Brooklyn Teens Visit Orphanage in Nicaragua

By Linda Busetti

Joseph Sousa Photo 

IN NICARAGUA, Monica Alvarez, left, Katherine Currier and Luke Gatta from St. Boniface Oratory Church, Downtown Brooklyn, take orphans from a Catholic run Mustard Seed Communities home out for a walk during a weeklong service project near the capital of Managua in July.

A group of teens from St. Boniface Oratory Church, Downtown Brooklyn, spent part of their summer vacation caring for abandoned disabled children at a Catholic run orphanage in Nicaragua.

Newly ordained Father Anthony Andreassi, C.O., and four other adults, Sandy Gannon, Joe Sousa, Richard Carlson and Monica Alvarez, accompanied them to Diramba, Nicaragua, July 7-14, on the international service project south of Managua.

The youths spent the week working at the Mustard Seed Communities home established in 2000, which serves about 30 children in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Mustard Seed Communities had their start in Jamaica in 1979. Members of St. Boniface’s Oratory Youth Leadership (OYL) group included Kathryn Bozzuffi, Matt Casey, Paul Bendernagel, Kate Carlucci, Gerry DiCarlo, Theo McKenzie, Michael Saterson, Alex Pelliccione, Megan Chellew, Luke Gatta, Katherine Currier, Anna Samulski and Ian Janczys.

OYL held car washes and bake sales to help pay costs of the trip.

To prepare, the group conducted service projects in a Missionaries of Charity soup kitchen in Harlem and at a Sisters of Charity home in Yonkers.

Gatta said he found out about the service project from Father Andreassi, his history teacher at Regis H.S., last September. “There was a lot of planning and vaccinations,” in preparation, he said.

Fifteen-year-old Alex Pelliccione thought the service project would be a good experience, but “We had no idea what to expect.” Soon after arrival in Managua, they were immersed.

“It put a face on poverty,” Gatta said.

Gerry DiCarlo, 17, “always wanted to do something good and this was a good opportunity.”

Since her Confirmation Kathryn Bozzuffi, 15, has been part of OYL. She had heard so much about “Father Mark’s (Lane, pastor) mission trips to other countries” and thought she would like to have that experience.

DiCarlo expected to find “very poor conditions, very sad. It surprised me how everyone was happy. The families in the town were tight knit.”

Pelliccione found it “amazing” that amid such poverty the staff was “so happy.”

At the Mustard Seed home, the young people lived in the same building with the orphans, “about 20 feet away,” sleeping on camp beds.

They found it “clean and well-maintained” despite the “crushing poverty” of the surrounding area, Father Andreassi said.

The physical care of the children – feeding and hygiene – were taken care of by staff, who is paid about $60 a month.

The teens mainly played with and interacted with the orphans. Gatta’s favorite was Hamilicar, a boy of about three years old. “It was so easy to make him smile,” Gatta said. The little boy had no visible physical handicap in contrast to Elvira, 6, whose tiny body showed profound physical disability.

“We have so much and depend on so much,” Pelliccione said. “But a lot of the people in the town are happier and they have so little.”

There were blackouts every day and the loss of electricity meant that water couldn’t be pumped from water towers. All the clothes were washed by hand.

Pelliccione bonded with one little boy, Moises, about six years old, whose one leg was shorter than the other. On the first day, they took the children on a walk to church. It was the first time all the children had been out in while. The children were very happy with simple things like crayons and paper the OYL volunteers had brought.

An adult volunteer, Joe Sousa, would get up early and help feed one little girl with cerebral palsy.

During their daily times of reflection, the members of the group discussed how the people could be so happy when they seemed to have so little.

“Personally, I think the adults know what is out there in the world, but they realize they have to make the best of what they have,” DiCarlo said.

He and Brian, a deaf boy of about eight, somehow found a way to communicate. “I really miss him,” DiCarlo said. He was surprised how emotional he got recently looking back over photos from the trip.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, half the group played with the children while the other half helped to mix and pour concrete for the site of a new residence for disabled young adults. On Thursday, they visited a garbage dump in which local people lived, which Father Andreassi described as an “overpowering experience.”

Visiting the garbage dump was “psychologically very tough,” Gatta said. As the bus moved 100 yards into the dump, they had to close the windows because there were so many flies. They turned off music that had been playing and observed the scene in eerie silence.

The bus drove on and they could see “little shanties where people live,” Pelliccione said. “You could never be ready for it.”

They parked near a concrete building with children waving from the windows and realized it was a school in the middle of the garbage dump.

A few youngsters stayed on the bus, but most got off the bus to deliver food donations they had brought. One woman resident was in charge of distribution and knew which families had last received food. If you weren’t on the list to receive food this month you didn’t get any.

The teens passed out sacks of fruit, bread and other food. After about an hour, they got back on the bus and drove out of the dump through open fields with cows and piles of garbage.

“People with fabric over their faces were going through the garbage looking for something they could eat or sell,” Pelliccione said.

Gatta, who brought a camera to document the trip, couldn’t bring himself to photograph some scenes that day such as people so poor they had no clothes to wear. “I didn’t want to treat them as though they were animals in a zoo,” he said.

An adult chaperone, who is a filmmaker, told him to get past that feeling and to document what he saw.

“They are living that way right now as we speak,” Gatta reflected from home. It made him consider what we really need, he said. “Do we really need an iPod?” On the other hand, he said, the experience made him “appreciate having the iPod, as well as a warm bed and something to eat.”

Gatta is compiling a photo album to share with friends and family.

Even though these children live in poverty, he said, he looks at the photos and sees smiles.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the visitors were “shell-shocked,” by the experience, Gatta said. On one hand it was fun to be with the kids, but it was also terribly sad. “It changed our lives.”

Gatta had already been thinking of becoming a doctor, but this trip clarified that goal – he now wants to become a pediatrician with a mission group such as Doctors Without Borders.

Before making the trip, Pelliccione thought about a medical career, but was discouraged by the long years of study. Now he says, “it would all be worth it” to be able to go back to Nicaragua to help.

“It was depressing,” Bozzuffi said of the dump. “Hard to believe that people lived there every day. It was devastating.”

When she returned to the U.S. she tried to tell friends, but they “can’t fully understand…how deeply Nicaragua affected me, the emotional connection.” She says she’ll never forget it.

“From being there I learned to appreciate things. They can’t drink the water there. Here I can take a long shower and have AC….Wow! I am so lucky.”

DiCarlo hopes to become a psychologist. Whether he can offer medical skills or not, “I definitely want to go back there.”

The hardest part of the trip was visiting the dump, he said. “After half an hour I was coughing from the smell.” Father Andreassi put it best, he said, by calling it “hell on earth.” The water was polluted and people got their food “out of the garbage.”

Since he’s been back, he has tried to tell friends, but “they can’t understand because they haven’t been there.”

“Anyone who gets a chance to do this should. This kind of experience puts everything in perspective. I’ve learned to appreciate things.”

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