Life as a Girl in Honduras...

Back in business! It’s been just over a week now since I arrived back in Candelaria after my two and a half month school holiday of travelling Central America; now it’s time for reality to set in and I couldn’t be happier. Travelling was one of the best experiences of my life and opened my eyes to so many new cultures and traditions as well as allowed me to meet some amazing people. However, being back home in my little Honduran village has felt amazing; the return to routine and the family felt so comforting and their warm welcome made it feel as though I had never even been away.

A few things have changed while we were away. Sadly Mary, the family’s cocinera and our good friend, had left to go and work for another family in San Pedro Sula, which came as quite a shock as she had been working and living with the Cruz family for over 10 years. Before coming out here we were made aware that we could be staying with a host family who employs a maid, which was true in our case. To be completely honest, I wasn't sure how to feel about this at the beginning - the thought of families employing maids in a third world country didn't make much sense to me nor did I feel entirely comfortable with it. However, I soon realised that my preconceptions of what it meant couldn't have been further from the truth. In the case of my host family, Mary had become part of the family and although she was still employed by them, it never once felt like that was the case; she is a family member, an older sibling to the kids, a friend to Lety and us, and an all round super woman. Looking into it I realised that it is very normal for Honduras, and Latin America - in fact there are 18 million domestic workers in Latin America (93 percent of them women), making it one of the most important occupations for women here. In rural communities like Candelaria, employment of young girls from local aldeas (small surrounding villages) is seen as a way of ensuring that they have access to a job as there are not many other opportunities available for them.

While it is sad to know that we won’t see Mary for a while, it’s also quite exciting as we have been introduced to Dania, the family’s new cocinera and she is absolutely lovely.

Dania :))

The family left for the city on a mission to buy new products to restock Victor's hardware shops - ferriterias - which meant that Izzy, Dania and I had the house to ourselves for a few days which was great and gave us a chance to get to know her. Like Mary, she grew up nearby in an aldea called Cacahual with her four sisters and her mum. It was sad to hear that her dad was absent while she was growing up, but the way she speaks about her mum’s strength and love being enough means that she didn’t miss him. Being the eldest daughter, Dania was kept busy looking after her sisters and although she did attend primary school, she had to skip high school and go straight to work in order to provide for her family. It’s a similar story for so many Honduran women I have met, and it breaks my heart to think about how so many of my students will do the same. To listen to their dreams of being an accountant and high-flying business woman and more is heartbreaking as I know that so many of them will never be given the chance to pursue such careers. This is not only because they are female and therefore are already given fewer chances than their male counterparts, but also because so few will make it out of small village life as they are needed at home to work on family farms or to take over small family businesses. In 2020, Honduras scored 0.72 in the gender gap index, meaning that women are about 28% less likely than men to have equal opportunities. Furthermore, in such rural villages like Candelaria, there are even fewer opportunities on offer, which has meant that the traditional gender roles of Mesoamerica - such as men doing the manual labour while the women stay home to cook and childmind - have stuck. My only hope is that by teaching them English, we are helping to open more doors in their future, or even just a boost in their English classes at college, if they make it that far.

Below are some photos of my schoolgirls across all of my grades - each and every single one of them is so special, and they all deserve the world, look at how gorgeous they are! You can't help but smile when you're surrounded by so many cheeky, grinning faces x

I have noticed during my time in Latin America that there is a severe lack of female empowerment. Not only are women almost completely cut out of the political system, but they also face extreme inequality in the workplace. As high as 65% of Honduran women do not complete secondary school education which leaves them vulnerable to insufficient jobs opportunities. Pregnancy is one of the reasons for such a high rate of high school female drop outs. One of the girls in my first grade class once told me how her mum gave birth to her when she was only 16 years old, and I can only assume that she had to drop out of school to care for her. The niece of my host mum has a similar story as she also dropped out of high school at the age of 15 to raise her daughter. Although, her story differs from many others as after a few years, she returned to Candelaria to complete her final two years of high school while her daughter continued to live with her Grandmother in a nearby aldea. I was surprised when I realised this was the case, and truly admire her for her awareness of the value of education.

(just a quick appreciation post about how amazing my host parents are, just look at them!)

It is one thing to read the numbers and statistics and try to comprehend them, but to live in a community with women who are living examples is a completely different thing altogether. However, the more I learn about topics like this, the more I realise how unique the dynamics of my host family are. When I first arrived, a previous volunteer had described my host parents’ relationship as rather 'out of the ordinary' when compared to those of other couples in the village. Lety is a very powerful woman who knows her mind and how she wants things done, and Victor will do anything to make sure that his queen (she is quite literally named ‘Mi Reina’ in his phone) is living her best life. However, that’s not to say that Victor is a walkover, in fact he is the complete opposite; he runs one of the village’s hardware businesses with his two ferriterias next door. On top of this, he is the president of Comlesul (Cooperativa Mixta Lempira Sur Ltd) which ‘promotes sustainable human development and the growth of the social economy in the southern region of the department of Lempira, developing financial, technical and productive services within the framework of universal cooperative values ​​and principles, in the shared effort to reduce poverty and raise the quality of life of the population’. So yeah, you could say that he is pretty important. Together the two of them make quite the dynamic duo and are one of Candelaria’s power couples as they are involved in almost every aspect of village life here - education, religion, economy - and thanks to Lety's instinctive Hondureaña gossiping skills, we know everything about everyone; Big Brother who?? Living with them has really opened my eyes to how fortunate I have been to have been placed with them for the year, and it makes me so happy to know that the kids have such great role models, especially the fact that Genesis has Lety, a stylish, confident, powerful and unapologetic businesswoman to look up to, which is not something that can be said for many young Honduran girls.

(some photos of the amazing girls and women I live with who have become so very special to me)

As a result of being over here, I have spent a lot of time thinking about gender inequality and how I really want to do something to help these girls. The girls in my classes have so much potential and would have the ability to achieve anything they want if they just had the means to do so. Like Dania’s mother, numerous Honduran women, who spend countless hours providing unpaid labour while also playing the role of the primary breadwinner, have no time to bring their case to the political stage. As a result, its down to us who have access to such platforms to do what we can to help. There is no doubt that I will be returning to Honduras and Candelaria for the rest of my life, and so this is a cause I am prepared to commit as much time and energy to in order to help my girls do what they want with their lives and prevent them from being trapped in the seemingly never ending cycle of ingrained Mesoamerican gender inequality.