More Mini Updates

Polly the Parrot
So my host sister came to me one day and said "Megan, I have a parrot!" She was pretty excited as one would imagine. So I went to her house and saw said parrot. At that time it was tiny and had absolutely no feathers. A week or so later it started to get green feathers and look more like a parrot. She decided to name her parrot Polly (I found this really amusing). So the parrot has been around for a few weeks, it gets fed masa and they give it water. All in all they take good care of it. I guess I should mention it was brought home by her husband after he found it nearly squished under a tree they were cutting down. I have to sadly report, though, that Polly the Parrot died Sunday. My little host niece brought me a box and said "look!" and the poor parrot was laying in the box dead. I had grown pretty attached to the squawking little creature and will miss him!
My Furniture
I was told that my house lacks furniture and whatnot. I have to agree. I do have buckets to sit on/store water and food in, but other than that I have a hammock and a small table in the kitchen. So Bernadina and I decided we would build me a shelf for my books and things. There were some scrap pieces of wood in the yard that we collected, and then we went to her father to borrow a saw and hammer. Unfortunately it takes a really long time to cut lumber with a really dull hack saw. But eventually we managed to build a slightly slanted, but very useful shelf. :)

This picture makes me believe it is the rainy season, but I keep getting told it isn't. The neighbor's ducks seem to believe my yard is a pond every time it rains and I am tempted to agree with them. This is what was happening outside as we were building the shelf inside.

Graduation
I am proud to say that my village has 3 new high school graduates! Before this year only one person in the village had ever completed high school, but two boys and one girl graduated from High School this month.

Mango Sadness
My newly discovered allergy to mango trees/mango skin is a bit sad for me. The kids keep picking the mangoes out of my trees and bringing them to me. I love mangoes! Sadly I just have to say no now. The kids are always picking fruit they see that is ripe out of my yard, and then insisting that I eat it all (which normally I don't mind). I will figure out how to peel and clean a mango without actually touching it, or find someone nice enough to do it for me soon.

I'm 25 Now and Other Random Comments

I haven't updated in a long time so I feel a bit guilty. I have been informed by one very impatient (but well loved friend, you know who you are) that I may be causing her slow death. I feel that is quite dramatic, but to amuse you I am uploading (with very slow internet) three pictures and going to tell a couple funny stories for you.

Veronica came to stay in my new house with me for a bit, and it was a wonderful visit from an old friend, but also a good enlightening time. It reminded me of things that I have just become accustomed to and no longer see as strange. At some point in time I will have to post "Veronica's list of 'that is not normal'", but for now I will just mention a few. Things like chickens walking through your house at random, bathing in an area with a tarantula that you refuse to kill (look back to the rescued by a 7year old post and see how I have progressed :), washing my clothes on a rock in the river next to all the other ladies in the village, running out of food before going to the market so picking random things that grow in your yard you didn't plant but actually are good food, etc. She also told me my K'ekchi is getting good which made me feel great, but then I remembered she had never heard K'ekchi before that so anything probably would have sounded great. Anyway she was amused with the chickens and I was a bit annoyed with them always being at my house when I don't own chickens, so here is a picture of my new house and "my" chickens.



So I feel like Belize is not a good place for me when it comes to random health things. I love it here, but my skin really does not. So for the past three weeks I have been going through this weird allergic reaction that we couldn't quite figure out and I was getting a bit tired of waking up with eyes swollen nearly shut. So today (on my birthday) I left my house at 9am on the bus to make it to my 2:30pm doctors appointment. I was only two minutes late so I felt pretty successful about that. Thankfully the doctor figured out what is wrong with me, so it wasn't a completely wasted 5.5 hours on the bus:) Apparently mango trees and cashew trees are closely related to poison ivy, and if you have known me for any length of time you have probably seen me for weeks (if not months at a time) with some ridiculous poison ivy rash. So apparently I am not longer allowed to pick my own mangoes out of the trees in my yard. I can eat them, but only after someone cleans them and peels them for me. At least I can still eat them. They are all coming ripe right about now and they taste amazing. So weird skin problem number who knows what will hopefully be resolved soon :)(I can't figure out how to rotate the picture so just use your neck and tilt your head a bit :))

I received a birthday card yesterday. One of those fun musical cards. I did not think about it when I brought it back to the village and opened it, but I got an amazing response. The kids love it, and constantly want to see "the radio" and listen to the song. There is a picture of my host-niece Anaya listening to it. It was amazing she came running to my house naked after her bath wanting to hear it and I told her as best I could in K'ekchi that she couldn't listen to it until she put on clothes, so she was back fully dressed (with shoes!) in under 5 minutes. I was impressed. I may soon hate the limbo song that it plays after hearing it non-stop for 20 minutes or so, but I loved seeing their response to it. Something that seemed so simple, but provides hours (literally) of entertainment and amazement.

Alright so dear Tracy, my fellow PCV and well loved pal, was planning to visit me in my village for my birthday. I wasn't completely sure she was coming, but when I found out I wasn't going to be there I let her know. So she decided to join me on the adventure up north to the doctor. She made me the most amazing chocolate cake with peanut butter and chocolate icing and lugged it through 7 hours of bus trips to get it here to Belize city. When I got on the bus with her a few hours into her trip she was contemplating singing happy birthday too me with the people on the bus, but thankfully reserved herself a bit. Needless to say cakes don't withstand heat very well, especially on buses. The cake tasted amazing, but may have been a little melty. I didn't mind, I enjoyed it very much with the forks we begged from the concession stand lady in the Dangriga bus station. It just reminds me of the great friends I have made here that would take a 7 hour bus ride, holding a quickly melting cake, on a very uncomfortable retired school bus, in the heat just so I don't spend my birthday alone. It was a good day :)

I can't think of a title :)

So my parents recently visited me and it was really great to see them. As we were riding in the car they were asking questions about different things we were seeing and I was explaining to them different cultural and economic things about the village I live in and some about Belize. My mom asked “why don’t you write about these things in your blog?” Since then I have been thinking about that question and I have come up with some kind of an answer, good or bad, I am still not sure.

I do mostly write lighthearted blogs with the amusing and sometimes awkward moments that lead to laughter that come along with trying to fit in in a completely different culture, or I write about fun events. Those things are easy for me to write about. I feel like coming up with words to adequately describe daily life here, the people, the traditions and culture that won’t lead you to misunderstandings or give you the wrong impressions is really hard for me. My thoughts change daily, things that once surprised or amazed me I don’t even notice anymore. Everything is becoming pretty routine and normal. Thankfully I have about 600 pages or more of journaling from the last 7 months to look back on when I want reminders. I will do my best to give a little bit of insight into what I have learned to love and grown to tolerate in the last 7 months here. I hope that you take these thoughts and realize my impression will or could differ greatly from any other volunteer you find in Belize, and that they are just that, opinions.

My Village

I have been in this village about 6 months. Now that I say that, it kind of freaks me out that I am already ¼ of the way through my placement here. I am slowly feeling like I have a home here. There are several of the 30 houses I feel completely comfortable going to visit, sitting with them, talking, laughing or even just having comfortable silence. Something that has taken me a while to get used to is the way visiting takes place here. You can visit with absolutely no purpose, you don’t have to be bringing a message, or really have any reason to visit someone. It is perfectly acceptable to go and sit with someone and enjoy their company even if that means there are periods of 5 minutes or so that are (what I used to feel was awkward) silent. I am working on making myself comfortable visiting the rest of the houses here, but sometimes it is just hard. It is really hard sometimes to convince myself to go to a house where I know our ability to communicate will be minimal and cause a lot of confusion. I have to remind myself, though, that these are the visits that usually turn out the most amusing, most beneficial, let people see that I am trying, and help me to learn the most K’ekchi.

I don’t remember what I have written in the past about this village, but here is a bit of a description. I would say about 15-20% of the adults speak some amount of English. All of the community meetings and everything are held in K’ekchi and most women only speak K’ekchi (With the exception of my host-family who speak beautiful English). So while Belize is an English speaking country it is necessary for me to learn K’ekchi. Even if everyone could speak English, wouldn’t it be more respectful to try and communicate with them in their first language rather than having them make accommodations for me? Most all of the families here are subsistence farmers, their food comes primarily from their gardens, plantations or hunting. So typically we eat a lot of corn (I never knew there were so many ways to prepare corn) usually tortillas, beans, eggs, sometimes rice, and a few vegetables here and there. Thankfully, there are a lot of bananas, coconuts, sweet limes, oranges and some mango trees around so we aren’t short on fruits. As far as income, there really isn’t much. Several families have someone that works at the nearby banana plantations where they make about 9USD a day and are gone about 12 hours a day. We have 3 people that work with the school bus taking kids to the high school in town, and they make about 14USD a day, but they only work about 2-3 weeks a month. Some ladies go to nearby tourist areas to sell crafts and jewelry now and then. The majority of income though is just odd jobs here and there.

The families here are large; most have between 4 and 9 children. People are starting to get married at older ages (18-20), but it is not too uncommon to see someone who was married at 14 or 15. Families tend to stay close together and build houses next to each other. As you can imagine all of these things leave me hard to understand; 24, not a wife, not a mother, and far from my family.

There are three churches here that many people attend, but they all are blended with traditional beliefs and practices as well. Sometime I will have to write about some of them, they are pretty interesting to me. We also have a healer or bush doctor that a lot of people visit when they aren’t well, or they don’t get better after visiting the clinic.

My Typical Day

People ask me what I do, and this is why I don’t consistently have updates. On a normal day I wake up about 5 or so in the morning. About 6 or 6:30 I will open my windows and doors, depending on when I am ready to have kids playing in my house. As soon as I open them they tend to come visit. I make breakfast, read/play with kids for a bit. When I see ladies going or about 9am I will go to the river to wash clothes and bathe. I usually go with my host-sisters, but there are always a lot of ladies down there. It is an awesome time for socializing with the ladies in the village. Usually that takes an hour or two out of the morning. I am convinced my house always needs to be swept so that happens at least once a day. Usually there is a period of spider killing as well. After lunch I usually go to visit a few houses and spend some time walking around and visiting. The unfortunate part of a small village is I can walk around the whole village in about 10-15 minutes, but at least I know everyone. Everyone seems to always know where to find me too. When school is in session I usually go in the morning or afternoon a few times a week to help out in the “library”, help with some special projects or in the garden. I also teach after school 2-3 times a week storywriting and math to help with standardized testing and high school entry exams. Yes, eventually I will work on some kind of project related to my masters, or a bigger project that maybe will seem to have more of a point for those of you at home. For now, though, I am just getting to know people, working on a plan with village leaders, learning, building relationships and teaching them a bit about where I come from, like “Yes we do have trees and rivers in the US. Really, I promise.”

Alright I have been sitting here writing by candle light for about 8 pages right now so I think I should quit. (I didn't even manage to actually type it all up, maybe another time I will add some of the other sections I wrote about :) I am sure you have had enough anyway. Hopefully it will give you a bit more of an idea of where I am and what I am doing. I miss you all and look forward to hearing from you soon!

Kids and the Camera

I take pictures in my village, but I am finding that most of them end up being pictures of kids jumping up and down right in front of the camera. I can't take pictures of them doing what they are actually doing. The thing is everytime I get my camera out, no matter what the reason, they always show up :) Even Anaya, the three year old that is learning English, knows how to ask. She just says "I want to see picture of Anaya".

Exibit 1:

The other morning my three host-nieces were coloring pictures on the floor of my house and I decided to take a picture. Instead I ended up with this video showing why I couldn't get a picture of them doing what they are actually doing.

Exibit 2 (Nicellia):

Exibit 3 (Anaya):

"You are the clumsiest person I know"

I got an email from Amy today and she let me know that I am the clumsiest person she knows (and that I need to write more blogs). I want to say she is worse, but unfortunately probably not. I think it may be one of the contributors to why we have been such good friends for so many years, though. That and she is awesome.

So I am pretty much the clumsiest person alive. About two weeks ago I re-hernieted two disks in my back. I feel like that injury shouldn't be attributed to clumsiness since we can't pinpoint anything I did to cause it to happen. It has been six years since I first injured it, and I just slowly over the course of a couple days started having more and more pain. Eventually I decided it wasn't going away and was pretty unbearable. Unfortunately there is no way to call from my village so I rode the bus into town and called the doctor. She had me flown to belize city and I had my very first hospital stay. I stayed in town for a few days trying to recover a bit and amusing my friends with my overly drugged state. They drove me back to my village after 6 days away and told me I could have physical therapy in about a week after I was feeling a bit better and was in town for our volunteer conference.

This past week was the all volunteer conference. It started Monday and I found out my PT would be on Friday. Well Wednesday I managed to fall down the stairs. This hotel should not be allowed to mop the floor. It is super slick tile and there are clumsy people like me staying there. I was so scared all week that I would fall somewhere and hurt my back that when I slipped on the stairs I held on super tight with my arm so I wouldn't land on my back. Now I have an injured shoulder too :) My Peace Corps nurse informed me that I do not have her permission to have any more incidents.

Thankfully the muscles/tendons in my shoulder are starting to feel a little less stressed out, and my back is feeling quite a bit better. I had physical therapy yesterday and it hurt quite a bit, but hopefully it will help in the long run. I am glad to be seeing recovery coming in the near future so I can get back to my village and back to normal life.

January (added pictures)

I was a bit of a failure when it comes to updating in January. Which is sad because for the most part it was a pretty good month :). So I will do some highlights for you and hopefully add some pictures here soon!

New Years at Caye Caulker
So I went on my first little vacation at New Years. I spent 2 nights on Caye Caulker. It is about an hour in a boat from Belize City. It was like being in a different world from where I am living. It was a beautiful island, nice view of the ocean, nice beach. It was a lot of fun to just relax and hang out with some of the other volunteers. The best part was definitely snorkeling. We spent a whole day on a boat in the Caribbean getting to snorkel. The first stop was just to get used to snorkeling (those fins were trickier than I expected hehe) and see some of the reef/fish for about an hour. Then we sailed a bit further to shark alley and got to snorkel with a lot of nurse sharks, some huge sting rays and some cool fish. It was amazing! The last stop was through a really pretty part of the reef. We saw some sea turtles and in some parts the water was only a few feet deep then suddenly there would be a huge drop off. It was beautiful. Definitely a fun and much needed break. (soon I will put up some pictures from the underwater camera we had I hope!)


House Visits
My village Alcalde went with me to visit all 30 houses in the village. It happened over about 8-9 hours on a few different Sundays. It was a lot of fun. A lot of the families don't speak any English, especially the women. The ladies got a huge kick out of me speaking K'ekchi. There was one lady that was so much fun! Our visit went a little like this:
Me: Anih ak'aba? (what is your name?)
Her: hahahahahahahahaha...
Me: ummm.... anih ak'aba?
Her: hehehehehe.... something in K'ekchi to the alcalde
Alcalde: She is just thinks it is funny to see a white person speaking K'ekchi
Me: ohhh... Anih ak'aba?
Finally she answered me and the rest of my questions I could get out in K'ekchi. When I ran out of conversation I was good at she started teaching me random words...
she points to her ear... xik (I repeat, she giggles)
she points to her hair... ismal (I repeat, she giggles)
she mimicks washing clothes... putch'uk (I repeat, she giggles)
It continued that way for a good half an hour. Lots of good laughter :)

I feel like I need to follow up that story with a note on the fact that I did finish out the month with K'ekchi in-service language training, so I am doing much better :) I can now count to 100 in k'ekchi... too bad most of them use English numbers. I can completely understand why, I mean thirty-eight or waqxaqlaju xkak'aal. Which sounds easier to you?

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I intended to wish everyone a Merry Christmas before Christmas, but my body had some other plans. I am feeling better now, though, and had a really nice Christmas here in Belize.

I stayed in my village with my host-family and spent a few days cooking, playing games and just enjoying having some time together. It is pretty much just a big family day here. My host-father is a baptist minister so we went to church on Christmas Eve about 9pm and it was supposed to end at Midnight, but we were there until 1:30am. The pentecostal church joined us and it made a total of maybe 40 people. After church we went back to my host families house for a Christmas meal (yes at 1:30am) of chicken caldo, corn tortillas, and I don't really remember what else right now. It was a really late night, but somehow we managed to be up early again cooking for Christmas day. The whole day was just a lot of cooking and games. Our Christmas meal here was BBQ gibnut, black beans, cole slaw and cake. A bit different than any other Christmas meal I have ever had, but it was good. Gibnut is a little bush animal, it tastes a lot like pork, but they hunt for it in the middle of the night in our village.

I attempted to get a family picture before Christmas, but it is hard to get 16 people together at once, so here are a few attempts with different parts of the family and just some random fun pictures: