Posted on 11/08/2013 8:31:01 AM PST by Gamecock
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Greg and Lisa Nillson of East Texas started sponsoring Carlita from Honduras in June. Two months later they bought the hut next door to where Carlita lives.
“This is a key relationship for us,” says Greg. “We don’t want a long-distance thing. We want to do life with this family.”
The Nillsons’ new hut, which cost them a few hundred dollars, is made of wood planks and pieces of scrap tin. Greg brought his camping equipment and they are busy becoming “part of the neighborhood” with visits every couple of months. Lisa is planting a garden and hosting a weekly “girls’ night out.” Greg is fixing up the hut and wants to organize a neighborhood work day to clean the place up.
“It could look a lot nicer around here if everyone just pitched in,” he says optimistically.
Carlita, their sponsor child, fled the first time she saw them.
“She just didn’t recognize us,” says Lisa. “We look different in the photo we sent her.”
Carlita’s mother Fabiola was surprised to see the Nillsons at her door one morning. They invited her to their “house-warming” party.
“I’m not sure what ‘Save the date’ means,” says Fabiola in Spanish, still puzzling over the perfumed invitation card.
Lisa says Carlita’s family has been “a little stand-offish and that’s fine. They want to know if we’re in this for the long haul, and rest assured, we are.”
Greg is still trying to keep the roof from leaking during tropical downpours, but “standing in the doorway seeing Carlita walk off to school each morning makes it all worth it.”
He also says he’s getting to know Carlita’s father, who hangs around the hut most of the day.
“I want to start an accountability group with the guys in the neighborhood and really get into each others’ lives,” Greg says.
The Nillsons have been seen peering through the fence in the play yard at school, waving at Carlita.
“My friends say, ‘Tell your sponsor parents to go away. It’s annoying,’” says Carlita, who prefers receiving occasional care packages to the new, closer contact.
The Nillsons often drop by her hut, twenty feet away, offering cookies and wanting to forge relational connections with Carlita’s family. They are quietly considering buying the entire neighborhood and starting an HOA, to put basic living standards in place.
“A good HOA won’t tell you what color to paint your house, but prohibiting use of the main pathway as a latrine might serve us all well,” says Greg.
The Nillsons say they will fight through every difficulty, for Carlita’s sake.
“Making this our second home is our way of saying, ‘You mean more to us than just a monthly contribution,’” Lisa says. “We’ve put our stake into the ground. This is real.”
For their part, Carlita’s parents are considering moving to the other side of the neighborhood and hoping the Nillsons won’t find them.
The equivalent here in the US of A is “I’m from the Obama Administration and I’m here to help.”
Good luck Nillson’s. They do realize that they have just become the winter solstice feast for the village?
I know it’s satire.
In Honduras, life does YOU!
Sounds like the beginning of an episode of “Locked Up Abroad” I recently saw.
For their part, Carlita’s parents are considering moving to the other side of the neighborhood and hoping the Nillsons won’t find them.
LOL!
Creepy. Very creepy.
"Let's play "weekend shanty hut occupants"
I have news from them, the way things are going it may soon be a permanent way of life. Right here. In the good ol' US of A.
Having said that, I think they have their priorities out of order. Buying it all up and starting an HOA is fine, but first these folks need is to bring true, life-saving changes to their safety and security.
And I think we can all agree, that begins with declaring the settlement a Nuclear Free Zone.
Oh my god-—this is satire? How bad is it that it never even crossed my mind that it was not real? I KNOW people who would do this. And they’d brag about it like they are really culturally sophisticated.
Shouldn’t a good satire have something in it, somewhere, that’s just so over-the-top it can’t possibly be true?
lol. Great satire, and not much of a stretch. A friend of mine who works for an ngo in Haiti says getting “Orphan” status for one’s children is something of a cottage industry for people at the top of the hierarchy. Many of the so called “orphans” are actually children of politicians, doctors, and lawyers who have discovered it is an excellent way to supplement their income.
I bet they look like the couple in the picture.
I like this story better: http://www.larknews.com/archives/5370
You mean there’s not?
Really, in a sane world this should be pretty way over the top.
Except we are so over the bend, it's entirely plausible.
Not that I can see ... seriously ... re-read the thing with that annoying, slightly lispy, pseudo-british “NPR Accent”.
In a sane world, it would be the plot for a ridiculous slapstick comedy film.
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