In Sickness and in Health

Greg with all the puppies following him to the shower.

In Health:

Greg's trip to Cayo. Greg went up with his best friend George and his family (wife and 7 kids) to Cayo. All in one truck. I stayed back to attend and show support for our host family for the one year anniversary outdoor mass of their son Estevan's death. Erica came out to keep me company and see the village for the first time and was shocked at how we constantly had an audience of 3-7 kids even when we were just writing letters. We went on a walk through the village and visited some of my favorite families. We met Ms. Rosita on the road and she invited us to come look at her garden. We went home with 4 huge green tomatoes and fried them up for everyone to try (sending some back with her daughter). The tomatoes were a huge hit, they do a similar thing with bananas so it wasn't too far a stretch. As soon as they came out keith, erica, or I were gobbling them up. She left before the mass which was really nice. I didn't feel out of place, I knew the ketchi songs and my lady friends all sat beside me. It was a full mass, outdoors, with candles and naked bulbs suspended from the USAID tarp providing shelter for our benches. We kneeled in the grass and prayed that Estevan's soul would be at rest. Afterwards we all ate caldo and drank cacao. Around a hundred or so people came to show their support. At least someone from every family in the village...people lined the surrounding buildings and road to sing and cry. Death may happen a lot here but it is not insignificant or forgotten easily.

The back of the truck

Meanwhile Greg left early for Cayo and had to bundle up in the back of the truck due to the rain and wind. He stayed at Cicily's brother's house and they all got along great! He said the food was wonderful with the women constantly cooking something. The highlight was a day trip into Guatemala. George and his wife both speak great spanish so Greg had fun keeping up. He even showed them up at a restaurant where no one could remember the name for toothpick in spanish. Greg whipped out his phone and slyly googled it and much to their surprise was able to provide the answer: palillo de dientes. Afterwards everyone did a little shopping, which was the point of the trip (buying supplies and a dress for his eldest daughter's quincinera). Greg bought a pair of fashion jeans, two pairs of socks, and 2 nice boxers (that will last longer than four scrubbings on a rock) for 40 BZE!!! Just the pants would have been 50 BZE here. He also bought a fan. We haven't had one for 6 months but it is about to get hot again so better to prepare. Two very different weekends but two very fun times!

Greg wants to get our portraits done by this artist.

Spanish ladies know how to cook!

Steve in the sweater Kristen sent! Thanks Kristen it fits great!

In Sickness:

This month Greg got sick for the first time EVER during his PC service. For 6 days he had fevers and chills at night, feeling relatively fine during the day. We were sent to the local polyclinic for malaria testing and blood work. When he went back to check on the blood results the nurse frightenly said he needed to immediately go to the emergency room for observation and would only say his 'platelets were low'. After speaking to a doctor in the ER he determined that it either wasn't his blood or someone had messed up the test, platelets that low would have someone bleeding from their eyes, mouth, and nose...AKA dying! So the Peace Corps nurse crossed off that hospital/clinic as a place to get blood work done and went ahead with treatment for malaria (results not in yet). We are getting his dengue test now to be sure. Greg thinks it is probably just a virus, there was one going around the village that presents like a slightly weaker version of malaria with not as high fevers and only lasts a week (instead of 15+ days). He is feeling all better now, thank goodness.

I had missed some school checking on him, making sure he was eating and resting and didn't think anything of a little 'fresh cold' that was developing. I celebrated my birthday the day Greg got better (best present I could ask for). I had a wonderful birthday, no more attempts at throwing a Belizean party because I had no time to prepare. However the staff surprised me with a most wonderful day. They had an assembly and the whole school sang happy birthday. Then I was given cards and little gifts throughout the morning. AND for lunch they threw a surprise feast! Rice and beans with stewed chicken and coleslaw WITH two fat tamales each! Top that off with coke, cake and another birthday song by just my teachers (ended with, 'for she's a jolly good fellow') and there you have it. Only to go downhill from there...

My cold got worse, I couldn't hear when I helped with our booksale (we made 75 dollars on a rainy day!) and then Friday night the pain came. My ear was throbbing waking me up and forcing me to the hammock for the remainder of the night. Peace Corps wanted to fly me up to see an ENT doctor but the altitude would hurt too much...I had to wait to take the express the following day. That night my ear reached a new pinical of pain and then (I later found out) I met some relief as my ear drum ruptured. Spare the gorry details but it was kind of nasty. However I got to see the specialist, the hole is small and I should have my hearing back in a week! Insult to injury, I was already feeling old what with the birthday and now I've lost my hearing to boot! But hey it is all on the upswing now:)

Some of my cards.

Birthday feast!

The boy puppy.

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!

Caves, shoe-boxes, and Bats...OH MY!

We're 26 yall!

My cake, Greg sang me a lovely rendition of happy birthday.
The cake was made in our new toaster oven!!!

For my birthday we decided to go to this place called Caves Branch Jungle Lodge. We get the 'local rate' since the prices are all in USD we just pay the same in BZE. We stayed in a sweet 'Jungle Cabana' with a luxuriously soft bed complete with towel animals! It reminded me of the 'Euro Camp' we stayed at in Italy. We got an orientation, including when dinner starts (chips and salsa at 6:30 where the tour guides come around and you sign up for what you want to do the following day, then salad & soup, main course, and desert!), how to use the jungle shower, and how to light the oil lamps. The whole place used oil lamps and torches, giving everything that warm romantic glow.

One side of the pool area, with the Caves Branch River in the background

A HOT TUB!

Couples table and our sweet cabana!

For the first time in six months we swam in a POOL! We got in even though it was freezing and swam all around, mixing it up with the hot tub when we got too cold. That night at dinner we met two couples that were here for our Erin (one of the tech trainers for Peace Corps) wedding, and another couple just traveling through. Dinner was so good and we had fun laughing with the three other couples, a nice break from the often awkward conversations with my villagers.

Greg skipped rocks clear to the other side...the banks were just lined with perfect skipping stones!

We chose the River and Cave Exploration tour. We took a 20 bus ride through an orange planatation then carried our tubes to the river...you could see the entrance to the cave and we just floated backwards right in...headlamps on. We alternated tubing and hiking for 5 hours inside the massive cave that archeologists said were used around 400 BC (the same time as the large Maya cities). We went to two chambers inside the cave. One was where they believe offerings were made to the fertility god (they found a carved face and an alter). This is where we ate lunch! I found a small cave nearby that you had to crouch down to get into but then it was almost head high inside. there was a little shelf of clay and apparently other kids on the tours thought it would be fun to make their own artifacts of smiley faces and hearts. I showed some kids who were with us and they had a fun little arts and crafts room all to themselves!

We saw fruit bats and insect bats, brain-suckers (like a glow worm with out the glow), and catfish. The water was freezing but as we got into the belly of the cave the air was nice and warm. It is believed the maya people would prey to the gods, sacrifice, or do blood letting here because the stalagtites were thought to be the roots of the tree of life of the Ceiba (or Kapot Tree) and that the smoke would travel up through the roots, the stem, and finally out to heaven from the leaves. We saw evidence of these rituals in the second cavern where there were several fire pits with pieces of pottery. They would collect the blood then burn it for the gods, finally smashing the pots to release an evil spirits trapped inside, or boring a hole at the top of the pot. The head lamp hurt my head and the water was freezing but other than that it was pretty much the coolest (no pun intended) trip, floating down a river deep inside a huge cave, our splashes and distant rapids echoing as we creep closer to the sacred grounds of the ancient Maya.

Fire pit and curtain and pond formations!

Fruit bats...their acidic poo eats at the limestone making these little cylindrical homes for them.
They flew around the cave periodically too!

Fertility God, notice the tongue

Little insect bat...he was so cute!

We caught the bus after we got back (after one last warm jungle shower) and got back home at 8:00. I wanted to be home for my actual birthday. We slept in luxuriously (until 8:00) I heard the family bustling around, and heard iswa (ducunu) several times so I knew already that we would be eating good. I came out to many birthday wishes and we went to the shop to get some breakfast supplies. We spoke only in ketchi again and the shop keep said my ketchi was getting good. With a smile on my face we started walking back and saw kids pouring out of the church with shoe boxes. I stoped some kids and asked what was going on and they said some white people came and gave out boxes of presents. Sweet mother, I live in a village that the Good Samaritans send their shoe boxes for kids to! This was a surreal revelation to me, I do not think of my village as poor, destitute, or oppressed, but this was just a reminder that by most of the worlds standards it is. Well it was great non the less. All the kids tore into the gifts as we and the adults all gathered around oohing and ahhing and there was much murmuring of "mas chabil" Very beautiful. They all got toothbrushes and toothpaste a book (Sheldon is not seen without his from sun up to sun down) and lots of little trinkets and some clothing. This did cause some drama which I heard about at the river later in the week. The ladies were all talking (I am less of the entertainment now and starting to be just one of the ladies....sometimes) and they said not all the kids got boxes, and that some families got one box while others got one per kid. Speculations were made that you had to know someone in the church to get a box for all your kids...I just kind of tried to stay neutral. I was just happy that they were asking my opinion by name and not just watching me wash. We had a great day helping to get the corn ready for ducunu (it was Murphy's birthday the day before mine!) We went to church, sang ketchi songs and watched 3 kids get baptized.

Sheldon with his goodies, Fermin and Andres with Tanisha and Brendon.

Cecilia the mom checking out all the kids gifts, she put them in this basket because Murphy destroyed his box.

Taking the young corn off the cob to make ducunu...even little Hermin helped!

So all you out there...I had a great birthday, and a great start to my 26th year of life. Happy Valentines Day everyone!