EL Porvenir is a rural village about 20 minutes away from the busy port of La Ceiba in Honduras. Surrounded by pinapple fields and huge mountains the scenery is incredible and nothing like I have seen before. The village is extremely poor. The roads/ gravel paths connect the small shacks which line the streets, ans it seems the whole community have very little to do apart from sit on their doorstep. Kids run around in a mismatch of clothing with no shoes on their feet, rotting teth and lice in their hair...this is definately completely different from the tourist track Ive been taking.

At first my initially feeling was to run to the nearest town with clean hotel rooms, electricity and running water, however having spoken to a few of the other volunteers here on my first few days they all assured me that every single one of them felt exactly the same when they arrived and that I should stick out just a week and see...

So I moved in to my house, unfortunately it wasnt, as promised by my main contact with Honduras prior to arriving, close to either the beach or the other volunteer house, infact it is about a half hours walk down there. My house mate Sandra from Spain had moved in a couple of days before and seemed to have only the smallest grasp in English- our conversation on the 2nd night about General Franco and the impact on modern spanish life was hillarious and turned into an exciting game of charades! However, after a few days it became apparent that she knew much more English and that she just needed some practise to get into it...phhhewwww...I dont think I could have done 2 months of my few spanish phrases, I mean, there are just so many times you can ask someone where are you from, how old are you and whats your name without them thinking your either plain crazy or just really forgetful.

The project we are working on is brand new to here. We are teaching English classes to kids in grades 2, 3, 4,5 and 6 although realistically the kids are plonked in any age group so some of our 6th graders ar 13 and 14. I found out about the Honduras Project through the internet, the actually internet project is based around a kinder class for kids whose l}home life is awful and who need some extra TLC and to learn how to behave around others before school starts. The English programme is a brand new idea which has both its good points and bad. The good being that we can pretty much do what ever we want, the bad being that there is no structure and with absolutely no materials or budget for materials we are having to stretch all our ideas to think of things to entertain the kids.

What with the corrupt government in Honduras the teachers and both the primary school and secondary school have not been paid for 2 years. In protest to this they have been striking regularly for 2 years, which means the younger kids in grades 2 and 3 are pretty much illiterate. Sandra and I have started a new class after the English to teach them their ABCs in Spanish (im also learning!) although, if we get found out Im pretty sure we are going to get into huge trouble..as this would make the teachers mad, you see if the kids are getting voluntary schooling then why would the government pay the teachers.. Although, really when it comes down to it, it breaks my heart that the little girl who lives accross from us called Nely cant even write her name.

The idea behind teaching the kids English is that El Porvenir is very close to the Bay Islands, if youre keen on scuba diving youll almost definately have heard of this place. Once ruled by England (we got everywhere didnt we??) this is a big tourist stop, and the idea is that if these kids can get a job in hospitaility by speaking English then their lives will improve greatly. I had a little girl tell me the other day 'Im going to learn English so I can be rich and I wont have to work in the pinapple fields'.

The classes that Sandra and I run are in the afternoon and the morning classes are run by our newest volunteers Ashley, from Canada and Amelie from England. This means Sandra and I can go down to the kinder in the morning to help out down there. The kids down here are fantatsic... they are aged between 2 to 7 and are lively and full of energy! My initially impression was that I had entered a hell hole of super hyped up children, who have absolutely no idea about how to interact with other children. The kick, bite, snatch and scratch each other. Games of football turn into something between rugby and wrestling. Talking to the other volunteers I found out why. These kids hav very very little parenting. Infact most oft he parents have problems with drugs and 2 of the mums are prostitutes and kick their kids out onto the street in the middle of the night when they have customers (Including little Brian in the photo). Its absolutely horrible how soem of the parents talk to their children. These little human punch bags have had very very little chance at a 'normal' life and so coming to kinder is their best part of the day...The affection these kids is amazing. You cant move for being hugged and begged for cuddles. Several times Ive come close to tears...Ive got no idea what they are saying and visa versa but the love and effection is incredible. So, at kinder we etach them their basic ABCs and how to brush their teeth etc.

One of the best things about where our house is situated is because it is right amongst a little cluster of houses so all our neighbours know us and come to talk to us. To our right we have a couple of guys who come and bring us pinapple everyday from work (most the people here work in the fields)...the other night they decided to prove their masculinity to us by performing a set of 10 sit ups (ohhhh yeah!) infront of our gate...we pretended we couldnt see! Infront of us is the house of little Nely, one of the girls in our English class who is absolutely adorable, her parents take away our garbage for us and bring ove things for us to look at, like a rabbit, yesterday! To the left we have a lady who has had about 10 kids thrust upon her. I started trying to talk to her in Spanish the other day and she answered back in a perfect english with a Sheffield accent.... turns out she used to live in Belize where she met an English guy. He took her back to Sheffield where she lived for several years with her 2 kids, then one day she said that she wanted to go and visit her family in Honduras so he paid for a flight for her...that was 3 years ago and he hasnt spoken to her since. Its heart breaking because she was telling me all about the places she used to go to in Sheffield-Felix having gone to uni there I knew about loads of the places she was talking about. NOw she has absolutely no money, lives in a corregated iron shack and has all these parentless children thrust upon her- he dream is to go back, find her children and go shopping in Oxford street, but as a pennyless Honduran woman its going to be near on impossible....so she just stays in her house playing Phil collins at full volume.

The other day there was a funeral procession down our lane. At the time we had some kids over painting and so we asked what had happened 'Oh they were shot' they said in the most natural way possible 'WHAT????WHY AND WHERE???' 'Oh over there(pointing about 200 yards away) a couple of weeks ago, i guess because of drugs'...For this reason we dont go out of the house after dark, although as we are beginning to know all our neighbours we are feeling a lot more safe. The tell us the gangs wouldnt dare touch a gringo (it doesnt matter how many times we tell them that we are NOT form America they still call us gringo!)

The kids on our English classes are great. We get letters from all the girls saying 'Will you be my best friend forever' posted through our door, and the amount of pictures painted for us on our wall grow every single day. It seems we ar the coolest kids in town and everyone wants to say hi.

So this is my update on El Porvenir, although I expect I have forgotten a HEAP of things...

Lastly just to say, if anyone has any great ideas of how to entertain primary school kids with games to teach them English please let me know!