Three Simple Words

This post is part of Blogging Abroad's 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week four: Change and Hope.

In three simple words: change is hard. There are a million ways to say that, to describe it, to illustrate just how difficult change is, but sometimes simple is best. Change is hard.

We know that coming in to Peace Corps service, because we know the job is hard. Again, the phrase they’ve told us from the beginning crops back up, “Peace Corps is the hardest job you’ll ever love” – everyone who did Peace Corps ever. It’s true though; we do development work, development work is all about change, and change is hard. It’s only natural that our job will be hard based on the work that we try to do. But we also know it inherently as human beings. Have you ever had a nasty habit you’ve tried to quit a thousand times and never succeeded? Of course, we all have one. For me (not that I’ve ever truly tried with all I have to break it though), it’s biting my fingernails. It’s not even a nervous habit for me; it’s just something I’ve always done. Often it’s when I’m absent-mindedly thinking about something, because I have this annoying need to chew on something, and my fingernails are always readily available…even if they’re already shortened to the nubs. For you it might be smoking, drinking (pop or alcohol!), watching TV, being too negative, saying sorry too much, being late constantly, or a million other things that people have tried to change over the years. The point is we’ve all failed at something like that sometime, so we all know just how hard change is.

Mobile clinic day

So if change is so damn hard, how does Peace Corps expect us to do it? How are people doing it? How did the people before us do it? Well in my mind it always comes down to two words: hope and persistence. Honestly, that’s what a lot of my job is here, putting those two words into action, every single day. I’m an extrovert, but some days I don’t feel like going out into the village, I want to just hide myself in my hammock and read a book all day. On those days, it takes a lot of those two words to get me out there: hope that what I’m doing is worth something, and persistence in forcing myself to keep trying to accomplish some good, even if I can’t see it. Thankfully I’m very much the optimist, so those bad days are few and far between, but the need for those two words definitely isn’t, and why I need them never changes. Sometimes though, even on the good days, it’s hard to keep telling myself that. That’s when I think of my favorite quote, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi. That’s what keeps me going on the days when I don’t know if I can.

Picking up trash after a Special
Olympics Belize event

The way I see it is this: sometimes change can occur simply through education, and I hope that happens quite a lot during my time here as a community health educator, but sometimes it takes someone modeling the behavior you want to change, and it always requires some sort of emotional component (whether that’s self-determination, an end-goal, a personal connection, etc.). That being said, I’m not naïve enough to believe education alone will create the changes I’m here working toward, I firmly believe that it will require personal connections and modeling the behavior. That’s what gets me out of my room those days, knowing that if I’m not out working with the people in my community, I’m not making any progress toward my goal of improving community health in my village. This quote by Gandhi has always been my favorite, but it resonates so much more with my life now doing what I do here. If I want to help make changes in my village to improve health, I have to be willing to make the journey right alongside the people I live and work with, showing them by doing it myself or trying something new with them. It’s been great motivation on both fronts: it helps get me out and about working, exercising, or meeting people, and the more exposure I get with people in the village, the more likely any changes I try to help with will succeed. I can only hope that by the end of my two years here, my hope and persistence will have paid off at least a little bit and I’ll leave CK a healthier place than it was when I came.

Best,

Bryan

An Adjustment Period

This post is part of Blogging Abroad's 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week three: Cultural Differences.

“Intercultural Communications folks have broken cultural differences down to 10 variables: How we see or value Environment, Time, Action, Communication, Space, Power, Individualism, Competitiveness, Structure, and Thinking.” – Michelle C., Blogging Abroad

I could probably spend time talking about how Mayan culture is different from or similar to American culture in every one of these dimensions, but that would make this blog post excessively long! Instead, I’m going to focus on the 3 that have stood out to me as the biggest differences I’ve found during my 7 months (crazy that number is 7 already, isn’t it?) in Belize, and consequently, the biggest adjustments I’ve had to make during my time here.

Time

For those of you that know me well, you know that I’m never the one to be late for a meeting or anything really important. I often show up to parties right on time (which isn’t the cool time to show up to a party), which is almost always too early, and I do it without trying. I value my time quite a lot, and I try and cram it full of everything I possibly can. If you were to take a look at my Google Calendar from when I was in Boston, you’d probably think I was crazy. And I loved that. If you were to look at my Google Calendar now though, you’d see that it looks quite a bit different.

Waiting for the mobile clinic nurses and community members
to show up for mobile clinic day

In America, time tends to be fixed for most people, meaning that “punctuality is precisely defined” (Philippa Collin, Ten Variables of Culture). If you’re 15 minutes late, you’re late. If you set a meeting with someone, you show up on time or it can be seen as an insult if you’re late. Here? Not so much. Time is very fluid: things will happen in their own time, and if a time is set for something, being late isn’t insulting at all. On the contrary, it’s expected. It happens quite frequently that if you ask someone to show up for something at 8am, they likely won’t show up until 9 at the earliest, often as late as 10 or 11. At first that was very frustrating to deal with, being the crazy time management person that I am. But in my time here, I’ve kind of gotten used to it. I bring a book and headphones basically everywhere now just in case, and I’m learning to enjoy moving at a less structured, slower pace. Not completely there yet, but I’m working on it!

Space

In America, people tend to value their personal space a lot. If you invade someone’s personal space bubble, they generally let you know and remove themselves a little bit. It’s also perfectly acceptable to hide away on your own for awhile for some “me time.” Here, there really isn’t a concept for a personal space bubble. All spaces are common ground for everyone, which is actually really cool. My siblings run in an out of my room all the time, because it’s not really “my room,” it’s just another room in the house. That being said, if I need privacy I can get some, but doing that is kind of selfish so I don’t like doing it a lot. I’ll partially close my door if I’m working, but if it’s not closed completely, they know it’s okay to come in. Which leads me to my 3^rd and final major cultural difference…

My entire host family in my room watching a movie together

Individualism

America is a very individualistic society; we really value our independence. We live our own lives, and though while often with other people, we generally tend to our own affairs. Our lives intersect with others quite a lot, but at the end of the day we move back into our personal spheres. We have our own things, in fact, ownership is a very personal thing on just about every level. Here it’s not like that at all. Everything is shared. Everything. And it’s actually really refreshing. This has been probably the biggest adjustment I’ve had to make, getting used to this, but it’s my favorite by far. I absolutely love collectivist culture after having been a part of it for the past 7 months. Triumphs, failures, trials and tribulations, things, space, time, moments, memories, projects…life is shared amongst everyone. Family and community is everything here. People often sleep in the same rooms altogether, families bathe together, work together, help each other out. Not just themselves either, but their community members as well. If a new house needs to be built, corn planted, or someone’s short on corns, beans or tortillas, people ask their neighbors for help, and it’s always freely given. People do favors for each other all the time, with no expectations in return, though favors always come back around from the people who had to ask in the first place. People are generally concerned about the well being of others in their community, because there’s a pervasive “we’re all here together” mentality in the village. That being said, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, it never is. People fight and disagree, some people don’t like each other or help others out, there’s gossip. But that’s life anywhere, not just here and not just back in the States.

There’s definitely been an adjustment period to living here, but just this week, I’ve finally reached a point where I truly felt integrated. It was honestly one of my happiest moments here, realizing that I actually had a place here, and felt like I fit in and belonged here, despite being a saq (white in Q’eqchi, their equivalent to gringo/American). The Mayan culture may be very different from what I grew up with, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live, interact, and work with the people here. I’m extraordinarily grateful for my time here already, and that will only deepen the longer I spend here. Integrating into Mayan culture has already changed me profoundly, and some of the things I’ve talked about will be things I continue to incorporate into my life here, and beyond when I return to the States. Realizations like this continue to impress upon me the importance of being a Global Citizen and not only learning about other people and their stories, but letting them impact and shape yours as well. 

Best,

Bryan

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

This post is part of Blogging Abroad's 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week two:

The Danger of a Single Story.

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue,

but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” – Chimamanda Adiche

Check out her TED Talk on “The Danger of a Single Story” here.

Finding something to write about for this challenge took me most of the week, until it hit me square in the face. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before, because the single story I’ll write about today is something that I deal with every single day in my village, without fail. It is one of the biggest challenges (if not THE biggest) that I have faced during my service, but it is also one of the most gratifying challenges to meet when I’m able to successfully: gender roles.

Mayan culture is very traditional in terms of the gender roles that are employed. Women do specific things, men do specific things, and children do specific things depending on whether they’re boys or girls. There is very little wire crossing that occurs among those roles, though it does happen occasionally. The interesting thing though is that when it does happen, it goes completely unnoticed by everyone in the community. I think that’s mostly because it’s a temporary thing; if it were a repetitive breaking of gender norms like it is whenever I do something that would be considered “a woman’s job” (which I often hear about it from others as if it’s very strange), it would be very different. This is very hard for me personally, as I’d much rather think of these as “people’s jobs,” but this is the culture that I live and work in, so I have to adapt to environment around me. This has become the single story that the community I live in has about themselves: that your role and job in society is determined by your gender.

So what does that look like?

The river where I wash my clothes every week

Women in Mayan culture are the ones that run the house. They cook (chiq’oq), clean (yamnesink), wash dishes (chahok sek), wash clothes (puch’uk), mind the kids (k’u’uxla li k’okal), sew (bohok), buy food (lo’ok wa), and bake tortillas (xorok). Women generally don’t go to the farm (though there are exceptions to that – my own host mother will go occasionally to pull beans or get corn), chop the yard with a machete (some women do this, but few), chop firewood (again, my host mom is a rock star and does this too), or work in general outside of the home (there are a small handful of female teachers and shop owners, and some women work at a local banana farm, but not many). Women always serve guests and men first, are always the last to eat and then clean up after having cooked everything (which absolutely kills the Midwesterner in me – if you cook, you should eat first and not have to clean up after!). Most women don’t or aren’t allowed to make decisions without their husbands’ approval. In more extreme cases, they can’t leave the house without letting their husbands know, though I haven’t heard of that happening very often.

Building a small thatch house to cover the corn husks

Men, on the other hand, tend to do all the physical labor things like working (kanjelak), chopping firewood (siib’k), chopping the lawn (q’alek), going to the farm (xko’o se kaal), building things/construction (yiibank, usually thatch houses), and in general make most of the decisions for the household. Men don’t cook, bake tortillas, clean (some do this actually), wash clothes, or really do anything that women “are supposed to do.” They tend to relax when they get home from work unless there are chores to do around the house.

Children generally follow what their parents do. Boys often help their fathers at the farm or around the house. They tend to be able to play and relax more, because they usually have more freedom than the girls do. Most boys don’t continue on to go to high school after they’re either done with primary school after standard 6 or turn 14 and are allowed to drop out. Girls usually help out their mothers around the house, and are expected to help run things when they’re as young as 8 years old. If there’s more than one girl in the house, the oldest usually runs things and will eventually teach the younger ones. They have very little time to play or relax unless they’re too young to help out around the house. Girls tend to get married very young in Mayan culture, sometimes as young as 13 or 14, but usually closer to 16. More girls tend to go to high school than boys actually, but even that is rare as most girls marry young or stop school to help their mothers out at home. High school attendance is very low in Mayan culture across the board.

But why has all that been such a challenge? Well, for two main reasons: 1. I’m not expected or assumed to be able to do some of the things that women do because I’m a man, and 2. When I do those things are attempt to learn, I get looked at as if what I’m doing is strange or amusing by the men (sometimes I even get called a woman), and the women tend to think it’s either funny or that I’m incapable of doing those things correctly. It’s also hard for my job sometimes, as it’s not culturally appropriate for me, a single man, to visit the house of a married woman when her husband is not at home (which tends to be the entire day from 6a-5p while they’re working). If I’m  walking around the village and get hailed by one of the women during this time it’s acceptable to go visit, but this doesn’t happen too often. These few things make doing daily tasks, whether chores or working in my capacity as a community health educator, difficult sometimes. I have to wash my clothes every week at the river, which because of the culture, could damage my credibility with the men of the village if they don’t take me seriously for doing what they see as “women’s work.” That being said, I also go to the farm, chop firewood, (attempt to) chop the lawn, carry big bags of corn around, and generally help out with as much as I can to show the men that one person can work effectively in both the roles that they see. As a man, it’s easier for me to get along with the men, so I also do a lot of the things that women “are supposed to do” to learn, to work and live for myself, and to gain rapport with the women. I can successfully make tortillas, wash my clothes and dishes, clean, buy at the market, and watch the kids, which help show that I can work not just with the men, but with the women too. Eventually I’ll make it to cooking, but that’ll take some time yet.

That’s the part that I see as the most gratifying when my message comes across to the people of my community – it doesn’t matter what your gender is, everyone is capable of working and doing all of these jobs. Whether it’s my host mother chopping firewood, the rare single man or single woman cooking or working at the banana farm, or me baking tortillas, the exceptions  are there and they’re okay. They paint a much more complete picture of a person than the single story that many in this community believe define their roles in this society. The days that I make progress in breaking these gender stereotypes are my best and my favorite by far, because it tells me that I can make some sort of impact here, and that the people here aren’t just stuck in their single stories. They tell us in the beginning of training that Peace Corps is “the hardest job you’ll ever love,” and when I think about things like this, I understand why. Working through this challenge will likely be one of the hardest things I’ll do during my service, but I’ve already seen glimpses of the light at the end of the tunnel with some of the people I’ve touched. Those moments make the hard times worth it because I know I’m doing at least some good here, and that I can always do more.

Me baking tortillas!

Best,

Bryan

Finding My Global Footprint

This post is part of Blogging Abroad's 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week one: Global Citizenship

Being a Global Citizen

The term “Global Citizen” has never really been something that I’ve given much thought to before joining the Peace Corps. As someone who has not only wanted to work in Global Health for quite some time, but currently is, I always imagined I’d just be one among the cadre of “International Health Workers” out there. Now that I’ve been 6 months in country, 3 months at my permanent site, I can say that this attitude has changed dramatically. Straight from Michelle C., the director of the Blogging Abroad challenge: “A Global Citizen is defined as ‘a way of living that recognizes our world is an increasingly complex web of connections and interdependencies. One in which our choices and actions may have repercussions for people and communities locally, nationally or internationally.’” Simply put, what we do can affect much more than the people in our direct line of sight. Knowing that now, I’m not sure that I could have ever ended up as anything but a Global Citizen.

For those of you reading this that know me, this statement probably isn’t a surprise. For those who are just meeting me now, welcome! The first thing I’ll tell you about me is that I’ve always wanted to join the Peace Corps, since I was very little. I’m only 27 years old at this point, but I’ve wanted to be a PCV for at least 20 years, so global work isn’t something that I’ve ever really taken lightly. I’ve always wanted to work abroad, volunteer, and travel, so me becoming a Global Citizen was all but inevitable. It took me about 27 ½ years to officially get there, but here I stand nonetheless. Well, sit I suppose, since I’m sitting at a desk in an internet café writing this! I also have a background in Public Health, having taken a number of Global Health courses while completing my Master’s in Public Health. Finally, I was a Master’s International student in coming here, which is a program that Peace Corps ran that recently ended that allowed graduate students to pair their degrees with Peace Corps service. All in all, there was virtually no way my life ran in a direction that didn’t lead to me recognizing my role as a Global Citizen.

How I Became a Global Citizen – My Global Footprint

The most interesting thing for me about being a Global Citizen is that while we’re all representing that title based on the same general principles, how that plays out is unique in every situation. Think about your Global Footprint for a minute. Where have you been? What cultures and peoples have you interacted with? Where did you stay while you were there, and with who? Was it a hostel, a hotel, camping, something else? Who did you tell about the trip, and what did you say? I could go on with questions like that, but I think that’s probably enough to illustrate my point. No one person’s story is ever the same as another’s, just like our Global Citizenship will never be the same as another’s. I love that idea, because it means that as Global Citizens, we’re always learning more, adapting, changing and evolving, and sharing those experiences with others helps shape their own definition as well. That being said, I’d love to tell you a little bit about my Footprint.

My last day of not being a Global Citizen,
the day before I came to Belize

I arrived in Belize to start my first day as a Peace Corps Trainee on June 22, 2016, what I would later reflect on as my first day of truly being a Global Citizen. I was exceptionally green when it comes to international travel before this, having been to Mexico for a week the year prior, and The Bahamas for a week when I was in the 6^th grade. I don’t count either of those times because I had no idea what was going in the world when I was 12, and I was playing the wedding tourist at a beautiful resort in Puerto Vallarta for the other. What I did there in Mexico had no real impact on anyone beyond the money I was spending, which admittedly is something, but it didn’t involve forming real relationships with anyone. What I do here in Belize is all about impact. What can I do with my two short years here? I frequently ask myself this in my daily life here to gauge the impact that I’m having. What am I doing and is it having an impact? What can I be doing that I’m not currently doing? Is there something I’m doing that I should stop? At the end of the day though, simply being here has some sort of impact. Right now, I’m living in a rural village in Southern Belize in the Stann Creek district. Due to Peace Corps’ social media policies, I’m not allowed to disclose the exact location of my site, so if you’ve searched through my earlier blog posts you’ll see that I refer to my village under the pseudonym “CK.” This stands for chaab’il k’aleb’aal, or beautiful village in Q’eqchi, the Mayan language that I’ve been learning to communicate here.

My host family's farm outside of CK

My job is all about improving community health, specifically to reduce maternal and child mortality rates, and reduce the risk and prevalence of non-communicable diseases in my village. What this translates to is teaching health education in the schools and working on community health projects in the village with my community health worker. We can also do what Peace Corps calls ‘secondary projects’, which is essentially any project we undertake that doesn’t fall under the umbrella of community health. I can’t pretend I’ve done much in my time here, but I can tell you at least a handful of things I’ve done or been a part of that contribute to my identity as a Global Citizen. I’ve learned Q’eqchi, a local Mayan language (as well as some Mopan Maya and Kriol) and been able to communicate effectively with the people that live here. I’ve been able to go to the market and purchase groceries entirely using Q’eqchi, almost always with people not from my village. I’ve taught health education classes in the primary school, and done health education talks and visits in the community. I’ve spent money at the local stores, worked with the people here, and spent a lot of time just talking with people and playing with the kids.

The interesting thing about working in this setting is the potential for the work I do to spider out to others. For example, while I teach health education in the primary school here, some of the teachers (including the principal) are not from my village, but commute here every morning for school. If what I teach has an impact on any of them, the message could reach back to their villages, families and friends. And frankly, that’s true of anything we do as Global Citizens. Anytime you venture out into the world and step into a new cultural environment, whatever you do or say has the potential to directly or indirectly impact the people around you, as well as whoever those people come into contact with. The best part about that, though, is the same is true of knowledge transfer from them to you and the people you come into contact with. That sort of cultural and informational exchange is always present for a Global Citizen, and it’s truly staggering to think of the implications of that.

Bringing It Home

I know it’s shaped my life here and beyond in ways I can only begin to express just 6 months in, but now that I’ve recognized my role as a Global Citizen, I can’t ever go back, and I wouldn’t want to. Now everywhere I go, I realize that I represent not only myself, but my people, my culture, and my country. They impress that upon us in Peace Corps training, but it really applies to anyone living, working, traveling, or interacting in the global sphere. Recognizing that, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world not being a Global Citizen, because even though there are many people that don’t travel outside of their home countries, they still represent their countries and cultures to anyone they happen to speak to not from their home country. I guess the distinction for me is in accepting that your life, your actions, and you’re words can affect those around you in ways you may not be able to anticipate. Anyone can be a Global Citizen, and I hope that someday we all will be. At the end of the day, we’re all living on this planet together, even if our lives don’t touch everyone’s around us. Things like climate change and globalization affect us all, and with the advent of the social media age, we’re all more connected than ever. The potential for us all to have even the smallest impact on a global scale is higher now than it’s ever been, and simply recognizing itself could affect the world around us as we continue to move closer and closer together.

This prompt has made me reflect quite a bit on my own story, and I’d love to hear more about all of yours. If you’re interested in sharing it, please reach out to me via the comments section or e-mail at kirk.bryan.pcbz@gmail.com and let me know - What’s your Global Footprint?

The road out of CK, probably my favorite picture here

Best,

Bryan