Living The Dream: The last month!

Oofda the last few weeks have been crazy! Lots of stuff to catch up on.

The weekend following Earl, Nick, Anna and I stayed at the Mayflower, a house the Peace Corps owns in Belmopan where PCV’s stay while they’re in the city. Friday we had pizza at one of the staff’s houses in Belmopan and watched the start of the Olympics, then got to go out and unwind in the city as a group, which was really great. It was something we all really needed after the crazy week that was Hurricane Earl, especially after being cooped up in the office all week. Loryann, Anna, Nick, Chelsea and I stayed at the Mayflower that night with Jason (forever will be J-Dawg to me after this weekend), the Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (PCVL) who’s been helping lead a lot of our training sessions. The other trainees stayed at various hotels and staff houses. Saturday, everyone went back to their sites except Nick, Anna and I. The rest of the weekend was a lot of hanging out with those two and J-Dawg, walking around Belmopan, and watching the Olympics – it was actually pretty great. Even better was that all 3 of us got news over the weekend that we’d be going home Monday. We were all ecstatic and ready to go back to our host families.

The next week was site assignment week, which was great for two reasons: moving back in with my host family and finding out where we’d be serving the next two years. My little sister, Mira, definitely missed me, which was awesome (and a ton of progress since day 1!) and we played a ton all week. She also really missed my flash drive with Frozen on it, so there’s that too. The week dragged a bit though leading up to site assignment since we all (well, most of us) were super anxious to find out where we were going. Site assignment day finally came and they made us wait until after lunch for it! It was pretty cool though. They made us leave the room for 15 minutes to setup the room, and when we came back, it was decked out with streamers and a big map of Belize. They would call us up one by one and announce our names and sites, and have us place our pictures on the map where our site was, and then read the next person in turn. I got placed in the Stann Creek district in Southern Belize, but due to Peace Corps safety and security rules, I’m not allowed to say exactly where on social media. If you want to know exactly where, feel free to ask me personally!

The next week we had counterpart workshop on Monday and Tuesday in San Ignacio, where we met our future counterparts. There I met Mr. Ical (my community health worker) and Mrs. Chiac (my principal) and we had two days of training with them. On Tuesday, I left with Mr. Ical to head down to my community (hell yeah!). Riding the bus down to Stann Creek was definitely an experience. I was told that you really need to fight your way onto the bus from the Belmopan terminal, but you never really know until you actually get there. I literally had to push my way through people to get out of the gate and we all squeezed through and made it onto a packed bus. I legit had to stoop on the bus for a few minutes since no one can be standing on the bus when it leaves the terminal. Then I was standing for about 45 minutes or so until a seat opened up that I could take, and rode the rest of the way to my village’s junction. We picked up another bus there after about 5 minutes and rode the 4 miles in to the village.

Let’s just call it Chaab’il k’aleb’aal (beautiful village), CK for short from now on, that’ll be way easier. Riding up to CK was literally breathtaking. Big tz’uul (mountains) covered in che (trees), mas li tz’ik (many birds), and red dirt everywhere. Seriously amazing. I was falling in love with CK on that first ride in. We got into the village and Mr. Ical (not only my CHW, but also my host grandfather) showed me to his house where I met his wife. Now let me tell you, my first experience in CK was meeting Xan Candelaria (Mrs. Candelaria), who happened to be topless making tortillas (xorok) in the kitchen without a care in the world. Big of a shocker right there, but I got over it pretty quick when I realized that she didn’t care at all, so I really shouldn’t either. We carried on talking in Q’eqchi for a bit, had some maatz (green corn porridge – DElicious) and then Mr. Ical showed me to my host family, his son Pablo. That’s when I met Pablo (inyaua – my host father), Fermina (his wife, inna – my host mother), and 5 younger children (wiiz’in) Venancio, Shereen, Wilfredo, Lizzany, and Anthony. Sarah, the previous volunteer in CK was also there since she was still in the village for another week or so. The welcome I got was absolutely amazing. They had me sit down and eat first (more maatz!), showed me my room with a big “Welcome to the Ical’s!” sign (awesome), and helped me setup my mosquito set and put a hammock in my room. We talked for awhile that night and then went to bed.

The next day I hung around with the fam all day, and in the afternoon Mr. Ical took me to meet the village chairman and show me around the village a bit, and I ate dinner at his house. I went home and chatted with my family at night and went to bed. The next few days would not be as calm as that first one was though, which was great! Over those next couple of days, I spent a lot of time playing and talking with my family, talking with Sarah, walking around the community, meeting people, experiencing Q’eqchi church (oh boy, that’s a thing), cleaning a community center, and playing with a bunch of the village kids. Okay, Q’eqchi church. 2-3 hours of church where there are a ton of hymns that everyone screams (yes, screams) to off-key and you can barely understand a word. They do say yuam a lot though, I did catch that, which means both body and life. It was actually really cool though. The community is really involved in church services, so lots of different people come up and speak or lead songs throughout the service, and Mr. Ical introduced me to everyone at the beginning, so that was pretty cool. My family goes Wednesday night, Friday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night, so I’m not sure I’ll do all of that, but I’ll probs at least go Sunday mornings.

About my new host family: in a word, they’re wonderful. Pablo is a farmer and Fermina stays at home with the kids. Ven is the oldest (14) and is super smart and a really cool kid. I taught him how to play Uno during the week and that was a lot of fun. Shereen (but we call her Sonida) is the next oldest) and is super nice and also really hard working. Then is Wilfredo (Fredo), who is really hard-working and always goes to the farm with Pablo. Next is Lizzany (Zany) who I swear is the cutest little girl y’all have ever seen in your life. She spent the week talking to me only in Q’eqchi, which was hard, but it helps to learn. Finally Anthony (Tony), is the youngest at 2 and is absolutely adorable. It took him about half a day to warm up to me and he was following me around everywhere and climbing into my hammock. I absolutely love these kids. They’re all super smart, fun and well-behaved, and already treat me like an older brother, it’s amazing. The day after I got back from site visit, Pablo texted me asking how I was and making sure I got home alright because Tony was worried about me. Freaking adorable. Mr. Ical, well, Augustine, is my grandpa and just an all-around awesome dude. He’s been a CHW for 31 years and is super knowledgeable, so he’s gonna be awesome to work with. My entire host family speaks both Q’eqchi and Mopan Maya (another Mayan language I’ll have to learn now), and Fredo and older all speak English as well. I already can’t wait to get back to them.

That being said, I also super love my Valley family. I don’t know how I got so lucky as to get 2 host families that are beyond amazing, but here we are. As excited as I am to get back to CK, I’m just as bummed about leaving Valley in my family here. Quite the back and forth really.

We got back from site visit that Saturday and had a busy weekend of re-integrating in Valley, doing laundry, hanging out with family, and helping to setup a football marathon at the village football field (baalil). We also setup a free blood pressure check booth there and ended up being at the field from 7am to around 3pm. Fair bit of work, pretty warm out, but a lot of fun. We got to hang out a bit, meet and talk with a bunch of people, and educate on healthy living. Pretty dang good day actually.

All this week was pretty down in the group though. Everyone was drained from site visit and re-integration into Valley, and some people didn’t have the greatest site visits unfortunately. Here’s hoping that everyone has an amazing round two when we go back in a few weeks though! The training has been up and down this week as well. Monday was alright, but Tuesday was super low energy all around. Wednesday we were supposed to have our final LPI and it got pushed back to Saturday last minute. Thursday was good though, and we found out we’re going to Xunatunich (a Mayan ruin) on Sunday, so that’ll be sweet. Friday is Kriol culture day (writing this on Thursday night right meow), so that should be fun as well.

The next few weeks are going to be absolutely crazy. 3 weeks from the day I wrote this (25/08/16) is swearing in (15/09/16); I still can’t believe it’s so soon. We have a couple of practicums over the next couple of weeks, a bunch of deliverables, some presentations, lots of planning (including a farewell party for our families though!), and very little time. Before we know it, we’ll be swearing in as official volunteers and I can’t wait!

Bryan

P.S. Here are some more pictures for y’all!