How is Honduras different to England?

As I was preparing to leave for Honduras last August, I asked many people where Honduras was on the map and very few could answer me, let alone tell me much about the country itself. To be completely honest, I didn’t know too much about the lifestyle or traditions or the goings-on in the small Central American country either. As a result, I tried to ready myself for the big move by learning as much as I could about Honduras, however the truth is that nothing can ever truly prepare you for an experience like this. Living in the little rural village of Candelaria has been the most eye-opening experience of my life, and the differences I have noticed between my new life here and my old one back in England are endless, so I'm going to try and narrow it down to the biggest differences in everyday life, including lifestyle, food, climate, transport and more.

During my year here in Candelaria I am living with a host family in a household of 10 people and so, as you can probably imagine, it is one very busy house. Our wonderful host parents, Lety and Victor, have four kids - Victorito, Josue, Genesis and Samuel - but we also live with Paola (the niece of a family friend who is staying with us while she attends high school) and Dania, the 'cocinera' (maid/cook/all-round-wonder-woman). Add Izzy and I, the two English volunteers, and you've got a full house. As a result, everyone’s always up in each other's business which at first, the lack of privacy was quite hard to get used to, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way. Something else which was a bit strange at first is the fact that the house doesn’t have a ceiling, only a tin roof and the walls between the rooms of the house are more like partitions as they don’t touch the roof. This means that noise very easily carries throughout the house and so you can hear everything everyone is doing all the time, including Victorito’s alarm which goes off at the ungodly hour of 5:50am which inevitably leads to Samuel switching on the TV at full blast; that boy is so lucky I love him.

Right from the very first night with this family I realised how special they were. They are the most welcoming and generous group of people who have treated us as part of the family from the get-go, and the tactile nature of the Honduran culture has made me feel loved and appreciated from the very beginning. It's the afternoons I spend falling asleep surrounded by the kids and the times when I just have to surrender to the boys and their rather aggressive ways of showing their love; if that means I often end up being sat on and squished on the sofa, then so be it :))

Before long, Izzy and I found ourselves involved in every aspect of their life; helping the kids with homework, watching the news in the evenings with Victor and Lety, gossiping with Dania as we prepare dinner, visiting Victor’s parents at their coffee farm, and even attending church with them.

Honduras is predominantly Christian country and like many rural villages, Candelaria is divided into the two groups of Catholicism and Evangelicalism. My host family is Evangelical and so every now and again Izzy and I go along with them and attend evening mass at the Evangelical church down the road while those who are Catholic attend the large white church which overlooks the central park. As Catholicism is the most popular branch of Christianity in Honduras, every established Honduran community will have its own Catholic church at the centre of the village.

During the first few months here it was difficult to grasp what was being said during the 2-3 hour long evening sessions however as I gradually got to grips with Spanish, I slowly started to understand more and more and now even try to sing along by frantically following the PowerPoint slides at the front, much to Genesis' amusement. Lety was always over the moon whenever I wore the sunflower dress I bought from her store to Church and when she's happy, I'm happy :))

There are many mundane everyday things which differ between life in Candelaria and life in England. First of all, all clothes-washing is done by hand using the 'pila' downstairs underneath the patio.

A 'pila' is a concrete water basin full of fresh water with a laundry washboard to the side. It's a quintessential aspect of Latin American homes and is where I tend to spend my weekend mornings washing my clothes, piece by piece, while listening to a podcast or chatting to family and friends back home. It's rare to get a moment to yourself around here and so this is definitely a time I treasure; it quickly became a way to escape Samuel’s screaming and is almost like my little sanctuary of peace on a Sunday morning, even if it is standing and scrubbing my teaching trousers. However, it's never long before my 5 year old host brother finds me and insists on ‘helping’ me, which usually ends up with him blowing bubbles in a bowl full of water or on his tip-toes standing on his little stool splashing about with my just-cleaned clothes...I'll say it again, he's lucky I love him.

Something I realised that I really took for granted back home in England was a consistent wifi connection and electricity. Out here, suffering from power shortages, which can last anything from an hour to a couple of days, is unfortunately the norm. When the power goes, everything is made a little more difficult as all the fans switch off, making everyone a little more hot and bothered as the lack of air conditioning in a place where 27 degrees Celsius is considered cool is not fun. On top of that, without wifi we can’t easily contact family and friends, and it's times like these that make us realise how in the middle of nowhere we actually are, and the distance between here and home is made very clear to us. However, I say that, but I can't think of a time when I have felt homesick or anything even remotely close to that, and this is something I can definitely credit to my incredible host family as they have made us feel at home right from the very beginning. Sometimes the lack of electricity is caused by the weather as oncoming storms often interrupt the connections, however recently, it has more often than not been due to the government which has been shutting off the country’s power supply. Victor explained that some of these power cuts are scheduled although I still don't quite understand why. Dania said something about it being related to strikes and protests in the capital city of Tegucigalpa, but to be honest, no one really seems to know as the current government is so secretive.

Similarly, the water supply is just as unpredictable. Now that we have entered the dry season, the rains have stopped which has meant that the water tanks on the hillside aren’t being replenished as often as before, meaning that we are suffering from water shortages more frequently; we often come home from school to find there is no running water in the house, and after a hot day of teaching and running around, this is not ideal. As a result, we all have to lug numerous big buckets of water from the water tank outside on the terrace to our bathroom, and now I am proud to say that I have mastered the skilful art of a bucket shower, whoohooo!! Yet, in all seriousness, these shortages can seriously inconvenience the household, especially when we never know how long they will last for; recently we went for 3 days without water and it was pretty miserable. However, we are very fortunate that this short amount of time was the longest period in which we have had to go without easy access to running water. Many families in the village have to cope for much longer without knowing if or when the water will return, and I often see some of our school children bathing in the river as that is the only source of water available to them, so I really have no right to complain. This has also shown me that the disparities between those who have the luxury of clean water and those who don't does not only exist between urban and rural areas, but also within the walls of tiny villages such as Candelaria as well.

Food. Where do I even start. Honduran food, or all Latin American food for that matter, has to be some of my favourite food in the world. Mary and Dania are fantastic cooks and I am in awe of their seemingly endless skills and talents and abilities to whip up the most amazing meals in our tiny kitchen. I love helping out, and my desperation to learn how to make as many traditional Honduran dishes as I can leaves me more than happy to be bossed around by Dania who loves our company almost as much as she loves having an extra pair of hands. An example of a traditional Honduran food is a Baleada - according to Lety, Baleadas are always the English volunteers' favourite food, and I can proudly say that I am no exception. I loved the evenings we would spend sitting around the table, listening to Reggaeton at full blast, making and rolling out the dough :))

Baleadas are similar to large soft Mexican tacos as they are flour tortillas which are folded in half and full of refried beans (that's the slightly questionable looking brown stuff in the photo above, but I can assure you it tastes so much better than it looks), crumbled cheese, mantequilla and avocado - they are INCREDIBLE. You can buy them just about anywhere in Honduras from every street corner to kitchen to bus terminal to beach hut - everyone adores them and for good reason. Similar to Baleadas are Pupusas, which are the traditional food of El Salvador but can be found pretty much anywhere in Central America if you look hard enough. They are smaller tortillas, about the size of your hand, and are filled with quesilla or refried beans, or anything you want really, and they are also fantastic.

Another one of my favourites is ‘Desayuno Tipico’ which is the traditional Honduran breakfast; eggs, beans, mantequilla, corn tortillas, fried plantain and sometimes avocado and cuajada.

Again, I really can’t fault it. If you haven't already picked up on it, 'frijoles' (basically kidney beans) are an important component of many Honduran meals; they are easy to grow, easy to cook and cheap so theoretically, everyone can access them. We have a huge bucket in the lounge (and I mean HUGE, just look at the video below of Genesis sitting on top of it, it's almost the same size as her) which is full to the brim with beans. Every so often we have a big 'bean sorting' session where we pour a load of them out onto the table and we search for any bad ones. It sounds laborious, which it is, but when the whole family gets involved, it becomes quite enjoyable :))

For our first meal in Honduras with our family, we were introduced to Honduran cuisine with grilled corn on the cob and ‘Atole de Elote’, a hot sweet corn drink which usually accompanies Tamales, corn based dough which is steamed in corn husks or banana leaves and can be sweet or savoury. One of my favourite drinks is Horchata - it's made from milky rice and is cold and sweet and spiced with cinnamon. On a hot afternoon, nothing beats it. My students often gift me a frozen mini plastic bag of it, and after snipping off a corner of the bag, we spend our school break times chilling in the shade, sipping away. Victor recently introduced us to 'piloncillo/miel de panela' (otherwise known as 'Mexican Brown sugar'). He had brought a bucket-full back from his father Don Timo’s farm and I can safely say I have never had anything quite like it; it is a sickly-sweet, thick, crystallised syrup and is the product of the first refinement of sugar cane juice. While it makes for a great afternoon snack with coffee, it is definitely not something I can have a lot of, it’s just so sweet! Fried chicken is also something I will forever associate with Honduras as it is absolutely everywhere; there is even a little stall that sells it just up the road from the house in Candelaria. I don't know why but when I first saw it I could help but laugh as there is something so strange about seeing a stall of one of the biggest fried-chicken chains in Honduras sitting snugly in between my neighbours' houses in sleepy Candelaria... Alongside the mini Fried chicken stands are pulperias and tiendas - little shops which sell almost everything you could ever need, from tortilla flour to washing soap to motorbike helmets to licuados, and they are almost always in the front room of someone's house!

Oooh while I think of it, another food favourite of mine is Dania's tortilla soup, UGH, now that is something to die for!

However, something I have really struggled to get used to is the fish soup here...

It’s a funny thing to be so far from the coast but sit down to a lunch of shrimp and crab; Dania explained that there are commercial fish ponds scattered throughout the mountains where fishermen take their catch, giving people from more inland areas access to sea food that they otherwise would never come across. The fried fish that she makes is amazing and when it's served with homemade tajadas (fried slices of plantains) it is out of this world.

But yes, the fish soup with crab legs and all just doesn’t do it for me all :’)) Unfortunately, tap water in Honduras - and also Latin America as a whole - is not safe to drink and so we have to rely on the water dispenser in the lounge. One day I spotted a Lego head floating around in it, and when I asked Samuel if he knew anything about it, he just looked at me with his big round eyes and uttered his usual response of 'yo no fui!!!'... Mhmm, sure it wasn't you Samuelito...

Safe drinking water isn’t hard to come by as both bagged and bottled water is sold everywhere, yet it is a huge shame there isn’t more of an environmental awareness or initiative over here as the plastic rubbish is just discarded, thrown out of bus windows and left to line the streets. Because of this, Izzy and I are planning to do an environment day or two with the school with the hope to increase the kid's awareness of the importance of looking after their environment.

Every Sunday, the market comes to the village and Candelaria suddenly comes to life; street vendors set up their stalls and yell out prices of their liches and watermelons as little old Honduran abuelas bustle by, weaving their way underneath the tarps, baskets wobbling about atop their heads. We often go to the market to accompany Dania as she goes with a shopping list of everything she needs to buy for the week and we help carry the heavy bags of fruit and vegetables we buy.

Cooking for such a big household is a huge task and it blows me away how easy she makes it look. The variety of fresh organic produce on offer is astounding, and to know it is all locally grown is wonderful. The first time I went to the market was on a Saturday evening as Mary liked to go when it was quiet and as the vendors were still arriving; the calm before the storm, if you will.

There were so many things I didn’t recognise and as a result I made Mary and some of the vendors go through all the goods, telling me what everything was. The list of fruit and veg which I had never seen before was unfathomable, including tamarind, guava, pataste, quince and yucca root. I also often spotted my students climbing trees to pick guama, also known as ice cream beans, which was something Dania always brought us after visiting her family in a nearby aldea.

As you can imagine, the fruit here is incredible - I mean we are living on the equator so fruit is available all year round - and while I love mango, eating green mangoes is a whole other thing; Genesis says the only way to eat green mango is when it is sliced up and covered in Worcester sauce and salt. Yes, salt.

It seems to be something that the kids love to have with almost any fruit they eat, and I will never understand it. Liche was another fruit I had never tried before, but I soon became addicted to them, buying them on every bus journey and whenever market was in town, as well as was often gifted them by lovely little Alejandro at school.

The climate of Honduras is so different to that of England that the two are almost incomparable. Being situated on the equator, it is hot almost all year round, leaving rainfall as the only way to differentiate between seasons. Wet season is categorised as May to October when dry season takes over and lasts from November to April. This meant that when we arrived last August, it was smack bang in the middle of the wet season and so were greeted by high levels of humidity and rainstorms. During the day it was almost unbearably hot until around 4pm when the heavens would open and unleash the most incredible thunderstorms.

It worked like clockwork; you could predict, almost to the minute, when the rain was about to start and once it did, it didn't stop until the early hours of the morning. This is where the tin roof came into play and the pounding of the rain against the corrugated metal made it almost impossible to hear anything, so we often ended up with the kids huddled around our speakers which were on full blast and held up to our ears in the desperate attempt to hear anything.

Yet, when we returned from travelling at the end of January, the dry season had begun which made me realise I hadn't really known the true meaning of heat until then. During the day the temperatures soar, normally reaching 35-40 degrees Celsius by midday, leaving everyone feeling slow and sluggish and extremely thankful for siestas and air conditioning, without which I’m not sure how we would cope. The evenings are not much cooler so falling asleep can be a struggle sometimes and I often find myself spread out over the bed with the kids watching a movie or just lazing about because it's too hot to do anything else. As a result of the lack of rainfall, I have been able to watch the luscious green mountain sides transform into orange fields of crunchy straw and dirt, and now everything is covered in a constant layer of dust.

The ongoing construction of the new road doesn't help on this front; every time we go out for a walk, we come home coated in a layer of dust from head to foot. While Genesis hates it, Samuel takes great pleasure in kicking it up in our faces and racing around in the dust storms he’s created. Oh the joys of the life of a 5 year old.

One of the biggest challenges of my time in Candelaria so far has definitely been the language barrier. Coming out here I had very little Spanish and therefore during the first month or so I heavily relied on reading body language. Thankfully my host family is used to volunteers arriving with little to no Spanish and they have been amazingly patient with me, making my life easier with their extra slow pronunciation, although Lety loves to have a bit of fun with me by teaching rather inappropriate phrases in place of the correct ones and ends up howling with laughter when I tentatively attempt to use them in a sentence….Gotta love her and her wicked sense of humour... Being constantly surrounded by native Spanish speakers both at home and at school 24/7 has meant that I have picked up the language a lot faster than I expected I would, and although I am definitely making mistakes and saying the wrong thing most of the time, I don't mind as much as I did at the beginning as this I've realised the best way for me to learn is to practice as much as possible. The Honduran accent can be rather difficult to understand sometimes, especially that of my host dad; his deep, rumbling voice combined with the extreme speed with which he speaks means I often have to ask him to slow down otherwise I reach the end of the conversation not having understood anything!

The first time I walked into the classroom was possibly one of the most intimidating things I have ever done; facing a room full of 30 tiny children who didn’t quite grasp the fact that I couldn’t understand every single word they were hurdling my way was a challenge I was not prepared for. Fortunately, I quickly got to grips with what they were saying - just about - and by getting to know the varied personalities in my classes, it was a lot easier to make out the gist of what they were saying. Also being kids, they had no inhibitions in coming up to me at break and just chatting away which has helped me learn on the go even more, and this often ended up with them discovering my laptop's camera which was always entertaining...

However, I won’t lie, learning their names was a whole other ball game. Over here, everyone tends to have three or four, sometimes five, names. To someone who is new to the Spanish language, names such as 'Juana Elizabeth Lainez Diazo' are not the easiest to pick up and remember from the get go, especially when the student the name belongs to has lost all her front milk teeth which has resulted in a very heavy lisp, making it nigh on impossible to understand anything she is saying to you. Looking back, I'm not sure how I made it through those first few weeks of teaching with such limited Spanish, and I can clearly see that I have come a long way since then, and I most definitely have my students to thank for that.

In order to keep learning Spanish and put myself out there a bit more, I have begun one-on-one English/Spanish class with my fifth grade teacher Profe Aminta, a.k.a the best woman in the world. During my fifth grade lessons, she has always shown such a keen interest in learning English alongside her students so we have made a plan where I go to her house in the evenings and one day I teach her English and the next day the roles reverse and she teaches me Spanish; it's really wonderful and I am so grateful for her, she is one of the most warmest, most welcoming people I have ever had the good fortune of knowing. Plus, she makes the most amazing frozen coconut milk pops - I mean, could she be any more amazing??

Something I’ve learnt while being in Honduras is that distances here are completely different to those back home. For example, the city of Gracias is considered to be the closest big city to Candelaria, and it takes about 5 hours on the bus to get there, 4.5 hours on a good day if you're lucky. As a result, I've quickly become used to travelling long distances and not thinking anything of it, in fact I have come to rather love our bus journeys. The roads - or I should really say dusty tracks - wind their way through the mountains, hugging the vertical slopes, twisting this way and that. The buses are old yellow American school buses which is funny as they are just like the ones I used to take to school in Canada, but the circumstances in which I hop on them now couldn’t be more different.

I’ve got to give it to these Honduran bus drivers; driving on these roads is no easy feat, and while they may seem a bit mental as they speed along to the point where I am certain we will careen off the mountainside if they’re not careful, they always manage to pull us back on track at the last second. The closest village to us with volunteers is Mapulaca, a 30 minute drive by car but an hour in the bus, so we have made that journey a few times to visit Libby and Esther and so now know the busboys and the driver quite well as they’re used to seeing us on their 4pm route. As the roads are so uneven and bumpy for the first three hours out of Candelaria, the journey can be a bit hellish, especially when the bus is full to the brim, really testing the 20 person capacity by squishing over 60 people on board, but the views make it worth it. Early morning bus rides are my favourite as there is nothing quite like watching the sunrise over the mountains of Lempira. (I've included some videos I tired to take during some of these bus journeys but they are terrible quality so apologies in advance - they demonstrate how bumpy the rides were better than the views which was what I was trying to show you whoops)

Another mode of transport around here is by mototaxi, little three-wheeled red tuk tuks which zip along the road and almost always feel like they are on the verge of breaking down or falling apart, or both if they hit one of the many potholes.

The taxi drivers are funny and always keen to give us a lift, and sometimes - if you’re lucky to have Mario in Mapulaca driving you around - they may even promise to name their next kid after you (so Mario I'll be sure to pop over in the next few years to make sure you followed through...)

Although there are so many more things I could write about, I'm going to stop here otherwise I'm worried I never will.

Adios from me and my little cowboy and his saltine crackers x