We’re into the final two weeks of our placement here and last Friday we finally got to do a homestay with our national counterparts in one of the communities. Spending almost every day of the week with the Honduran volunteers, we’ve certainly got to know them all very well. Yet it’s only after spending a night in the communities where they’ve lived their whole lives that you can really get a feel of what life is like for them.
The communities we are working with in the Gracias region rely on farming; almost every family owns a farm that acts as their main source of income. This means that everyone has to work on the farm from an early age and the livelihoods of the people in the communities are especially fragile, a bad harvest can have devastating consequences.
In a previous team blog, we spoke about micro-organism soup (not the scientific name). This yeast-smelling concoction has been a recurring theme during our agricultural activities and this week we were taught how to create the base for the solution.
As we enter our fifth week in Honduras and fourth in Guayape, we are at a loss as to where the time is going. November is upon us already, yet it seems like only yesterday that we boarded our plane at Heathrow. However, when considering a topic for this week’s blog, and the huge amount there is to choose from, I realise the huge amount we have achieved… reflected in the 1,589 photos we have already taken!
Across the globe, people can easily be divided into two distinct groups: those that ‘Eat to Live’ and those that ‘Live to Eat’. Whilst the former see food as a source of energy alone, for the latter it is an incessant obsession, where happiness can be measured by the number of cookery books you own and breakfast, lunch and dinner (not to mention elevenses and teatime) constitute the pillars against which the rest of the day falls into place.
Team Gracias finally arrived at our home for the next eight weeks on the 10th after meeting the nine national volunteers and our partner organisation, Red COMAL in the town of Siguatapeque the day before. We've been settled in Gracias for just over a week now and while the girls took a little getting used to the indigenous wildlife sharing our houses with us, after a few days the screaming that accompanied a cockroach sighting was replaced by the sound of a stomping boot.
Since 2008, the International Day of Rural Women has sought to acknowledge and recognise the critical role and contribution of rural women in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty. To mark the day, Progressio ICS volunteer, Benjamin Jones, visited Elsy Mendoza, a single mother living in the community of Santa Cruz. This is the blog he wrote after meeting Elsy.
After weeks of talking about the idea of doing a mural for the local community of La Asomada, we finally took the initiative and set about putting our design ideas into action. The village is very proud of their local radio station, and it is positioned on the main road leading into the community. We thought this would be the ideal location for the mural. Before the work could begin, we had to agree on our message for the community. The village is in a beautiful location, with lush green mountains scaling up and down the surrounding landscape.
For international youth day British and Honduran volunteers organised and carried out an event in the rural community of La Asomada. The turnout was great, with many people coming from the surrounding villages such as El Tablon, El Zapote and Catatao to name a few.
Another week has nearly passed, with the British volunteers in Gracias still involved in their community work. The outer, rural communities surrounding the town of Gracias are somewhat isolated from the wider world. The inhabitants’ closest source of modernity is the nearby town, in which we are based. The young people of the villages follow the latest fashions, with high tech mobile devices, designer label clothing, and in the case of the males, carefully attended hairstyles. Despite all this their living conditions probably have not changed much since the 1980's.
