Day 14 - what they don´t tell you at INTOPS

Saturday morning, 4.45am. Hannah and Nic wake up, eager to help the army men milk the army cows at 5am as promised yesterday. We actually spent the hour waiting and wondering where, in fact, they had got to, and watched the sunrise instead over the already hot Honduran morning. They did finally turn up at quarter to 6 but it was too late - 6am was exercise time! We ran around the football field getting very muddy and doing stretches before breakfast, of more refried beans! Our workshop was due to start at 8am, and, at 7.55am we were delivered more bad news that unfortunately no more leaders would be joining us. It was decided to still go ahead with todays workshop, training the existing leaders until 4pm and go home early. After some very last minute changes to the programme, to condense it still into a one day workshop, we lugged our resources bag up to the football pitch and ran our programme to 16 leaders in total, with 10 new leaders who hadn´t been to a GOLD session before.
Our workshop was not without battles, mainly of the bovine variety, where we were joined by the herd of cows at the beginning. Ducks and geese came in for a gander too, wondering what we were up to, and we powered on through the noise of the soldiers mowing and strimming the football pitch most of the way through the day.
After lunch, the new leaders made their promise to become members of the Guias de Honduras, and we were very lucky to be able to see their ceremony. We came back to our room for water to discover another giant iguana in our room, who was clearly confused why there were 5 girls in the army quarters. Forget tarantulas, we had our own pet iguana! Afterwards, we had an hour to deliver as many of our activities about condoms as we could, before the leaders had to leave. We quickly packed away our bags, VERY sweaty and a bit bemused, but otherwise pleased to at least done a days workshop.
We arrived in our hotel just in time for the pouring rain, in which we adopted the non-conventional method of cooling off by dancing in the rain and laying in the car park, exhausted from the most bizarre set of events over the past couple of days.

Day 13 - A night in the army barracks!

Friday - we left Tegucigalpa at 9am in high spirits ready for the 2 hour drive to Choluteca where our 3 day workshop would be. We were due to start our sessions at 2, and grew slightly concerned at getting lost and waiting ages for lunch, and leaving the restaurant at 1.40pm. When we did finally arrive we were welcomed into a real live army barracks with men with guns and lots of cows. We arrived to no leaders, and a large room full of army beds, which the army men then proceeded to put mosquito nets on and clean the communal showers. We were very lucky and given the luxury of the Officers dorm, and the Colnel cleared his stuff for us! We waited, and we waited for the leaders to arrive whilst the heavens opened and it proceeded to pour it down with rain, to a point where it was flooded outside our room. Emma and Hannah caught a glimpse of an enormous Giant Iguana creeping round the side of the building and it suddenly dawned on us what these ´dinosaurs´ the officers had been referring to were. Finally, at 5.30pm a bus of 8 new leaders arrived and we found out that the rest of the leaders - the 42 missing- couldn´t get the bus today due to strikes on the road. The workshop for the day was cancelled until the leaders would arrive at 8am tomorrow, so we had yet another team meeting to create a new 2-day leader plan instead. That night we ate in the army canteen before playing some games with the Honduran leaders and retiring to bed (with our own armed body guard outside our door), hoping for some better luck tomorrow.

Day 12 - some last minute resources shopping before camp!

Ahhhh camp tomorrow! We´re starting our 3 day workshop with leaders in Choluteca, south Honduras where apparently it is 43 degrees! 43! And they call this winter. Today we have been shopping in the supermarkets in Tegucigalpa to get some last minute resources for camp, including a banana, corguette, and 2 stumpy carrots to use as ´demonstrators´so that the leaders can see that you can use anything to demonstrate putting a condom on. Ooogo was looking on with mild interest at our purchases. Then we´ve spent the evening cutting, sticking, unpacking, writing, creating and repacking our resources to be ready to leave in the morning. We´ve found out that camp no longer means camp, as the minister of health has said it is not safe to be in tents due to mosquitos, so army barracks it is! Slightly concerned about tarantulas, but very VERY excited about tomorrow :)

Day 11 - 2 more workshops later!

Yesterday we drove from Tegucigalpa to out 3rd workshop with 20 leaders aged 14-19, in a local secondary school. We adapted our 2 day leader workshop and girl one day workshop to be relevant to these leaders, and also condense it to the time we had. We ran activities on leadership, STIs, HIV and AIDS and did condom demonstrators to give the leaders confidence to pass these skills onto their girls. The workshop was hard work, especially as we had limited time, but after another hilarous rendition of the ´here I am on my badger´song, we hope they went home having learnt a lot.
This morning we were lovingly awoken at 6 by some super keen tourists outside our window, before driving to our next workshop with girls aged 8-12 in another school in the Danli region of Honduras, close to Nicaragua. We ran this workshop outside much to the delight of some local builders as well as the boys in the school who watched on eagerly, every now and again saying things like ´I´m sorry´ and ´hello my friend´ which was always nice. The girls were an absolute delight and we all bounced off their enthusiasm and had a great workshop. You should have seen them scream when we blew up the condoms and played games with them, and they all worked really well in all the activities we ran about self esteem, teenage pregnancy and STIs. We convinced most of the girls that Hannah was actually Hannah Montana, as well as lots of girls coming up and asking ´do you like Justin Beiber?´to which the answer had to be yes.
The girls all asked us if we were coming back, and we had to let them down gently that we were doing this once only. The badger song/our now daily exercise dance of course went down a treat, and we all left on a high having completed half of our project now!

BIG update, our 2 worshops!

On Wednesday we delivered our first worshop to 55 girls aged 9-12 in a school near Tegucigalpa. It went really well, especially as it was our first workshop, and the girls had fun as well as learning a lot. The worshop for this age group covered self esteem, sex and relationships, STI´s and introduced the idea of condoms through some games. It was an amazing experience to see our hard work come together and be successful.
The next few days we were in the north west of Honduras, having endured the worlds most uncomfortable bus ride ever for the 8 hour journey to and from Copan! We were joined by 3 more translators and Marisol too. We were lucky to be able to visit the famous Copan ruins and reinact our Spice girls routine in a local karaoke bar before our two day workshop that ran over the weekend.
This worshop was for leaders, training them to be able to run worshops with the girls in their own units about self esteem, sex, STIs, HIV and AIDS and teenage pregnancy. We also did some leadership activities, giving the leaders the confidence and knowledge to be able to deliver these activities. We ran full condom demonstrations with the leaders, allowing them all to practice. Over the two days we really noticed the leaders´confidence grow and their knowledge of the topics covered increase, which demostrated the real impact our work our out here is having. Best of all, both the leaders and the GOLD team had great fun!

Day 3 - Resource shopping and the national park

Last night´s welcoming ceremony was really lovely, we were made to feel very welcome and met a lot of the commissioners of the Guias de Honduras. Some of the local Brownies did a dance for us, including to Poker Face, our team song! We were given gifts and the Honduran scarf and chatted a lot to the leaders there. The local newspaper took our photo, as did a lot of keen Brownies, before we went for dinner with the commissioners.
This morning we visited the Headquarters de Guias de Honduras, and had a look around their centre. There were lots of gifts from the previous GOLD projects there which was great, as well as a giant Rainbow Pinata! After deciding what resources we still needed to buy here we went to buy glue and card in the supermarket, driven by Hugo (pronounced Ooooooooogo!) our driver, who knew Emma from her 2008 trip.
In the afternoon we took a very windy and bumpy ride up to the national park, which is high up in a protected area of Tegucigalpa. We had a picnic and took a stroll up to the Mayan ruins before visiting the animal reserve, where they have captive native animals such as tapirs, leopards, monkeys and lots of crocodiles. After returning back to the hotel, we had a typical Honduran dinner with Marisol before sitting down and preparing for our first workshop tomorrow! We´ll be leaving at 6.30 tomorrow for a drive to Copan, where our workshop is, and will probably only be able to update the blog on Monday when we return back to Tegucigalpa. We´re all very very excited to see how our workshops pan out! :) Adios for a wee while ...

Bienvenidos a Honduras!

Yay we´ve made it to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras! We all woke up super early this morning because of the time difference here - 5am Miami time is 10am UK time. After a mammoth amount of rainfall that woke Emma up last night, we set off again at quarter to 8 in the already sweltering humidity for breakfast in the hostel before getting a taxi to the airport. Surprisingly we had no more hiccups at all, and the flight (althought a bit bumpy) was fine too and we even had all our bags waiting for us at the airport! Amazing. 1 litre of Febreeze has managed to spill all over our resource bag during the flight, but luckily nothing is too worse for wear and everything just smells nice now! Marisol, the International comissioner for the Guias de Honduras (Guides in Honduras) met us in Tegucigalpa and we drove to the hotel where we will be based at for our workshops in the area. Marisol is really nice and we´re sure she´ll look after us well here :) This afternoon we are going to a welcoming ceremony from the Guias here, where we´re not sure what to expect but hope that we´ll get to meet a lot of people who are involved in Guiding over here. We´re all so SO glad to finally have made it here, after 2 years of hard work and many many changes along the way, we managed to arrive! :)