frontera schools

it's so hard to decide which schools are the poorest when they are all so very poor.

went to las delicias yesterday. as i was wandering around outside i noticed that there were no doors on the baños. there were two baños and they faced away from the school but neither one had anything that resembled a door.

i chose one school, el cachito, for the team to go to because when asked what the greatest need was the teacher said food. the kids are hungry and there is no money to buy food. they have a new school building with concrete bathrooms, one for the boys and one for the girls. so does that mean they are better off than the school i went to yesterday?

las delicias has lime and orange trees and banana plants. and power.

el cachito has none of these things.

el coyol that i went to on wednesday - the teacher sleeps in a tent in the classroom and has his kitchen on a plank in the front of the classroom.

the uniforms, tops and bottoms, that most kids had were very shabby, held together with pins, or just left gaping. one girl in el gallito, where i went tuesday, held her shirt together with a bc pin we gave her a few years ago.

kids are wearing shoes that are either very much too large for them, or very much too small and they are cramping their feet to fit into them, or they have none at all.

it looked like some younger kids were wearing pants that would have to last them all their elementary school years. and older kids that looked like they had worn their uniform for several years and had outgrown them. pants and skirts that no longer came together because they had been outgrown.

and yet we had milk and cereal in plastic cups, washed hands, brushed teeth, listened to information about lice, good nutrition, cleanliness, good dental hygiene, malaria, etc. and played games and soccer in the scorching sun, and they were all laughing having a great time.

they are SO poor and have nothing but they had a blast. and so did we.

it's makes me sad to think of all the things we give our kids. most of these kids don't even have power in their villages, never mind a tv and vcr in every room in the house.