Having lived in Trinidad for 9 weeks, I think it's about time I told you more about the area I'm living in. Trinidad is a town of around people, its situated in the department of Santa Barbara , about an hour from San Pedro Sula, in Western Honduras. San Pedro is Honduras' second city, extremely dangerous, but if you want to travel anywhere to San Pedro you must go. With Trinidad you can walk from one side to the other in about ten minutes. It's a pretty area, with some wealthier houses, but just two minutes from the parque central (the main square where the church and majority of shops are located, which is a feature of all the towns here) and you can see the houses of the less wealthy residents. And the difference is striking. From beautifully painted houses with immaculate to mud huts with corrugated iron roofs and heaps of rubbish. Walking further out often you come tithe barrios (kind of like suburbs, but as you get further from the town the poorer they get) thses stretch far up onto the hill, and up to 4 kilometres outside of the village. These are the poorest areas, and Mali and I have the opportunity to work in a poverty stricken kinder school in a barrio called Lempira. It's a huge change to the school we currently work in. It's one room, decorated with second hand posters. The children are very young 3/4 years old. And extremely cute. They are excitable and fun to teach. I'll elaborate on this teaching opportunity later in the blog.
Trinidad is a very safe place compared to other areas of Honduras. We can walk around and not feel threatened. Although going out too late after dark is inadvisable, and can be dangerous. Even though we've been reassured of the safeness of our town, the locals still like to carry guns, everywhere. The guards at the bank have shotguns casually resting on their shoulders and pistols in their belts, our landlord walks about with a gun holstered in his belt, walking down the street you'll see two or three people (always men) carrying guns. And you cant help but notice the bulletholes in some of the vehicles. At first it made me very wary and slightly disconcerted, but now, it's just what happens. This is how the people live. There's always a risk of violence. Armed robberies are popular along some of the isolated roads of this department. And with the main occupation being farming, travelling on the isolated roads is daily routine, the farmers feel the have to protect themselves. While this is entirely justifiable, I can't help but think that the amount of people carrying guns can only compound the violence here.
While we haven't witnessed any violence, we did have a moment where at 7am we thought there was a dead body in the street. The street was relatively busy, but everyone kept walking on, as did we. It worried us, until the next day, we saw the same man, lying in different spot at 7am. Turns out he's the local drunk who likes to pass out in the early hours and wake up around lunchtime. This reassured us, while Honduras is the murder capital of the world, Trinidad is not a town where murders happen in broad daylight and the people just walk on by.
Unfortunately due to some issues in relation to public school, we are temporarily unable to teach there. This should hopefully be resolved soon, as I really do wish to continue working there! Before the issues arose, I won't get into the details as it should be easily resolved, we decided we would also work in a Kinder school in a very poor barrio about a kilometre from our house. The first day we started, we walked down, it was a very beautiful walk and it shows you areas of Trinidad that you wouldn't normally see, highlighting the extreme poverty faced by some families in this area. Approaching the school, we soon realised that this would be very different from where we teach in the afternoons. The school was a room, decorated very basically and with 4 desks surrounded by 18 tiny chairs. Te children were all standing up, with one hand on their heart, singing the national anthem as we entered. A daily occurrence here. The children were unbelievably small and extremely cute. You could see the poverty much more clearly here, their shirts were not gleeming white, skirts were faded navy and trousers were ripped at the knees. It was a hard first day. We started by teaching them basic letters and words and matching those words to pictures. At first there was a lack of understanding, but come our next visit, the lesson ran much more smoothly. And the kids were excited for our return.
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On Tuesday, we walked down to the barrio Lempira in the intense heat, to be confronted with only two pupils in the class. The elementary school teachers next door had gone to San Pedro for the day, so that school was closed. Everyone assumed that the kinder school would be closed. But alas it was not and only two pupils turned up. I have to admit, teaching the two cutest girls, one on one, was one of the best lessons I've done. They understood what we were teaching and were delighted when we spent half an hour after class playing with them. It was obvious that they weren't used to the constant attention we were able to give them. It was a good day. Although I am looking forward to having the full class back tomorrow.
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