"If you feel the need to escape the law, elude creditors, hide assets, or shed the skin of your humdrum life, you could do worse than to run away to Belize. Belize is a tiny nation tucked between Guatemala, Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It's firmly attached to Central America but considers itself a Caribbean Island, like a chicken that thinks its a duck. ... Imagine a country the size of Massachusetts with the population of Corpus Christi, Texas. Give it an army of 700 soldiers and a seat in the UN and you start to get an idea of Belize. ...The country teems with adventurous refugees who've set up shop in the middle of the Central America jungle. British innkeepers, Mennonite farmers, Chinese shopkeepers, Lebanese entrepreneurs, American missionaries, Canadian aid workers and Dutch scientists live peacefully along side the nation's longer established residents, the Garifuna artists, Maya cacao growers, Mestizo plantation managers, and the Creole politicians who make up the majority of the country's population. Belize draws the eccentric, the madcap and the downright mad."
-Bruce Barcott,
Let's start at the top...
I made it here without a hitch. Ottawa->Newark->Houston->Belize City, all easy connections the only thing that went wrong was a spilled a diet pepsi when cashing out at panda express for a quick lunch in Houston, but the Cashier gave me a new one. I cut a few lines at customs to catch a 4:40 Tropic Air flight to Punta Gorda after landing at 3:40. The airport looked more like a Bus Station than an international airport, which was apparent in the lax security to go through to catch my local flight, although I still have to take off my shoes and have an empty water bottle.
The flight to PG was more like a van with wings (as the American woman sitting next to me described it), but was very smooth. we made stops in
Dangriga and
Placencia before arriving in PG. Gary, Jan and Mark, who is the head of Plenty, pick me up at the "airport" in Mark's car. We got back to Jan and Gary's which is right on the ocean in a guest house called
Blue Belize. Had a few
Belikins and Jan made a delicious supper (which of course included rice and beans, not to be confused with beans and rice). We chatted about lots of things and I tried to get a sense of what the culture is like what I would be doing, etc.
(PG at night)
I unpakced, showered and crashed in bed to the sounds of the calm ocean, bugs and the occasional gecko squeek (they climbed the walls in the house and eat bugs, so we like them. They are also so cute)
I woke up at 6:30 to the sound of the pouring rain, which seemed like the hardest rain we would ever get in Ottawa or Boston, but Jan and Gary said it can rain a lot harder on some day. The rain only lasted a short while and then we headed to the Plenty office for 8; it's only a two minute bike ride from Blue Belize (although I get the sense nothing is more than a 15 minute bike ride). Every one was doing there own this to start, I was introduced to everyone but only remembered half of their names. There were probably 8-10 people in and out of the office today (not counting the cute children who filled up their water bottle from the water cooler in their little green school uniforms). I did some of my own research while everyone was busy on the WHO recommendations on sanitation practices, which they want me to teach in one of the rural villages.
Then Mark took me to the hospital (also just around the corner from the Plenty office) to see if the Public health minister was in to meet and see what work I could do with him. The hospital didn't look like a hospital at all it was a two story turquoise building that looked rickety and was very open to the outdoors. We tried to meet with Lyle the minister of Public Health for the
Toledo District he was busy and I was to go back and meet him at one.
The Polyclinic at the Hospital, the nicest part of the building
(the colour is pretty fantastic though)
After a quick lunch back at home I went back to the Hospital to meet with Lyle. He was very excited to work with me and had lots of places he wanted to have me work. It was very exciting to have the Public Health official for the whole district excited to have me work with him. They wanted me to help out a lot in the sanitation, food and water safety. Which will include water testing, food safety raining in the food establishment and in the school kitchens as well as food safety training for the kitchens in conjunction with the work Plenty does with school feed programs. I went back to the plenty office but since it was still lunch timeish the office was almost empty and there wasn't anything specific for me to do, I biked into town to get Belizian money out from the Scotiabank that is right in town (nice not to have to change banks).
I went back home since Jan would be there (she works with one of the school feed programs here in the mornings) ran into Isabelle who is from Montreal and works at the BLue Belize office but is also a marine biologist here. She said she would take me out and introduce me to all the foreigners who are here. I ended up taking a nice long nap for the afternoon which was much needed after a long day of travel, adjusting to the heat and humidity and trying to take in all of my new surrounding.
After I woke up, Jan and I sat out on the veranda in the ocean breeze and drank a coffee before heading back into town to go to the market and get some more beers delivered to the house.
The streets (only the main ones are paved) were scattered with dogs and kittens, kids on bikes, pedestrians, motor cycles and cars. All the shops look like those over packed shops you would see in Chinatown; everything has a little dust on it and you wonder who would buy half of it.
We picked up some bread from just this little shack of a house with the cutest puppy sitting out side, of course I couldn't resist petting and then it tried to follow me home.
It gets dark pretty much right at six here, and the sunsets are short, but we sat outside on the veranda as the sun disappeared drank so Belikins and had some cassava chips while dinner was cooking and talk more about the local culture and the day.
I won't need to write down every detail of everyday like this as time goes on but its just so much I am taking in right now. I am very excited about the work I will be doing here and I am sure I will be learning a lot. I am meeting with Hannah one of the Peace Corps girls here to talk about teaching sanitation practices to a small rural village called Graham Creek that Plenty helped install a village well recently. I will be going to the village, which is a six mile trek through the jungle from the nearest road, on Sunday for two nights. More details to come.
Good night all.
Boom!
