Mocorón (Honduras) (EFE) Caribbean of Honduras, made her stay in this remote region.
“I came here in June of 1988 to do thesis work I needed to graduate from a university in Arlington, Texas. It was not easy to come to the Moskitia, but I did it with the help of people who had a lot of influence in Honduras, ”Love (63 years old) told EFE in Mocorón, where many of her residents call her“ mother ”.
Mocorón was a refugee camp and Nicaraguan “contras”
He added that when he arrived in the Moskitia, one of the richest areas in natural resources and exuberant beauty, but also one of the most impoverished and remote in Honduras, he felt “pity for the misfortune suffered by its people.”
In Mocorón, Love, a native of El Progreso, northern Honduras, received the impact of the camps with 10,000 Nicaraguan refugees, who had fled their country due to the internal armed conflict in Nicaragua.
In addition, there were many Nicaraguan “contra” fighters who were fighting to overthrow, with the support of the United States and Honduras, the Sandinista regime then led by Daniel Ortega.
“For a few months I went with a military guide that was assigned to me, I asked many questions, I learned a bit of the Miskito language, I learned what was happening with the war in Nicaragua and I became very fond of the children,” recalled Love, daughter of Juan Abogabir. , Israeli, and Elisa Abogabir, Spanish.
Her time in the Honduran Moskitia was spent touring the region, almost always accompanied by many children, to whom she spoke in English and Spanish and gave them sweets.
With friends in the US, he created the “Norma I Love Foundation”
“At night we made bonfires and I learned a lot about life with them,” Love said, not imagining that she would stay in Mocorón.
Before returning to the United States in August 1988 for his university thesis, where he had lived since he was about thirteen years old, he met a poor Miskito woman with her little son who was very sick, to whom he told that he would return in December to bring him medicine, food and clothing.
That sad story changed the life of Norma, who according to her story, upon arriving in the United States began to seek help at the university where she studied for the poor in Mocorón.
In November, Love had her house flooded with donations with medicines, food, clothes, toys and other things that she would bring to Mocorón in December, where she unfortunately did not find the woman with her sick son.
“I came in December, I looked for the lady and her son, but they told me that since you left she disappeared. We looked for her from house to house but we couldn’t find her, at that moment my heart changed”, said Love when evoking all that the Honduran Moskitia represents for her.
Support for women with the Spanish NGO “Ayuda en Acción”
The solidarity crusade in Arlington, with the help of his students, classmates, university professors and other friends, marked the beginning of what would later become the “Norma I Love Foundation” in the United States, to help the Miskitos of Mocorón and others. sectors.
“That was where my heart said: Norma, your life in the United States is very good, but now you have to help the poor and since then, from 1988 to 1998, two vans came every year full of things that I collected with the students and teachers to help this community”, he highlighted.
Around 1995, in Mocorón, her “best friend”, the lawyer and former congresswoman Carolina Echeverría Haylock, murdered on July 25, 2021 in Tegucigalpa, legalized the “Norma I Love Association” in Honduras.
Love is currently carrying out her solidarity work with a comprehensive vegetable garden project with women, backed by the Spanish NGO Ayuda en Acción, in the village of Salto, a few kilometers from Mocorón.
The first phase of the agricultural orchards project in Salto, which was recently closed, had as its corollary an exquisite gastronomic fair in Mocorón with products grown by the women.
The diners tasted the food prepared by the women of Salto based on cassava, sweet potato, malanga, coconuts and products such as fish, shellfish and deer meat, among others, livening up the atmosphere with dances from the Miskito ethnic group and thanks to Ayuda en Acción and the Norma I Love Association.