Nearly one month in!

The time here is absolutely flying by and Tuesday will mark 4 weeks in Honduras! Over the past month I feel like I've learnt significantly more about this country than I would have done if I had just visited for a holiday. For example, finding out about politics, corruption, environmental standards and history has really interested me, as has learning from our hosts about the biggest problems facing Hondurans today. For example, the average age women have their first child here is between 15 and 20 which as you can imagine only leads to further issues. There's an article about it here which focuses on Guatemala but the situation in Honduras is very similar http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/aug/26/guatemala-rape-early-pregnancy-sex-education-catholic-church?CMP=fb_gu

Myself and Innes are getting used to everything being very different from at home, whether it's from sharing a bedroom with lizards to all village roads being dirt track, to being able to pick oranges from the garden, to several power cuts a week or to seeing 'JesoCristo' (Jesus Christ) 'Dios' (God), Hijo (son) and Rey (King) written everywhere! I'm still getting used to living in a very Christian community and received a hefty kick from Innes under the table the other day when nearly beginning to eat before our hosts has said grace, oops. 

The local buses! 

Although we had already started to teach at the primary school once a week, this week we properly started our schedule at Miqueas. In the mornings Gaby and I work with a young boy who is both blind and deaf and due to being severely malnourished when he arrived at the orphanage, he remains physically quite weak. We are doing physiotherapy work with him and activities to improve his motor skills, with the hope to move onto finding ways to communicate with him. This is really interesting and has involved a lot of research into deafblind children. I have a session in the morning and one in the afternoon with children between 4-6 to teach basic english and this week we've been doing animals and where they live. This can be pretty challenging at times (considering I've got no experience working with this age group) but the children are sweet and it can also be pretty rewarding.

The jungle! 

Following this I do homework with 4 of the older kids, which can also be a struggle, because no one likes homework right? I also discovered that I can't do the maths the 11 year olds are doing, how embarrassing...

Thursday mornings at the primary school continue to be good fun, the children work hard and are always so keen to show me their work when they're finished.

Some of the children I teach at the school, boys vs girls football 

Maybe now would also be a good time to mention that I have never until this week appreciated how much work my own teachers did for me! (And if any of you are reading, thank you!) The background work, researching, lesson planning, making resources or worksheets, the time, patience and energy, teachers really don't receive enough recognition for this, especially from the pupils. I don't think you can fully understand it until you go through it yourself but it's definitely worth it! 

Today consisted of a full-on morning from which we are now recovering in our hammocks which we bought from a big indoor market last week in San Pedro Sula. (Yes we made it in and out of the murder capital of the world, where statistically 3 people are murdered a day, without so much as a scratch or a scrape -proud). On this excursion we also tried our first 'Baleada' which is a very popular local food - tortillas with cheese, beans, butter and avocado and it was delicious!

It's a hard life isn't it! 

Innes and her Baleada! 

Anyway, to get back on track, we got up at 6.30 this morning to climb the hill behind the village. Granted, it was only a short walk but it felt like a real adventure! Armed with a machete, Miqueas's handyman Karin, lead the way! From the top we could see palm oil plantations (hmm) stretching as far as we could see, La Colorada and other nearby villages! It was an amazing view, which sadly didn't capture well on camera due to the morning haze. 15 minutes, no snake attacks later and walking through what appeared to be someone's garden, we were back at the bottom.

Careful kids that's a dangerous weapon!

My morning continued at a fast pace by taking 6 of the children at Miqueas down to 'El Campo' (the local park/field) for football training which I'm really excited to be doing every week with them. All in all, despite a few sulks, it was very successful, and having played football for about 8 years it was easy for me to make up drills for them. A few are very good but for others the concept of structure, listening, following instructions and good sportsmanship is more important than the skills itself! The pitch is surrounded by palm trees with views of the mountains and if it weren't for the rubbish that the locals leave on it or dump in the woods behind (no infrastructure for rubbish collection here, it's dump or burn it - horrific) it would be beautiful. 

I hope everyone at home is enjoying the updates, these may be less frequent from now on as we will be moving out of our hosts house and into our own little house in the village which has no wifi. (Which I'm looking forward to because let's face it I have no self control to stop myself using it here).

Adios! 

Avocado and orange collection!

Preaching, teaching and beaching

Nearly two weeks after arriving in Honduras we're beginning to feel pretty settled in, although every day we still find ourselves saying "I can't believe we're actually here" and it's weirder still knowing that we're not leaving anytime soon.   We've written bucket lists for where we want to travel to in Central America in the year and also everything we want to achieve, ranging from celebrating Robbie Burns day with the children at Miqueas to learning to cook Honduran meals to finding out about the politics and history of the country.

As much as I want to keep these posts short, there is so much to write about so here's some of the more interesting events of this week-

1.Last Sunday, Innes, Gaby and I attended church with Melody and Jacob and the older children, which is something at home I have never done. 97% of the Honduran population are Roman Catholic and Christianity plays a large part in people's lives here. We were made to feel very welcome and enjoyed the hymns and service in Spanish, although as the service focussed on the Christian definition of marriage it certainly contrasted with many of mine and Innes's own beliefs and with what is considered normal in British society. Our eyes had been opened.

2. We also went into San Pedro Sula with Melody and Jacob to do a big food shop at the Honduran version of Costco - shopping for 40 is no walk in the park. What we saw of the city was very, very, very American with a lot of fast food chains, big malls and shops. In fact I didn't like the city very much and it felt weird being in what was pretty much identical to our Costco shopping amongst the middle class people when a high number of Hondurans live below the poverty line of $2 US dollars a day.

3. On Thursday morning we taught our first classes at the local school and it was a great success! Although the schools are required by Honduran law to teach a lesson of English a week to all the children, this school has never been able to do so as there are a lack of teachers and as a result none of the teachers or pupils knew a word of our language. Communication-wise this provided an interesting challenge to us! However when planning the lessons we had prepared some spanish phrases so we got by ok. I am teaching the 1st-3rd grade classes and we began with head, shoulders, knees and toes and related activities. Despite preparing for the worst with class rules and discipline methods all the children were excellently well behaved and seeing the smiles on their face when they showed me their work or singing the songs was really rewarding. It felt really good to be making a difference and if these children only learn a small amount of english with one lesson a week for a year, it may give them an important head-start when applying for jobs in a country where a knowledge of english in increasingly desired by employers. One thing for sure is that we will really look forward to our mornings at the school due to the inspiring commitment and eagerness the children show to learn!

4. On friday, Innes and I carried out our first activities with the youngest group of children at Miqueas 6.8, aged 2-5 and even if it was only duck, duck, goose, ball games and making paper chains of people we felt pretty proud as with all children this age, their attention spans are extremely short. The children here are so much fun to work with and we're looking forward to starting our proper schedules tomorrow. We also took part in the singing session which takes place each week with all the children, Tia's and the parents and Innes and I felt very moved as all the children sang their hearts out to the lively Spanish Christian songs. I've also really enjoyed being able to play football with the older boys and am hoping to do some proper training with them at the football pitch later on in the year.

5. Yesterday we took our first proper day trip in Honduras to Tela, a town on the Carribean coast, which is 1 hour from here on the local bus. This cost 35 lempiras each way (£1 get in!) and if I thought journeys on the 201 seemed boring before, they've paled even further in comparison with this route. We travelled through the mountains with stunning views, dangerous over-taking, watching people ride by in the back of pick-up trucks and seeing vans piled high with fruits we've never seen before. Travelling by local transport felt both "wow how adventurous" and also as if it was a completely normal thing to do. In Tela we met Ellena and Jessie, two of the Project Trusters who are working at a school there and it was great to hear about everything they've been up to so far and to get shown around the town and the beach. The beach was gorgeous, the sea was warm and the sky was blue. Palm trees and small restaurants with hammocks lined the top of the beach, it felt truly exotic! Spanish music was playing whilst we sunbathed (a mistake, I got badly sunburned) and we also walked by lots of stalls selling cool jewellery. It was particularly nice that everyone around was locals, I think the vibe would have been very different it was full of tourists. I think it's safe to say we'll spend a lot of our weekends here!

6. This afternoon we went across to see the little house that Innes, Gaby and I will move into in September. We love Melody and Jacob's company but are also looking forward to having a garden and our own kitchen. We're hoping to get hammocks to hang outside, chickens (eggs are one of our main sources of protein since meat here is expensive) and Gaby wants to build an outside oven that all the locals have for us to cook baleadas (tortillas) and pizza on. The previous volunteers here planted pepper plants and herbs which is cool and there is an avocado tree in the garden and a tree with weird green fruits like oranges. The garden is currently weeds, weeds and more weeds so this is another big project to fill our time!

I think this pretty much sums up the main events of this week! Hope everyone at home is well and good luck to all my friends starting uni soon! 

First impressions!

We arrived at our project in La Colorada on Tuesday evening after an exhausting, yet relatively stress-free, 19 hours of travelling - that is in comparison to the other half of the Honduras group who nearly missed both their flights and whose bags didn't leave Heathrow with them and have not yet made it this far... The views from the plane as we came into land in San Pedro Sula (yes, that is the murder capital city of the world) showed a country different to what I had expected in the sense it was a lot greener and more mountainous. We also quickly realised that it gets dark very quickly here and it's pitch black by about 7pm. Melody and Jacob (our hosts and also the directors of the home and children's parents) picked us up and we went to children's home by truck.

At Miqueas, there are 39 children, although we have only met 35 since the 4 eldest attend boarding school. It's not hard to remember which child has which name but there are so many of them and some children get called their first name by some and second name by some that it's pretty confusing. Melody and Jacob are from the States and have legal custody and guardianship of all the children who are being raised as a large family unit instead of as orphans in an orphanage. All the children call Melody and Jacob Mami and Papi and by day they spend a lot of time with the Tias (nannys) who supervise, cook and do some activities with them etc. The volunteers (us)  run classes, homework help and activities although we have been eased in slowly and haven't done much yet, also many of the children are on holiday at the moment. All the children speak Spanish and we are picking up new words and phrases each day although it's very difficult to understand them and they often laugh when we try to speak Spanish to them. A few speak good English as they attend a bilingual school, and in fact all the children attend private schools. Melody told us that it's estimated that public school education is about 50 years behind that of Honduras's Central American neighbours and I'm sure we'll soon see their standard of education as we are going to be teaching English on Friday mornings in the local village school to children who have never had any English teaching at all before, no pressure!

The view of La Colorada from upstairs at Miqueas. 

Exploring our village 

Innes (my partner) and I are staying in the house that Melody and Jacob live in and there's also another volunteer staying here too. We have our own room and bathroom (our shower is cold which is brilliant because it's so hot here and it's virtually just a hose sticking out the wall so it has been rightfully named 'José'...'ha ha ha' I hear you say...). Melody and Jacob are brilliant, they have been so kind and helpful so far and it's useful that there's no lanaguage barrier. Saying that, as they and the other volunteer Gaby (who's our age, really lovely and also here for a year) are all American I feel like if I come back using words like 'the mall, the movies, trash can, garbage and jelly' I wouldn't be at all surprised (sorry Dad!). We've got a weekly food allowance, so when it was announced that we were going on our first shopping trip we had made no list or plan and had no idea where to start. Turns out we didn't buy enough vegetables and a few other things and meals so far have been omelette, egg-fried rice (an interesting experience) and cheese wraps. Next time we go shopping we'll be more prepared!

So far, during the days we've spent a lot of time playing with the children, they love clapping games unfortunately Innes and I only know 'a sailor went to sea, sea, sea' and it feels like I've sang it a million times so far - it got old really fast. We've got some ideas of other activities to start with them though and are looking forward to getting properly stuck in. This morning we took a trip into the local big town which we were quite excited about as the village the children's home is in is nice yet small, pretty poor and there's not much to see. Progresso we were told has a beautiful church, park/square and a market, idyllic right? Not quite. As it turned out, the town is busy and polluted with cars and buses and motorbikes everywhere, the market was inside and the people stared a lot. We bought drinks to break a 500 lempira note only to find out when we had sat down that the waiter had completely ripped us off and despite the drinks costing 32 lempiras he gave us only 48 in change. We were not impressed but too scared to try and confront him about it. After this Innes's shoe broke and she limped whilst Gaby and I walked about for half an hour trying to find our way back to the bus. So despite a somewhat disappointing morning, we figured that Progreso has plenty of shops should we need anything and despite the town not being scenic and the atmosphere not being what we'd hoped it was colourful and there was lots going on and the bus ride was beautiful - palm trees and mountains and some colourful houses. The buses here also all play music loudly, either Spanish or English/American music from the 70's so that was amusing! However it's clear from the road that poverty is widespread, many have small houses cramped together with corrugated iron roofs, a lot of the children don't have shoes and people make their living from selling things by the roadside.

Progresso

So that's what this week has consisted of so far! Honduras is in some ways very similar to Mexico which I visited a couple of years ago but it's noticeably poorer and there's little tourism here - being the murder capital of the world and all. It's certainly a very interesting country and Innes and I are looking forward to spending more time here!