After I graduated from university, I had every intention of taking the gap year that I hadn't taken between high school and uni. I wanted to go further afield than Europe, and learn another language; I had my heart set on Spanish. So after temping for a year to pay off the obscene overdraft I'd run up whilst a student and pay the air fare, I packed my bags and set off to Honduras in Central America in August 2003 on a year-long volunteering programme that involved living with a local family and working for local charities. It continues to be the single most important thing I think I've done with my life to date.
Trying my hand at a career in consultancy, caught up in the rat-race of corporate life, at a time when all anyone talks about is interest rates, property prices and our ability (or lack thereof) to accumulate shiny new toys, a quick glance back to that time puts everything in perspective.
I recently came across the round-robin emails I sent whilst away. Other than minor edits for spelling and grammar, I've left them unchanged. I hasten to add that the opinions expressed therein, or the way I chose to sum up the country or its people, aren't necessarily how I would choose to now. Now I have the benefit of hindsight and the whole year's experience that included the friendship and patience of many Hondurans and Central Americans, some of whom I now count as my closest friends. The following passages are snapshots of my evolving understanding of a very special place that was very different to where I'm from, and into which I was pitched head-long, an up-tight Englishman with what was at first only a rudimentary grasp of the local language and bereft of the cultural sign-posts upon which we seldom realise we rely so much until they're gone.
Trying my hand at a career in consultancy, caught up in the rat-race of corporate life, at a time when all anyone talks about is interest rates, property prices and our ability (or lack thereof) to accumulate shiny new toys, a quick glance back to that time puts everything in perspective.
I recently came across the round-robin emails I sent whilst away. Other than minor edits for spelling and grammar, I've left them unchanged. I hasten to add that the opinions expressed therein, or the way I chose to sum up the country or its people, aren't necessarily how I would choose to now. Now I have the benefit of hindsight and the whole year's experience that included the friendship and patience of many Hondurans and Central Americans, some of whom I now count as my closest friends. The following passages are snapshots of my evolving understanding of a very special place that was very different to where I'm from, and into which I was pitched head-long, an up-tight Englishman with what was at first only a rudimentary grasp of the local language and bereft of the cultural sign-posts upon which we seldom realise we rely so much until they're gone.
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