A Flashlight Tale.

I want to tell you a story. 

This story has a lesson. 

This story is about a flashlight.

All of the new volunteers went into the capitol, Tegucigalpa (Tegus for short). The main object was for some of the old volunteers to show us around but we also needed to obtain cell phones. Many an old volunteer has sung the praises of a phone with a flashlight. It seemed a bit silly to me. Plus, I have a pretty great headlamp. Still, I decided to go for it when it came down to picking out a phone.

Little did I know how soon I would be a phone flashlight convert.

The ranch has been having some issues with electricity the past couple of days. Not super unusual but for some reason we had no electricity and no water all day Thursday. Luckily, it came on before it got dark here and we all headed out to our Hogars. I was in Casa Suyapa, which houses the smallest children. I was working with the little boys. Wow. They could run the Ranch off the amount of energy those boys have.

So there I am, hanging out outside with a group of about seven boys, who are already about as much as I can handle. And then it happens. The power goes out.  It is PITCH BLACK.

Chaos ensues. Someone is crying. A few people are fighting. I am being climbed like a tree.

Can you guess what I did next??

I pulled out my super sweet new phone, and turned on the flashlight!! It was brilliant. The kids were a bit calmer. I could at least see what was going on, and even attempted, unsuccessfully, to calm down the crying kid and break up a wrestling match or two.  Mentally, I was singing the praises of my new phone flashlight, when I felt something. See, here is the thing about light when it is dark out, it attracts bugs. This rule still applies in Honduras.

So there I am, standing amongst a pile of children, shining my flashlight and something is crawling on my face. Something big. Something very very much alive. Now, how I see it, I had two options:

1) Freak out and scream like crazy

2)Stay very calm and get the bug off my face

Shockingly, I went with option two. I made a split second decision to try and keep the kids as calm as possible. So I slowly reached up with my free hand and swatted the massive (potentially cockroach) bug thing away. The kids were none the wiser.

All of this is to say, my life feels very different right now. Very good. But oh so different.

The moral:

Stay calm when bugs land on your face.

Oh, and buy a camera with a flashlight!