Now that I’ve been here for a few weeks, I’m starting to
settle into a daily, and even weekly, routine.
Anyone who knows me knows that I really enjoy having an organized
schedule. I’ll admit, it’s not a great
thing to have, especially being a Peace Corps Trainee, but it’s helping to keep
me sane while so many changes are occurring.
Generally, the morning starts out around 6:45 when the kids
get in a fight and the younger, Alvin, starts crying. I’ll either lose all hope in going back to
sleep and get out my Kindle, or I’ll stuff my ear plugs into my ears and hope
beyond all hope that I can just get thirty extra minutes of sleep. My family also has a radio that they played
once early in my stay, but it died and they had lost the charger. They asked if I had a charger that would work
for it. I said I may but that it was
locked up at the Peace Corps office.
After that, I’d forgotten about it.
Unfortunately, my host family had not.
My host dad bought a charger for it while he was in Belize City the
other day. That night, instead of
listening to my iPod while we played Uno, we listened to the ten songs that
they have saved to the car on repeat. My
first inclination was to feel bad about not trying harder to get my charger
from the Peace Corps office. It was
clear that they really liked the radio and had to pay a relatively large amount
to get the charger. It wasn’t until 5:30
the next morning when they were blaring the radio that I remembered why I had
not wanted to give them the charger. If
that radio would have been playing every morning for the first four weeks of my
stay here, I think I would have gone crazy.
After I eventually roll out of bed, I’ll throw on my
business casual and walk out to a breakfast that’s usually larger than I prefer
first thing in the morning. The
breakfast size seems like a constant battle with my host mom. I say that I don’t usually eat a large
breakfast. The next morning I get a
small breakfast of oats or cereal (perfect for me). A few days go by at which point she slowly
starts to include a banana or some mango.
As the week goes along, breakfast gets larger and larger until finally
I’m back where I started – just me and my pound of rice and beans. I guess, though, too much food isn’t a bad
problem to have. Plus, it’s around this
point that the day turns from a dreary,
I-don’t-want-to-be-a-productive-member-of-society kind of day to the
overarching feeling of I-am-the-luckiest-person-in-the-world. Once I’ve eaten as much as I can, I give my
host brothers a hug, tell them to be good and listen to their mom, and run out
the door so as not to keep the other trainees in my neighborhood waiting for me
for school.
Peace Corps school is pretty much the equivalent of college
except it’s eight hours a day and almost all of the information that we receive
is going to be relevant for at least the next two years (and maybe the rest of
my life). We have just recently gotten
into the health work that we will be doing.
The two main goals of PCBZ is maternal and child health (MNCH) and
non-communicable diseases (NCDs). We
just worked our way out of having a health pregnancy and are starting to talk
about child health. When I’m not learning
about health topics, I’m learning Q’eqchi, but I won’t get too much into that
now. I feel like I could write a whole
post just on the language.
After school, I’ll get home and play soccer with my family
or go on a run, weather permitting.
This, inevitably, leads to the bucket shower. Over the course of the past month, I have
developed a love/hate relationship with my showering area. At first, the roof was about six inches
shorter than I was, so I was more concerned about the pain in my lower back
than how cold the water was. It wasn’t until
my host dad raised the roof that I began to actually feel the cold. Since that point, I’ve realized there’s a
perfect time for a bucket shower. If I
don’t get to the shower by that point I’m out of luck. The perfect time is about seven minutes after
exercising – too soon after, I’ll sweat for the rest of the day; too late and
the shower is freezing.
Pretty much every week day goes like this up to this
point. After dinner, though, things
start to mix up some. On Sunday, Monday,
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I play Uno with my host family and some other
trainees that live in the neighborhood.
This is something that the kids really look forward to, so much so that
I’ve started trying to use not playing as a form of punishment. I noticed that the kids were constantly
fighting and nothing was really being done about it. Occasionally the parents would yell at them
or threaten to spank them, but other than that, there’s not much that the
parents can take away as an alternative form of punishment. Because of this, I spoke to both of the
parents and asked if taking away Uno would be good. They both said yes. A few days later Alvin was being very
obnoxious and difficult, so I told him he couldn’t play Uno that night. He proceeded to say he hated me and sneezed
in my face. It’s okay though, the next
day he was on my team for Uno and things were back to normal. There was another morning when I heard Alvin
crying. I walked out of my room and
stared right at Adrian. No words were
spoken but he could see in my eyes that I knew he had done something to make
his brother cry, and I could see in his eyes that he was terrified I was going
to say something to his mom and take away Uno.
I don’t want to seem like a dictator to them, but it was getting to the
point that I needed to become more of an authority figure to them, not just
their personal playground. This method
seems to be working for now.
Tuesday and Saturday have become established as movie
nights. Saturdays are the ones for the
kids in the community. We recently
watched How to Train Your Dragon. It was
my second time seeing it and it is still one of my favorite movies. If you haven’t seen it, I would highly
recommend it. I have also been told that
I am Hiccup, the main character. Tuesdays
are a movie night for the family and my neighbors. We recently finished the first three Star
Wars movies (IV-VI), and I think my host family really enjoyed it. I think The Princess Bride is next on the
list.
Every other Saturday, the trainees go on what we call a
culture day. This past culture day we
all went out to Benque Viejo, a really cool Mestizo town. We got to try and bunch of Mestizo foods and
see some of the traditional dances.
After that, we went to an awesome Mayan ruin near the border with
Guatemala, Xunantunich (X is pronounced ‘sh’).
It was incredible! It’s hard to believe that it was built hundreds of
years ago. It’s even harder to imagine
thousands of people there for a ceremony or sacrifice. It was awe inspiring. I definitely will be going back sometime.
Sundays are my time to get together with my family. The other trainees and I cooked them black
bean burgers this past Sunday. We also
made some guacamole that they really enjoyed.
Overall, Sundays are a time to relax and hang out. After lunch, we had another get together with
the kids in the community and taught them about self-esteem. This past Sunday, an incident occurred, so we
were not able to hold our lessons on healthy living. Everything is okay, though, and we should be
back at it again this weekend.
I suppose that’s about it.
It may not seem like a lot, but it keeps me busy. As a side note, I recently found a solution
to the rats: his name is Tiger. That’s
right, I got a cat, two actually. The
first cat I got was borrowed from one of my teachers’ host family. In Belize, it’s customary to put a cat in a
bag when transporting it so that it can’t find its way back to its old
home. Then, when you bring it to the new
house you circle it around the kitchen fire three times chanting, “A’an a’in
aaochoch,” or, “This is your home.” After
performing this ritual with the first cat, we pulled it out the bag and it ran
away… Fortunately, it made it back to its old house after four days. Either way, after Moonshadow (the first cat)
ran away, my host mom got lucky and found a woman who had kittens that she was
giving away, so my host mom grabbed one.
Since it was orange, it only seemed appropriate that its name be
Tiger. Since he’s been in the house, the
rats haven’t been an issue at all.
Judging by the poop, they’re still there, but at least they’re quiet.
Well I suppose that’s it.
Next time I post, I’ll probably know my permanent site. Until then, all I’ll be doing is figuring out
what sites I may be going to. So far, I
think it’ll be down south in the rural district of Toledo. It’s going to be a blast!
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