Florida Catholic | Missions :: Elderly Feed Children

MISSION SUNDAY

Home for the elderly feeds the young

DANIEL SOÑÉ | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 10.19.07

A young girl and her brother wait for food at Hogar de Ancianos (Home for Elderly) in Chinandega, Nicaragua. They are the fortunate ones because the home is only able to feed 300 children once a month and many others wait on the outside of the compound's walls and hope for a small handout.
- DANIEL SOÑÉ | FC

CHINANDEGA, Nicaragua | Every 13th of the month, St. Anthony's day, more than 300 children are fed in the poor city of Chinandega.

Poverty is rampant across the Nicaraguan landscape, but the children who are fed at Hogar de Ancianos, an elderly home, are especially poor. In many cases this is the only decent meal they receive all month.

The children who are fed by the home's director, Father Francisco Solorza, and his volunteer staff normally get their food and furniture from the trash heaps and landfills of Nicaragua. They come to the elderly facility skinny with distended bellies, ragged clothes and the comfort of knowing they will eat — at least today.

On July 27, the Hogar de Ancianos was able to scrounge up enough money to feed Chinandega's poor for a second time in a month, giving 15 missionaries from the Archdiocese of Miami a firsthand experience of what many in the U.S. only see on television: extreme poverty.

"These children are the poorest of the poor. They gather food in the landfills and from garbage bins around Chinandega," Father Solorza said.

By noontime, the courtyard of the facility was filled with hundreds of starving women and children. The children waited in a long line to wash their hands, and then waited in another longer line to be served.

The missionaries helped make sure the children's blackened hands were clean and helped serve the food to the hungry — rice, beans, tortillas and cheese.

"Oh my, there are more families coming. I don't think we'll have enough," said Chinandega volunteer Maria "Chola" Venerio as more hungry people pressed against the gates.

A handful of volunteers stood at the gates and strictly regulated the inflow of the hungry so as not to give false hope should food run out.

Pleas for food and more food came from between the bars of gates.

"Señora! Señora! Más por favor," ("Miss! Miss! More please") one boy said as he stretched his hands through the bars.

Despite the missionaries' feverish work, lack of funds prevented them from feeding all who crowded around the elderly home.

"Are we out of beans?" said Susana V. Lee, a home educator from Miami.

"Yep, we're out of beans," responded fellow missionary Michelle Hernandez.

One by one, the tortillas, beans, rice, meat and cheese disappeared to only scrapings.

"The food and the amount of food vary from month to month depending on what we can afford," said Venerio, the Chinandega volunteer. "We want to do this more than once a month, but we work with what God gives us. And it does a lot of good."

Feeding the young of Chinandega is not the only good the elderly home performs. The facility cares for about 60 elderly on a meager budget of $5,000 per month. The residents receive food, medicine and company — until the money runs out.

"Here we have the two extremes of those who need the most care: the young and the elderly. They are extremely valuable parts of our lives because one is our wisdom and the other is our future. We need to treat all with the dignity God has given them until he calls them home. This is our mission here," Father Solorza said.

After feeding the youngest of Chinandega, the Miami missionaries entered the former Sandinista military barracks where the oldest are housed.

"How are you doing today?" asked Father Jean Pierre, director of the archdiocese's Office of Missions, who is fluent in Spanish, English and Creole.

"Good now that you're here, Father," the elderly man responded.

"They receive few visitors. Many times their own families will not come here for months or years. They are essentially abandoned by their own families," Father Solorza said.

Dozens of kittens scurried around the feet of the elderly, perhaps their only consistent companions.

"Poverty does such terrible things. Their families cannot care for them and then are too ashamed to visit because they cannot care for their own parents," Venerio said.

Father Solorza and his staff said they were grateful to receive some extra help with the charitable work they do on a daily basis with the elderly and monthly with the children.

"The hardest parts of the work we do is filling the bellies of the children and filling the void of loneliness in the elderly," he said. You do not understand the tremendous good you have done today. You have allowed children to live longer and the elderly to know that they are not forgotten. Thank you."

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Home for the elderly feeds the young

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