Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Some Photos






Here are some quick photos...

- This is what is referred to as the Business Organization/Community Development group -- six of us will be in Spanish villages and the other 5 will be in Creole villages.

- My home for two more weeks--more modest than the last but an incredibly lovely generous family even if just a latrine.

- The Ambassador from Finland with a sewing cooperative when I visited a site where there is a microenterprise project for women. I am hoping that my ultimate assignment is in the general area of women's group--there are many here but most do not have a structure, financing, etc.

- Me presenting to the group (don't remember what).

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Updates since April 12

Well, I've been very busy. Previous Peace Corps groups said they didn't have enough scheduled during this three month training, so the Peace Corps has overcompensated and kept this group going like crazy!

On April 12, I moved to a new family but still in San Antonio Village. They are the "salt of the earth." When not watching novellas, they want to talk politics, and politics in Belize is unlike anything anywhere. Basically, whatever party is in power gives favors, jobs, land to their compatriots so the local people vote them out and then the other party -- there are only two-- wins and does the same! The good news is they have never had internal political violence, civil war or even international support (manipulation) for one side or the other.

Last weekend I stayed with a Peace Corps volunteer from New Orleans who is finishing up shortly. I became very excited about her project and we both speculate that maybe I will work there. It is a non-governmental organization specializing in microfinace for women--my passion of the year. Stay tuned. It was incredibly helpful to see more normal day-to-day living--I am really too old for living with a host family!

On what I am doing, Peace Corps training continues to be intense and high class. We even got an amazing lecture on solidarity the other day. Spanish continues to be practical--how to buy in the market place (that was our field trip yesterday) and today--our first day off in two weeks--was a trip to a spectacular waterfall along a beautiful river where swimming was great especially in over 100 degrees of heat. This week I have to give a session on proposal writing to my fellow Peace Corps volunteers--before my computer crashed, I managed to retrieve the workshop I did in Nicaragua and add some local flavor to the Power Point presentation.

Tonight we prepare a dinner based on the market place lessons of yesterday, and tommorrow it is back to school.

More soon...

Sunday, April 11, 2010




Here are 3 photos from a field trip yesterday... Belize is protecting 44% of its land and we had two lectures on the problems involved. This was my first and only chance to swim--it was really nice--

Thursday, April 8, 2010


The next generation!

My housing arrangements.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010



Who needs a washing machine? I am a washing machine!

Sunday, April 4, 2010

At Pentacostal Service



Here I am at a Pentacostal Church where my host "dad" was teaching a class to children that went from 7 PM - 12 midnight (I did nod off a lot but so did his wife). This picture is with them and 3 of their children and some others there).

My Community-Based Training (CBT) Experience Part II

Saturday, April 03, 2010

I went to a church concert tonight. The music varied from very good to slightly off key but always extraordinarily loud! A lot of evangelical speeches—some good singing and dancing but mostly praying to the lord for a better life but accepting that this is God’s will.

Saturday, April 3, 2010 - More

Today was my big day to do laundry (pictures to follow). My host mom showed me how to use the washtub and board and it actually was very efficient. After two scrubbings and one rinse I actually put it in an electric spinner to remove most of the water; on the line for one hour and they are dry!

Then the children announced they were taking me to a cave in the mountain surrounding my home. In general I have 4 to 5 children attached to me at all times; the only problem with the cave was they couldn’t find it but they showed me two very dry ponds. The interesting sociological phenomenon was that the five year old stepped on a plant that looked lovely to me but apparently if it gets into your skin it is very painful. She herself pulled out the thorn but was whimpering. The 11 year old carried her as we headed back; what I found interesting is that when we returned they did not mention it to their mom, they simply took care of it. I decided to get a handiwipe to clean the very dirty wound and the child seemed to take some comfort in that.

I didn’t do much in the afternoon but sat and read Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver on my Kindle; suddenly I was surrounded by children who insisted it was an etch-a-sketch; at least that’s what I thought because they kept asking me to shake it so everything would erase (I now know the word erase in Spanish). The more sophisticated children insisted it was a computer and wanted me to get Google.

My Community-Based Training (CBT) Experience Part I

My Community-Based Training (CBT) Experience:

Thursday, April 1 and Friday, April 2:

After spending one week with a really rather extraordinary group—ages 22-71 (with 30% over 55 years of age) and from every part of the country, I was ready to get out of the hotel in the Capital Belmopan. The Peace Corps office is a rather impressive structure and network of very talent staff. They are at the level of state-of-the-art training—from organizational development to 4 languages (English Creole (Kriol in Creole), Spanish, Maya aka Mopan Maya, and Garifuna). The country has several more languages that are spoken. Mestizos (mixed European and indigenous ancestry make up over 50% of the population, Creoles 25 percent, Mayans 10 percent, Garifuna 7 percent and then a population called Chineey (no kidding and no one seems to think it is racist to call Chinese, Taiwanese, East Indians, Koreans, Japanese—by a name that sounds racist to me). All my concerns about not having basic toiletries were ill-placed because the “Chineey” stores have everything and at much cheaper prices than the U.S. Ironically, even the toothpaste is made in the USA (is there actually a toothpaste factory in the US?) We are told that those labels are accurate (by pretty official sources.)

English is the official language but Spanish is widely spoken (about this I am very pleased.) There is a large Mennonite population that speaks what they call “Low German” but Creole is fast becoming the most common language.

Belizean Creoles are mostly descendants of slaves bought and captured in Africa and the West Indies; Garifuna are runaway slaves who mixed with the native islanders of St. Vincent in the 17th and 18th centuries and lived all over before settling in Belize.

The country has the lowest population density in the world and the largest coral reef in the western hemisphere, an extraordinary cave system, thousands of Mayan archaeological sites, and the only jaguar reserve in the world.

Enough travelogue information, now about me:

I received the assignment of going to San Antonio Village in Cayo District about 2 hours outside the capital Belmopan. It’s a Mopan Maya village with a population of about 3200 people, but it also has a large population of Mestizos (Mayan-Spanish), Garifuna (African Caribbean roots), and expatriates. It is located between the Macal River and the Mopan River. It was founded over 150 years ago by farmers from Petén, Guatemala. My luck is they are known for its concentration of cacao farmers that makes the best chocolate, and my host family is known for their peanuts that were drying in the hot sun when I arrived late afternoon on Thursday, April 1. However, I have as yet to see one bar of chocolate!

Lonely Planet says that it the home of the best Mayan handicrafts, natural medicine, the August Feast of San Luis, and Deer Dance of the Mopan people (haven’t seen that either yet.) I am supposed to look up the Garcia Sisters who are known for finely cared figures from Maya mythology and Belizean wildlife out of local black slate. The area is known for incredible birds, butterflies and learning the secrets of the ancient Maya.

The village is famous for Don Eligio Panti, one of the last known Mayan natural healers whose power came from plants, flowers and the Mayan spirits that lived high on tree branches, under bushes and underground. He died in 1996 at 103 years of age. Dr. Rosita Arvigo tells his story in her book Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer, coauthored with Nadine Epstein and has set up the Belize Ethnobotany Project that catalogued the plants and supports research on their use in treating cancer and AIDS. (I walked by a hut that says “Don Eligio Panti lived here.”

We dropped off 3 PCVs in Cristo Rey village and continued on Cristo Rey Road off the Western Highway in Santa Elena through extraordinary forests passing numerous resorts about which I learned much from my host family, because their son works in the Francis Ford Coppola (yes he owns it) Resort where rooms go for up to $1200 a day (that is US—in Belizean money that would be $2400 a day). I am promised to get to go to the Macal River to swim.

There were 6 PCVs remaining in our van and just as we were about to be dropped off, we got a flat tire. But the staff wanted to get us to the families that were waiting so I was dropped off first in a pickup truck. My family has had 10 children.

I was told in Belmopan that I “got” the best family ever—they are warm, friendly and kind. The three youngesthave adopted me (this is only the next morning). This morning I began a training project of mapping the village and the children took me around (asking at one point—did I really think it is OK to add the three local bars to my map?)

The father is a farmer. His wife just informed him that she wants a table for the water buckets (yes I am doing bucket baths) and he promptly built one! They have a 23 acre farm with platanos, peanuts and other products that I will see later. But in the middle of his drying the peanuts, gathering water, his wife informed him that he had put the wrong bed in my room (she wanted the larger one with the better mattress) and he dropped everything to entirely reconstruct a bed in my room. Ah my room…it is actually a separate house that was built for the brother who died (it feels like a shrine although there is nothing of that sort in evidence but they do talk about it). There is no running water (this happened in November when the old iron pipes for the entire village gave way) may be only a minor inconvenience (we’ll see – but my bucket hair wash this morning was just fine!).

Dinner on my first night consisted of flour tortillas, beans, a soup whose name I can’t remember but it had the most incredible lime taste with roasted chicken and many vegetables, and also we had beans. Breakfast the next morning consisted of a delicious egg omelet with tomatoes and onions, tortillas, cheese, and Lipton’s tea—the young children apparently love it. Coffee would be Nescafe so I have decided to see how long I’ll last without Starbucks. As with most Central American countries the coffee grown is for export. Lunch was beans (yes again), maduros (my favorite), and fresh cucumber.

The map project is well underway; I feel like it is a treasure hunt (have only found 3 of the 9 churches and 1 of the 2 schools). This will go on for the weekend. This is Holy Easter (probably not the right name) but includes Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday and with 9 churches I expect to see a lot of religious culture this weekend.

There are few public schools anywhere in the country (the estimate I was given was 10%). Religious schools are everywhere—but people’s religion seems to have litle to do with where their kids attend. The two youngest in my family are both in school and amazing—they read and write fluently in English, Spanish, and Maya. I am supposed by PC rules to speak only Spanish but when I don’t know a word they easily give me the Spanish word. The 5 year old prefers speaking in Spanish. I did my usual child thing—an origami peace dove—and the 7 year old picked it up immediately.