Venezuela Day at St Colmcille's Primary School, 21 September 2026

Hola, Ballymena!

We started with one word. Hola. I asked them to say it back to me, and then I asked them to say it louder, and then louder than that, until the room was shouting hello in Spanish at half past nine in the morning. I cannot think of a better way to begin a Monday.

Then we found Venezuela on the map. It sits at the very top of South America, and it takes a whole day on an aeroplane to get there from here. When it is cold and dark in Ballymena, it is hot and sunny in Caracas. That fact alone got a proper reaction.

We looked at the flag. Yellow for all the wonderful things Venezuela has. Blue for the sky and the sea, and a reminder that the sky is never the limit when you have a dream. Red for all the brave people who fought so that everyone could be free. And then I said to them the line I always want children to hear, which is that today, they are free to dream, to grow, and to be the best version of themselves.

After that came the animals, and the room went wild. Capybaras, jaguars, toucans, scarlet macaws, giant otters, howler monkeys, piranhas and the Orinoco crocodile. I have learned to stop explaining and simply let them shout.

Then we went quiet, which is my favourite part. In the west of Venezuela, over Lake Maracaibo, there is a place where the lightning comes nearly every night for most of the year. Not once. Not twice. Hundreds and hundreds of times. It is called the Catatumbo lightning, and sailors have used it for centuries to find their way home. We watched it together on the screen, and for a minute nobody moved. Then one child said what everybody was thinking, which was a long and heartfelt wow.

So we drew it. Dark sky first, then the lake and the mountains, then the lightning coming down in yellow and white on the top. Every single drawing was brilliant. There is no wrong way to draw lightning.

And then we pushed back the tables and danced salsa, because you cannot talk about Venezuela and stay in your chair.

We finished with gracias and adiós, and one thing each that they had learned.

Here is what stayed with me on the road home. Children do not need to be persuaded that a place thousands of miles away is worth knowing about. Curiosity is where they start. They asked me brilliant questions, they were kind to each other, and they were delighted to learn a language that was new to them. That openness is already there in them. The work of all of us is to keep it safe as they grow, so that when they meet somebody from somewhere else in ten or twenty years, they still lean in rather than look away.

Venezuela is thousands of miles from Ballymena. This morning it was in a classroom on the Old Cullybackey Road, and the children made room for it without blinking.

Thank you to the Inter Ethnic Forum for having me, to Natasha for organising it all so smoothly, and above all to the teachers and classroom assistants at St Colmcille's, who were warm with me from the moment I walked in and threw themselves into every bit of it alongside the children.

Gracias, and adiós until the next one.

Humanitas Initiative delivers intercultural workshops for schools, workplaces and community groups across the Causeway Coast and Glens. If you would like to talk about a session, get in touch at contact@thehumanitasinitiative.org.

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