the moment, I don’t think they have any infants, but there are twenty or so two- and three-year-olds. They were spread out in a fairly comfortable room watching Shrek  (someone must have donated a flat-screen TV they can use to show movies).  A bunch of the little ones crawled onto me as sat on a couch and watched the movie with them. They called me “Padre Wasson” (the name of the priest who founded NPH- there are pictures of him all over the place, and he is revered like a saint here. He died in 2006. The kids must have thought I was him because I was dressed the same way he is in the pictures.)  At one point a little girl came up to me, put her head on my chest, and said, “mi mamá murió.” (“My mommy died.”) After this two other little ones, who seemed as if they had only learned to speak, came up and said the same thing, “mi mamá murió.”  They weren’t crying, but seemed sad and just wanted to let me know.

It was a lot to take in in one day...
(I posted some pics on the pic page of the group distributing food and toys) 

Arrived on January 3rd!

I made it down to Guatemala on Thursday morning, and was pleased to be greeted as I entered the gate of the NPH campus by the entire group- It was humbling as the Director spoke to the children and talked about what an important day it was in the life of their home, as after sixteen years of receiving orphans they had finally received a priest. The kids are incredibly open, friendly and affectionate. The older ones seem younger than their counterparts in Chicago- even though they have experienced incredible tragedy and sadness in their lives, and in many cases have witnessed horrible events, including the murder of parents- here they are fairly sheltered and do not seem to have the sophistication or “street smarts” that kids their age at home have. To be sure, they are not all innocent doves, but there is something beautiful about their spirits that became evident very quickly.

The first few days have been spent getting oriented to the people and the place. There are around 350 orphans from babies through “high school,” plus about thirty studying at the university. Sixty of the kids live off campus in homes in the town where they attend school. The school system here seems much different from what we have at home: on campus they have what we would liken to grade school and part of high school. There is also a “catch up” school for those who arrive without having had adequate formal education one might expect for their age. At some point, around 17 to 19, they move off campus for a kind of pre-university/vocational training school that lasts two or three years. They used to do their year of service prior to going to this school, but the government has established new rules prohibiting this, and so they come back for their year of service after they have done their “bachelor’s” (which is not comparable to our bachelor’s university degree). The 30 or so “bachilleratos” are separated, the girls in one home and the boys in another, living with one adult to keep an eye on things.

I will be overseeing a small religion department, which includes myself and two others. We will provide all of the religious education for the kids in school, including the 160 or so “externs” who come onto the campus for class here. In addition, there is a fairly developed youth ministry program. As far as Mass and the sacraments go, there is much to be done. I’ll say more about this another time, but to give an idea: we had a nice Epiphany Mass on Sunday in the cafeteria, but out of the 350 or so who were present, only about 75 received communion. Part of the issue is that the kids feel they cannot go to communion if they haven’t been to confession in a while- ordinarily a good disposition, especially if aware of serious sin. But here, confessions are a much bigger deal than at home. I’ll need to find a way to help them receive more frequently without their losing their sense of the importance of confession.

I had lunch with the pastor of the parish in town on Saturday, and he told me that he hears for confessions for an hour solid, beginning at 5am on Sunday mornings, before the 6am Mass. And then again for an hour in the afternoon prior to the 6pm Mass. He also has a 10am, and a 3pm off site at a mission parish. I will say more about the parish situation here at some time in the future. But I did tell him that once I have a sense of how things at NPH are going, I should certainly be able to help him out on Sundays.

My Spanish is holding out better than I thought it would. It is exhausting having to hold my concentration to listen and speak throughout the day, but I can understand most of what people say to me. And while what I say probably sounds a bit juvenile to those I am talking to, I seem to be managing to get my point across.

And so, a few days into the experience at NPH, I am flush with joy. It is a place filled with hope and energy, and I feel that I will be able to make a meaningful contribution. The living conditions are better than I expected (for now I am living in the house of the national director). The food is simple, but fine and seems healthy enough. I am trusting them when they tell me that the water is OK to drink (there is a modern water purification system), and so far my stomach is doing fine. I posted a few photos, so please feel free to punch the button to take you to that page.