27: Meet the Mama' (old man)

Follies in Belizean Style Birthdays

We decided to have a traditional Belizean birthday for Greg this year. We invited our extended host family to dinner (Greg's favorite...spaghetti) at 6:00. We have gone to enough birthdays to attempt a reenactment. You go over, hand your gift, eat, tell stories, then the men drink rum with coconut water. Lynette and Margarita helped me set up the house with their tables and stools and brought over a bin of dishes and forks since we have only 4 of each.

Everyone filed in and Greg was handed his gifts. He said it was hard not to open them right away, he was a good Maya and put them under the tree without peeping. No one opens gifts in front of people and you don't ever talk about the gifts you got.

I served everyone their bowl of spaghetti and the hilarity began. Morpheus (the 5 year old) didn't resurface until his bowl was empty. This, however, was sadly not the norm. It was like a dungeon scene from a movie where the prisoners were given gruel and forced to eat it. Mrs. Cecilia would spend copious amounts of time separating just two tiny pieces of noodle. You could see during her hesitation, face twisted in dread, that she was psyching herself up to eat the repulsive food. They all ate it even with me insisting that they didn't need to eat it if they didn't like it. Jr. just walked up to me and said, "Thanks keveen, but I can't eat this. I don't like it." It was fine though we were all joking about how hilarious it was. Keith was tearing through his bowl but he admitted it was because one day he wanted to go to the states and if he couldn't eat it, he would starve. In all, Fermin, Andres, Morpheus, and Armin were the only ones to like the spaghetti.

Armin...LIKING the spaghetti!

After dinner Ofelia and Vera washed the dishes for me as I dished out more coffee. We put Fermin's memory card in the computer and watched a slide show of his pictures and videos. INCLUDING Amy dancing the traditional harp dance with some of her villagers at their garden graduation. After that Santiago asked Greg to tell some stories to entertain us. After story hour Greg passed out the rum and the guys chopped some coconuts and the men sipped rum as we watched an episode of Glee. What a 'mash-up' of traditions it was.

Ofelia brought this amount of cake. As of today (10 days later) we are still eating it!

After everyone left (around 9:30) we had our little birthday song and Greg opened his gifts. A planting cuxtal of his very own and new boxers!

The birthday celebrations continued on Monday (his actual birthday) where his best friend George, who works at his school, invited us for a birthday lunch. I came in the morning and did two writing model lessons and then we piled in their truck with their 7 kids to have a delicious lunch with potato salad, and fresh lime juice. They all sang happy birthday to Greg, it was a great birthday week.

His birthday luck was strong...behold his new drums from 3rd place in a raffle!

Keith and Brendon with their new, our old, laptop!

Holiday hours at the library...making book marks after story time!

TFABB Video: Teachers for a Better Belize

If you would like to know more about the non-profit that works with myself and my school here's a little history starting when the founders came for a month long visit to Toledo.

http://vimeo.com/17041184

It also has a link to their website (found under the 'Links' section of this blog also) if you want to learn more or even make a donation.

Nomsi Xok Chalk'a Bantioxs (Please Pass the Thanks)

Working on our horn of plenty...

This year Standard 2-5 are participating in the garden initiative. I take standard 5 so Mr. Baltazar can do extra PSE prep with Standard 6. The kids are teaching me, and work really hard. The group of six stayed till 4:40 because they wanted to make sure they made the bed beautiful. "It's too nice Miss, I want to sleep here." (get it?? on the 'BED')

Sandra, my friend who lives across the road (hers was the first wedding we went to in the village) asked me to come over to learn how to do crafts and hair. We made bracelets and she showed me how to 'style' my hair all with her mother in law commenting and watching. I finished my first bracelet that first night (on my wrist) and another in the morning. We made another date to learn how to do the 'w' and very difficult 'x' style of bracelet from her mother-in-law (sandra hasn't learned those yet either).

Christina the librarian doing a read aloud to some Infants (meaning Infant I and II).

Tide Freshwater Cup

For teams to compete in this years Freshwater Cup Football Tournament (which is allowing girls teams for the first time ever this year) they must complete a project by the end of March that focusus on 'Freshwater, Healthy Life'. Our project title is: Keeping our Creek Clean and it began with a creek clean up. All team members were required to participate, starting at 8:00 they were given a shilling bag (small black plastic bag) as a glove and we headed off to start behind the school. Students immediately found a bike and an umbrella which foreshadowed what was to come:

36 pounds of glass, 3 buckets of plastic and 1 and a half buckets of clothing. Students were amazed, as they dragged the corn sacks full of glass, batteries and hand corn mills at the amount and variety of trash in our creek. It was very beneficial too since we passed 6 groups of women washing and they saw the waste we'd picked. Towards the end we had two kids cut on their legs from the glass bag, and 6 that had chosen to bathe and swim. The kids asked the Tiul's if they could pull some oranges as we walked through their yard, and seeing the trash, were encouraged to pull as many as they could carry for their hard work.

Weighing the trash...Metal works table. Those are 26 DD batteries at the left.

Clothing scraps

Glass

Plastic

The teams with their treasures. All items were disposed of in the most environmental way we could (no trash service comes to the village). Plastic and metal was buried, glass was thrown down the old school latrines, and the clothing was dried and burned.

It was also children's day so afterwards they went off to play.

Since it was children's day...AND cultural day Mrs. Delphine made hudut in my house for the teachers' lunch. She needed help so Consuela brought the whole preschool over so she could help.

Hudut is a Garifuna fish dish made with coconut milk (that was made from 3 real coconuts) and boiled and mashed plantains. All the women teachers helped prepare and then called the men to come eat. It was fun having everyone in my house. Afterwards the ladies went out to 'wash cups' and Consuela and I gave our own cultural lesson to Delphine and Susana on how the maya wash cups. They were amazed we squat the whole time at the pipe and how there was no frugality with the water (water in town is metered and EXPENSIVE). We were all teasing and joking while the guys hung out inside. Mr. Baltazar later commented on how it was really nice hearing us all laughing from outside, how we are really a family.

Toledo Thanksgiving 2010

The gang that celebrated thanksgiving in Toledo

Some of the guys

Deserts 8 deserts for forty people...due to no pumpkin being imported to Belize this year we had one pumpkin pie that was Thanksgiving miracle number 3, we each got a very small cube and relished it together. Other districts were not so lucky.

Our favorite holiday!

Two volunteers in town, Cali and Mallory really pulled together when we found out there would be no national gathering of Peace Corps this year for this most special holiday. They set out planning and reserved a parish hall, assigned food groups, and planned an itinerary of events including American football, Maci's parade viewing, and even a pre-feast dance performance. We, everyone except Erica, agreed the food was much better this year. There was a focus on the American staples with copious amounts of stuffing, turkey (thanks to our interim CD Matthew Cain), sweet potato, and green bean casserole. We had many Belizeans, JICA volunteers, and interns from the high school in attendance and it made us thankful to be around so many friends when we couldn't be around family.

Serving line!

Cake Room at the Big Falls Bazaar

House before the Christmas elves.

Sheldon enjoying the messy sparkly mayhem.

Morpheus and Margarita...she kept a count down until decoration day!

My little helper elves...Seaford loved the ornaments!

Here is greg doing an impromptu workshop on computer repair that was excellent at IST (in-service-training). We both presented this year so it was fun seeing how Greg teaches, which is AWESOMELY! Only a few short weeks until school is out and baby sister is here!

Speaking of baby sister, I must brag a bit now:

My sister was hand picked by her poems to attend a graduate level workshop/course with the North Carolina Poet Laureate, Cathy Smith Bowers! If you (like me) don't know what a poet laureate is you can learn more here:

http://ncarts.org/freeform_scrn_template.cfm?ffscrn_id=603

Only 4 were accepted from her entire university I am so proud of her!

Here is just a little poem Kaylyssa did for a class:

My Mother Was a Fish

By: Kaylyssa Hughes

I was red.
In my small, Japanese heart
I harbored
what I could.

My castle was a sign
that said Dios Te Ama,
like an old “No Fishing” post
designating the boundaries
of my bowl.

She called me Mark
after an actor
in many famous films
such as Fear, Boogie Nights,
and The Departed.

I lived high up on a shelf,
watching her and waiting
for her to tap the glass
and say “Mark, I’m sorry
about your water:
the level and color of it.
I’ll clean it soon.”

Her thin pink hands
went by like little clouds.

Yesterday she tapped the glass
and I didn’t flit
like a windsock,
alive in a sudden breeze:
I was still.

She stared at me for a long time,
remembering the day
three years ago
when she thought buying a fish
would keep her mind off things,

when she brought me home
in a little cup.