Peace Corps with Greg and Kevina: January 2010

Photo by Margarita Coh -8years

Quotes:
"Mis is the soap burning your hands?" -Maya woman at the river, asking me
"No (looking at my hands) why?" -me
"(all the women look around) well your hands are red?" -Says another woman
"Ooooh, yeah....you see white people turn red when they get cold." -me at the river washing when it was 65 degrees

"What should I do with my life?"-Grace, after our Q'eqchi instructor introduced the next topic: Future tenses of verbs

"I wish I could just write it how it smells." Erica, at her second ever Q'eqchi class

"I really like how this sheep poo just turns into grass when you step on it." -me while playing volleyball in Blue Creek.

"Does your Daddy grow corn on his plantation?" -Manuel (the 61 year old brother of Santiago) to Greg

The latest trend swiffering our village:
SLING SHOTS! It looks like our village has been infested with Denis the Menises...and I LOVE it! All the kids have these great sling shots...they borrow their dad's kuxtals (planting 'purse' thing) and fill it with rocks and travel in little gangs of three shooting targets throughout the village. Kind of like lazer tag only for real. The sling shots are home made, our shop sells the thick rubber by the foot. I cought one of my Standard 3 students eagerly buying his bit of rubber...his Y-shaped stick hanging out of his back pocket.

Joke:

A Y shaped stick walks into a bar.

Bartender: "We don't serve your kind."

Y shaped stick: "it's okay I'm with the band."

The path to Fermin and Andres' houses

Where some do their washing...my creek is cleaner and bigger (not to brag or anything)

HA! This had to be hard to fix.

One of the roads to plantation

Babies and Blues:
The good news...Saturnina had her baby!!!! A healthy baby boy of almost 7 pounds. He was just named (after his two week birthday) but it is super long and I don't remember it. He is very cute and spends most of the day in the 'lepop' which is a sort of baby hammock that they make out of a white square of fabric folded in a triangel. The two points of the triangle are tied to a 10 inch wide strip of fabric which is used to hang the lepop from any hook or from their foreheads. Saturnina said she would show me how to make one. Since it has been cold they wrap a blanket around the whole thing so it looks like a little pyramid of cloth suspended from the rafters. This I love, and the baby loves it too!

I got to observe his first bath. they heated water and poured it into the pig tail bucket of cold water. Then they scrub him down while they hold him over their lap...which since it was in the low sixties elicited angry wailing from the baby. After he was clean they wrapped him in a towel and brought him into the cocine. There Cecilia (the grandmother) called me in to watch out the 'Indians warm the babies.' She held a cloth over the fire hearth for just a few seconds then softly pushed it against the babies trunk at which point he would shiver and let out a little satisfied cooing noise. This was repeated until he was nice and pink and sleeping.

Okay now for the blues...Saturnina's husband, Estevan got in a bad accident on his motorcycle when his son was 4 days old. He was flown to Belize City and they just took him off of the coma inducing medicine two days ago. We are all still unsure of his future...he was lucky and broke no bones, no spinal injury and no skull fracture or swelling. However he has sustained massive head and face trauma and the first night all the villagers came to the house to cry and pray because we didn't think he would make it. Please keep him in your thoughts.

Our first community meeting:
Much to my delight the community meeting was announced by a series of loud conch shell blasts. The staff from the school came to introduce themselves and give an update (we just met with all of the PTA before for the first time so we informed them of these things also). The Alcalde was speaking a while and I knew he was talking about Greg and I (we went to him a couple weeks ago asking if we could just kind of introduce ourselves to the community). So when the Preschool teacher leaned over and said it was our turn I got quite nervous. Greg and I gave a 5 minute speech in Q'eqchi and I think they appreciated it. This was the most productive meeting I've been to in Belize! It was only men and there was lots discussed. They even brought up trying to get internet in our village! I love my village and left happy and excited!

Just call him the cow whisperer

Brandon loves greg, and greg loves the chicks...the two brothers.

Sheldon and Brandon

One morning Sheldon and Murphy came to our door, we gave them small 'local' bananas and they proceeded to sit down in our doorway and have a little 3 year old conversation for 10 minutes...it was TOO cute!

Brushing their teeth...Ofelia and Whindon

Tanisha

TFABB-ulous:
Teacher For A Better Belize (of which we are a model school) came the first week we were back and spent two intensive days in my village, two in Amy's village and one with the big wigs of management and Ministry. It was great letting the teachers see model lessons, and getting to collaborate with everyone. There is a lot of work, but it will be worth it. One of the volunteers who came down was a former volunteer from Punta Gorda and she spoke some mean Kriol. One of my teachers later said, "I like hear her speak da Kriol Miss Kevina." So I told her I would work on mine. We had quite an adventure one night trying to get back to my village, it involved nearly running out of gas, hailing gas men in the middle of the night, and dog poo. I will leave it at that.

TFABB and staff at Luis' house for his daughter's 12th birthday...Caldo and cake!

Plenty Garden Workshop:

Fun Fact: Plants with yellow leaves are most likely lacking nitrogen.

Solution: Add manure or plant peanuts or other legume plants in between

This workshop is for educators and it was very informative...we made 'medicine' for plants (a dry compost that will fix most ailments), learned how to take care of cabbage, identify simple problems, and keep garden logs. It was great being outside and playing in the dirt.

Greg helping to make the plant 'medicine' and the magic cacao leaf used for pesticide and bug replant

Our instructor

This was in one of the gardening books!

Tending to the cabbage

Qeq'chi Training at Tumulkin Institute of Learning:
All of us first years who were trained in Qeq'chi got to go to an alternative high school (focused on preserving Maya culture and agriculture) for three days of intense language training. We were all picked up by a van rented by Peace Corps in our villages. We were the second ones to be picked up and it was quite hilarious with all the kids yelling bye and waving at us. As we left the village I saw one of my favorite students walking with his mom so I stuck my head out and yelled "By Serapio!" He got so excited and ran a little bit after us smiling. Tumulkin is a boarding school where the students sleep in dorms for 10 days then have 4 days to go home. They have to get up and start their chores at 4am (we found one of their schedules). We all slept in the boys dorm, it felt like college playing games and cutting hair all night. Our classes were held in a cement and thatch classroom with screens and we were fed 3 meals a day and two snacks of fresh fruit or johnny cakes...delicious. Our training was just what we needed...verbs, verbs, verbs! Now we could survive in Qeq'chi ex: Your house is burning. Will you go bathe now? I have to vomit. Can we help? You get the idea. We can all now count to 40 and name all our body parts.

Fun Fact 1: lips are called 'mouth-skin' I like to think of a Qeq'chi man looking into his wife's eyes and saying "oh your lip skin is so beautiful."

Fun Fact 2: Kis=fart

After the first day of training we played several games of volleyball in our flip flops with the two language trainers. We were sweaty, the ball was covered in sheep poo, and Megan broke her flip flop but it was so much fun! We also went and explored some of the creek for which the village is named. The water was so clear and blue and like sirens pulled me into its sweet refreshing depths.