I flew to Honduras with 14 other Project Trust volunteers on August 7th 2023 and cannot believe that I have now lived here for 6 months. I am based with two other volunteers, Jack and Paul, in a rural village called Yamaranguila, located in the Intibucá Department up in the mountains. It is the main coffee district of Honduras so all the fields are currently covered with small green trees budding with red ripe coffee beans. Being up in the mountains has its advantages as it is usually around 25 degrees, rather than the 35 degrees you find by the coast. But we arrived in the rainy season so one of the first things I did was to buy a jumper as it was really chilly in the mornings and evenings. As I write this report, however, we haven’t seen a proper rain for about two months although it is still surprisingly green as we are surrounded by pine trees and, of course, the coffee.
Jack, Paul, and I are living together in a small bungalow in the centre of Yamaranguila, about a 30-minute walk along a dirt road from our school. We do our own cooking and washing (by hand as there is no machine) and struggle with intermittent electricity and water! We are a 20-minute bus ride from the nearest big town, called La Esperanza, where we mostly do our shopping. I hadn’t realised quite how time-consuming sorting out our meals would be and I have had to learn to bulk cook and use the freezer so that I don’t spend all my time shopping for food. I take a packed lunch to school every day and have been rapidly learning Spanish so that I can shop in the local market which is cheaper than the actual shops in town.
I volunteer at the Abundant Life Christian School (ALCS), a bilingual school with students from ages 5-18. I spent the first 3 months of my time here teaching maths to grades 4-7 as their teacher was on maternity leave. Luckily, she was still living close by so she helped me to prepare the lessons each day and to make sure that I was teaching according to the syllabus. I never realised how time-consuming marking every homework and test was and am full of admiration for my teachers back home.
In November, I started to teach Reading to Year 5 and I have found this extremely rewarding. At the moment we are reading the book “Wonder” by R. J. Palacio and I love how versatile the subject is as I can incorporate a whole range of additional activities into my lessons. One of my favourite lessons was right before the Christmas holidays. I had set homework for each student to write their own Christmas story and each student then read this out in class. They were all very entertaining and I learnt so much about Honduran Christmas traditions, for example eating tamales. Tamales are a traditional food made from a mixture of corn dough and a filling of pork or chicken, rice, olives, potatoes, peas, and raisins, wrapped in a banana leaf, and then steamed; they are delicious. I also taught the Year 5 Christmas dance which was incredibly challenging as I have absolutely no experience as a dance teacher. Every grade had a dance and they were performed to the whole school and parents just before the holiday break. It was great fun and I was very happy that none of the year 5s dropped their hats during the dance!
I have also become the designated cover teacher for ACLS, which means that, outside of my teaching to Year 5, no day is the same and I have taught almost every subject to every Grade from 4th-12th. One of my more challenging cover lessons was invigilating a test in Social Studies, which is one of the two subjects taught here in Spanish. I felt very sorry for the student who came to ask me a question about the test as I was more lost than them!
The main school sports are football and volleyball and I now appreciate the global outreach of football as everybody knows the results of the Premier League. Volleyball is also extremely popular and the students have been teaching me how to play. It is, however, surprisingly difficult and I wish I could say that I was improving, but it seems that every time I play I find new ways to mess up! However, I have joined the volleyball team at school and train with the older students twice a week, which I have really enjoyed, and am slowly learning the correct techniques. I have also really enjoyed getting to know these older students and learning more about their daily lives. For instance, I was recently invited around for supper by one of the students and also to look around their coffee farm. I felt very lucky to have this personal experience and really enjoyed being in a home environment, especially as his mother was an amazing cook!
Outside of school, I have really enjoyed immersing myself in the Honduran culture which is very different from life in the UK. Due to roughly 300 years of Spanish colonisation, some places here are reminiscent of Spain; for instance, Trujillo and Gracias were the first city- capitals when Spain colonised Honduras and are full of Spanish architecture and have lovely, cobbled streets. Honduras is also rich in Mayan history and, for Thanksgiving, ACLS took all the teachers to visit the Copan Ruins, one of the most important sites of Mayan civilization. We had a guide and I really enjoyed learning about this incredible UNESCO World Heritage site. For instance, the Mayans were fascinated by the stars, and astronomers in Copán calculated the most accurate solar calendar produced by the Maya up to that time.
Since I am a food lover, I have taken every opportunity to try all the new foods. Hondurans love baleadas, which consists of a tortilla filled with frijoles (beans), and often eggs or meat. Other local specialties include Pupusas, a thicker stuffed tortilla, and Catrachas, tortilla with frijoles and cheese, which are equally tasty. Overall, I think it is fair to say that Honduras is powered by frijoles as they seem to be eaten by everyone at almost every meal! The variety of fruits and vegetables at the markets has also been a great pleasure for me and I am always stocking up on plantain, pineapple or papaya. At the coast, you can find some amazing fish as well as mangoes and coconuts; the taste is incomparable to what you buy in the UK.
Overall, I feel that all these experiences are making a lasting impact on me and I am loving being exposed to a totally new culture. I am also full of admiration for my teachers in the UK as I never realised how difficult and tiring lesson planning, marking and teaching can be; on the positive, however, seeing the students improve is so rewarding. I am also learning to appreciate and be thankful for the simple things in life and to enjoy moments of downtime by drinking local coffee and eating excessive amounts of baleadas and pupusas. Sometimes it feels that life doesn’t get any better than that!
