Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you had a wonderful holiday and are counting your blessings – like no mosquitos and humidity less than 128% :-)

Internet service has been *very* slow and intermittent so I haven't been able to upload any photos but am working on that. Attached a few so you can see my new Belizean brown, with the Ambassador of Belize/Obama's college roomate, and my awesone purple beach cruiser and my office

Settling In

Things are going quite nicely (especially when I hear some of the horror stories of fellow PCVs). I’ve decide to stay on with my host family for a variety of reasons. For one thing, no one lives alone in the village, and especially not single females. It would be very weird to go that route, especially early on, while I’m trying to integrate. Second, there is a bit of a problem with alcoholism in the village. There are 2 bars (and 11 different churches!) but the men are pretty much out of work due to the decline in fish (due to overfishing), so not much to do except to sit around, drink, and lament the good old days. Given that most female PCVs leave villages due to “unwanted attention”, I’d rather not invite trouble by being on my own. And if I did have my own place, it would have to be a high-security compound, with burgular bars, fences, mean dogs – which would also be really weird in this neighborly village.

Fortunately, my host family has the room – in fact, two. My bedroom has bunk beds so I can have visitors J. I also have the office next to it where we (well, I, one day when everyone was out) reorganized so there is space for yoga and a hammock. They have someone who does the laundry (mine too) and cooks so I have lunch with them everyday. And when my mom makes waffles. Otherwise, I’ll be cooking for myself, which means – send a lot of trail mix!!!

My host parents have been married for 23 years, they have 4 kids, 3 daughters and 1 son. The two older girls have gone off to college and are working in Costa Rica (to get work experience). The younger two are in school but in Belize City, so they come for the weekends but are gone all week. Eslner, the dad, works a lot in other cities (he does land surveying for the government) so it’s pretty much just Mrs. Tomasa (who is a primary school teacher) and I (and Brownie, the dog) most days of the week. We bonded immediately when she asked me one night what I wanted for dinner and I said “ice cream” and that’s what we did!

So I’m pretty much a spoiled, only child – finally, once again LOL

Oh, and my family is basically vegetarian. In the 6 weeks I’ve been there, they’ve had chicken twice and fish maybe 3 or 4 times. And 3 of those times, it was as ceviche which we all know doesn’t count against vegetarianism because it’s just so amazingly good.

We’ve started introducing each other to more fruits and veggies – I introduced egg plant and plums. They’ve introduced me to cassava, Caribbean yam, and “spinach” which tastes a lot like our spinach but grows as a vine-y weed in their yard!

Ms. Tomasa says she’ll try yoga sometime and is going to teach me the cumbia (a form of dance). We ride our bikes around the whole village, about 3 miles, before sunset. In a race against the mosquitoes. I usually lose. But as you can probably tell, no real complaints here

My Placement

So I’m working with some really great people – who definitely keep me entertained if nothing else. I’m working with the Conversation Alliance, the Tour Guides, a Women’s Group, and the Fisherman’s Association. Well, with the fisherman, I’m just try to learn the lingo – never been exposed to fishing terms, let alone in Spanish. Learning about boats, nets, hooks, piers, currents.

The Tour Guides are the most entertainment – a bunch of 20 year olds trying to figure out how to make a living, giving that fishing is not really an option for them. Most do have some education but somewhat limited English. And they are also a little too much into the local bar scene. So I’ve had to put my foot down that we would NOT have our meetings in the bar. Then I had to explain that we wouldn’t go to the bar after working for an hour. Then I had to explain why we wouldn’t go to the bar to celebrate after making one decision 4 hours later … Hilarity I tell you. But good kids.

Oh, this was the other reason I decided staying with my host family was a better way to go – what Sarteneja knows of volunteers is from the “short timers” who come for 2 weeks or a few months and like to party hard, since that’s all the time they have (and I guess they don’t know what else to do here). So I have that association to distance myself from. And, everyone remembers the last Peace Corps volunteer who left, early, pregnant. It was 20 years ago but they act like it was last year. So, some reputation management to handle as well.

Anyway, what I’m finding most interesting is just the stuff that comes up, in my head, around being here and what I can vs. should want to vs. want to accomplish (and those are 3 different things).

Right now, there’s my general mental ruminations about “what is helping?”, “what is empowering?”, “what is ‘making a difference’?”, “what is progress?”, “what is development?”, “what is capacity building?”, “what is organizational/community strengthening?”. We had some great lectures in Training about the latter few and of course, it is more complicated than one might think. But as complicated as you would expect because if my village/Belize had these things figured out, they wouldn’t need us. Well, see, even that, I can’t say that they need us. And I can’t even say that the USA has it figured out. So I wonder what it is I have to offer. I can’t honestly say that I think my village should learn to have more structured meetings, to create agendas and write minutes, to prepare reports using standard, accepted accounting and/or business terms, or any of the other myriad of things I can teach them. Frankly, the only reason they have to know it, or do it, is so that they can maneuver in the Big World – funding agencies, government programs, etc. And then my honest thought is, the last think I want for them is to have to answer to funding agencies, government bureaucracies, etc. I get that is how it works but I’m realizing I have a deep problem with that fact and I’m not sure how I feel about being the person who is going to help them “sell their soul” so to speak.

And everywhere you turn, you question, well, I question (myself) more and more. For example, a house near me has a dog who has 4 puppies. They are adorable, of course. And they’re not being starved or neglected but they are at the one of the poorest homes in the village. The dad is diabetic and has lost his legs. These people can barely feed themselves let alone 5 dogs. So everyday I debate about bringing the puppies some bread or tortillas. But I know, for one thing, it would be a bit of an insult to the family, suggesting that they are not providing. It would also cause them some embarrassment. It would also be awkward because they need the food as much as the dogs. So do I bring them something and something for the dogs? But then what about creating dependencies – obviously don’t want the family to start counting on me to feed them. And really don’t want the dogs to rely on it because I can’t keep it up – even if I do so for 2 years, it’s not their whole lives and it wouldn’t be fair to be feeding them for years then to take off. And the reality is, if I start feeding the dogs, the family will stop because I'm taking care of it. And I can’t take 4 puppies to my host family. Nor could I really bring 4 dogs back to the USA … because it would be more like 20 dogs if I get started, this not being the only “I want to help the dog” situation in the village.

So I percolate and masticate and ruminate and all the other things you do when you don’t really know what to do but are trying to do the right thing for everyone.

Mostly, I thank my lucky stars that I get to see beauty all around, glorious sunsets every day, spectacular sun rises, all kinds of birds and fish life, that I’m living with and surrounded by kindness, that I can go really fast on my purple beach cruiser and feel the wind filling my lungs. That I have the means to send you this message. That I have the chance to get to know a whole other world and culture. And that, if I’m very very lucky, I might be able to figure out how to accomplish what I can, what I should want to, and what I want to...

Blessed and grateful

Manissa