Site Assignment

One night I was at home sitting on the floor with Bryan, Kevin, and Evlin playing ‘one more night’ over and over on my laptop. I decided to mix it up and put on some Ray Charles, ‘I got a woman.’ Kevin loved this and in no time was belting out the words in his sweet little voice. So there we were, the four of us, sitting on the floor by the door singing Ray Charles at the top of our lungs. I love Belize.

First Workshop:
The education group presented a workshop on classroom management together to a school at one of the community based training sites. We broke it up into segments and it went very well. Peter started things off with a little Kriol and the teachers got a good chuckle out of the white boy speaking Kriol. Greg’s section was on positive reinforcement which including Greg prancing around tapping teachers with his ‘super job’ wand he made out of a pencil (I don’t know who enjoyed this more, myself or the teachers)! I did my presentation on a behavior action plan and my most powerful secret weapon…a behavior reflection. Afterwards we had banana bread and juice and chatted with the teachers. Overall it went pretty good! Everyone was very receptive and it was great practice before we head out into the real world of Peace Corps.

This 13 yr old kid was substituting for his mom all week.

Belizean Funeral Procession:
We were driving back from the workshop and the traffic was really backed up (unusual when there has been no rain). Then we saw a priest walking in the middle of the road in front of a red pickup truck. In the back of the truck there was a slender coffin with elaborate red velvet exterior with brass handles and accents. The coffin hung off the back about 2 feet. Behind the truck walked about 25 people. Slowly and somberly the men, women, and children marched. I didn’t see any tears. Close behind the crowd began the line of vehicles that followed the rest of the procession. The vehicles were stuffed with well dressed people. I suddenly felt very out of place inside our Peace Corps vehicle as the 5 of us stared at the very personal affair happening in the next lane.

Dengue:
We had to move out a day early from our host family’s house. As I think I’ve said before all my host siblings at one point during our stay have had ‘fever’ or the flu. Miss Alberta had a fever last week but then never said anything else until Wednesday when she went to the hospital. She came home late that night very upset. She was complaining of UTI like symptoms and had asked for a test. They said that she needed to see a gynecologist and that they did not have one at the hospital. After walking in the rain to the private gynecologist (who, of course, had gone home for the day) she walked home, with no treatment. The next day she went to a private doctor who immediately ran tests and found out that she not only had a severe kidney infection, but also stage two Dengue! This woman has been going to work, cooking, and cleaning with DENGUE AND A KIDNEY INFECTION. Now you have to understand, they call Dengue the ‘break bone fever’ because it feels like your bones are breaking. So we texted our PCMO and she said that we could sleep there (under our net) and we had to move out early the next day. We had a sad night of card giving and story sharing. There were tears involved. But, overall it was good. Alyssa wrote us a lovely card which she then read aloud to us. Miss Alberta said I showed her that she could make time to play with her kids more. It was really nice too because I kicked Miss Alberta out of the kitchen (can you believe she was still trying to cook for us!) and made dinner for them…Greg helped a little. My tortillas finally came out EXACTLY like Miss Alberta’s! We ate tortillas, eggs with tomatoes, leftover stewed beans, and pear. The kids kept on asking for more tortillasJ Oh, and the prime minister has dengue too.
Celistino, Grace’s host brother called Greg to say goodbye when he found out we were leaving early. He has been infatuated with Greg since the day the first weekend when we flew the kite. It was so sweet. Amy’s host brother, Jose, also made us all little cards. Mine had a palm tree and a kitten (she told him I liked dogs but he said he could only draw a cat). They both said ‘You are my best friend.’

Poor Bryan also 'got fever'...do you like the Belizean sick bed?

Host family party:
For our host family party we started cooking at 7 at Mrs. Kus’. We cooked until 11:30 and then brought it all to the resource center which we decorated with paper chains and paper lanterns. Greg was the master of ceremonies and said a thank you in Ketchi, and then I said a prayer in Ketchi. I was very nervous but my host family said that they understood all of it. After we all ate we broke out all the games. There was a couples face off of tangoes, and multiple games of go fish going on. Then we played one huge go fish game with two decks of cards! Afterwards, all the kids from the neighborhood started coming in. Since we had a ton of spaghetti left we handed out plates to the kids, and then sent them home with huge to go plates. The spaghetti was a big hit! As we left we were followed by about 8 kids, arms filled with our paper chains and plates of spaghetti. Afterwards, like a good maya woman I washed all our clothes while Greg played video games. We went to bed early after that exhaustingly fun day.

Site placement:
October 2nd 2009. This was the day we all finally found out where we will all be for the next two years!! They had a huge board game taped to the floor with each color representing a project(education, healthy communities, business org. and youth). We rolled a huge dice to get a category to play Pictionary. It was a win-win situation because when any group got it right someone got to find out their site! So here they are:

My site:
Small Ketchi village of 500. I will be working in a Roman Catholic School with 160 students and 6 teachers. My counterparts are the principal and vice principal (they are both teaching administrators which means they teach full time AND have all the administrative duties on top of that). In my village there is electricity. 80% of the houses are thatch! J My school is a TFABB school which is; Teachers for a Better Belize. This is a US organization that has been working with 6 schools in the Toledo district (the poorest district with 79% of the people living below the UNDP poverty line). TFABB’s purpose is, “for students in the Toledo district of Belize to have increased access to academic and economic opportunities because of an improvement in the quality of education.” So I sort of have two jobs because TFABB has its own specific goals. I am very excited to get to work!

Greg’s site:
Is a bigger village of 2000 on the southern highway. His village speaks Ketchi, Kriol, and English. His school is also a RC (Roman Catholic) school but his is totally different from mine. Our two villages are only 2 miles away but his has a library, computer lab, and INTERNET! There are about 400 students and 16 teachers. His counterpart is a non teaching principal and there is also a non teaching assistant principal. Greg will be the 3rd volunteer working at that school. A lot of great practices have already been put in place so he will have more of a maintenance and enrichment roll. He is going to be working on the library, giving computer classes to students and teachers, starting and coaching a sports team, and starting the school garden. For the first month or so we will both be living in Big Falls with a host family. We plan on moving to my village so that we can better assimilate to the Ketchi life and language.
After we received our site placements we all went out to eat and then celebrated on the third floor of our hotel and in Roger’s room of course. We were all so used to our schedules in our CBT sites that by 9:30 people were getting tired and we only made it to 10:30! Perhaps there were some flips for joy…behold.