Wrapping Up Our Peace Corps Service - Saying Goodbye

We certainly did have the joy of getting to know and love some very special people while we were in Belize. As our time approached to go home to the States, I became a regular "leaky tear faucet," anticipating the new homesickness I would feel leaving my home of two years in Dangriga.

We let select people know about our early exit for several reasons:

1. I wanted a smooth transition for Aidra and the Garifuna GLOW Girls.
2. I hoped that someone would take over teaching the Zumba classes.
3. We wanted to make sure that there was no financial problems with our apartment rent, and that Rafi would be able to find a new tenant.
4. We wanted to find good homes for all the STUFF we were leaving behind.

And so it began. Our last weeks, and especially the last weekend in Dangriga, were spent tying up details with utilities and moving furniture and other items out of the house. Some of the things were sold at a very reasonable price, and a lot were given. Our last night in the apartment, we treated it like a hotel room, because there were no items in the kitchen in which to cook, or on which to eat! Slept in a bed that Rafi bought but left for us, and took a shower with borrowed towels.

We also tried to get around to all our friends for one last goodbye. In no particular order . . .

Pen and Ingrid Cayetano gave us some of their beautiful art as a way to remember them. We've been lucky enough to keep up with them since we returned through Facebook and Skype :-)

Rafaelita and Anthony - they were our housemates. Rafi taught me a lot about being Belizean and being generous! Anthony grew several inches in the 21 months that we lived with them. Look out young ladies! Missing from this picture is her beautiful son, Michael, born just a few days after our grandson, Burke. By the next time I see him, he'll probably be walking!!

We saw a lot (but not enough) of Norielee, Aidra, and Daytha Rodriguez during our last few days in Dangriga. Those gals, especially Aidra, were just the light of my time in Belize. I learned so much about honesty, caring, community service and thinking of "we before me." I feel so lucky to call them my friends. Norie (on the left) and Daytha made the drum. It has a picture of Steve and me (well, the Belizean version of Steve and me). They got EVERYBODY - all the Rodriguez family and all the GLOW girls - to sign it. SO special. Aidra (on the right) made the beautiful doll that I'm holding. It's sitting in a special place here in our apartment so I can enjoy it all the time. The drum is, too, and "one of these days," I will take some lessons so I can play it.

On our last night in Dangriga, Kim (in the center with black scarf), and Ava (on the right), both PCVs, made us a scrumptious dinner. Ava was our companion for many things we did in Dangriga, and was always ready to lend a hand, share a joke or a gripe, and suggest great ideas for GLOW activities. We have left her all alone in Dangriga for her last couple months there. Kim is winding up her extended duty in nearby Hopkins. She'll be coming back soon to her home in Detroit with her hunky Belizean fiance!

Many GLOW girls came by the house to say goodbye. I was so touched, because I didn't think they would be comfortable showing their feelings about me. They were very sweet and open about saying they would miss me.

The Zumba ladies threw a surprise goodbye party for me on the last night of class. I am so pleased that TWO of the women who took the class, Carla (2nd row, 4th from right next to me) and Jolene (2nd row, at the right end in white and blue), agreed to keep the class going! They are sharing duties to cover the class, sometimes teaching together. They took the big speaker and paid for my old iPod. I've heard from Jolene via email several times, and she's even added some new (!) songs. I'm thrilled to think that there might be a little "sustainability" with the class.

Well, the desktop is getting wet because my eyes are leaking again. Did I say this in the last blog entry?  My life will be forever changed by these wonderful people.

Too Tired to Write. Pictures!

Lots of GLOW Girls, traveling up and down the road to Belmopan, woodworking, Zumba, eating, and writing.

Self-esteem activity

Making puppets

More puppet making

Puppet dogs

And more puppets

Charlie in front, Pen in back

Steve is making a cabinet for Pen Cayetano with the help of his friend, Charlie. We don't have a picture of any woodworking yet, 'cause it's still in the planning stages. This is a picture of Pen showing off his guinea hen to Charlie. I took care of his 15 or so chickens for almost TWO months!

Yum! Barbecue chicken!

Rafi cooked a big spread for us! Delicious!

I know Rafaelita is going to say that's a bad picture, but I think it's really cute.

We used this picture with an ad on cablevision.

When we started Zumba classes, we were exercising inside the Town Hall in front of Pen Cayetano's mural. After three weeks, just when our number of participants had exploded, the Town Council received a huge shipment of desks, chairs and tables (for the schools, I guess). Now that stuff is stored in the room where we were exercising. The last time they got a donation like that, a huge supply of books, it took them a year to distribute them. So anyway, we're dancing on the stage at Princess Royal Park. At least it's lighted. We really liked that Town Hall venue.

One more thing. A picture I painted of Aidra.

Aidra

A Day When Everything Went Right!

A Facebook friend of mine posted an article that listed thoughts to live by. One of those ideas really struck home when I applied it to our Peace Corps work here in Belize.

Over-prepare! And then go with the flow.

I think Steve and I both are good at being over-prepared. The most important part of the advice is the second phrase, though, and it wasn't until yesterday with the GLOW Club meeting that I got to enjoy the benefits of following ALL of those words of wisdom.

I didn't have to do much preparing. Most of it had been done last Saturday for the club meeting. Except nobody came. NOBODY came, not even Aidra. Well, it was raining off and on, but because club meetings are so popular, I figured a few would trickle in. Zero, zip, nunque!

Even that wasn't TOO terrible, 'cause Steve and I got to eat all the chocolate chip cookies ourselves. Took a few days, but we enjoyed them a lot!

Anyway, this week we had a house-full of glowing girls. We had fun activities, and some of them were new and challenging!

• Role play scenarios learning how to introduce friends to each other. We will do a little of this every week with different "mannerly"aspects of life. Next week, saying "thank you" and all the times when it's appropriate to do it.
• Odyssey of the Mind challenges. We want these girls to learn to think on their feet, and to learn to work together in teams. There are some fabulous practice exercises online. We started them off with an easy one yesterday, with real loose rules. We will work up to tougher problems and stricter guidelines. 

The girls loved both of these activities, and were very enthusiastic in helping each other!

We also played the "indoor field hockey" game and made pencil toppers and ate cookies and "juice" and laughed and sang and danced . . . . Oh, no wait a minute. I'm getting carried away.

I had lots of helpers this time. Ava, the PCV who lives here in Dangriga, Steve, and Charlie, an American friend who has retired down here, AND Anthony, the boy who lives downstairs - all of them helped Aidra and me. In addition, Rafaelita and her new baby, Michael watched (and enjoyed, I hope). I guess she was curious about what goes on up here.

Well, unfortunately, except for a few, all our pictures are on video, and I don't have that yet. Will post as soon as I get it this week! For now, enjoy the pictures of our big crowd while we were doing our crafts :-)

And then go with the flow

Charlie, Malicka and Vaughnya

 

Aidra - in charge of color mixing

Cathy - pipe cleaner expert

Ava - wields a mean pair of scissors. Gets award for most patient.

Refreshments. The little girl on the right is a member's sister.

Art!

Admiring the avant-garde dragonfly.

Anthony lent his expertise by managing the drying operations.

Finally - from me, anyway.
I just had to paint another picture here in Belize. Used those same poster paints you see in the pictures above.

Malicka

From Steve:


We had a site visit by our Country Director, Nina Hernandez. We talked about progress on the training manual. She seemed very happy with our progress so far. 

We went to a close-by restaurant for lunch. One of Princess's other pups (FuWe Dog's brother!) lives there and is their watch dog. The owner warned Cathy not to go near the dog since he would bite. When he sniffed Cathy, he remembered her and seemed very happy to see her again. So much for the watch dog idea.

Not Quite So Integrated as I Thought - and Merry Christmas!

Ah, Christmas time. 'Tis the time for good company and good food, Christmas songs and . . . firecrackers?!? The folks around here, mainly children and young men have been setting off LOTS of those poppers. I don't remember it happening last year at Christmas time. Yesterday, however, we heard not pops, not cracks, but B-O-O-M-S! Right in the street in front of our house.

I hollered at the kids to stop or to take it down to the riverside, that if they didn't stop I would call the police. Normally, I would just groan and put up with it, but these were beyond loud and were very scary-sounding, like a big gun. And there was nothing pretty to see, no big spread of color and light; the sole purpose of the "toy" was noise. Now in all my time here, I have only called the police twice, and it was when the music was blasting at 1:00 or 2:00 o'clock. They have a law that the "racket has to stop by midnight."  This time, in the afternoon, when the blasts continued, I called Dangriga's finest. Nobody came. As time went on, night fell, and more people started drinking, the whole situation escalated.

So I called a policeman I know, who came by to where most of the drunk group was hanging out (across the street) and rousted them. After he left, one of the guys came over a "cussed me out" big time, and so did his mother! How stupid am I? I was scared with how aggressive they were, and it occurred to me that this incident is the kind of thing that would cause Peace Corps to jerk somebody out of site.

Anyway, within a half hour, it was back up to the craziness level again, and I could hear it going on all over town. It was at that point that I realized that it really is the way that Belizeans celebrate Christmas. All our neighbors just put up with it, assume that nobody will get their arm blown off or lose an eye. The "celebration" continued until after midnight, and then was quiet until about 8:30 this morning, Christmas morning. It's been going steady ever since, not always on our street, but always close enough for good volume.

The dogs didn't like it. They are flat-out terrified of the explosions.
Stayed in the house for most of the last 24 hours. The dog at the
top of the picture, Princess, is FuWe Dog's mom. They both
stayed stuck up against Steve or me so they could feel safe.

We made Christmas cookies, a BIG batch to share with friends.

Steve did the rolling and sugar coating

Aidra and her husband came over for dinner on Sunday the 23rd.
Stew chicken, roasted potatoes and carrots, and some stir-fried
broccoli, string beans, and onions for dinner, and cookies for
dessert!

And here's a Christmas card that my friend, Ingrid, sent to me. So pretty! Of course, if you've been following the blog, you recognize this as the mural painted by Pen Cayetano for the wall of the Town Council meeting room.

The original painting is about 25 ft X 12 ft

Merry Christmas everybody. We miss you and would love to hug you in person!

Mostly Ups

The last two weeks have been mostly ups! With a serious big crasheroo right there at the end. Maybe I can write about yesterday’s unfortunate event and then do the flashback thing to complete this entry on a high note.

Yesterday, Sunday the 16th, was the day that Aidra and I and all the GLOW girls decided was a good day for our Christmas party. It looked like everything was falling together into a big beautiful bashment. Aidra and her sisters, Daytha and Norie, arranged for the place (Why Not Island), and the food (Norie does catering so she donated her time and skills), and some extra presents in case the some of the girls forgot theirs (Daytha had lots of things she had bought for her daughters that she had not given them yet) and dessert (Aidra arranged for ice cream and cones, as well as plates, cups, etc.) I was in charge of music and other entertainment – fun games! Just because I wanted to eat some, I made cupcakes with red and green sprinkles.

So I had a great time pulling together the games. We had a home-made version of Twister. Steve made the spinners and we used the rubber exercise padding for the playing area.

Twister - Peace Corps style

We also had the field hockey game (more on that in the flashback portion of this entry), a fun keep-away game that the girls had enjoyed before, and those games we used way back at Easter for the DYA fundraiser.

Bean Bag Toss - only we used the paper ball for the
field hockey game instead

All the girls remembered their Secret Santa presents (they were excited about that idea), but none had wrapped them. They all stood together at the end of the table where Aidra had brought wrapping paper and wrapped their presents in front of every other girl. Funny. 

The girls clustered around the table wrapping their
not-so-Secret Santa presents

I had four hours’ worth of Christmas and pop music, and certificates from Peace Corps congratulating them on winning the art contest.  (Yes, you remember. Waaaay back in September.) This was gonna be a killer party.

BUT . . .

We didn’t know that the Town Council had scheduled a Jankanu dance competition at Why Not Island. We thought it was supposed to be at another venue, Parrish Hall. Well, we found out on Saturday, the 15th of the changed location, but we knew it was supposed to be under a huge tent over at the basketball court – not at the shed where we planned to be. We figured there might be some noise coming over from there, but not enough to mess up our party.

Crowded under the shed at Why Not Island

There's the shed in the distance. You can also see all the boys
preparing to dance Jankanu.

When we arrived at the bridge to cross over to Why Not Island, we were met with a huge metal gate and two ferocious women who said we had no right to be there unless we paid admission for the big event. Fortunately, a police officer arrived (who I knew from the Health Fair), and she helped us straighten out the situation. We told them that a few girls would be coming in for the party and we could identify them.

What we had NOT counted on was that everybody assumes the shed is as much theirs to use as the other parts of Why Not. We were literally inundated with kids getting ready to perform. At any given time, there were between 25 and 75 boys and girls, and a few adults, from different schools under the shed with us. No room for our games. And the other kids kept interrupting, wanting to play. They also wanted to buy our food. “We no di sell no-ting!” They also decided that under the shed was a good place to do some last minute rehearsal with their drums. So forget the music that I brought. In fact, I turned off my big speaker and grabbed up my iPod so it wouldn’t “get legs.”

Steve had come with me. I invited him because I thought it would be fun, and he definitely deserved a good Norie meal for all the help he gave the club. After an hour or so of “not fun,” he decided to exit. Plus he was hungry, and the food wasn’t there yet. (We found out later that the taxi driver didn’t show up for a half hour after Norie called him, and then he couldn’t get through the crowd to get near the gate to bring it in – multiple trips.)

Now earlier in my service, I would have been going nuts because of the way things were not working out. Not so this time.

I had already been through craziness for the Settlement Day Parade and survived. I learned that things usually work out OK even if not the planned way.

Aidra was there with me, and she is like a Valium. She was in control and knew how to handle the non-party people. After observing her for a while, I knew what to say and do, and, at least on the surface, appear calm and collected.

To the end of this story. We only had seven of the 12 girls who were supposed to be there. The other five missed some or all of it for various reasons. The ones who were there seemed to have a good time and definitely had plenty to eat. We told them that we were taking the rest of the year off, starting back in January. Although  disappointed, they seemed to accept it as a reasonable thing.

After 3 hours of pandemonium, Aidra and I were able to pack up and head for home. Steve made two trips on his bike so we didn’t have to try to get a taxi. By the time I walked in the door to our house, I felt like somebody had picked me up and slammed me against the wall a few times. Whew! Glad it was over. Stevie brought me a big cold Belikin!!

So let’s hop back one week to when we were planning our party at the GLOW girls meeting. It was fun, and the girls really participated and were helpful and cooperative with each other. Also, we tried out a “field hockey” game with brooms and a paper ball to see how it worked. Steve and I were planning to use it in a training on Monday and Tuesday of the coming week, so we wanted a dry run.

On the right you can see Ava Hacker and Aidra seated, and
Daytha standing just behind them. The girls are learning about
Secret Santa.

I thought we had pictures of the field hockey, but no. I thought we had pictures of them working together to make little individual pizzas (tortilla crust!), but no. Here’s a chance for you to visualize.

Here are the girls making Christmas stars again. One of the girls made one for me. How nice!

The girls worked so well together

The girls who had made stars the previous week helped the new
ones.

So all day Sunday, Steve and I worked on our presentations for the HECOPAB Educator training, slated for Monday and Tuesday. Arlette Sheppard had invited us to do two sessions. The Monday night session was “Fun in Learning,” and then Tuesday morning, we had two hours to introduce the educators to the CHW Training Manual. 

We were pumped! The event was held at the Banana Bank Lodge, a nice resort outside of Belmopan - gorgeous landscaping and a small zoo with a healthy-looking jaguar and some exotic birds. We had a beautiful cabana all to ourselves. They had a large dining hall where they served meals family style. And they were healthy meals with lots of vegetables.

The dining hall

Our “fun” session went very well. They enjoyed the field hockey. (They scored 1 point if their team made a goal, and 10 points if they answered the health-related question after it.) They liked the team-building exercise with people blindfolded and trying to find something on the wall with their team members helping them. But what they liked the best was the role play of “mom” and baby. Belizean people love stories, and this played right into their enjoyment of a story. 

A mom and her two-year-old son

Ms. Arlette, mom, and her nine-month-old daughter

On Tuesday morning, we spent some time talking about the manual, and we had one module that had been printed up so they could follow along to learn how to use the manual. Then we taught a small lesson exactly the way it was supposed to be taught according to the book. 

Arlette Sheppard and me between sessions

Action shot

The participants

Well, the topic was diabetes, so who better to explain the complexities of that disease. Steve was marvelous, and everybody absolutely LOVED the way he taught. The only thing that I did was lead a small group activity that focused on what family and friends can do to help someone with diabetes.

The MAN!

We were very pleased with how the training worked out. This was our first time to present this new tool to the HECOPAB folks. We were the only "outsiders" invited to participate, so it was an honor and acknowledgement that they felt we were a part of them.

Settlement Day - Unveiling of the Mural AND the Parade

Monday was Garifuna Settlement Day (a national holiday in Belize) and the day before was full of preparations as well as its own events. The biggest Sunday event was in the evening with the unveiling ceremony for Mr. Pen Cayetano’s mural on the north wall of the town council hall.

Cultural entertainment played a big part, and the GLOW girls performed a short version of the Chumba, which is a traditional dance. They looked great in their matching traditional dresses, and all the practice seemed to have paid off since they were nearly perfect.

On the way to the performance

Nervous girls just before dancing

These boys focused on the view of the sea

After the unveiling, Mr. Cayetano spoke about the culture and the ancestors and explained all the parts of the mural including who the characters were and what the events meant in the history of the Garifuna people. Several times he mentioned that during the months of working alone with the mural he sometimes did not feel alone. Instead he felt that the ancestors were all around him as he worked.

Hayawadina Wayunagu
(Literal translation - Imagery of our Ancestors)

Pen's interpretation

Monday started early for us, but it was not the re-enactment of the arrival at dawn that occupied us. The float for the parade later in the day was over at Norielee’s house where she had worked her magic on a simple trailer. She had turned it into a small jungle with real plants that are part of Garifuna culture. Cathy and I took the giant tissue paper flowers that she had made. We attached them to each post of the side wall of the trailer. On the way back home we passed people who had been to the river for the re-enactment which was over.

Norie was "fluffing the stamens" on the tissue flowers.

At mid-morning we wolfed down a snack and prepared for the arrival for the GLOW girls to get dressed again in their traditional costumes to wear in the parade.

When the float arrived in the staging area, I took the banner to hang on the front of the truck so none of the girls would have to carry it. It was covered with small tissue paper flowers of black, white, and yellow. Norielee was there making last minute additions to her mini-jungle, and fortunately I had brought twine and lots of duct tape. It was certainly a MacGyver moment.

The handmade-duct-taped-on banner

When the float moved into position, I called Cathy who came running with the girls to hop on the float. Several girls were late, and one girl just forgot about the parade. Aidra arrived for the second half of the parade and took over so that we could come home and sit and re-hydrate.

And the parade begins. Norie really ran the show.

Aidra and Cathy. Aidra made all the dresses.

That night, Ava made a pot of spaghetti and meat sauce and brought it over for a relaxed supper.

Here are just a few pictures of those beautiful girls.

Deshanae

Vaughnya

Comani and Shae

Nicole

Shaniah

Leannah