A simplified version of Old MacDonald had a Farm and ´Moo´ … ´neigh ´… ´Sss´
…´ Bubblebubble´…´woof´ are among many of the unusual noises that have been
emitting from the 1st – 3rd grade classrooms in English
lessons this week... needless to say that the topic of animals has been very
popular! Teaching English has so much
scope for creative and varied lessons and for this unit, I made animal finger
puppets, masks and fold-out paper farmyards with my various classes. Both Innes
and I like to take our kids outside now and again to play English games, which
we also do in the classroom, - depending on the day they can be a recipe for
success or sheer chaos. Innes´s class were having a ball a couple of weeks ago
making and modelling clothes from newspaper which also provided a real laugh
for the teachers who were snapping photos and clearly hadn’t seen anything like
it before. Whilst crafts and such creative activities aren’t possible all of
the time we both really enjoy
these sorts of lessons – providing they go smoothly. The best thing is seeing
the children getting inventive and being proud of the work they´ve made. This
is particularly important to Innes and I as in contrast to our primary school
education, the Honduran school curriculum is very textbook based and it doesn’t
encourage much imaginative thinking.
A few weeks ago I spent a couple of my English teaching slots at the
Campo (village field) with only the girls doing some football and football
training. This was inspired by seeing the boys hogging the ball in the
playground and the all-boys school football team playing in a tournament with the
girls hanging around on the sidelines. Honduras is a football crazy country but
it also has a very macho culture. It was great to get all the girls out and
playing football at some point over the two mornings and I was really impressed
by many of their skills. Whether it was just running in circles and tripping
over their own feet and the ball (1st grade) or properly structured
drills and matches (5th and 6th grades) everyone appeared
to be really enjoying the exercise and getting competitive, not to mention being
extremely smug that and the boys didn’t get to come too. I personally really
enjoyed spending the time with this great bunch of girls, many of whom I´ve not
taught before, and it was a great feeling to be able to pass on something that
I´m so passionate about.
In Miqueas I´ve also started doing a bit of football training for fun
with the youngest kids. This is particularly good to let them run off a bit of
steam after a long and quite intense (private school system – big difference!)
day at school. Another change is that I am now doing 1 on 1 work with the 6 and
7 year olds who are starting to learn to read in English and this again is so
different from teaching a class of 30+, a group of 4 or 8 or where there’s such
a mix of abilities.
I was really impressed by my older English teaching group whose recent
project was to make up a puppet show and perform it to the younger kids. They
made up the script, puppets and puppet theatre and called the play´The 4 Friends
and the Shark´. It even featured a snowman and a robot! Another part of my Miqueas work is working
with a little boy who is both blind and deaf. Prior to Christmas he wouldn’t
eat unless spoon or handfed by a Tia but with a bit of work he now eats finger
food on his own, uses a spoon with a bit of help and drinks from a cup
independently – we´re all so proud! I´ve just started doing some activities
with him to improve hand and finger strength, but this remains in its early
stages…´Pedro, playdough and dried pasta are not edible´!
The past 6 weeks have also brought with them a lot of laughs, events and
new experiences outside of work, as well as ever more lessons about the
culture. One week we were incredibly sociable and had one of the Tias and her
family around for dinner in an evening; walked up into the mountains a little
way with her and one of her sons to a bathing spot at a river near us the next
day; visited friends from a nearby village a few days later where we spent the
entire day cooking and eating and a previous Scottish Miqueas volunteer came to
stay for a week! We feel that there is an impossible amount of Honduran culture
to learn about and experience and are constantly being surprised. In terms of
priorities, a family might have a small but nice kitchen and living room with a
big TV but sending their daughter to secondary school is too expensive. Or on
the contrary, they might have more than one child attending university and a
nice house, yet the toilet is in a little hut in the garden. I´m constantly
being surprised by the big things right down to the little things. When eating
with friends a couple of weeks ago I was shocked (and fearing for my teeth) to
see that sugar went into all parts of the main course, with even a couple of
heaped spoonful’s into the salad. Another cultural experience and memorable
night was attending a community event which can only be described as a night of
party games for all the family. The evening as a whole was such a laugh,
including when I got up on the stage and embarrassed myself in front of all of La Colorada and my pupils in one of the competitions where I had to dance with
a sombrero and broom horse…At least I won! What really blew Innes and I away
however was the ´Punta´dancing. The ´Punta´dancing performed on this evening
was very intimate with a resemblance to Twerking and was either performed by
women alone or with a man or even with a pole. No one, parents or kids alike,
batted an eyelid, whilst Innes and I were staring in disbelief.
Last weekend we attended a Carnival in a city a few hours away from us
with 2 of the boys from another PT project. It was the first thing I’d ever
seen of its kind and is said to attract people from all over Central America.
The ´La Ceiba Gran Carneval’ was a huge, incredibly colorful event, with
amazingly decorated floats of all different themes, companies, brands and
advocating different issues including teen pregnancy, looking after the
environment and very surprisingly one on LGBT rights. There were amazing masks
and costumes, food and freedbies, even a BMX biker who flipped off a ramp on
one float, as well as music and dancing all day and night.
Time is something that is never far from the front of my mind and this
is certainly not something that I’ve picked up from Honduran culture. For the
Honduran people (as a generalization) things happen when they happen, few events
start on time, people are rarely in a rush and we’ve even found when inviting
people around to eat with us or when booking tours, boats or buses that if they
even arrive within an hour after the agreed or departure time - it’s a good
day. Over the past 10 months I have come to realize that time here (and to
quote Pirates of the Carribean) is´more of a guideline´ and it´s certainly not
specific. Time has become particularly important to me for all sorts of teacher
and classes and time-table and responsibility related reasons but above all it
is because I have a deadline, a day on which I know that I leave the country if
not for good, for a long time. As I have said over and over in my blogs, this
time is ticking far too fast (although I do retract that statement for Friday
afternoons, nights when homework or classes are running on past 6pm and in the
rare occurrence of a temper tantrum or a class kicking off…).
The passing of time is inevitable and a reality that we all face. It is
also an illustration of how other aspects of my year are constantly improving
and progressing, which is particularly true for all of my different types of relationships
I have made here. I feel like I have 30 younger brothers and sisters at Miqueas,
3 school classes who I am incredibly fond of, friendships that are only growing
stronger, work colleagues and Tias who I have a laugh with every day in or
outside of work and my project hosts who we have made such a strong connection
with that every day it becomes harder to imagine leaving them. 
