Stupid Decision

So you have read about Quincho and the plan to buy a motorcycle HERE and about him getting kicked out of New Horizon with us HERE.

We decided together that it would be best for him to continue to stay at our house until we got back from the States. Then he was getting a large, lump sum that he could use to buy land and put up a shelter, rather than buy a motorcycle. What good does a motorcycle do when you have no place to park it?

He knew of some land for sale that he had chopped before. He had actually ridden a bicycle there before from his house. He could purchase the land and then have money left over to put up four walls. I told him I would help him install the electricity and plumbing. It sounds pretty straight forward and makes perfect sense.

Unfortunately Quincho has no discipline and is an easy sucker. His family kept pressuring him to get more money from me while I was in the States, so he spent 10% that way to help with some unknown medical problem his mom had.

Then when I got back he needed another 10% to pay off some loans. I later found out that these were loans from people who could retaliate and that he had actually borrowed from other people as well that he hasn't paid back. Some was receiving help and promising wages after he got his money.

After we had been back for a week Quincho is told by his family that it is his responsibility to go to Guate City and help his sister who's kid is in the hospital. So instead of buying land, he asks for half of the money he still has coming to him. We talk about the foolishness of taking that much money on a bus and going to Guate, and how he will spend it and not have anything left. We both know that there is no chance he will be able to buy land, but I could not get him to understand that the consequence is that he'd have no place to live.

He took the money and left. I offered the whole thing to him, but he only wanted half.

A week later he called me and asked me to deposit the other half of the money into his brother in law's account. I saw that one coming. By this time I had taken account of the things missing or destroyed and told him that I would deposit the money minus those items. He didn't have anything to say about it, to him he was still getting a lot of money.

I have talked to him twice since then, but now I haven't talked to him in over a month and a half. He is notorious for losing or selling his cell phone. I hope and pray that he is doing well, but this was one of those things where the money could have really helped him. I would like for him to come back, but it would be a bad decision for him at this point because he would have no job and no place to live. I hope he gets as much from his sister and her family as they got from him.

We didn't give anything away for free. We actually paid him a fair wage, and he earned it. Our dogs were healthy and nobody broke into our house. He just couldn't handle responsibility when handed to him for the first time in his life.

Here's a picture of him from the last time he got a job in Guate:

He was guarding this truck of off-brand Cola. He quit because after two months he had still not been paid.