On Her Experiences
Crystal Clusiau: How has the specific work you’ve done with Our Little Roses evolved, say from when you were 14 and you first went to now, when you’re older and more experienced and you have relationships with them?
Sarah DeCamps: When I first went down there for a longer period of time I think I was eighteen. I went down there to teach English in their bilingual school, and realized that, I don’t like to teach. It was a good experience, but I started off doing one or two acute tasks, just volunteer work - I tutored and I mentored a lot of the kinds and I taught in a summer English program to 15 first grade-aged kids. Then after I continued to go back I started to work with the girls that live in the home and I did a lot of one on one mentoring, got to know a lot of the kids on a more individual level, and got involved in specific things that were going on in their lives. I was helping some girls get enrolled into the university, and helping teach them different skills and whatever it may be. Now I would say my role is more involved in management. I do a lot of fundraising here, I do a lot of speaking engagements with different churches and non-profits, I’ve worked on their website, and I’ve attended the past couple board meetings just as an observer. The woman that runs the organization invited me to come, just see what I see and learn what I learn; it was an eye opening experience for me to be able to be a part of that. Now, I lead a lot of groups down there, I’m taking a group in May, from Richmond, and then I’m taking a group from Alexandria in July.
CC: Could you tell me about some of the personal relationships that you have with the women at Our Little Roses?
SD: There’s one young woman that I’ve known as long as I’ve been going down there, and she came into the home in a very bad situation; her mother severely abused her… She was awful for a long time, just awful. She treated everyone around her like they didn’t deserve to be around her, and she was rude. I think a lot of people expected that she would end up just pregnant and run off, that she was just there for a while. When I first started going down there I always paid attention to her because she has this way of controlling everyone around her, in this really, kind of bizarre way. I mean, she’s bossy, but she just has this power to kind of engage people. Then they decided that they needed to give her something productive to do, because she wasn’t say, academically inclined, like a lot of people around her were. So they assigned her to work in the building where all the little girls live, and kind of be one of the house-mothers, and they started paying her. I think this is probably the best thing they could have done for her - she just really came into her own. She just realized that she loved to be around kids, and she was good at it. I mean, she could whip 25 kids into shape in ten minutes; if they need to be standing in line to get on a bus she’ll do it, and no one else can do it. They listen to her, a lot of these younger kids look to her as a mom now. It has been truly a joy to get to know her, because she has just really come around, and I don’t think she trusts a lot of people, and so the fact that I just kept coming back, I think was just the huge thing for her; she doesn’t get to know a lot of the volunteers like… you know, I consider her one of my best friends down there now. I mean, she’s actually my same age, so you know, in the end it has worked out for us to be really good friends.
There’s another young woman named who everyone pays attention to, because she’s beautiful, and she will step out on a limb and speak to you, she’s not shy, or anything like that. She learned English, not perfectly, but well enough, and she’s always willing to go up and talk to people – so patient – with, you know, if you didn’t understand then she’d repeat it, or she’d say it more slowly in Spanish. A lot of people sponsor her. Because, just over the years she’s gotten to know all these different American groups that come, and so all these churches end up sponsoring her. If you get to know her, she really is, she’s absolutely wonderful. She has taken nothing for granted that’s been given to her, she will write each person a thank you note every time they come and see her, she emails people, which takes a lot more time and effort down there. She’s just very special. When she graduated from high school she tried out all these different things, stuff with computers, or science. She knew she wanted to do something where she could really make a difference and give back to the home. So she took some biology classes and now she’s in dental school – and that’s really neat, because she’s the first girl that we have had in a professional program. She has all these plans, that she’s talked to people about, you know, coming back and opening up a dental clinic at the home, and so it’s been wonderful to get to know her. She just called me on my birthday. I mean, she just is always thinking about other people, so it’s just nice.
CC: What about the staff members? Do you have close relationships with them as well?
SD: There is one woman who’s been there for about 6 or 7 years now, and I got to know her because when I first started going down there I was placed in a room with her, and you get to know someone when you’re stuck in a room with them… But she’s really wonderful too because she’s so patient with a lot of these kids, I mean, she knows they’re not hers, but she really treats them like they’re hers. She got married two or three years ago, subsequently got pregnant, and I am the godmother to her daughter. So, I went down and we had this whole big baptism, and so that was really nice.
CC: Do you feel like through your experiences down there that you have a special connection with those Hondurans and their culture?
SD: Definitely, definitely. People joke that I’m half Honduran or something because I’ve been there for Christmas, I’ve been there for Easter before, I’ve spent a lot of holidays with them so I think they can know that I’ve, you know, given their culture a chance…
CC: Do you feel like, or have you ever felt like working there has given you a sense of power, in any way?
SD: You know, it’s funny, I think that is maybe the classic problem in organizations like this, in any non-profit, because nobody’s in it for the money (chuckles). There’s so much power to be wielded in positions like this, because it’s peoples’ lives that are at stake. There is a lot of control, and power issues with a lot of people within the organization. Not just staff, but everyone. And, I think everyone kind of thinks, well she has this power and she has that power; I think that’s a problem that people need to recognize.
CC: That people take advantage of their power almost?
SD: Maybe not even on purpose, but the amount of power that people have and just acknowledging that they have it and knowing that they are always going to at least try to use it for good and not take advantage of someone’s situation.
CC: Do you feel like working there has made you feel like you had more of a power to help, maybe in other arenas as well?
SD: Yeah, definitely, yeah.
CC: On the contrary to that, have you ever been in a position where you’ve felt vulnerable?
SD: I mean, I would definitely say yes, but if you asked me an example, I don’t know if I could give you one off the top of my head. I mean, in my position down there, I’m often the only American, and that’s not to say there aren’t a lot of Americans around, but often with the work I choose to do down there, I surround myself with Hondurans, and not as much with Americans. Most often the times I feel vulnerable is when I don’t have a comfort to look to and say ‘what do I do here,’ ‘how should I answer that question,’ or ‘how should I deal with this.’ You know, because I’m not Honduran. As much as I know about the culture, I have my values too…
CC: Do you find that having the sense of power that you feel, whether it’s good, bad, to help, or anything, do you feel like that puts extra stress on you, or does it act rather as an inspiration?
SD: I would say both, depending on the situation. Definitely, when you know you have the power to do something that’s really going to change someone or affect someone positively, that’s a motivator. But, certainly, if there’s a… Like, we just found out that one of the teacher’s mothers had a really bad brain hemorrhage. You know, and just, that kind of a situation where ‘what do you do,’ ‘how do you help her,’ ‘who do you turn to,’ I mean, that’s just stressful. You know, knowing that someone’s looking to you because they don’t know who else to go to, and how do you help them.
CC: Could you tell me maybe about some of the most meaningful moments you’ve had with Our Little Roses?
SD: Well, definitely being a part of the teacher’s baptism of her daughter and all that was very special. Also, each of the summers that I went down there, I went with a friend who I actually met down there. Each summer we agreed to go back together for three years in a row so we got to know each other really well. She was from Birmingham, Alabama. And she got married, she got engaged when she graduated from college, and took her whole family, and some people down there, and that was really cool for her, and for the girls, I mean, the message that she sent to them, that it was important for her to get married there must have been really powerful to them. Another special time, we had a young woman, and she came to the home a very difficult case as well. She was sort of one of the original ones; she came when it was a much smaller organization. She’s beautiful and smart, and rough around the edges, and several years after she had been there, she kind of pushed her way through a lot of the education, and she was doing pretty well, and the group from Christ Church went down there, and this woman met her. Diana, the woman that runs the organization said, ‘well maybe you’d like to have Aurora come live with you in the states for a while.’ So, Aurora came here, and had a completely awful time. She just wasn’t ready for a change like that. But she went back to Honduras, and finally I think it occurred to her sometime down the road that it was a worthwhile experience for her, that she had learned a lot, and she had established relationships. She really does consider the family that she lived with, the woman and her daughter, to be her family. Then what happened was she went back, and she ended up going to college, and she ended up graduating valedictorian of her class, and she ended up meeting a wonderful young man whose family owns a coffee plantation in Honduras, and the family that she lived with ended up throwing her a beautiful wedding in Honduras. They did the ceremony at the church, and the family participated in the wedding, and we all went down for it, and we brought about 15 people from the church to go, and it was just absolutely wonderful. Everybody was crying, and that this girl had come so far, and that she had meant that much to these people.
CC: What about maybe some more difficult times that you’ve had?
SD: I mean, there has been lots of those too. We had a young girl who came to the home, and social services got her in because they didn’t disclose that she was HIV positive. But Our Little Roses just doesn’t have the resources to take care of – I mean, there are places for kids that are sick, and Our Little Roses is not one of them; at the time it would have cost about $3000 a month for the ‘cocktail’ drug, I think is what it’s called. So when they found out, they called everyone together and we had this meeting and Diana explained that we were going to have to give this child away, and she was going to have to go somewhere else, and these kids just said, ‘no, absolutely not, she’s been here for six months, she lives here now, she’s one of us, you’re not giving her away.’ She ended up staying for three or four more years, so it was a really hard thing for people to deal with, and it was an education piece for a lot of those kids, because they know of AIDS and they know of HIV, and a lot of their parents have had it and even died of it, but they’ve never really been right there next to it and realizing what it’s all about. We ended up finding a place for her at a Catholic home designed for kids with HIV. That was tough, but it was a really good learning experience. Also, some of the tougher moments have really been seeing a lot of these kids, who you know have just this enormous potential, end up pregnant, and, that is sort of my value system, in how I sort of wrap my brain around that. For them it’s not as bad as if you’re in the middle of your college experience and you got pregnant, and you would think ‘oh my gosh, you know I wasn’t ready for this, I didn’t want kids ‘til I was, you know, 27,’ or something. But for them it’s totally different. We look at that and say, ‘that’s not a success,’ because she didn’t graduate and she doesn’t have a job and she’s not going to bring a child into this world any better off than she was. So, it’s hard for me to grapple with that issue, but a lot of them aren’t able to finish college or finish high school if they end up pregnant, and that’s something that we have to deal with.
CC: How has working with Out Little Roses changed your life?
SD: How has it changed my life… Well, it has kind of made me who I am, because, you know, some people have jobs where it’s just a job, but I kind of see this as my life and what I do. I feel like so much of my life is there, and the friends that I have there, and I go there for holidays and it’s almost like going home sometimes. So in that sense, it has broadened my relationships and broadened my family. And then, it’s what I’ll probably be doing for a good while.