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.

A Dance Item and a Disappointment in Orange Walk

Last week began what seems like a month-long holiday. Monday was St. George's Day and Tuesday was Carnival Day. Wednesday Dangriga had the Talent Showcase, and on Friday the primary schools held their big rah-rah rally!

Our Garifuna Glow Girls wanted to perform for the Talent Showcase on Wednesday. We didn't have much notice - about 5 days - so we had to keep things simple. The girls were already familiar with several dance routines, taken from music videos, so they made the decision to pull something together from that.

I volunteered to have the girls practice at my house. About 9 girls showed up on Sunday afternoon. More than an hour was spent selecting music and trying to download it. The songs they wanted were NOT available from anywhere online, and they wouldn't believe that it couldn't be found.

"No, Miss. Right there on YouTube."

"Yes, girls, it's on YouTube, but that's a video, not music. I can't find only the song to download." And I tried some of those so-called YouTube downloaders, but none worked. I guess Google has found a way to disable them.

Steve helped me record it from YouTube played through the computer speakers, so the quality was AWFUL. Girls didn't care.

As the girls left on that first day, they all agreed to come back the next day at 1:00, and I followed with my usual, "And don't be late."

When 1:00 o'clock rolled around Monday morning (St. George's Day, remember? So there was no school.), and no one arrived I wasn't surprised. One girl showed up at 1:15 and she had a good reason for being late. Aliyah is one of the "good ones," usually punctual, quick to volunteer, very polite. By 1:30 we had 4 girls here, but we waited some more before practicing. The de facto leader still wasn't there, and we felt like she knew the routine the best. (I certainly didn't know it.) They finally started rehearsing and we broke up about 3:00.

As I walked out with the girls, we saw four other club members strolling up the street toward the house. I kindly but firmly told them that practice was over and that I was very disappointed in their lateness, that it showed disrespect for their club mates and for me.

I don't know any other way to put this. Few girls here have been taught social skills. The four girls just stood there gawking, speechless. So I gave them the words to use. "The nice thing to say would be, 'I'm sorry, Miss Cathy. I messed up and I won't do it again.'" Those poor girls could still not get a single syllable out of their mouth, just stood there. Some looked down at their feet, another gave a half smile, and got a little tear (of embarrassment?). Another turned on her heel and just walked away. I waited a few moments, never got anything from the latecomers, and walked away with the other girls. As we walked away, I told them that last rehearsal was the next day after school.

This is dragging on too long, but I guess I'm trying to get across the basic frustration I live with on a daily basis. I did call the girls' mothers to tell them that their daughters had let us down and that I was disappointed in them. I also emphasized how each girl was special and that I thought they were special (which is true!). Each mother said she would talk with her daughter.

The next day - 4 girls showed up and practiced. Here's a sample:

The little girl in pink in the front row is the only one who came to all 3 rehearsals.

There's more, but I'm tired of writing about it. Short version, to get this whole show on the road, I  -

• Called Town Council
• Called Police Department
• Called 4 principals
• Called Central Education Center
• Helped the girls settle on what to wear and where to meet and when

I had to leave for Orange Walk the next day (see next section), so Aidra was taking over to make sure they did what they needed to do for the Wednesday performance. In the end, two girls showed up and one refused to dance. No dance item for the Garifuna Glow Girls. Sigh.

But they do look cute, don't you think?

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Several weeks ago, Peace Corps Volunteer Natalie Macias invited me to come to Orange Walk Town to teach a Zumba class to a small women's group. I agreed and looked forward to seeing a part of Belize that was new to me. 

It's a L-O-O-O-N-G bus ride, close to 6 hours I decided to take my big speaker - my Block Rocker - so we'd have good sounds for the class. It weighs a little over 20 pounds, but it's got wheels and good handles. It's manageable. I just have to be careful to make sure nobody "thief" it.

So I rode up on Wednesday morning. Natalie met me and we had lunch at a cool restaurant (air conditioned), and did some power shopping at A&R (sort of like Target). Natalie has a great house, a sweet fun dog, and a nice music collection. On Wednesday night, we met another PCV, Barbara Levy, and had shrimp ceviche and Belikin Beer at a fun spot. The only thing they sell at the restaurant is shrimp ceviche (except when conch is in season; then they also have conch ceviche). And I saw something that I never would have believed. Mennonite men sitting around drinking beer. They weren't even eating, just drinking. Natalie said there's a group of "very progressive" Mennonites in the OW area.

Thursday morning, we went early to the library, where the Zumba class was to be held. Natalie said the women's group was small, usually about seven, but a very enthusiastic and outspoken group. They meet once a week and have a different speaker or program each week. They had been looking forward to this fun class and even joked about what they would wear. The librarian texted everybody at 9:00 to remind them about the session. Class was to start at 10:00.

You guessed it - nobody came. By 10:50, I was disgusted and ready to pack up. One of the women walked in with her two kids. "Where's everybody?" The librarian "railed up" on her, but of course it fell on deaf ears. She said, "Well, I couldn't come because I had family court." She kept talking about family court. I asked her how it went in family court and she said, "Well, I didn't have it because I never called them back." Not quite sure what that was all about.

So I showered and got back on the bus. On the Belize to Belmopan leg of the ride, I had an interesting conversation with some guys who were ranting about how Peace Corps was trying to teach children in Belize to be homosexuals and that the anus is a sexual organ. They were getting pretty excited about it. I decided to speak up, identify myself, and set the record straight. They were referring to the HFLE curriculum, of course, which has been in the news a lot lately (see this link: HFLE PAGE LISTINGS and brief descriptions of issues). By the end of the conversation, I think five people believed me, and the last guy wasn't going to change his mind no matter what. It was fun and cordial, and I think the people appreciated hearing a reasonable dissenting view.

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So that's about it for me. Here's a picture of the journals that the Garifuna Glow Girls made. They are writing in them a little each week - about their name, their strengths and weaknesses, goals - topics like that. Some of the girls are enthusiastic, and some do bare minimum - just like school!

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Steve here. This week I traveled to the satellite clinics in Pomona and Hopkins with Mr. Tillett who is the nutrition social worker for the district. We went through all the charts of babies and children up to 5 years old to check on their growth charts. We picked out those that may be in trouble and compiled a list for home visits if they do not come in sometime soon for their routine immunizations. We have great data on how many kids are served by each clinic and how many of them are underweight and what their ages are and their genders are. 

Hopkins clinic

Nurse Martinez at Hopkins Clinic

Pomona Clinic

It was a good week for keeping in touch. I was able to video chat with my son and was able to talk to both sisters on the phone. We all look forward to getting together next month in the US.

Fix It

(Hey - we have two blog entries this week, so be sure to check out the one right after this for a taste of "real" Peace Corps life.)

Sunday was a fun day for the fix-it man hidden inside me. I went with our neighbors, Rafaela and her son Anthony, to her home village, Big Falls, near Punta Gorda. She owns property there, and she is renovating her building in hope of renting it as a commercial site. It has a good location right by the road.

The future Copa Cabana of Big Falls

It has a distinctive red zinc roof. There is a large room that could be a store or restaurant or night club and an adjoining kitchen, bath, and storage room.

The current project is electricity - no pun. The meter was tacked to the cinder block building with concrete nails and doesn't meet code. We used U-brackets and concrete anchors to screw it to the building. When we finished I thought it was ready to be hurricane-tested.

After the work was completed

They have not yet hooked up the water connection, so Anthony went across the road to pump a bucket of water to flush the toilet.

In Belize, it's usually the women who pump and carry the water.
We enlisted Anthony's help for this special situation - his mom is
8 months pregnant!

We went into Punta Gorda town to get larger brackets and more screws and also got lunch. It was spicy fried chicken in a place that was air conditioned. Wow!

I like the "timeless" clock tower in PG. None of the four clocks work, they all tell different times, and none of them are correct - except each is correct for one minute twice a day.

The clock tower and the town center

Back in Big Falls, Rafaela also owns a house across the creek, and we went to see it after finishing the electrical work. She has a renter there who was baking journey cakes (pronounced johnny cakes) to take and sell. The woman and her daughter (or granddaughter?) rode with us to Bella Vista (it's on the way back to Dangriga) where her son lives. We also visited with Rafaela’s brother before heading back home. I am not sure what her next project will be. She does parts as money becomes available for the work.

Rafi's house in Big Falls

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Weekly Dose of Pet Pictures

Murusun Mesu is growing! He seems to be the catalyst for a lot of interaction between dog, cat, Steve and Cathy!

Tag Team Blog Entry

Cathy: Every so often, we don't have a lot to write about - HA! very often. That gives us a few choices -

1. Don't write anything, but then we'd lose track of those little everyday things that make this adventure SO very wonderful ;-)
2. Write something with a theme - about the culture or an economic or health situation or some other meaningful issue.
3. Or filler. Steve and I both scribble down some things and let that pass for blog entry. 

Lucky you - you get option 3 today! Do not expect any cohesiveness whatsoever.

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Last week, our Medical Officer sent us all an email letting us know that she would be in a meeting all week. Thought you'd enjoy reading some of it.

Greetings to all,

Please note that I will out of  office next week August 6-10 as I will be attending  a Peace Corps Medical conference in Belize City.  Peace Corps Belize has the honor this year of hosting about 60 doctors and nurses (Peace Corps medical officers ) from several Peace Corps countries.

Since I will not be in office, please be kind and don’t drink to excess, eat any bad food,  have unprotected sex, ride in back of any trucks or play any sports, ride a bike without helmets or break up with your boyfriends/girlfriends.. smile…although this is would be the time to get sick with all these medical personnel coming.

Dr Craig will have the phone to assist with any medical issues . Kent will be in the office to help with supplies.

Have a great week to all.

Regards,

Jackie

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Steve: Last week, Hurricane Ernesto came and went. On Tuesday, August 7, we were summoned to consolidate in Belmopan. 

It was boring, but we had air conditioning, electricity, running water, and WiFi at the Garden City Hotel. 

The Garden City Hotel got mad at Steve

This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with the next two
paragraphs of the blog entry!

While in Belmopan, I was able to attend a focus group on reporting sexual assault in Belize, facilitated by Peace Corps officials from DC. The emphasis was on finding ways to ensure confidentiality and take appropriate action on behalf of a volunteer who had something to report along those lines. They are still trying to improve their function (and their image) after several horrendous attacks and a murder, most recently reported in 2010 - ABC Investigative News Report.

Hooray for Peace Corps’ concern for volunteer safety.

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Cathy: When I found out we were going to Belmopan, probably staying until Thursday, I called Aidra to let her know we couldn't have GLOW club on Wednesday, asked her to let the girls know. Unfortunately, I neglected to give her the list of telephone numbers.

The Security Officer let us come home a day early. There was NOTHING - no wind, rain, NOTHING - in Dangriga or Belmopan. Which put me here on Wednesday afternoon. Not only did the girls show up, they came an hour and a half early! I had nothing prepared, but the girls didn't care. They played with the pets and made coffee filter flowers (again), and were happy with things. Wanted to do Zumba, but I had to chase them away so I could get work done.

Aidra and I are trying to make some big plans for the fall. We want the girls to have an act in the talent show for Independence Day (mid-September) and march in the Settlement Day parade. More on that later.

On Saturday, only three girls came because there was a lightning rainstorm.

The three girls who braved the storm
This week's project was to make bags that everybody wears to carry their stuff.

Malicka - her own design on the embellishment of the bag.

Shinoah - Malicka's older sister.
She liked the flower so much, that she copied it.

Skylar - She's visiting here from the States. Her grandmother is
our neighbor and a local Garifuna activist. We enjoyed having Skylar
be a part of our club while she's here.

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Steve: In Belize we have a semi-official website PCBelize.com. It was nicely put together by a volunteer, Nate Thompson, who finished his service last June. 

I have been entrusted with maintaining it since then. I had a personal triumph with successful posting of a new article on the “News” page with an image. Nate would be proud of me. I will probably never be a “webmaster”, but I qualify to be a “web amateur” for a site already created. 4th of July Celebration

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At the Dangriga Polyclinic the administrator asked each section to put together an educational DVD to play for patients in the waiting room. The medical chief of staff put his together with minimal help from me, just a little coaching here and there. Both of the nursing units put together videos with help from tech-savvy relatives. 

I think the nutrition section probably has the best video. I was able to ignite the interest and creativity of my work partner, Tylon Tillett. He is the social worker in charge of the malnutrition prevention project for the Southern Health Region. (Cathy: It IS good!)

This weekend I combined all of their DVDs into one movie project, with small transitions between them to make the whole thing cohesive. I burned it to a DVD that will play automatically and will loop back to the beginning to play again. "Look Ma, no hands!" 

It seems like not much when I write it here, but I spent long hours tweaking and perfecting this project. Even so, every time I watch it, I see one more thing that I could improve. 

Tomorrow, it "premiers" on the waiting room TV. Can't wait to hear the feedback.

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Cathy and Steve: We continue to be entertained by the pets. We re-evaluated, and decided the cat is a female. It's tricky.

Our new name for the kitten is Murusun Mesu, which is Garifuna for “a little bit of cat." We call her Murusun (mu-ROO-soo - "N" is silent). She will probably grow out of that name at some point, but I guess we'll stick with it.

Kinda Rhymes with Distress

FuWe Dog has begun her first estrus cycle - in the vernacular, she's in heat. The male dogs are lined up outside the fence, and our PUPPY - she's only 6 months old - is hot to get outside to the fun.

Well, shame on us for not having her spayed earlier. Current wisdom is to have them spayed before their first heat because they are less likely to develop certain cancers. It's just not that easy here in Dangriga. The vet is here every other Saturday afternoon. Some people here do not like him, and say that he is not a careful surgeon, so I need to get more information before we visit him. There are occasional free clinics, but I seem to learn about them after the fact. The ones in Hopkins are regular, but it is not practical for me to take her on the bus - especially bringing her BACK after surgery. We need a friend with a car, a GOOD friend.

So needless to say, FuWe is under house arrest for the next three weeks. We are lucky that we have a fence all the way around the yard. People are always going in and out, however, so we must be very careful of the gate. FuWe's mother was inside the closed gate, and a skinny dog got himself through the bars to hook up with her. Voila - FuWe and six other puppies!

Here I am trying to have a heart-to-heart talk with
FuWe Dog, explaining why delaying sex is the
smart thing to do.

On other fronts we are having good luck with the new girls club. Our first meeting had seven girls who joined together in silly games, learned about Garifuna dress, heard the Gipsy Kings and their style of music, danced a couple of Zumba routines, and devoured a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies and almost a gallon of orange juice. To finish up, they created collages from magazines, different papers, ribbons, other media, that told us about themselves. We purposely did not take pictures at the first meeting so the girls would not feel self-conscious (well, MORE self-conscious). 

This Saturday, we will meet at Why Not Island and should have a few more girls in attendance. We had a last minute day change so three of the girls couldn't make it to the meeting. We will make maracas from the calabash fruit, paint it with pictures of Peace and Friendship, and enter them in a national art contest!

I have this calabash at our house so I can experiment with the paints
before the girls start working on them.
FuWe says HI.

We are making progress with the training manual. More attention being given it by the Ministry of Health. Maybe I should say more VISIBLE attention. I think they always knew it was being created, but now they are giving us some real support, including a PERSON.

We got a great care package today from Larry and Jeannie, my brother and sister-in-law. I'm not sure who threw in all the wacky fun things. They both have a terrific sense of humor.

Item I'm most thrilled about - Hair highlighting kit (Do you think it will make me look young again?)
Item that made me laugh the most - Irish Spring soap (They know I hate it)

On our neighbor's roof. We haven't named her yet.

Happy Fourth of July, Everybody!

Mostly Ups

If you've been keeping up with this blog, you know that Steve and I have been struggling with our time here - psychologically and emotionally, much more than any physical or financial hardship. Our original work assignments were not well-vetted, so we have been engaged in very little meaningful work. So many current and retired PCVs have told us that we would need to be here at least a year before things really shape up. Unfortunately, that's assuming that the work assignment is a good one. Nevertheless, Steve and I trudge ahead, routinely encouraging each other and looking for any glimmer of positive developments.

This past week was about the same for Steve. We make jokes about how early Steve gets back from work. He leaves in time to get to the clinic by 8:00, about a 20-minute bike ride,and seeks out his work partners to see what's going on. He's usually back before 10:00. Friday was a record; he made it back by 8:30. 
Next week promises to be a big step up. Steve will head up a big new project - updating and restructuring the training manual for Community Health Workers. It's a great opportunity and so perfect for him. I will be involved, too, since I have lots of experience writing educational materials and training manuals, as well as a background in adult education. Our "get organized" meeting is Tuesday. A Peace Corps Program Manager from Honduras will kick start the project. You may recall that all PCVs were sent home from Honduras, so this guy is on loan to PC-Belize for a month or so.


For me, last week was pretty good. I taught my regular HFLE classes and they all went very well. The kids in my classes have told other kids in their schools and neighborhoods about me. It's pretty fun to be walking or riding around town and hear, "Miss Cat!" I don't necessarily know the name of who's hailing me, but it warms me up to hear the hello and exchange a smile. I also taught Zumba twice, both times with large attendance. Yay! 
Kids across the street play most afternoons.

The Dangriga Youth Alive group met again. The Dangriga Town Council will join forces with DYA to create an even bigger and more diverse Easter celebration - a day longer (add Saturday), and a longer day (Sunday night concert/dance from 10-3). Yes, folks, I am helping to create my own worst complaint, the loudest, awfullest, all-night-keep-me-up musicfest :-(  OK, it's for a good cause. The Town Council will pay for all the advertising (DYA had NO budget for that), build a shed for vendor booths, pay for the big tent, and provide some other games. 

Aidra and I are planning how to cut and use this board
for some carnival games

Everybody benefits! The Town Council benefits by promoting Dangriga as a fun place for Belizeans (most people from Dangriga would go somewhere else for the holiday weekend) and tourists, and DYA also promotes its name and goals while raising money for high school scholarships. 

Dare I hope that something more permanent will work out for me with DYA? Fingers crossed. They are a newly-formed group that is just developing their organization and mission. Peace Corps and I disagree on a fundamental element of project assignment. PC management believes that work in Belize needs to be through the various ministries of government, and I think working through grass-roots efforts is best. I certainly understand the need for approval at high levels. Peace Corps can't just traipse in to a country and haphazardly try to help with development. But for the volunteers, it sure is easier to actually GET WORK DONE and feel useful working with very small groups. Just my two cents.

Finally, I thought I'd include an excerpt from a letter written by my friend, Alex. I knew her from when I volunteered at Family Violence and Rape Crisis Services in Pittsboro, NC. She was a paid staff counselor there. She and her husband came back last fall after their Peace Corps service in Vanuatu. She shared these words of wisdom with me. (P.S. If I have already included this in an earlier entry, I apologize. It's good advice two times.)

Thanks for the email--We are in the throes of readjusting to American life and I am so far behind on writing friends and even seeing friends in America.

The two most shocking things of being back in the states are how cold it is here and how stressed out everyone is. I am used to being the most high strung member of my community (along with Lucas), but compared to the average American, I am SO LAID BACK! Unbelievable! I really miss how chill the islands are (although at the time, I wish people had a little more fire under their asses to do ANYTHING at a faster rate).

Oh, Peace Corps. Towards the end of our service, Lucas laid down on our bamboo bench for a week and fell apart over how unsatisfying the job aspect of Peace Corps was for him. he was originally a business vol and really went into health because there was nothing for him to do that he would consider ethical as a business vol (he did lots of small business individual advising and was there long enough to see anyone who was doing something remotely innovative fail because of their family relationships). capitalism and a tribal community don't mix and the good things about the tribalism where we were outweigh the good things about capitalism...even if there was strong tribalism, people couldn't and wouldn't work together on community projects for various reasons: All of this caused my poor husband to have a breakdown for a really sad and ugly week...Lucas' hope of a meaningful project died and it was really hard to watch.

But, what we did take away from it all is that we caused no harm. We know volunteers that have done big projects that will surely fall apart when they leave (or soon after) and that did nothing to empower communities (in fact, having the opposite effect). They feel better about themselves, but I wonder about the unintended consequences they left behind.

we did do a whole lot of intentional nothing (we could have made ourselves very busy, but it didn't go with our value system of doing work with the community not for the community) and the only thing that I wish I would have done differently is offered more things like computer classes, adult literacy and English classes, reading classes with children, Spanish classes, anything like that. Lucas wishes he would have done PACA (I think it's a waste of time). Anyways, we did have periods of extreme busy and then absolutely mind-numbing nothing. I think most folks in the developing world are okay just taking care of the daily acts of living (which can be so time consuming), and all the other stuff isn't that important. Who knows. 

Anyways, I'm sorry for you guys--it's a tricky spot to be in, I know.

When we were leaving Vanuatu, there were about seven of us leaving at around the same time--we all ended up going out to dinner one night and all of us had different periods of really hard times in our service. 

This is what we could all agree upon: 
1. Peace Corps kicked our asses in ways we had no idea was possible--a lot of us at the table were very used to being competent professionals that were used to some degree of mastery; we were all humbled as all of our expectations for what we could actually do were higher than what happened.


2. We had all grown: there were people at our table in their 70s and a 24 year old and we all felt stretched and challenged.

3. At some point in our service, we all HATED Vanuatu.

4. And we would all do it again (not take it back) and would recommend it to anyone who was interested. 

So that's been our view from the end. All those stupid cliches are true about it being the hardest job you'll ever love.

I miss Vanuatu now being on the other side of it all and I even miss the laid-backness that would drive me so NUTS!! 

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The requisite puppy pictures. FuWe Dog can SLEEP!

Feels Like Autumn

Girl from a magazine

We're about midway through October, and it definitely has cooled down. Temps range from 75 at night to 88 during the day, and it feels milder. I'm writing this at about 8:15 a.m. The sun is shining brightly, thermometer says it's 82 degrees, but it's quite pleasant with the cool breeze. A couple of times on my morning walks with Miss Patsy I have had to wear a light jacket! I fear we may have to close windows at night soon if it gets much cooler.

However, I don't believe we'll see leaves changing color and dropping off the trees. I'm told that there is one tree, called the Flamboyant tree (and it IS, believe me. Sorry, we don't have a picture.), that loses its leaves for a couple of months in January. I'll try to post a picture next April when they bloom. Other vines, shrubs and trees are still blooming, and the view is lush green. 

A young Steve Burnham

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, it is STILL rainy season. We joke that it's like Camelot here. It mainly rains at night - hard blustery rains - with an occasional daytime shower. It's not unusual for Dangriga to get 25 inches of rain in October, maybe 150 inches for the year!

Only a couple of things happening with my work. The POWA women will begin having workshops for girls - Adolescent Empowerment Workshops. This weekend they'll hold the first one. Nine women were divided up into three groups: one group will teach 10-14-year-olds, another the 15-16s and another the 17-18s. This first series of six sessions will focus on self-esteem, with each group adding another element of life skills into the mix - goal-setting, relationship skills, communication skills. I have been working with each of the three groups as they set up and create their lesson plans. Not only are they putting together the activities, they are also recruiting the girls! Each age group will ideally have 15 girls. This is truly trial by fire for the POWA women, but they are working hard to make it successful.

Rose

All of this work is on weekends, and then I don't do much at all during the week. We both went to a meeting of VOICE, a Senior Advocacy group, on Wednesday. Steve is now on the regional NAC - National AIDS Council. Not sure what they do, but they meet once a month, and there about 11 people representing various groups. It's a good way for Steve to make contacts around town.

I've been taking drawing lessons from another PCV, trying to find some new things to occupy my time. I'm just at the beginning stages - you know, drawing a coffee mug, drilling on certain techniques. However, I've had several friends ask me to post a few things, so here goes.

Another pretty girl from a magazine.
Can't get the eyes right!

And from Stevie. He had fun writing about the

Local Geography

Belize has a wide variety of geographic areas. We live in the southern part where the valley meets the sea. The Hummingbird Highway runs west northwest from here through the valley to somewhat of a gap in the Mayan Mountains and on to Belmopan. When people tell where they live along the highway they say they are from “the valley” at mile whatever. The valley and the flat land south of here between the mountains and the sea has citrus groves and banana plantations. I think the valley must get more rain than we do, since we see dark clouds and rain there at times that we are not getting rain. The weather seems to move east to west, and our breeze is usually from the sea.

We have friends who live in the rain forests of the Mayan Mountains, and they have to think about the rivers and flooding whenever they try to make travel plans. Our town seems to soak up the rainwater quickly so that flooding here does not really hinder transportation. The dirt roads have puddles for a day or so. We have to ride slowly on our bicycles when the roads are wet since bicycles here do not have fenders, and we get little dots of muddy water up the back of our clothes.

Our house is in a great neighborhood. We are between Stann Creek (“the river”) to the north and Havana Creek to the south. Havana Creek is much like a storm drain and usually has an isthmus of sand where it would meet the sea. During the heaviest rains they dug up a trench to drain the creek into the sea. We are also between the sea and “the main”. (The busiest street changes name several times, and people often do not know what the name of the street is).

Havana Creek. You can just barely see people walking
across the isthmus in the distance.

The highest point in town that I have been to is the third level of the town hall. From there one has a nice view of Princess Royal Park, the fire station, the market, and Y-not Island with the great thatch. 

Princess Royal Park

Fire Station

Market and Why Not Island recreation area