nov 6

I love Fridays. It means tomorrow is Sabbath and Sabbaths are always greatly appreciated by my tired self.

Today, Marta was giving us trouble. Did I tell you what happened with her? Well, if not, I’m going to tell you and if so, then I’m sorry. Last week Marta was at the Hogar and she was eating breakfast… well not entirely. She was bothering Letty and throwing food at her. Tarynn grabbed her orange away from her and told her that she needed to eat her food and then she can have her orange. Marta freaked out. She got so angry that she got up, pushed her plate, and stormed off into the kitchen. Tarynn followed her into the kitchen to make sure she obeyed. And who would’ve guessed…Marta had another orange in her hand. Tarynn told her to give the orange to her, but she refused. Tarynn grabbed her arm and said to give it to her and Marta refused again. Tarynn held her arm harder so she could take the orange from her hand and that’s when Marta took her other arm and hit Tarynn really hard. This girl is pretty strong. She’s been having a lot of problems at the Hogar. Maria Jose, the lady in charge, has brought her to the Infa in San Pedro Sula and was thinking of letting her stay there instead of the Hogar because she wasn’t listening to anyone and she thought that it would be better for her there. She needs to learn how to behave and how to obey and no matter what they do at the Hogar, it hasn’t been working. Marta begged and said that she would behave and so they brought her back. It also wasn’t very safe over there. Apparently Marta didn’t mean what she said. Hitting Tarynn put it over the edge. They brought her to the Infa in Santa Barbara (the one where we work at) and Isabelle said that she would take her in her own home to try and help her. Thing was, Marta hasn’t been listening to Isabelle either. Isabelle opened her home to Marta and gave her time to help Marta and Marta couldn’t even mop the porch for Isabelle. She lied to her about Tarynn and about Maria Jose saying things like Maria Jose hits her and the kids all the time. No one knows what to do with Marta. She doesn’t listen to anyone and it’s really getting out of hand.

Anyways, today she left without telling anyone anything. She was walking somewhere alone with another girl who is around 14 years old. Apparently this “cousin” of hers lives somewhere with her “husband” and is trying to convince Marta to come live with her. She’s telling Marta that she needs to get a guy and is making things ten times worse. Mirna (the lady who takes care of the kids living at the Infa) told me that they went somewhere really dangerous especially for two young girls. When she got back, no one did anything. I was angry because what am I supposed to say? I can’t speak Spanish well. I can’t talk to her like I want to. Mirna told me to get Marta to do the dishes (I’m still very bitter that they wouldn’t talk to her). I told Marta to come and to my surprise, she came to do it. I told her I would help her and I tried my best to talk to her. I pretty much poured out all that I could to her. I told her that what she was doing was unacceptable and that she’s smart and that she knows better. I told her how important it was to listen to Maria Jose and Isabelle and the volunteers because we’re here to help her. I told her that she doesn’t realize how much she has here and she may not realize it until it’s all gone. I told her how much people love her and how much they want to help her. I told her how much it hurt us to see her act like this. I told her that I loved her so much and that I wanted her to have a great future. She laughed at me and with a faint smile she said that it’s better for her to be dead. I wanted to cry. Here I am trying to tell this girl that she means something and that she is so much better than how she’s acting and that I don’t want to give up on her, but nothing goes through. I kept telling her no no no and saying how important she was, but she just left the kitchen. The rest of the day, she continued being Marta. She started writing on a table and I tried to get the crayon from her, but she refused to give it to me and I had to break the crayon out of her hand. She also started making one of the girls cry. And instead of saying sorry like we told her to do, she laughed and ran away trying to imitate the girl’s cry. Tarynn was telling her to stop and finally she talked to Isabelle and Nelson who weren’t doing much and told them that they needed to talk to her right now. We all went into the office and they started talking. Tarynn and I were already extremely frustrated with her. She didn’t have any respect and it seemed like Isabelle and Nelson weren’t taking it seriously. We obviously couldn’t talk to her the way we wanted to talk to her so we wanted them to talk to her. And instead, they got off topic, they started laughing at things, and they asked her ridiculous questions. Let me just tell you… we left extremely angry at the way they handled it and so we comforted ourselves with what we know best… food.

After dinner at the Hogar, I was talking to Maria (one of the older girls) and I asked her why she had glitter on her face. This was not a good move because that’s when the glitter war began. She smeared glitter all over my face and I wasn’t about to take it so I started fighting back with that same glitter and putting all over hers. Somehow two of the other older girls got into it too and we were all on the floor pouring glitter on each other. It was fun, but very messy and I’m sure I’ll be finding glitter everywhere for the next 2 months.

Oh and I have to mention that I didn’t realize we had visitors during our glitter war. It was a group from the east coast who came to stay at the Hogar for a day or two. One older guy looked at me and asked me what I was doing. I wanted to hide, but there really wasn’t much use to that. He had already seen me. I was extremely embarrassed and I’m sure between the red glitter and my red cheeks, I was quite a sight.