So this week has been crazy busy at school. We've had a teacher off and so we've been covering extra classes etc. I have also been writing a profile on each of the children that will be sent to people who want to sponsor children in the school (we want to get every child a sponsor!) Anyway, this has been a real eye opener this time. I wrote about all of them in regards to school-related stuff, then I met up with Douglas in the Providence office to find out more about their home lives. Seeing the children coming to school every day in their beautiful school uniforms we provide it is easy to forget the poverty they leave behind each morning. I have been hearing stories and looking at photos of their houses and living conditions. Heart breaking. One boy in my class lives in a 2 room house with 20 other people/children. 21 of them in 2 rooms!! He sleeps in a single bed with his mother and 2 of his sisters, which is behind a curtain in the 'living room'. Then behind another curtain is his aunt and her family on their bed. Each of his brothers and sisters has a different father. And so it goes on. But they are such a happy well adjusted family. Another girl in my class sleeps on a single mattress on the floor of her house with her brother and mother, whilst other family members do the same on their mattresses. Yet no-one complains. Another girl goes home - and goes walking thru a small stream to get there. Her father doesn't work - he lost his hand and wrist in a drunken fight. None of the family have been to school past Grade 7 (at the most, others dropped out in Grade 1). She is a mal-nourished girl. Heart-breaking.
But just so easy to forget. When the mums come to help cook and clean in the school they look so nicely dressed - easy to forget that Providence provides them with clothes in payment for helping cook and clean at school (which is their payment instead of school fees!)
These children live in sheer poverty. Yet come to school with a smile and a spring in their step.
We have a team coming from the States next week. Opthomologists etc, will be testing the eyes of all the children and people in the community and doing surgeries etc. Due to a lack of people available to translate...I've been drafted in to translate for some of the eye tests etc. HAHAHAHA!! Heaven help me! Heaven help them!
Friday, 30 April 2010
Monday, 26 April 2010
Melting
Tomorrow is meant to be the hottest day. I am melting! 38C ++ Not an air conditioner in sight!
Saturday, 24 April 2010
National Earth Day!
On Thursday as a school we had to go down town to the Plaza to sell food! Each school had to go and set up a stand in the Plaza whilst there was a big concert/presentation/ thing going on to celebrate Earth Day and environment month!! My Grade 1 mum's made Carne Asada to sell...meat, tortilla, chismol, beans, and the Prepa mum's maded Gringa's (tortilla with chicken inside) to sell. It was fine until about 7pm when the Heavens opened with perhaps the most enormous rainstorm of the year! We got vv wet! But still managed to raise money to buy the children sweat pants for P.E.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
HELP!!!
As I said before, last week I went to a leadership conference. Now, he said we had homework to do .... I thought he was joking! Umm...apparently not! I have to write a 3 page paper on the Leadership qualities in the book of Nehemiah!!! What we can learn about leadership in Nehemiah!! In Spanish! hahahaha yeah right! I will write it in English, and translate it myself - but in reality I will give it to a bilingual friend to translate for me if it gets too tricky!!
So.....please email me everything you know about leadership in the book of Nehemiah and what we can learn from it!
Heaven help me!!
email: katharinemarrow@hotmail.com
So.....please email me everything you know about leadership in the book of Nehemiah and what we can learn from it!
Heaven help me!!
email: katharinemarrow@hotmail.com
Saturday, 17 April 2010
Strange reality
I finshed the last day of my 3 day Leadership training course today. Surprisingly I enjoyed it!! I walked away today at the end of it and yet again found myself amazed that I am emmersed in a Spanish speaking world, spending my days in Spanish more than English. Me!! I really enjoy it an can now communicate freely, the thing that makes me realise I can understand well is that I understand jokes...well some of them!
So, as much as I sometimes find it strange that I live in this surreal world of Spanish, it's my world!
I was sat on the sofa today and looked at my family photos that are in frames around my room. This is a far cry from England. I miss everyone very much. But is also doesnt feel real! In my garden I go and check how my newly planted banana trees are doing and to see if the mangoes are ready yet! Really...
So, as much as I sometimes find it strange that I live in this surreal world of Spanish, it's my world!
I was sat on the sofa today and looked at my family photos that are in frames around my room. This is a far cry from England. I miss everyone very much. But is also doesnt feel real! In my garden I go and check how my newly planted banana trees are doing and to see if the mangoes are ready yet! Really...
Thursday, 15 April 2010
A very large ark!
OK...dry season where for art thou?? It is raining so hard outside, tropical style, that I feel like I'm living on an island!! Thank God my car is 4x4 as I have to drive down rivers that were once roads outside my house!! I will try and catch on video if I am brave enough to go out! Is crazy for this time of year.
Also, it's a National holiday tomorrow, but alas...Providence is making all it's staff go for training. Tonight (Thursday night)
I had to go 6pm-9pm. Tomorrow 8am - 9pm (they said 6.30am for breakfast but I'd rather go hungry and sleep more!) and then Saturday morning. A good old Spanish conference...on how to be a good Pastor??? It's on being a leader. Fair enough. Then I look at the handout which is entitled...'For faithful men' who want to be Pastors. Hmmmm I'm a teacher and a woman?! Interesting use of my time!! Not so much. Hey ho, I have no choice in such matters and so I shall and go and learn how to be a faithful man who wants to be a pastor?!
May have to swim to get there though!!
p.s ...does anyone want my puppy? Yeah she maybe cute but as soon as I sit on the sofa she barks at me to play...never barks outside where it's useful, never barks at other dogs. And she jumps...all 4 legs at once just jumps everywhere like a kangaroo!!
Also, it's a National holiday tomorrow, but alas...Providence is making all it's staff go for training. Tonight (Thursday night)
I had to go 6pm-9pm. Tomorrow 8am - 9pm (they said 6.30am for breakfast but I'd rather go hungry and sleep more!) and then Saturday morning. A good old Spanish conference...on how to be a good Pastor??? It's on being a leader. Fair enough. Then I look at the handout which is entitled...'For faithful men' who want to be Pastors. Hmmmm I'm a teacher and a woman?! Interesting use of my time!! Not so much. Hey ho, I have no choice in such matters and so I shall and go and learn how to be a faithful man who wants to be a pastor?!
May have to swim to get there though!!
p.s ...does anyone want my puppy? Yeah she maybe cute but as soon as I sit on the sofa she barks at me to play...never barks outside where it's useful, never barks at other dogs. And she jumps...all 4 legs at once just jumps everywhere like a kangaroo!!
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
I'm gonna build me an ark!
It's dry season again...apparently! Jan/Feb - May. ish. This time last year - in my old house - we had no water in the house for 4 weeks because of the dry season, and well the lack thereof of water! Easter was blinding hot. Today was scorching hot, real tropical sun. Tonight...a real tropical rainstorm!! Yes, torrential, tropical rain..the kind you don't get in England! It came from absolutely nowhere. What happened to the dry season?? I tell you what though...I rushed outside with my potted plants from my porch and put them in the rain....I could almost see them smiling!!
I truly am not understanding the weather. Everything is screwed up entirely. Goodness knows what effect this has on the crops?! Heh ho, least it's going to be a cooler night...better sleep!
I truly am not understanding the weather. Everything is screwed up entirely. Goodness knows what effect this has on the crops?! Heh ho, least it's going to be a cooler night...better sleep!
Monday, 12 April 2010
Midnight visitor..
Life here can be fairly boring these days and so most unlike me but I've taken to having early nights...only way I can cope getting up ridiculously early for work!
Anyway, last night I was in bed by 9.30pm and at 1.40am was woken up by feeling something on my face and then my arm. I flicked it off and quickly turned on the light. There running across my bedsheet was a baby..cockroach!! I tried to grab it but missed and eventually with my sheet in my hand I grabbed it and crushed it within the sheet til it was a gonner! By then it was 1.45am and I am standing bleary eyes with a dead cockroach crushed into my top sheet! So I flicked it into my bin, stripped the sheets off my bed, put new ones on and went back to sleep with a plan to completely wash my house after school today with bleach and spray with Raid. Just as I was drifting off to sleep I hoped that the baby cockroach didn't have a mother who would come looking for it....
(it didn't!)
My friends were not overly disturbed by my story, just told me it's part of life and normal! I'm not so keen on having my personal space invaded like that!! Weird thing is, unike every house here in Honduras, I don't actually have cockroaches in my kitchen or my house. I do in my bodega, but not in my house. This one must have just wandered in. My house is now clean. I hope nothing else visits me tonight...I need sleep....
Anyway, last night I was in bed by 9.30pm and at 1.40am was woken up by feeling something on my face and then my arm. I flicked it off and quickly turned on the light. There running across my bedsheet was a baby..cockroach!! I tried to grab it but missed and eventually with my sheet in my hand I grabbed it and crushed it within the sheet til it was a gonner! By then it was 1.45am and I am standing bleary eyes with a dead cockroach crushed into my top sheet! So I flicked it into my bin, stripped the sheets off my bed, put new ones on and went back to sleep with a plan to completely wash my house after school today with bleach and spray with Raid. Just as I was drifting off to sleep I hoped that the baby cockroach didn't have a mother who would come looking for it....
(it didn't!)
My friends were not overly disturbed by my story, just told me it's part of life and normal! I'm not so keen on having my personal space invaded like that!! Weird thing is, unike every house here in Honduras, I don't actually have cockroaches in my kitchen or my house. I do in my bodega, but not in my house. This one must have just wandered in. My house is now clean. I hope nothing else visits me tonight...I need sleep....
Sunday, 11 April 2010
The sad reality
Last night, as I was just getting ready for an early night I had a call from my friends Marlon and Melodie. Melodie runs a children's home here (she's Canadian but raised in Spain). Anyway, they were just heading out of town..Marlon giving a ride to Melo or something and they had got a call from a girl who was coming to the Children's Home with her baby, and had arrived early. I say early, meaning a day early. So they called me to go and collect her and find her a hotel for the night as they were out of town.
It was about 9pm and she was down town alone with her baby (of about 1 yr). The girl could not have been more than 18 herself and was here to deliver her baby to the home. It was heart breaking to see cos she clearly loved this gorgeous little girl a lot, but the baby's father had wanted a boy not a girl and there in followed a lot of neglect and abuse. I can't tell any more than that. But you could see in the girl's face how hard it was going to be to give her baby away. Yet knowing it was the only option.
That is the sad reality of life.
It was about 9pm and she was down town alone with her baby (of about 1 yr). The girl could not have been more than 18 herself and was here to deliver her baby to the home. It was heart breaking to see cos she clearly loved this gorgeous little girl a lot, but the baby's father had wanted a boy not a girl and there in followed a lot of neglect and abuse. I can't tell any more than that. But you could see in the girl's face how hard it was going to be to give her baby away. Yet knowing it was the only option.
That is the sad reality of life.
Mountaineering
So having made lots of videos it's now not letting me put them on here...typical! So I shall say what's been going on and maybe this week I'll be able to upload them.
On Thursday I take my little class of Grade 1's for P.E. My Spanish co-teacher suggested we take them for a walk in the mountains behind the school (owned by the project) and so off we went. She said she knew the way! Hmmm I beg to differ. We found a path and followed it and then the path stopped! Luz was sure that we were about to come across another path.....we didn't. We were pushing our way through thick mountain undergrowth. The kids thought it was great, although there was no disguising that we were lost!!
Eventually we turned round and headed back in the rough direction that we came from...hard to tell exact direction when all the trees look the same!! We eventually made it back and the kids were full of energy and so ran up the hill in front of us. I thank God we didn't ome across any of the cobras or other snakes that are abundant around here!!
On Thursday I take my little class of Grade 1's for P.E. My Spanish co-teacher suggested we take them for a walk in the mountains behind the school (owned by the project) and so off we went. She said she knew the way! Hmmm I beg to differ. We found a path and followed it and then the path stopped! Luz was sure that we were about to come across another path.....we didn't. We were pushing our way through thick mountain undergrowth. The kids thought it was great, although there was no disguising that we were lost!!
Eventually we turned round and headed back in the rough direction that we came from...hard to tell exact direction when all the trees look the same!! We eventually made it back and the kids were full of energy and so ran up the hill in front of us. I thank God we didn't ome across any of the cobras or other snakes that are abundant around here!!
Sunday, 4 April 2010
Happy Easter!!
As you have probably noticed I haven't been updating this! Sorry, what with lack of speedy internet at times, lack of time and lack of motivation! But a new start....
Here's a very quick overview of what has happened the past 2 months...
Well my friend Jenny (was Grove) from Mayfield (CYFA camp) days was working for Tearfund in Latin America so managed to fit in 3 days in Honduras!! She came and stayed with me and interviewed someone from my church for her Tearfund work and it was lovely to have someone who knows me and my culture stay a while. A true blessing - and a right laugh!
Work plods on, has it ups and downs, hard times and fun times.
It has been a bit tough at times still settling down again after time at home cos I know I'm coming back in July for 2 weeks so am thinking about home...as much as I desperately love coming home it doesn't help me feel settled here!
This week has been Semana Santa - Holy Week. We only get this week off school..agghhh...but it has been wonderful. I chose not to go on the Youth Group camp...a decision which upset a lot of people! Instead I went to Belize with Sue and her family. They had to go to renew their visas and asked me along. It was just exaclty what I needed to relax and unwind. Beautiful beaches and just getting away. The weather here is just plain weird...why is it raining in the hottest month of the year???? So we had some rain but nothing terrible and was still fun. The amazing news is that the Vissers pretty much paid everything for me - talk about an amazing gift at just the right time!!
Here is a link to the photos....(click on it!)
Belize photos
So, after I got back from Belize on Wednesday night all my friends went off to camp on Thursday morning - til Tonight (Sunday). It was actually really nice to have time at home to read my books and relax. I spent time with the Haglers (lovely Missinoary family here) and went for lunch with the Vissers. I am trying to work out the balance between spending time with my friends (all Honduran) and spending time with friends and people from my own culture - to help keep the balance. Is a tough line to follow but I'm trying!
Today, being Easter Sunday, I went to the Sunrise service that is held as a united services for all the Evangelical churches in town. Had to be there at 5am! Luckily round the corner. I do love singing all the old hymns! I videoed some for you - I clearly have to work on my camera skills and next time not sit in front of a loud singing lady!! But it gives you an idea of what it's like...screachy and all!!
..Because He lives....
I couldn't upload the others on my super-slow internet!! But you can see 1!
Here are some photos I took today of Sheba who is looking more like the lioness Nala from Lion King every day!!! She is getting enormous and is only 3 months! She got stung by a wasp today and so is sporting a fat lip on her already too-big-for-her-body head!
Here's a very quick overview of what has happened the past 2 months...
Well my friend Jenny (was Grove) from Mayfield (CYFA camp) days was working for Tearfund in Latin America so managed to fit in 3 days in Honduras!! She came and stayed with me and interviewed someone from my church for her Tearfund work and it was lovely to have someone who knows me and my culture stay a while. A true blessing - and a right laugh!
Work plods on, has it ups and downs, hard times and fun times.
It has been a bit tough at times still settling down again after time at home cos I know I'm coming back in July for 2 weeks so am thinking about home...as much as I desperately love coming home it doesn't help me feel settled here!
This week has been Semana Santa - Holy Week. We only get this week off school..agghhh...but it has been wonderful. I chose not to go on the Youth Group camp...a decision which upset a lot of people! Instead I went to Belize with Sue and her family. They had to go to renew their visas and asked me along. It was just exaclty what I needed to relax and unwind. Beautiful beaches and just getting away. The weather here is just plain weird...why is it raining in the hottest month of the year???? So we had some rain but nothing terrible and was still fun. The amazing news is that the Vissers pretty much paid everything for me - talk about an amazing gift at just the right time!!
Here is a link to the photos....(click on it!)
Belize photos
So, after I got back from Belize on Wednesday night all my friends went off to camp on Thursday morning - til Tonight (Sunday). It was actually really nice to have time at home to read my books and relax. I spent time with the Haglers (lovely Missinoary family here) and went for lunch with the Vissers. I am trying to work out the balance between spending time with my friends (all Honduran) and spending time with friends and people from my own culture - to help keep the balance. Is a tough line to follow but I'm trying!
Today, being Easter Sunday, I went to the Sunrise service that is held as a united services for all the Evangelical churches in town. Had to be there at 5am! Luckily round the corner. I do love singing all the old hymns! I videoed some for you - I clearly have to work on my camera skills and next time not sit in front of a loud singing lady!! But it gives you an idea of what it's like...screachy and all!!
..Because He lives....
I couldn't upload the others on my super-slow internet!! But you can see 1!
Here are some photos I took today of Sheba who is looking more like the lioness Nala from Lion King every day!!! She is getting enormous and is only 3 months! She got stung by a wasp today and so is sporting a fat lip on her already too-big-for-her-body head!
Now I have this little flip video thing (bought down for me from the States I can start posting videos of my life here..I promise to work on my camera skills!)
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