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.