Muriela's Shack...is home.

Well, Edgar’s been a busy man with all the responsibility of taking care of the North Carolina group, so I wasn’t too surprised or worried when he forgot to pick me up that morning. They all came to get me on the way back to church, where we had another lunch at Comenzano (where I’ve become an honorary member of the staff). Afterwards, I went to help them paint more of the mural, which by now had come a long way. I painted the word “HOPE” in the shapes of white cloud puffs coming from a train’s smokestack, then chalked some more inspiring words on each of the train’s compartments: esperanza, fe, amor. Hope, faith, and love. I wouldn’t be able to help them at the school tomorrow, because of a date I had planned with Gelion, so that was all I was able to do before we finished.

It started raining again, so we finished what we could and cleaned up the paint. Muriela from Comenzano saw me outside and beckoned me to follow her to her home, which actually stood only a few homes away from the HOPE school. I was amazed to walk through the flimsy metal walls to find a few rooms of a makeshift house separated by sheets or cardboard. There was even a kitchen with a little stove they had somehow plugged in, and a refrigerator, but otherwise, the house was bare. One room held all the beds, which were strewn about the floor haphazardly, and I was reminded again of the extreme poverty these people endured. Muriela then told me how flimsy her house was, and that one good push could topple everything. It would cost her $12,000 to fix it. $12,000; dollars, not quetzales! To keep a flimsy house from falling over. It blew my mind.

She obviously can’t afford that kind of money, or she would be in a better house to begin with. Muriel is a single mother of 3 children who are all over 7 years of age, her oldest being about 11 or 12. Muriel is in her thirties.

How can I ever be dissatisfied with my life when I remember her, when I remember how many situations are like hers or worse?