Stranded on cyclone-hit islands in the south Pacific, in locked-down towns in India, and in distant parts of Guatemala, Britons are helping support local communities.

The UK government’s coronavirus rescue operation is under way but with many of the estimated 400,000 Britons marooned overseas in far-flung regions subject to travel restrictions, some are preparing for weeks and even months abroad while others anxiously await repatriation.

On the storm-torn island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, a three-hour flight off the north-east coast of Australia, 67-year-old paramedic Nich Woolf, from Somerset, is volunteering on ambulance crews and rescuing the injured from the wreckage left by category-5 Cyclone Harold.

Schools and residence suffered damage and destruction after Cyclone Harold battered Vanuatu. Photograph: Dan McGarry

“The situation is dire now and their economy could be completely destroyed,” he says. “My mission is to carry on supporting the paramedics here and to just get through till more volunteers can come.”

Woolf had originally planned to volunteer for two months but because of Australian flight cancellations, along with the imposition of a state of emergency in Vanuatu, he was unable to return home.

Coronavirus is not known to have reached the 65-island archipelago, but Wolf is helping Vanuatu prepare for a possible outbreak as work goes on to repair homes, schools and public buildings.

“I’m at much greater risk travelling back than staying in Vanuatu though it’s pretty tough here – we have had many days without running water and the electricity has gone. Everything is pretty fragile.”

In Guatemala, which suspended all flights a month ago, Britons have been offered buses from popular tourist areas to the Mexican border, where they must arrange their own travel to the nearest airport.

An elderly man is granted entry to the market by a soldier in Nebaj, one of many stationed at every entry and exit point. Photograph: Catriona Spaven-Donn

“The British embassy is not offering me any more assistance than I could find myself,” says 27-year-old Catriona Spaven-Donn from Edinburgh who is working for an NGO in Nebaj, 200 miles from the Mexican border.

She has decided to continue her humanitarian work with a charity which is fundraising during the lockdown to help young indigenous women gain scholarships to nearby schools.

Catriona out in the empty streets of Nebaj. Photograph: Handout

“We are doing phone check-ins with the families we work with and distributing food and hygiene baskets,” Spaven-Donn says. “We are also doing story-hour transmissions twice weekly on a community radio station in Spanish and the indigenous Mayan language, Ixil, along with offering psychological services over the phone.”

Others elsewhere have also continued their work to help local communities. Clara Nowak, an animal welfare charity director, is overseeing emergency rescue work in Pushkar, Rajasthan – where her organisation looks after more than 400 injured animals in a specialist hospital – amid an increase in dogs with bite wounds.

“With only four hours notice of the lockdown we struggled to get in supplies of food and medicine, but there have been lots of kind donations from the community,” she says. “We’ve found we’re admitting more dogs with bite wounds as they compete for limited resources as there are no tourists and restaurants have shut.”

Clare Nowak and her eight-year-old son Ben outside their rented home in Pushkar, about 90 miles from Jaipur.

Emergency daily clinics are being run for poorly animals owned by locals, mostly goats and cows and pets. The prices of essentials such as flour have risen and Nowak is helping provide her staff with food packages.

Aside from her work, the lockdown has given her time to bond with her son and delivered a memorable 42nd birthday last week which was celebrated with Marmite chapatis after their flights home were cancelled. She is now waiting to be allocated a flight to facilitate her return home to Gloucestershire.

Just north of Casablanca in Morocco, a retired British couple from Cambridge travelling in a motorhome have tried twice to return by ferry but it was full the first time they arrived and then they broke down en route to the second planned voyage.

Frustrating scenes at a roadside in rural Morocco for the motorhome owners Andy and Sheila.

“We are gradually coming to terms with the fact that we are going to be here for some considerable time,” says retired languages teacher Andy Brown, 67, who is with his wife, Sheila, 65, in the absence of ferries to Europe and uncertainty over whether they can drive cross-country.

However, they are enjoying the simplicity of their life. “Sheila has her sewing machine and is in the process of making a dress and we have a short set of golf clubs to play pitch and putt,” he says, adding that they enjoy entertaining their grandchildren on long video calls.

“We also spend a lot of time talking and supporting each other on the campsite,” Brown adds of his French and German motorhome neighbours, after the Chinese contingent shipped their vehicles and returned home by plane on Thursday.

Andy and Sheila enjoying one of the ‘pleasures of Morocco’ – buying fruit and veg at the market – after the country decreed that those not wearing masks risked prison.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We know it’s a difficult time for many British travellers overseas, and we are working around the clock to bring people home.”

They said the government was working with airlines around the world to ensure as many people as possible could get commercial flights home and that planes were being chartered from India, South Africa, Peru and elsewhere.