Cómo están? And that’s as far as my Spanish stretches to right now. To anyone I neglected to tell (yes, am an awful person, completely crap at replying to email messages and keeping people up to date with what’s happening), am currently in Honduras (that’s Central America, if like me you thought Honduras was somewhere near Malaysia). Will be here for a year doing voluntary work with street children, possibly also mental health work if I get the chance. Things were so manic before I left I barely had time to pack (in fact I was still rushing around trying to find stuff at 4.45am when the cab came to take me to the airport).
Living with a host family in the capital, Tegucigalpa - ugly city, beautiful surroundings. They don’t really do multi-storey here - the city houses around a million people but it’s all spread out over a valley high up in the tropical forests of the south of the country. Despite the failure of any building, including even the cathedral, to provide much inspiration, the gap in between two decaying edifices betrays a glimpse of bright green mountainside. The airport was as good an introduction to this place as any: instead of an ordered line of sedate individuals queuing up along plastic barriers, there’s a heaving a mass of people shouting and waving outside the airport doors (the arrivals ‘hall’ is too small to have anyone who’s not actually getting off a plane in it). Included there was my host mother and brother - they don’t speak a word of English (apart from one of the brothers, who speaks a bit), and my Spanish is non-existent so the last two weeks have been very interesting. They aren’t particularly well off (by western standards, although they don’t apply here - you realise what ‘rich’ means when you drive past the slums that ring the outside of the city high up in the hills) but they have a maid, like everybody else. When you don’t have a washing machine, you take in a girl who has nowhere else to go and get her to scrub you clothes in the stone basin in the backyard for you. This is a very narrow view of it, of course - it’s always more complicated than that...
There are about 15-20 ICYE volunteers: Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, German, Italian, French, Taiwanese, Austrian, Swiss, American, English. Everyone speaks English though, except the guy from France who doesn’t speak any English or Spanish. A few of us speak French, so it’s not that bad, but at one point Laura (English), Valentin (French), Francesca (Italian) and I were trying to have a conversation that hosted as many languages as it did participants - confusing is not the word. The climate in Tegucigalpa is tropical - I’m told it doesn’t get too hot or too cold, although goodness knows what ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ means here. It’s wet though, although it’s that nice kind of warm rain that I don’t mind walking in. Everything here is so green and bright, mango trees and lime trees. The city looks fantastic at night - because it’s all spread out it’s like a sparkling blanket undulating over a vast expanse. Unfortunately it’s not safe to walk out at night, or even take a taxi by yourself (boy or girl). My host family is very nice, although they insist on my calling them mami and papi (mummy and daddy, I mean I’m 23 and I’m foreign, come on). I'm not alone in this though - a lot of us living in host families get the same thing. Their hearts are in the right place though.
Anyway, have written loads and have spent far too much on internet cafes already this past fortnight.
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