Sweet
Moments at the Columbia Opportunity Center (Names below have been changed to protect the shy.) Guadelupe saw that I was experimenting with long-distance telephoning using the computers and the internet. She brought her husband to the Center early one Sunday morning, and we tested the system with a call to his parents in El Salvador. He stood in the lab, awkwardly wearing our headset, and spoke with both his mother and father for over a half hour, speaking rapidly in Spanish, while Guadelupe and I sat and talked. After awhile, I asked her what he was saying. She said he was apologizing for not getting in touch with them sooner. I asked how long it had been. "Fourteen years," she quietly replied. Since their oldest child (of four) is not yet fourteen-years-old, I guess there was a lot of catching up to do. He has spoken with them several times since then, and his parents plan to assist him to visit them in El Salvador at Christmastime. Soon after Danila's marriage and the birth of their baby, her husband, unable to find work locally, traveled to the U.S. to look for a job. He found one, but Danila and her son have been unable to get a visa to join him. There was little communication between them until the internet came to COC. Danila and her little one became daily visitors to the Opportunity Center. Although she and her husband weren't able to engage in live chats, they wrote long messages to each other for months and gradually worked out their future together. In September, Danila was fortunate to find a teaching position at a school in a nearby village, and her husband will return home to stay in December. A couple years ago, Alphonso answered an advertisement in nearby Punta Gorda and traveled to the States to work at a Branson, Missouri hotel for their eight-month season. When he left, he intended to return the following season, but Homeland Security thwarted his employer's attempts to rehire him. A year has gone by since he left, and he mentioned to me that he had been told that his income tax refund was going to be direct-deposited into his U.S. bank account. I told him I might be able to help. He brought in his banking information and we accessed his account online. When I looked up from the computer and told him he had an account balance of BZ$1,200, his jaw dropped. Then, I was able to assist him in accessing the account through a Belize money-changer. He was very grateful! Anna is
in her early twenties and loves computers. One day, she told me about
a Catholic missionary who had lived with her family for two years when
she was a little girl. It was clear that they had bonded as good friends.
Her family had long since lost touch with him, so I suggested we look
for him on the internet. We had little luck with the "People Finders"
because his name was fairly common and she was not sure which state he
was from. Then we "googled" him and found all kinds of news
about him, learning of his current development project in Haiti. I moved
on to help another computer user, and then forgot all about it. A couple
weeks later, Anna told me that she had found an e-mail address on the
web and they had exchanged letters several times, rekindling their friendship!
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