Exploring Belize with the Amazing Ms Allison

This past week I enjoyed a great visit with my grad school pal Allison. Her vacation started out with a few bumps but turned out amazing. The morning she was arriving just as I was walking out my door, I received a call that all Peace Corps Volunteers were on standfast meaning we couldn't leave out sites because of a bus strike. I never quite understood what happened but there was some disagreements between the government and one of the major bus companies. I think the government had made some promises and then changed their minds. All the bus companies agreed to strike in solidarity so there was no transport. The government was able to work something out and buses were running by noon but PC wouldn't let us travel the rest of the day. I fortunately reached Allison just before her plane left so she wouldn't be worried that I wasn't waiting for her at the airport.

She was able to take a short flight to San Pedro, the largest tourist town in Belize located on a northern island. I took a 5 am bus the next day and was able to meet up with her and enjoy most of the day on the beach. San Pedro was beautiful and we stayed in this amazing resort north of town. We had our own little cabana right on the beach. It seemed very romantic and felt like a honeymoon destination so we decided the week was our honeymoon together. Of course it made us both miss our boyfriends but we definitely enjoyed our girls time too! We enjoyed some great food and drinks there including these amazing basil lime vodka drinks.

We took the water taxi from San Pedro back to Belize City and bus to San Igancio in the west. I had visited this town with my dad and think its great. It has a very different feel than the coast so was glad she could see another side of the country. We did a tour here that included an activity for each of us. She really wanted to go ziplining so we did that. I had gone before in Costa Rica and it was similar but still a blast. I'm scared of heights so it always takes a little personal pep talk to get me to jump off a high ledge but its exciting to fly through the jungle. After a traditional Belizean lunch of rice and beans, stew chicken, coleslaw and plantain, we moved on to the next adventure - cave tubing. I think I read that Belize has one of the highest concentration of caves in the world and many were used by the ancient Mayans as sacred places for ceremonies and burials. We walked a ways through the jungle to reach the beginning of our route where we got into our tubes and paddled to the entrance of our first cave. We continued down the river through a total of three caves. Most of the time the water was deep and river slow-moving so we had to paddle along. The last cave was very shallow though and in several places we had to really raise our butts and the water moved us along swiftly. It hadn't rained in weeks which is why the river was so low but we only had to get up and walk in one area. I can't imagine what it would be like when the river is swollen. Inside the caves it was pitch black in some areas but most of the time you could see a little light from the entrance or exit. We had headlamps to look at the stalactites (are those the ones coming down from the ceiling?) and see where we were going. Allison didn't enjoy this as much but I loved it!

The last part of the trip was spent at home in Dangriga. I think she enjoyed seeing where I am living and what my life is like here. We enjoyed the market and the beach here and I even took her to work and she got to experience more of what Belize is like with lots of informal planning and nothing starting on time! All in all, I think it was a fabulous week with a fabulous friend!

Allison was so amazing treating me the whole week since she understands how little we make on a Peace Corps stipend. Its hard to enjoy all that Belize has to offer sometimes because all of the tourist activities charge American prices but I only get enough money to live at a normal Belizean standard of living. Thanks Allison for really spoiling me and coming to enjoy Belize with me!

Sex Ed on the Banana Farm

For the past few months I've had one activity that has really excited me and I've enjoyed. I was asked by the principal of a very small school to come teach sex ed to his older students. I really wasn't sure what I was getting into since I had never heard of the place and its a Catholic school so was uncertain what I would be allowed to discuss. The first time I went I planned a lesson on sex and gender most of which comes from some Peace Corps curriculum and I had used in Burkina. I wanted the students to get to know me first before we got into the fun stuff and also to have a chance to really discuss with the principal and teacher what they wanted me to cover. They basically gave me freedom to cover anything that I thought was important and the only limit was to not give condom demonstrations. This was 5th and 6th grade though so I completely understand that.

This small school has about 100 kids in eight grades though most of the classes are combined so 5th and 6th grade which I was working with had about 13 students. The school is located in the middle of a very large banana farm. Most of the families that live here are migrant workers that come from other parts of Central America so English is a second language for the students. There is no transportation unless they walk from the farm out to the highway so most people are pretty isolated. The kids and teachers were so appreciative of me coming out to their school which makes it much more enjoyable for me. Getting to the school is a challenge but definitely worth it when I feel appreciated. Every time I went to the school I caught a teachers bus at 6 am in Dangriga which takes teachers to several different schools south of here. I'd ride the bus for about an hour and then get off at a junction. In the meantime I'd meet up with a teacher from the school and we'd wait on the side of the road here for about forty-five minutes. Eventually the mechanic from the farm would come get us with the pick-up truck and everyone would pile in with several people jumping in the back. It was about a 20 minute ride to the school. I usually started teaching around 9 am but it felt like I'd been working for hours by that point!

I developed six different lessons for the students that I felt covered the most important information for students. Like I said, the first was on sex and gender and we discussed the difference between our biological sex (male or female) and our gender based on society (masculine or feminine). We also talked about gender roles and how society tells us to behave. They said that only women are supposed to cook but they realized that men could cook. Same goes for driving and many other roles that in the US we think our gender neutral but not the case here. The other topics I covered were: puberty, insemination and pregnancy, reproductive anatomy, HIV/AIDS, and other STIs

For the first session they decided to have me work with grades 3-6 since there were some older kids in the lower grades. This meant I was working with students that ranged in age from 8-15. I found this very challenging since their understanding is so different and I wasn't comfortable about teaching some of the other topics to kids so young. From then on, we agreed to just pull the older kids from the lower grades so I only worked with students ranging from age 12-15. Most of the information was completely new to the students and I know they struggled to understand my English and what I was saying. I was very surprised how much they had learned by the end though.

Peace Corps Belize has been working on an initiative to train teachers in how to use the sex ed curriculum written by the Ministry of Health. I am helping with this project and will have more updates later. I realize that my teaching these classes is not sustainable, one of Peace Corps' main objectives. I did share my lesson plans with the teacher and principal though and discussed ways to teach these topics. I hope in the future they will feel more comfortable teaching it.

Even though I know this wasn't a sustainable project, I enjoyed it very much and sometimes I think its important to have an activity that just feels worthwhile and makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something even if its just with those individual students. I loved having the opportunity to get out in a village and work hands-on with youth since I miss doing that in Burkina!

Bingo Hits Belize

I'm not sure if I've just been way out of the loop or what but it seems like Bingo has just taken off in Belize. Over the past month, I have heard so much talk about playing bingo that I feel like I need to let you all in on the excitement. I think its fascinating how they play bingo here - its a nationwide game played twice a week!

Bingo in Belize is a lot like playing the lottery. Anyone interested in playing buys a ticket for $2 at one of the local shops. Every Wednesday and Saturday night at 8:30 pm everybody sits down in front of their tvs and waits for a pretty lady to come on and start calling numbers. If you have the number called, you mark it off on your card at home. The computer system can tell when somebody has won and the pretty lady will announce that there was a winner. Prizes range from $500 for a row to $200,000 for the jackpot which is all the numbers on your card called in less than 49 numbers. Once somebody has won a prize (like a row), nobody else can win it. If nobody wins the jackpot, the amount continues to increase each game which is why its gotten so high and probably why there has been a lot more talk about bingo.

I can think of a lot of other events that can bring a nation together but there is something that seems so innocent over a nationwide obsession with bingo!

Belize Zoo

Last week I visited the Belize Zoo with my friend KC. We had talked about going for a while but finally had a free afternoon when we were together in Belmopan so decided to grab a bus there. The zoo was formed almost thirty years ago by an American woman. A crew had come to Belize to film a nature documentary and afterwards they were unsure of what to do with all the animals they now had capture and domesticated. It was decided they couldn’t be released so this woman decided to open a zoo to share Belize’s many exotic animals with everyone. I read this is the best zoo in the Americas south of the United States and was definitely impressed. The zoo only has animals found in Belize and all the inhabitants were either born in captivity, orphaned, or confiscated as illegal pets. Most of the exhibits feel like they are in the middle of the jungle with lots of trees and greenery both inside and outside the large enclosures. We were even amazed by some of the animals outside of the cages just wandering around in nature including some huge iguanas and an armadillo. There also are monkeys loose but we never saw them. Other animals include the tapir (called a mountain cow here), scarlet macaws, the largest eagles in the world, all kind of different cats, crocodiles, and something that looked like a wart hog. Most of the animals I had never heard of but they were all fascinating. One of the most amazing was the jaguars. If you’ve been religiously reading my blogs, you’ll remember that KC and I went on a jaguar hunt in the world’s first jaguar reserve but only found scratch marks on a tree and paths made by some type of animal. This was our chance to see a jaguar and boy did he pose for us. They have three jaguars at the zoo but there was one that seemed especially friendly and photogenic. He was in a large enclosure but came to the fence and was only a few feet away from us. I posted some pictures from the zoo including our favorite jaguar.

Parents' Visit

My first visitors in Belize recently left. My parents came for the Easter weekend and although my mom had to return to work, my dad stayed for two weeks. All of us enjoyed spending the weekend on Tobacco Caye. All the small islands just off Belize’s coast are called cayes (pronounced keys). Tobacco Caye is located about twelve miles off the coast of Dangriga. This island is small - just four and a half acres - and its only a few minutes walk from one end to the other or about a fifteen minute kayak around the island. We stayed in a small cabana with a porch and a hammock hanging over the water. The second-largest coral reef in the world is located along the coastline of Belize and is known for its great snorkeling and diving. Tobacco Caye, unlike many of the islands, is located right on the reef so we snorkeled right off the beach. We saw all kinds of colorful and exotic fish and coral and even a turtle. My mom and I also enjoyed kayaking around the island though my mom did struggle to stay out of the water!

After my mom had to return to Wisconsin, my dad and I continued the vacation. We enjoyed a day trip to Blue Hole National Park. The blue hole is a deep sinkhole that is connected to an underground river. The water here is freezing cold so very refreshing after the heat of Belize.

We also took a trip to the Cayo region in western Belize. This was the only area I hadn’t visited yet so I can now say I’ve travelled to all six regions of the country. We rented a car that allowed us to stop in lots of little places we wouldn’t have seen on the bus. One of these was Spanish Lookout, the largest Mennonite settlement in Belize. Like I previously stated, there is a large Mennonite population in Belize that are successful farmers and entrepreneurs. Many of the largest businesses are owned by the Mennonites including a poultry company and a dairy. They also are known as great mechanics and many Belizeans travel to Spanish Lookout to get their cars repaired. The landscape in this area seemed very different than the rest of the country and other than the occasional palm tree, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that we were in the American Midwest with rolling hills and lots of fields and farms. Dad’s favorite part of the visit was a stop at Western Dairy’s factory where we had ice cream!

We visited two different Mayan ruins in this area as well. The first was Xunantunich, one of the largest and most impressive ruins in Belize. We also saw Cahal Pech, a smaller set of ruins located on the edge of the city of San Ignacio. Both were amazing and if I was an archaeologist, I’d have tons to say about them but I’ll let me pictures tell the story instead.

On the way home from Cayo, we stopped at the Belize Agricultural and Trade Fair that is held one weekend a year. This is the Belizean version of the county fair and reminded me so much of the many years I spent at ours. There is a 4-H program here but its a little different than at home. The fair is held on the 4-H grounds and I saw many kids with 4-H shirts on. There were animals, plants, and lots of commercial booths selling junk. And of course lots of food and beer stands with loud music blaring. The day was horribly hot just like most fair days in Wisconsin! The only thing I didn't see was a Fairest of the Fair!

Pictures from all my latest adventures are posted on the link to the right.

Little Updates

A new group of trainees has arrived in Belize so after only two months here, I'm no longer the newbie! My life has been a little crazy for the past few weeks as I've been discussing with Peace Corps how to improve my working situation. Not working during this time has allowed me the opportunity to experience some great parts of Belize. I've enjoyed several nice bike rides around Dangriga and swimming in the ocean from several different beaches in town. I've also spent a while in Belmopan at the Peace Corps office so have had a chance to get to know some of the new training group and answer a few of their many questions. I don't know a lot about Belize yet but I know the basics and think I do understand Peace Corps well. I'm able to participate in some of the more interesting sessions since I never went through training here. Last week they had a panel on politics and the local government of Belize. I realized that I've learned nothing about either of these during my time here. The panel included three volunteers that work with local government - one with a mayor, another with a village council, and the last with the National Association of Village Councils. They also had two Belizean women speak about their experiences. They were from the two opposing political parties but both are working to focus beyond political parties and look at the needs of the country. One is an employee that works with the association and the other is an elected official. She originally was elected to her village council, became chair, then asked to serve on a district association, and also is serving as a Senator. She's currently wearing all these hats at once so representing several different populations depending on which role she is working in at the time. They were very honest with us and explained how animosity between political parties can have a debilitating effect within Belize. It sounded very much like my own country! Today I'm back in Belmopan to attend a session on the history and government of Belize. Senator Hulse, who represents the business community in Belize, gave the lecture. He's a great public speaker and did a fantastic job making this topic interesting. Belize is a young country (30 years in 2011) and the senator could tell us stories from before independence up until today and many of the challenges the country has faced. He also shared the history of Europeans arrival in Belize and why it is so different than the rest of Central America. Since the arrival of Europeans, it has been considered more a part of the Caribbean than Central America but because of its location on the mainland and the large coral reef that prevented large ships from easily attacking, early settlements were fairly secure. I also was invited to participate in Culture Day, an annual tradition in Peace Corps Belize held at the very beginning of training. The group travels to an area of the country to spend a day learning about one of the local cultures. This year the focus was Garifuna and everyone came to Dangriga. We had a tour of the National Garifuna Museum, lectures on spirituality and the use of plants for medicinal purposes, a tour showing the process of making cassava bread, visited Pen Cayetano's art gallery, ate a traditional lunch, watched a drum-making demonstration, and enjoyed dance and drumming performances. It was a fun day and covered lots of information. I had met and spoken with most of the individuals that presented activities during the day but its always different hearing their formal presentations. Last week I did a little traveling to learn more about activities that other Peace Corps Volunteers are doing. I spent a day in Georgeville, a village in the Cayo district west of Belmopan, visiting PCV Jenna. The village has about 500 people in it I believe but is right on the main highway and in a popular tourist area. Cayo is very mountainous and beautiful and Jenna has a gorgeous house on the top of a hill with a great view of the village and countryside below. She works at a small primary school in the village as a teacher trainer and has done a lot of work with the school library, has reading groups, and started a running and exercise club. I enjoyed interacting with young kids since I haven't had many chances to be around children since I left Burkina! Later in the week I traveled to the very north of Belize to visit PCV Holly in Corozal. This is a large town near the border with Mexico and has a much larger Mestizo population than in my area. Its a beautiful town as well and feels so different than southern Belize. Its amazing how diverse this country is for being so small. Holly is a youth development volunteer but also works in a primary school as well as with other activities in the community. I've posted pictures from some of these recent activities so check them out!

The Garifuna

The Garifuna are an ethnic group found in Belize and Dangriga is often referred to as the heart of the Garifuna people. This group has an interesting and well-preserved history describing how they settled along the shores of Belize. The story begins before European arrival when there were two distinct ethnicities living in the Caribbean and more specifically on the island of St Vincent: the Arawak and the Carib which later melted into one group. In 1635 two Spanish ships carrying slaves from Nigeria where shipwrecked in the Caribbean. Some of the captives were able to swim to the shores of St Vincent and settled among the local populations. The indigenous people and new arrivals did not always get along at the beginning but eventually theses separate groups intermarried and formed a new ethnicity known as the Garifuna.

One hundred and fifty years after the marooned slaves arrived on St Vincent and mixed with the Caribs, the Garifuna were the largest and most powerful group on the island. At this time St. Vincent, along with many Caribbean Islands, was under British rule and they began building slave plantations. The British were unwilling to accept a free black population so close to their slaves and wanted to gain control of the island so repeatedly fought the Garifuna.

In 1796, after a year of bloody fighting and the killing of their chief Joseph Chatoyer, the Garifuna surrendered. Months later the British decided to put an end to free blacks in St Vincent so rounded up the Garifuna killing many in the process. British records state that around 4300 individuals were deported to the island of Balliceuax, just off the St Vincent coast. Half of the remaining population died within a few months because of lack of food and yellow fever. The survivors were once again rounded up and deported this time to the island of Roatan, one of the Bay Islands off Honduras. Survival continued to be a struggle and many died here. Shortly after their arrival, the Spanish took the remaining 1700 Garifuna to mainland Honduras. They settled here for 20 some years before war came to Honduras. The Garifuna supported the losing side and were again persecuted so once again had to move this time to British Honduras (which later became Belize).

History states that on November 19, 1832, the largest group of several hundred Garifuna landed at Stann Creek (located in Dangriga). They were led in their travels by Elijio Beni (who happens to have a park named in his honor next to my house). Other Garifuna had arrived in small number prior to this and even more came later. After 200 years of travelling, the Garifuna finally found a new homeland.

November 19 is a national holiday in Belize called Settlement Day. It is celebrated throughout the country with some of the biggest festivities in Dangriga including a re-enactment of the first ships arriving at Stann Creek.

The Garifuna were traditionally fishermen along the coast of Belize and did some farming. These people sought out ways to advance themselves and focused on education. They moved into the professional class throughout the country and are known as being very successful. It is very common to find Garifuna teachers, principals, and medical professionals.

Today the Garifuna continue to keep their tradition and culture alive. There is a National Garifuna Council that have wrote a dictionary, hold conferences, run a primary school, and opened a museum to share their story with visitors. The Garifuna language is still widely-spoken though there is talk about it being a dying language. In my experience, many young people have not learned it and are uninterested in doing so. It is mostly older generations that I hear speaking Garifuna. Traditional dances and drumming are still performed and many older women can be seen in town in their traditional clothing. These dances remind me of dancing in my village in Burkina Faso and I can see how they probably originate from the same traditions.

In the past twenty years or so, younger Garifuna have developed a new style of music called Punta Rock that has a base in traditional music but with a quicker beat and other instruments besides traditional drums. There are many well-known Punta Rock artists in Dangriga but two of the most famous are the late Andy Palacio and Pen Cayetano of the Turtle Shell Band. Pen is also a painter and he and his German wife Ingrid have a beautiful studio in Dangriga showcasing their work.

Other Garifuna traditions remind me of what I saw and learned in West Africa. There is a strong belief in ancestry worship and that spirits are all around us. Some people say that this involves voodoo and black magic but I’d like to think of it more as traditional religion and beliefs that are still practiced here as well as in Africa. One tradition is for a large event that is held every several years when an ancestor or spirit tells someone they need to hold this event or party. The spirits require that everyone in the family attend so it often takes a long time to plan. People have family that have settled all over and everyone must come including those in the United States. The event includes singing, dancing, and lots of food and continues for several days I believe. At the end, the spirit can say that they didn’t do a good enough job and they have to plan and throw a whole other event. This doesn’t usually happen though since it is such a huge expense for just one. I’ve also heard that there are many traditions surrounding death and funerals but I don’t know the specifics.

Please note that this is just my understanding of what I've read in several guidebooks and heard from the folks at the museum and other Garifuna in the community.