A perfect day

Yesterday was simply…a perfect day

Every once in a while they come along and its so important to enjoy every minute of them. How can i write about a perfect day? Well I will simply try and list the things that made it so.

From the morning expectations, nerves and fears as we set of for the march, to the march itself (which i will write more on later) which was a mind-blowing experience. After the march we sat with the young people by the road side, chatting, drinking strangely coloured fizzy drinks and celebrating and reveling in their high from what they had just done.

After that, a few hours off and me and LG and Noxy went for a gorgeous lunch, sitting outside and having a celebratory beer. The work was all over and we could start to relax. A shower and freshen up later, we headed to meet with the Honduran guys again, where we treated to the funniest cultural presentation and performance by young people I have ever seen, part of which involved me having to dance with a transvestite women, dressed up in an ugly rubber mask, with huge fake boobs and arse who was dancing like the most agile lapdancer in her 20s! The cap it all off, she finished her dance by bringing my boss to dance with her too! But all the dancing was fantastic.

This was then followed by a long drive away from the mean streets of Tegucigalpa and out in the beautiful hills that surround it. We went to a traditional bar and restaurant and spent the rest of the night dancing away, doing a piñata, eating cake and then about 2 in the morning, starting Kareoke! The dancing was awesome, we had basically taken the dace floor over as cultural stereotypes did too! And as for the akreoke, well we took turns to sing english power ballads (mine and Noxys whitney housten was a high point, as was mine and LG’s ‘Smells like teen spirit’) and they sung latin love songs crowded aroud the one dodgy mic.

For us a staff team too, it was great night too, to come together and celebrate a hard week, which had gone extremely well. We rarely let our hair down all together, so it was great to relax…even our boss had a good dance too.

To spend a night like this with people who have become such great friends and to let our hair down in the most latin way, was such a pleasure and a night I will never forget.

We all rolled into bed about 5, full of dark rum and complete happiness.

A perfect day.

The Prison Break

So we did it….we got out! The prison break happened, but in the most dramatic fashion!

We went out to Barrio San Francisco and joined loads of young people in a march through their barrio against violence and for peace! It was amazing. My week has been gearing up to the big march on friday, so this was like a bonus one, or even a warm up one!

We came round the corner (as we were a little late) and hit the march, in all its colourful and noisy glory! Suddenly I was back…and in my element again. It was so easy to enjoy it so much and feel so much part of it, that you begin to forget you are marching through one of the most dangerous barrios in the world

Except it was not possible to forget, as we were flanked by the very police the march was protesting against . The police were carrying huge guns, and behind the march was 4 rows on police marching as a block. The irony must have been lost on them

Still you soon got used to them…until the rally at the end of the march. We all congregated in the main playground, and the young people released balloons and did some plays and dancing. One sketch involved mimicing a gang fight. They were great actors, so much so that when they pulled their fake gun out, the police reacted, instantly, and pulled theres ready to fire. It all happened in the blink of a very terrifying eye. Me and LG were in between the boys doing the play and the crowd of police…and for half a second as we turned to flee I genuinly thought they were going to open fire (and we would have been in the middle)

They didn’t. But it was a terrifying reminder of the reality of life here for young people. And so amazing to be with young people prepared to march to change it.

Bob Harris I am not

The last two days I have been stuck in a meeting. I am not usually the formal development meeting person. Others are involved in these conferences – evaluating and planning and sharing – sitting behind desks, fiddling with translation head pieces. I am usually more of the hands on guy, the person who is out there getting my hands dirty, seeing and being involved in projects, rather than talking about them.

So I have found these two days hard. When you are used to working with young people and making things as creative and interactive as possible, a day stuck behind a desk listening to powerpoint presentations being read is never really going to turn me on. We are also in a high rise hotel in the centre of Tegucigalpa, in a street that appears more like the latin zone of disney land than the Tegucigalpa I have come to know and love, and the city we had spent such a great few days in before moving here. I can’t help feeling like Bob Harris in the middle of ‘Lost in Translation’ as I have felt stuck in our high rise hotel unable to leave.

Me and LG only confirmed this when we ventured to the gym, which was on the top floor with a stunning view over Tegucigalpa. Tucked up in our little gym bubble though, it was almost like a picture on the wall, rather than the real world and we could have been anywhere…thankfully we got a little lost on our way down and found a deserted balcony outside, which not only gave us a breath of fresh, warm, un-air conditioned air, but we could also hear the sounds and smell the smells of the city. The meetings and preparations mean we’ve hardly had a minute to even leave the four walls…….

So tonight, in the words of Bob Harris….”can you keep a secret? I’m trying to organize a prison break…..”

Job descriptions !?!

I heard some colleagues moaning recently about having to do things that weren’t in their job descriptions….

I giggled to myself about this after the last few days me and LG have had. Job descriptions? What job descriptions….and thats why I just love what I do sometimes. These is what I thought as I sat on the table in the office cutting out large letters in sparkly red paper, to make a welcome sign, sticking down pieces of card to make a Zambian flag, in amongst chatting away in my bad spanish, giggling and planing for a big march next week. The day before after doing some planning for our meeting (which i guess is in our job descriptions) then setting off shopping to buy paints, plastic, paper, card and most importantly balloons.

What better way to learn spanish than to follow around N as she told me things to go and find in a shop that was the Honduras equivalent of B&Q on speed! When would I ever have learnt the words for balloon? Me and LG then went on what felt like the quest for the holy grail to find ‘palstico negro’ for the march. Everyone apart from us seemed to know what is was and eventually we found it! I’ve put in a picture of the ‘plastico negro’ to show you what it was…what we are going to use it for is anyones guess at the moment.

Another shop saw us amazed by the enormous number of ‘pinatas’ hanging from ceiling. There was so many, even an Elmo from Sesame Street one! It was a very surreal sight.

To top it all off, today was spent building large black coffins, which the young people will use to parade through the streets during their march……….

More formal meeting start tomorrow, so back to the job description for a few days…sadly……

Friends

Its is so good to be back with the staff and volunteers here in Honduras. Being here only 5 months, ago, it feels like we’ve hardly been away and I’ve really felt welcomed and at home. There is none of the formality and sounding out of eachother, that you often get the first time you go to visit a partner, and we were straight into jokes and laughs as we spent out first day in the office.

Its great to hear the good news of friends and people we had met last time…of V, who is now working as a lawyer fighting for womens rights, and B a young person we met on the Februar project a few months ago (read about that here) , who is now speaking on their behalf on national youth platforms, and to meet her mum, who now volunteers herself on community projects. The office here is always so busy and full of young people, sitting, chatting, working, it has to have the best atmosphere of any office I’ve worked in in the world! We’re planning to all go dancing one night…and to make it to the Karaoke we never quite made it to last time.

There is of course the bad news too, a good friend who has been battling drug addiction is ill again and no longer well enough to carry volunteering as a youth worker, and we heard more stories of killings of young people.

But all in all, its so good to back amongst these guys who so quickly become friends, as well as colleagues. They are all making jokes about my improving spanish….hopefully next time I come I’ll be able to understand the jokes!!

White knuckles

Tegucigalpa airport is terrifying.

Well, the airport itself is lovely actually, very bright, modern and airy (bit like a Terminal 5 that works), but the approach and landing at the airport has to be the most terrifying in the world.

Just google it or put it into Youtube and you will see loads of videos of people backing up my claims! Here is just one of many examples, but its hard from here to tell just how scary it really is! Mine and LGs sweating hands are better testimony!:

When I landed hear in March I was simply terrified. Now doing it another time, and following a fatal crash in June, when a plane over shot the tiny runway (only 18000meters – read this god article about it), I took the time to experience the shear fear of it all!

The airport is right in the city centre and surrounded by hills, which are simply too big to have any right to be anywhere near an airport. So as you approach all you can see is hills and houses that are very very close and it seems inexplicable that you are anywhere near an airport. You fly right over a mountain overlooking the city with the synonmous overlooking large statue of Jesus (see an earlier post about that), so near you can literally pat him on his head. As the plane comes into land and you realise its about to hit the ground, it seems inevitable that you are about to crash into the centre of the city, so close are the houses and roads. But miraculously as you close your eyes waiting for the end, you realise the loud bump is in fact the runway hitting the planes tyres – a runway that appears from nowhere. People clapped – and if ever a planes landing deserves a clap, its at Tegucigalpa.

The most frightening bit is then looking out the window and seeing the end of runway, literally 10 meters form the plane! Its one of the smallest in the world, so the braking when you finally hit the ground is extraordinary as the plane tries its very best to stop before the end. They are now in the process of extending it.