Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, my body shaking and pulse racing, when the memory of the event makes its way into my unconscious mind. It was just a bad dream, I reassure myself, and I nestle back down into the safety of my duvet. Yet the memory persists, lying in wait as I fall asleep, ready to pounce to the forefront of my mind and scare me witless. It is my hope that by setting down my recollection of the event, by placing it in the public domain, I may somehow exorcise that dreadful occurrence from my memory.
Much has been written recently in criticism of the UK’s overseas aid budget, so given that I am here in Honduras in large part thanks to the UK aid budget, I thought that I would set out a brief defence of international development spending. This is not to say that I wish to defend the exact ways in which the aid budget has been spent - I would probably be the first to admit that it could be better spent. Rather, I want to set out the reasons why I believe that the UK should spend money on international development.
This week has been a lesson in two things; the British digestive system and expertly winging it. Make no mistake, my team are incredibly hard working, and normally very prepared for what’s next in our ICS adventure. However, this week we have been blighted by two cases of food poisoning (no fun, unsurprisingly), another as yet unexplained case of the bad stomach and a whole lot of work to do without the team members we need. Let’s revise what else we’ve continued to learn this week - flexibility and adaptability!
I must admit that this is a somewhat self-indulgent blog post. The title alone contains two of my favourite things: history and terrible puns. Yet when we received a talk on Honduran history from José Martinez, an academic from the charity Democracia sin Fronteras (Democracy Without Borders), it gave me the perfect excuse to write a blog on the subject. As a self-confessed history junkie, I find it fascinating to see why things turned out the way they have by looking into the past.
We ended last week by learning another new skill. The afternoon before, our parting conversation ended with an instruction, which nicely contrasts our cultures, being that it would sound downright disturbing in the UK: ‘Okay cool, so meet at 8am tomorrow at the school with your machetes and sacks ready.’
We were to help tidy the school grounds in preparation for school starting on this Monday by mowing the lawn. Well, mowing was our term; we learned Honduran-style includes a lot less mower and a lot more elbow grease, hence the machetes.
This week I thought that I would talk a bit about one of the projects that Team La Esperanza is working on during our time in Honduras. One of our key aims is to help a group of local Lenca women to set up and run small businesses in handicrafts. The Lenca people are the largest indigenous group in Honduras, with a population of approximately 100,000. They have a rich culture, which became mixed with that of the Spanish colonisers, yet they still retain much of their indigenous heritage.
Also known as, what happens when you move family, country, culture, language, food... and everything else?
One night this week, whilst trying to get to sleep, which, by the way, is no easy task in El Carrizal when the chickens living in your garden wake up before you’ve even settled under the covers and the dogs of the town compete every night for who can be the loudest, I started to think about the new world I’d been thrown into. When visions of a toilet that requires a bucket to flush and a shower that only feels warm after standing in a blizzard for three hours began to invade my head, beauty wasn’t the first word that came to mind.
Three numbers:
- 22 bucket showers
- 5 hours teaching with the community
- Six kitchen appliances transported, washed and installed in the cafe
Three things we’ve learned:
1) How to remove tree trunks from the ground relatively quickly (for us UK volunteers that’s relative to something reasonably slow.)
“At some point during your placement you will end up needing to go to the doctor’s…” We were told during one talk at our in-country orientation. I scoffed at the idea – it had been years since I had needed to go to the doctor’s, and I had no intention of going during my three months in Honduras. Later that day Murphy’s Law took effect as I hurtled down a hill at full speed to land ungracefully on the concrete path below, resulting in a badly grazed arm and a very badly bruised pride.
