When I first applied to work for Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH) they asked me: what love is, what does it mean to love, to be loved…
Never had I come across an application question like this before and may never again. I sat there, in an Internet Café in Viña del Mar, Chile and realised that I would need to put a lot of work into this one. I answered the question as best I could…but I didn’t answer like I would today.
After a year of hard work and incredibly dynamic relationships at the NPH home in Honduras I can say that I had no idea what I was talking about. So much happens inside a year; to learn about that and to grow is something very magical indeed. Over this past year I’ve learned about the good, the bad, and yes even the ugly. But whenever I thought I had it all figured out, like a daytime soap something would change and turn the whole world upside-down.
I’m not here to tell you what love is, or how to find it; I only wish to depict how it has affected me and helped me to become the man I am today.
It started one night on top of a water-tank with someone who would forever become my friend. We shared our stories and opened our friendship underneath a waning moon dancing in the sky with the trees, the clouds, and the stars. She helped me to see the truth that I was there in Honduras now and my job was to care for all these orphaned children. But I would soon find out that in doing so, they would care for me too.
One thing I learned about was education…it took coming to a 3rd world country to finally see the correlation between education and people’s places in life. These kids learn trades as well as their studies. When they leave, they’re ready for more studies or a profession which they already know and where they can succeed.
But I tell you this, the greatest thing that the children at NPH have are the relationships that they form. Honduras is a poor and hard country and Hondurans are a looking-glass to their homeland. It’s rare to see a smile, but when you do, you know its real and honest, completely true. The children as well, don’t smile often, but when one pops out it strikes your heart with happiness. To see these rare beauties, you’ve got to be with them in their natural environment, with their friends, their sisters and brothers, their families, their caregivers; you’ve got to see them when they are just their selves and nothing else matters except for who jumps into the pond next.
In Honduras, you change what having a sweet in your life means. It used to be a candy, a dulce, a sweet wrapped in plastic or paper. Then, curiously, it changed. A sweet was now an orange, a handful of grapes, a slice of watermelon.
Then simple moments: a conversation under a perfectly placed shadow, a movie just in time for bed, an apple to start the day, a rock shared with a friend in a rolling stream to end the day peacefully; came about changing the very definition of sweet, broadening its horizons.
In the end, with a duty to document the lives of these orphaned, abused, and abandoned children, I will try to show what magic I saw and felt. I will try to give a voice to these kids, their relationships, experiences, and accomplishments. Because with each moment that I witnessed through the camera lens, I too learned; learned to love and care and give.
With all this said, I give you a look at light and color and its actions upon the lives of 500 children at NPH during 2009. I give you Honduras, through a child’s eye.
Sincerely, ben gatos
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