Manos Amor

Manos Amor- Hands of Love. The long awaited opening of the Bucerias Children's Orphanage opened yesterday. It's called Manos Amor. The community has been fund raising for this orphanage for a number of years. Previously, the place where the children lived was in a gruesome place although I had never seen it.
Anyway, yesterday we decided to attend the opening and give a donation. It was quite emotional. Right now, they have completely paid for the land and building, but only have enough funds for one full time staff member and lots of volunteers. There are two large rooms, one for ninos (boys) and one for ninas (girls) and each has 12 beds. There's a large kitchen and a storeroom for food, which mainly contains rice and beans. There are both girls and boys bathrooms, with showers. Of course there are also rooms for the administration. The place is very sparse but very clean. There are only 10 kids there now because they cannot cope with more until they have more staff. The lady who has been instrumental in getting this done told me that there is a great need to take more kids, but they just can't. I have to wonder where these poor children are right now.
So, it was actually quite nice to see the place and meet some of the kids. They were so EXCITED to be hosting this party for the community. They were all dressed in their best clothes, polished shoes and braided hair for the girls. There was so much food and grills being set up when we left so I'm sure the party continued on long past the posted time of 6pm!
The kids were adorable. We were totally amused by the boys, grabbing bottles of soda pop from the coolers, then after shaking them up, climbed the monkey bars and let them explode!
Gail has been thinking of volunteering there, but I don't know if she will. It is a little far from where we live, so she couldn't walk there, and it's quite a drive over what we would consider logging roads. So, we will see.