Sorry for the really long delay in posting – things have
been pretty crazy the last couple of months, and about a month out of it I was
laptop-less as my charger broke and I had to wait for the new one to get here.
Hopefully there won’t be such a delay in posting one again! A lot of things
have happened since I last posted! I’ve been in country 6 months now, 3 of
which have been at site. We had our reconnect training a couple weeks ago, so I
got to see everyone again (which was amazing, I love BH4 so much). Anyway,
there’s a lot to cover in all of that!
An overview of some of the things that have been going on
since I last wrote. I’ve been in the school a lot more since the teachers’
strike is over, and my goal was to shadow all of the teachers at least once (16
teachers!). I’ve now down that, and have started teaching HFLE (Health and
Family Life Education) lessons, which is what my job will be in the school.
I’ve taught 3 at this point – anger management (awesome), being a part of a
community (okay), and products used to take good care of the body (good).
Hopefully I’ll start teaching more as time goes on, but only time will tell on
that. I’ve also started tutoring Standard 6 (8th grade) kids in Math
and English to get ready for the PSE (Primary School Examination – High School
entrance exam) on Wednesdays. I’ve only been able to teach a couple so far, but
it’s been going well. Done some home visits with my CHW now, those are okay but
they’ll get better, need to get into the swing of things there, hopefully. I
found out he’s planning on retiring in March, so who knows what will happen the
next few months. There is a new CHW that’s been elected already, though I
haven’t met her and she hasn’t started training yet, so who knows how that will
go. That should actually (hopefully) be really nice when that begins to work
itself out. One of the most frustrating things about being here so far is that
it’s really hard to connect with the adult women of the village, especially
because my current CHW is male and goes to the farm during the days, and as an
adult male I can’t go do home visits alone to the women of the village when
their husbands aren’t home. It totally makes sense, and I wouldn’t care much
for a stranger coming to my house visiting my wife while I wasn’t home if I
were them, but it makes it hard when I can’t do any work in the mornings unless
I’m at school. I can walk around the village and talk to the people that hail
me, but it doesn’t happen all too often and I often just end up heading back
home. I’ve been trying to figure out work here, but it’s been challenging the
last couple months figuring things out. With my current CHW retiring, we
haven’t done much in the way of community health education, and while I’ve been
in the school a lot, it’s been mostly helping out here and there around the
office rather than teaching a lot. The bit that I’ve done so far I’ve enjoyed a
ton though, so I’m looking forward to more. The longer I’m here, the more I
realize I’m going to have to start going out of my way to reach out to the
teachers to try and help teach in their classes more. I think that’s the way
it’s going to go with community health education too – I need to go out and
find some people that really want to work on health projects here and reach out
to them to get started. One of the things I learned from reconnect is how vital
it is to have counterparts that want to work with you in the community, so I
need to find some more to really get started here. I have done a lot of needs
assessments here though, so there’s plenty I know of that could use working on.
It’s encouraging to know that I can definitely help here; I just need to find
the people that I can work with next.
Some of the cooler things I’ve been doing in the last two
months though…A bunch of doctors came in one day from the org School Bells,
which is an awesome mission that comes to Belize 1-2x a year to help out with
education and health. I got to help them register patients in Q’eqchi, and help
translate some (GREAT practice). I actually helped translate a consultation to
a man in Q’eqchi explaining his symptoms, likely cause (gallbladder! that was
interesting but actually went well), that he needed an ultrasound at the
hospital, to stop eating as much spicy food, and his prescription order. That
was awesome experience actually, and it was a full day of that, so a lot of
great practice. Morris (another PCV near me) and I started doing health
education at one of the nearby clinics in Independence, first one on
hypertension, and that went alright. It’s a cool experience though. I helped
out with a Special Olympics Belize event in Dangriga that was a lot of fun, and
got to hang out there with Yanni and Anna afterwards, which made for a really
great day. The day after that trip with the Harvest at one of the churches in
my village, which is basically the equivalent of Thanksgiving here. They set up
a bunch of tables at one of the churches, and the students march in with a
donation of food to sell and raise money for the school, and perform a bible
verse, song or speech. The skit thing was really cool, the market after was
crazy, but it was fun being able to help out with that. November 19 was Garifuna
Settlement Day, which is a big holiday here celebrating the arrival of the
Garifuna people in Belize. The day before, we had a culture day at the school
in the morning, where all the classes performed skits, songs, or poems to
celebrate different cultures. In the afternoon, we did sports day, so I got to
play football with the kids and softball with the teachers all afternoon. All
in all, a spectacular day. On Nov 22 I had Thanksgiving dinner here with my
backup host family and a couple of missionaries for the Church of Christ here that
come every year around that time to celebrate. I helped cook a little bit and
we had chicken pot pie soup, which was amazing. Gonna need to make that again.
Dec 4 I went to a birthday party at one of the nearby villages and had a blast
there playing with the kids and swimming in the river all day. They slaughtered
a pig and made an absolute TON of caldo. I’ll be honest, you don’t want to be
around for a pig slaughter, but the food was delicious. After that was reconnect
with my cohort at this amazing resort in Burrel Boom, and that was an
interesting experience. It was amazing seeing everyone again after so long, weird
being at a place with hot water and giant beds, hard hearing about the
successes others are having when you’re having challenges in those areas, but
cool to talk about and hear all the successes that everyone was having, and a
little rough being back in 8-5 training again (the memory of PST is still too
real for that to have been okay, haha). Overall it was good though, and I left
feeling motivated to get back to my village and work, and I absolutely loved
seeing everyone. The 13th was had our Christmas Pageant at the
school, and I got to play Santa Clause. That was an absolute blast, and yes
there are pictures and videos, haha. The 16th was the first night we
were officially allowed to stay outside of the village for a night, so a
handful of us went down to PG for the night and had a blast hanging out down
there. This week I went to the farm and carried a big bag of corn for a mile
down a muddy hill and then attempted to ride a bike the 4 miles home with it on
my handlebars. That was interesting, haha. That’s about where I am now as I’m
writing this.
This weekend is Christmas and it’ll be only my 2nd
Christmas spent away from home, and I like it about as much now as I did then,
which is to say, not really at all. In case any of you didn’t know this about
me, I absolutely love Christmas. It’s by far my favorite holiday, and I hate
spending it away from home. I’m one of those awful people that start playing
Christmas music in September/October, and I have a Spotify playlist almost 200
songs deep that I usually go through at least a few times by Christmas. I know many
of y’all think it’s a travesty to play it before Thanksgiving, which is fair,
but I can’t wait that long. Because of that, it’s been a little tougher here
lately. At the same time, it’ll be cool to experience Christmas here in a
different culture at least once since I’m planning on going home for Christmas
next year. I also love my host family here, so it’s an opportunity to spend
more time with them during what’s also a really big holiday here. Still, it’s
hard not being at home right now.
On a more positive note, things to look forward to! I’ll be
spending New Years on Caye Caulker (one of the beautiful resort-y islands here)
with most of my cohort, which will be a blast. There will be pictures to come I’m
sure. I got official approval to come home in July for Jackie’s wedding in
July, so I’m looking at flights back home next summer. That being said, it’ll
only be for a week so I can save my leave for Christmas next year, but I’ll be
home for a little bit! In January I’ll be starting a blog challenge the Peace
Corps put out, so I’ll be posting about once a week for at least a month. They’ll
give me a prompt to write on each week, so hopefully that’ll make up a little
bit for my lack of posting these last two months! Finally, on the picture
front. I need at least halfway decent internet for me to post pictures on this
blog, which is hard to come by. That being said, I’m not posting any pictures
this time, but I hope to in the next couple of weeks. I have a ton lined up to
post, so the next post will likely be only pictures! Now for some fun stuff. In
the spirit of fellow BH4 Volunteer Eileen, I’m going to copy her and tell you a
little bit about my host family here because they’re wonderful.
Pablo
Pablo is my host dad, and is absolutely hysterical. He’s
incredibly hard-working, tireless, and is always smiling and cracking jokes.
His favorite way to mess with me (which we both this is hilarious) is to mimic
the neighbors calling me to play football, even though we both know it’s him.
“Mr. Bryan!! Yo’o chi ballib!” in a fake voice he makes up. He works at a
nearby banana farm, so he brings bananas home a lot, which is super great. He’s
also really smart…actually my whole fam is.
Fermina
xMin (pronounced Shmeen) is a rockstah mom. For real. Pablo
goes out to work, but she runs the house. With 5 kids here, plus me and Pablo,
that’s not easy task. The oldest kid is 14, the youngest just turned 3, and she
cooks (ah-MA-zing food), cleans, washes clothes, and generally just does
everything, and is always smiling while doing it. She’s harsh when she needs to
be, but she’s super sweet and loving. Also, she makes the best Caldo I’ve had
in Belize, which is flipping spectacular given how much I mega-love Caldo.
Venancio
Ven is my oldest host brother at 14, he’s in 2nd
Form (Sophomore year of HS) and is a smart kid. He always wants to play
football (and usually kicks my butt), is hilarious, likes playing jokes, and is
all around just a really good kid. He once took my phone and edited a picture I
took to write “I love you” on it, which I absolutely lost it to.
Shereen
Senaida (not sure why, but that’s what everyone calls her)
is 11 and is basically 2nd in command for running the house with xMin.
Super sweet and smart, but she likes to mess around with people too. She’ll
walk casually by into the kitchen and poke me in the side if I’m not paying
attention to make me jump and then run away laughing.
Wilfredo
Fredo is basically a little monkey and will climb anything,
at least until he fell and broke his wrist during my first month here. He still
runs around everywhere making sounds like he’s The Flash though. He’s 9 and can
be rude sometimes, but he’s a good kid, and he’s smart too, super curious about
everything.
Lizany
Zany is an adorable, super energetic 7 year old who always
wants to play cards, no matter what. She asks me probably every single day, and
doesn’t like to stop until she wins. Won’t say anything when she loses but
“Let’s go again” and then gloat like crazy when she wins, it’s hilarious.
Anthony
Tony is my super adorable 3 year old brother who is always
running around, hugging or tickling me, asking where I’m going and if I’m doing
well in Q’eqchi, and is always asking what everything is. He’s 3 and can speak
Q’eqchi, understand Maya, and is learning some English, it’s nuts. This kid is
already super smart, and he’s so flipping cute.
My family is wonderful here, I really do love them. It’s
interesting though, there are a lot of languages going on in this house.
Fermina is Mopan, speaks Q’eqchi to Pablo and me, Mopan to the kids and me, and
Kriol/English to me. Pablo is Q’eqchi and speaks either Q’eqchi or
Kriol/English to everyone. The kids can all speak Q’eqchi, understand (and most
speak) Mopan, most speak English/Kriol, and some speak a bit of Spanish. It’s
crazy. For the first month I had no idea which language xMin was speaking in,
but now I know based on what she’s saying if I know the words, or who she’s
talking to. My Q’eqchi is coming along though, so that helps a lot. I can
understand Kriol for the most part, and I’m slowly learning a few words here
and there in Mopan. They’re a ton of fun though, and I feel super welcome here.
Anyway, I think that’s all for now, this was a super long
post. Look forward to a lot more posts in January, and the next one should be
up soon with a ton of pictures!
Bryan
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