The Direction of My Life

The past two weeks have been, perhaps, the most important two weeks of my service up to this point.  It began with an engagement party in Jacinto, a village in Toledo.  The experience was unlike anything I had ever encountered.  When my friend, Dan, and I arrived to the house with my host parents, we were introduced to my host aunt.  Soon afterward, we found out that no one at the engagement party had been expecting two gringos to show up, but if my host dad wouldn’t have told me that, I wouldn’t have known.  Everyone was very welcoming.  Within 30 minutes we were playing Uno with my host uncle and seven or eight kids that were related to me in one way or another.

Side note: living in Belize is like living in a small town in the states in that everyone knows everyone, regardless of what village you’re from or live in.  For example, people that I know in Armenia know people all over the country, either through relation or friendships.  This is awesome because it’s really helpful as a way to meet people in different communities.  It also shows how important the relationships are within the different subcultures of Belize.

During my time in Jacinto, I also finally met my other host brother, Edwin.  He had been working at his grandpa’s farm most of the summer, so I had heard lots about him but never actually met him.  It was nice to finally put a face with the name.  Even if I would have met him not knowing that he was my host brother, I probably would have figured it out.  He looks, talks, and acts just like Adrian, only he’s three years older.  My first meeting was a little awkward with him (when are my first meetings with anyone not awkward?) because I was introduced as his brother and Dan as his uncle.  I could just imagine being in his shoes.  Here I am with my family for the first time in a month and they introduce these two foreigners to me as my brother and uncle.  I would have been a little confused.  Luckily, however, it wasn’t long before the awkwardness subsided and, yes, we began playing Uno.

The women were up cooking and socializing all night before the engagement while the men were playing cards and hanging out.  I believe it was around 2:30 AM that I woke up to the sounds of a chicken being slaughtered and around 4:30 that I heard “Skip you! Reverse! Reverse! Ope draw four. I want blue!”

Another side note: Uno is a great way to integrate into almost any community/culture.

After all the preparation came the engagement.  Around 11:30 AM, the boy’s family showed up to the girl’s house where I was staying.  I was anticipating no more than ten people showing up with him, but when the bus pulled up, I figured that I had underestimated the importance of a Q’eqchi engagement.  After all 30 people had piled off the bus with their crates of Coke and buckets of Caldo pork, the two fathers met each other and spoke about the intentions of the boy and the future of the two families.  There were about 50-60 people around watching as the boy put the watch onto the girl’s mom’s wrist and then proceeded to put the ear rings on the girl.  After that, the families exchanged the food that they had spent the night preparing. 

At one point, the boy’s family asked the girl’s if she could live with his family.  Apparently, it’s normal for the girl’s family to say no and the boy to run out crying.  This was the case in this engagement as well.  There was also some drama because the boy wanted to have the marriage a year from now.  This is a really long time for Q’eqchi families.  The girl’s family told the boy’s that if he really loved her, he and his family could find the money to have the wedding in a month, so that was awkward.  Then again, this is all translated from my host mom.

Overall, it was an extremely interesting event unlike anything I had ever attended before.  I thought it was interesting how different an engagement is in Q’eqchi cultures versus in the states.  In America, engagements are generally between the boy and girl, maybe with a few friends or family members involved.  In Q’eqchi cultures, it’s much more of a family event.  I was honored to see it, especially because I may never see anything like that ever again.

The other (pretty major) event that occurred was site placement.  This was something that I had been looking forward to for about a week prior to the actual event.  Ask any of the other trainees and they’ll tell you how I drove them crazy about it.  We all got in a big circle around a map and drew names out of a hat.  When someone’s name was drawn, they’d go up, yell out their site, and pin it on the map.  To me, it was a lot like Christmas.  I was excited to see where everyone would end up.  After it was all said and done, my site is (drum roll)…

Actually, I just found out that we can't post our site publicly to protect from stalkers.  If you want to know my exact site, contact me privately.

It is a small community half a mile away from the Guatemalan border.  It’s down in the southern district of Toledo and mostly Q’eqchi.  There’s some Spanish and some English, but for the most part, Q’eqchi is the most common.  This is going to be awesome and hopefully lead to a fluency in Q’eqchi.  Unfortunately, despite its proximity to Guatemala and the markets on the other side of the border, I’m not allowed to go there.  Either way, I get the benefits of both aspects of the culture.  They eat and drink a lot of the Guatemalan cuisine, and some of the stores even take Quetzales, the Guatemalan currency.  I’m pretty isolated from other volunteers, but I don’t anticipate that being much of an issue, especially since we will have workshops with our Community Health Workers (CHWs) once a month where I’ll get to see them.  It will suck being far from the volunteers outside of Toledo, but that’s something that we’ve all known was coming for a while.

After we found out our sites, we met up with our CHWs and were on a bus for a site visit the next week.  I got to meet my host family and other leaders in the community.  Though there were a few times when I felt very alone in a new situation, the site as a whole was awesome.  San Vicente is in the mountains and is beautiful! I get to bathe in a creek daily which is something that I’ve been looking forward to for months.  I have a traditional birthing attendant (TBA) in my community as well.  I feel like she is going to be a great resource to educate women about having a healthy pregnancy and healthy children.  My CHW also told me that there was a problem with diabetes in women.  On top of that, there is a school in the community that I’ll get to work with.  They recently got a new principal that wasn’t in the community, so I haven’t met with him/her.  I think that working in the school will be awesome, though.  One thing that I’m excited about is teaching the kids in the community that there’s more than San Vicente and farming.  There’s science and space and all kinds of stuff that’s so cool that they probably have no idea about!! Overall, I’m nervous to get started because it’s a huge change, but I’m excited to see what all the future has in store. 

While I was doing my visit, I also had some time to read, especially during the seven and a half hours in the bus.  I was reading a book called Cloud Atlas.  Many people may know the movie (which I loved), but the book was equally as good.  The writing style was so interesting.  It is written like a Russian doll, if that makes sense.  It starts with one story and then cuts off in the middle and movies to a completely different story and keeps doing that until it gets to the final story.  After the final story completes, it goes back in time to finish off all of the previous stories.  The really cool part is that each story has a completely different writing style and writing media and all of the stories connect somehow with each other and the overarching theme of the novel.  It was awesome.  Here’s a quote that I found particularly incredible.

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty.  Phenomena that determine the course of our lives.  Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction.  Today, it is headed in another.  Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today.  These forces that often remake time ad space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish.  Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment.  That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction.”