Food

Part of any experience is the food. When you travel to Italy, you immediately think of the pasta, the pizza, or the gelato. Spain the tapas, Philadelphia, the cheese steak, Japan the sushi. It’s all about what new and exciting foods you are going to try. Belize is not much different. I was very excited to live not only in a new place, but experience a completely different diet.

The food here has been its own, somewhat lackluster adventure. The Belizeans only take so much pride in food. The food somewhat lacks in exotic spices or flavors that you would expect from such an exotic and tropical location. But the familiarity of the flavors and the repetitiveness of the diet is a comfort so far from home. Often we volunteers, on our trek to the rectory for food, joke about what our next meal shall be.

“What do you think we will eat today?”

“I don’t know, but I really hope its rice and beans.”

“Or maybe beans and rice?”

We are rarely disappointed. Beans and rice, or rice and beans (The variation comes in whether the beans are mixed with the rice or cooked separately. I have yet to learn which is which) are the staple throughout the whole of the country. And, as volunteers trying to embrace the culture, we share in this food almost everyday.

There were a few surprises on my dinner plate that I have encountered in Belize. The first is the prominence of coleslaw. I never expected to see it outside of the Midwest, let alone in Belize. I believe its prevalence comes from the ridiculous amounts of cabbage that the Belizeans consume weekly. My love affair with cabbage has been another pleasant surprise. Cabbage with the chicken, cabbage with the Chinese food, cabbage in the coleslaw, it is there and it is delicious.

My newest food love affair has been beans. I remember when I was younger and my mom would cook baked beans or put beans in the soup or the stew and I, spoiled child as I was, would pick around them and waste them. I grew out of that after spending time in the Dominican Republic and partaking in the delicious beans and rice there, but now, beans and I are practically involved. We see each other sometimes for 3 meals a day and we have become quite close. For breakfast there are beans on toast, for lunch I see beans in rice, and for dinner I see beans and scrambled eggs. When there is that rare meal where beans don’t make an appearance, I do miss them.

I suppose now is the time to mention that I eat scrambled eggs almost every night for dinner. In the states we eat our eggs for breakfast. Not here. That is strictly dinner fare. But these eggs are not just scrambled; they include peppers, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, and even potatoes. I am unsure how they can make them so exquisite, but they are different every evening. (I suppose I should pause here and give praise to my momma’s eggs. I miss them. So delicious. But when in Belize…) I never thought that I would someday eat eggs, beans, rice, all mixed in a tortilla shell. But it is an excellent combination here.

With all the celebration of beans and eggs and the other Belizean..ahem..delicacies, there are a few things in the dietary world that I miss. Number one on the list is the Dairy products, especially cheese. It must be imported, therefore it is incredibly expensive. I have had cheese once since I have been here. My goal is to save up my money to buy some cheese to make a grilled cheese sandwich. It might be heaven on earth. Along with the dairy disappointments is icecream. In some parts of Belize you can get some delicious ice cream, but here in Benque, it is but a melted then refrozen scoop of bitter disappointment. Good thing they have vanilla-flavored popsicles named ‘ideals’ that only cost 25 cents to be that cool and refreshing treat I need to sustain me. The only other food item that I really miss is fresh vegetables and ranch sauce to dip them in. And chicken nuggets. But the foods I missed are compensated by the new foods I have discovered, like salbutas, chicken chow mein, and of course fresh frozen pineapple.

As far as the beverages are concerned, it is not terribly different than in the states. Coca Cola has a monopoly on the whole country, so their products are everywhere, but in glass bottles and with real sugar. Automatically an upgrade—everything tastes better from a glass bottle. They also have pineapple flavored soda, a new addiction of mine (unfortunately it will never replace my love of sweet tea, absent from all of Benque). The last noteworthy beverage is a bag of water. Yes you read it correctly, bag of water. It is a plastic bag of water, you bit a hole in the corner, and you drink it. Genius, pure genius.

Teaching

The greatest reward in teaching is seeing your students succeed. As I have trudged through the first three weeks of teaching, this reward seems so near, and yet so tantalizingly far. I want so much for my students, and I have quite the challenge. Teaching English as a second language a task I was not mentally prepared for in coming here, and religion is the most terrifying subject to teach. It is one thing to have to form their minds and make them up to a government standard, but with religion, it is the soul that is in question. If I teach them falsehoods and they live their lives believing some heresy, who is going to hell? Me. That’s who. That’s just a little pressure.

Just to give you a idea of what my life has become, I shall now proceed to give you a day-in-the-life of Miss Katie, volunteer teacher extraordinaire.

I walk to school every morning, dressed in my teaching best, albeit I usually leave my nice shoes at the school, so as not to ruin them in the morning trudge. Though early, the sun is already hot, and you can feel the sweat drip down your back as you walk up and down the hills of the city. The city is already buzzing with students, mothers walking their students, taco vendors setting up shop, and taxis driving up and down the boulevard. As you approach the school, you see students everywhere, in their khaki skirts or trousers, crisp, white blouses, and for the girls, white knee socks and black maryjanes. I walk through a sea of students, and listen to the “Morning, miss! Hi miss!” and “Hello miss!” that greet me in the school yard.

I’m not going to lie, this is not back-breaking work. I usually go straight from the school-yard to the teacher’s lounge, sit at my desk, and play on facebook. Of course I have to prepare for class, grade papers, and do research on what I’m teaching, as well. But for the most part I just sit there, at my desk, and devise new ways to inspire my students. Then the bell rings, and I must head to class with my papers, books, and of course my piece of chalk. In the past I had a severe fear of public speaking, but now I have had to put that behind me. I come to class, enter with a “good morning, ladies!” and wait for them to settle into their desks and prepare for class. Depending on the class, we do a variety of things. For religion we talk about God, the trinity, the angels, the saints. I want them to know the ends and outs of their faith, but I want them to develop a passion for it most importantly. It is not so much knowing the Bible by heart, but being able to know the Bible enough to live by it. Ultimately that is my goal for that class. I also want to be a good resource for my girls. I have been in their shoes before—though not too long ago. But if they need to talk, they know I’m around.

My English class is quite a bit different. Not only is English the second language for these girls, it is the first year for these girls. It is a learning experience on both of our parts. Vocab, spelling, grammar, reading comprehension, writing, speaking. It’s a lot of stuff to fit into 6 hours a week. Somedays we lecture, someday we spend a whole class period trying to think of the craziest verbs to use in a sentence. And somedays we just play hang-man. All marketable skills, I hope. Mostly it is just a lesson in patience.

“Quiet, girls”

“Clear your desks”

“Really, girls, I want silence”

“Do I have to separate you?”

“Do I need to repeat myself again?”

By the end I feel as if my voice or sanity could flee at a moments notice. And it is such a split. Do I be a super-strict teacher whom my students fear and loathe, or do I let them get away with things, and just hang out in the classroom doing girl talk? At this point all is trial and error. Besides this, my biggest challenge is getting excited about the subjects I’m teaching. There is only so much energy for nouns I can muster. After 5 days, I just get relieved to move on to verbs. Here is the point where I have to practice my patience and my selflessness. Not only do I have to take my own interest out of consideration, but be able to wait on my students to catch up. It’s all quite the learning experience. Perhaps I should have trained for this. I must say it has become easier. By the end I should be an old pro.

The end of my class day recently has involved volleyball or meetings. Staff meetings, department meetings, presentations on ancient Mayan cultures have been the end of my already busy days. Volleyball has been a blessing, and a good way to see my students in a new light and be seen in a new light. It has also been an opportunity to meet some of the boys, and influence them in the only way a young female teacher can sometimes—persuade them with my feminine charm to get rid of that unsightly facial hair and cleaning themselves up.

Often my days don’t come to a close until 5 in the evening or 6. Then there is dinner, mass, and home to continue the lesson planning and grading, preparing for the next day in Benque. The days are long, but they move quickly. Besides in the teacher’s lounge, you are hardly just sitting around looking for something to do. And as the weeks go by, the work gets more rewarding. You get to see the progress and growth, and you can’t help but feel proud of your students, and accomplished in yourself.

Though not much time has gone by in this school year, through in-class assignments, out-of-class conversations, and one-on-one time, I have gotten to know a number of my students and little-by-little hear their stories. I feel that the more I learn, the greater will be my ability to reach out to them in a more effective way. It is a process, because trust does not come easy, not just to high school girls, but to girls who have spent their lives being told no and having people let them down.

I asked my English students to write about the “best day ever” for them. It could be one they had had, or one they wanted to have some day. One of my students, a 16-year-old with a 3-year-old daughter conceived by rape responded: My best day ever was the day I heard I was going to go school so I could work hard and someday be somebody my family could be proud of.” Many of my other students had similar stories to tell.

How ungrateful had I been as a high school student? It boggles my mind how much some of my girls have to sacrifice just to be at the school. One of my students wakes up at 4:30 every morning to get to school and does not return home until past 5. Many cross the border every day from Guatemala for school. Those students really appreciate the sacrifice they and their families make so they can go here.

It has been such a joy to get to know my students, and to begin to foster relationships with them, I am beginning to get really excited about what the year will bring. And this connection has only made me want their success so much more. I am constantly thinking, fretting, and praying that what I am trying to teach them, whether it be about God or sentence structure, will get through to them. And all the while I am hoping everyday that what I can do for them in the short time I am here will make a lasting impression. For this experience, it is much more than the teaching. It is the presence, the discipline, the encouragement, and the conversations about our lives that will really make a difference someday. And the hope that I do not become one of the people that lets them down. I can’t let that happen.

I’m excited to see what the next few months will bring here in Benque and Mount Carmel High School. Hopefully there will be more success, more friendship, and more learning on both sides of the desk.

Roughing It

When I came to Belize to work as a missionary, I thought I was going to be roughing it. Cold showers, no TV, beans and rice 3 times a day—and no sign of sweet tea. I clearly had no idea what roughing it really meant.

I learned the true meaning of the phrase “roughing it” in my time at Black Rock. Several of the volunteers, after a spontaneous trip to the river for some tubing, decided it would be quite the adventure to go camping in the jungle there the following weekend. So, after a busy week of lesson planning and lectures, we decided to head out to the Belizean wild to get some camping in. Saturday morning we packed our bags, but not wanting to be an inconvenience, we packed as little as possible. All that I packed I could fit into a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. Sunscreen, camera, Long-sleeve shirt, and a pair of scrub pants. Not even a blanket. The reason we were told to bring so little was because we were going to have to cross a very fast moving river to reach to the camp site. Hence the Ziploc bag. We got our stuff together and then we were ready for our big adventure.

The most popular way of private transportation in Belize is in the back of a pick-up truck. You see people of all ages being chauffeured throughout the city and throughout the countryside, whether they are on their way to Church or off to the construction site. So naturally, we felt that, as temporary citizens of Belize with little options, this would have to be our mode as transportation as well. So we pile ourselves, the inner tubes and our supplies into the back of a friend’s truck, and head out, stopping only for supplies of water and hot dogs.

The Belizean countryside is a beautiful mix of the rural and the tropical. Orange groves coexist with cow pastures, and the hard-wood plantations add to the landscape in addition to the palm-trees. The roads are rough—unpaved, narrow, and winding. These details make for an exciting and sometimes dangerous trip out into the jungle. But, despite the bumps from the road and the constant pummeling of the wind, there are things you can only soak in from the back of a truck. You can watch civilization slowly fade away to leave space for pristine countryside. The hills, mixed with the tropical foliage make for a beautiful landscape pictures cannot do justice.

About 30 minutes into the car ride, we arrive into the jungle. Back in the states, there are those theme parks that have the ‘jungle adventure’ rides, where they give you the ambience of the forest. They are pretty accurate. The truck is winding down a side of a cliff, jostling very similar to a theme park ride, and we begin to smell the aroma of the jungle. You begin to hear the birds and feel the mists and, just to top it all off, a waterfall comes out of the jungle near the side of our car, bringing the experience full circle.

The truck drops us off and all around us is unspoiled, pristine, nature. A roaring river punctuates the bottom of a magnificent view of jungle and cliffs. I paused to take in the beauty of the moment, but then reality sank in and I begin to wonder “well, where are we going to be spending the night?” You look all around you and see no surface suitable to camp on.

“The beach is on the other side of the river.” Was the confident reply of out guide, Matteo. And no, he is not Belizean by blood, but has lived in Belize long enough to know the ins and outs of camping in the jungle.

So with out plethora of supplies, from inner tubes and a cooler to two very long baguettes given to us from a pleasantly French mother, we hiked down to the river and proceeded to cross it. Because it is the rainy season in Belize, the river was high and fast. I was a little nervous about crossing it at first, especially with all the luggage we had brought with us, but the men of the excursion were confident in our abilities. They tied up the inner tubes with rope, and asked the girls to sit inside of them. They then piled as much as the supplies as possible on top of us. They then pushed our make-shift raft out and guided us down the river, across the rapids, and to the beach just downstream. It was more exciting than any rollercoaster, to say the least.

After we arrived safely and piled our supplies onto shore, we were able to survey the surroundings. It could not have looked more like a scene from a movie. A small beach, flat rocks, black as asphalt, smoothed away by the river, and palm trees and jungle surrounding the site. This was certainly unlike any camping trip I have ever been on.

The group got settled, made a rudimentary shelter made of branches and palm leaves, reminiscent of the Swiss Family Robinson, and proceeded to make a fire to cook our hot dogs on. We swam in the river and fought against the current, being careful not to be taken downstream. We enjoyed good company, good weather, and were able to watch the sun sink down behind the cliffs, far too early (For in Belize, due to its proximity to the equator, the sun sets at 6pm. It has completely messed up my sense of time).

As the darkness came, so did the bugs. I must admit that, at the beginning at the school week after this trip, my students stated that my legs looked like I had the chickenpox. Surrounding the campfire, we cooked our food and admired the stars. By 9pm I was laying on the ground, trying to find comfort in the sand using a rock and a very small backpack as a pillow. The experience of sleeping with the stars as your blanket, the rocks as your pillow, and the bugs and howler monkeys as your lullaby can be quite the amazing experience; but to be perfectly honest it is also the most uncomfortable feeling as well. The sand shifts and gets everywhere, the bugs crawl all over your body and face, and after the fire dies, you get incredibly cold. We were truly roughing it, and our 2am efforts to find firewood in the dark was only the topping of the experience.

By 4am, the group was awake and praying for the sun. And it came, sure enough, creeping over the cliffs and revealing itself ray-by-ray. As it neared sunrise, I was able to climb out onto a rock overlooking the river, and watch the water turn to gold. Tired, cold, and hungry though I was, I have never been in such a state of serenity. It was at that moment that I had to pinch myself to make sure this life I had taken upon myself was not just a dream. I was truly living in Central America, and able to meet such amazing people and have such incredible adventures.

We enjoyed of morning of relaxation, swimming, and enjoying the scenery before the exciting but treacherous and exhausting adventure of crossing the river again, against the current, and hiking out of the canyon, supplies in tow. We climbed back into the truck and drove back to the comforts of our temporary home, where we enjoyed our cold showers, fresh clothes, and sleep before Sunday evening mass and the beginning of a new week here in Benque.

Life in Benque

A busy highway, roosters crowing, a mother doing laundry, music blaring over a static radio, the honking of angry drivers. These are all the sounds that pound my ears from the minute I wake up to the minute I fall asleep. All sounds that make for life in Benque. While the town seems small and slow-moving, it has a lot of character and a constant flow of activity.

When in Benque, I rarely ride in a vehicle. I walk everywhere. Home; Church; school; supermarket. There and back again. (On a random sidenote—my egregious use of fragments here make me seem a hypocrite, since I just told my English students that they were the greatest sin of English writing of all…) I never realized in the states the true beauty of walking. When you are in your car you jam your music, blast the AC, and try to get to your destination as quickly as possible. You are in your own isolated universe. But when you are walking, you get to truly study the patterns of the road. You see each bump, each crack, each person, each chicken, each flower. You get to feel the sun on your back, or the rain. You get to appreciate the temperature of the outdoors. You can choose the pace. Often I am rushing to make it to mass on time, or rushing to school to make copies, but mostly I am just walking. With aim, but without hurry. And how refreshing it is. I can pause at a moment’s notice to examine a flower, to watch the men in the feed store work and to ask about someone’s day. And while everyday the paths are the same, the scenery never remains the same.

It seems that in the states people remain indoors, lounging in their air-conditioned prisons, hiding away for fear of what might be outdoors, whether it be heat, strangers or the general unknown. But here in Benque people do not have such luxuries as AC, the internet to escape to, and are blessed with no unknown to fear. Because of this, you are never alone on the streets. You constantly pass by people lounging on their porches or in their hammocks (which are the national porch furniture of the country, speaking to the laid-back nature of the Belizean people). The children are playing futbal, basketball, or riding bikes. Or even sometimes they are throwing rocks at each other, as I was horrified to see one evening. As you past by, the people say “hello”, or “good morning” and offer a wave or a smile. And then there are those men who offer their opinion of you, in a not-so-gentlemanly fashion (You just ignore those greetings). The only real form of danger the city presents is the vehicles that wind through the narrow streets of the city.

A curious thing about this town is the presence of Asian community where you least expect it. Zhen has as much a monopoly of this town as Coca-Cola has on the whole country. Zhen’s Supermarket. Zhen’s Hardware store. Zhen’s restaurant. We are as dependent on this Zhen character as my family is on Kroger’s. And Chinese food holds the country fascinated. For a town that only has a handful of restaurants, the majority of them seem to be Chinese. And on the storefront of each of these restaurants, the slogan “Welcome, and Good Luck” graces the front. “Good Luck for what?” I once asked. Good luck eating the food without getting sick? Good luck that you are you not eating dog? Good luck that you will ever make it out alive. I’ve tried the Chinese food here, because let’s face it: who doesn’t love Asian food? And I must say I was impressed. And I survived to tell the tale.

One more interesting feature about this town that my first two weeks have taught me: dogs. Sad dogs, yappy dogs, emaciated dogs, happy dogs. I have never hated dogs so much. When I was in Peru the dog population was terrible. There were 3 dogs per 5 yd². Here it is not quite that bad, but they have to be 3X more annoying. You can’t help but feel bad for some of these dogs as you walk by. You see the ribs, the momma dogs with no milk for their young, the doleful eyes. But the yappy dogs are really yappy dogs. As soon as you decide to lay your head down on a pillow, they start to fight and bark and bark and fight. It's all very annoying. You wish you had windows you could close, or a rifle. As an American with a soft spot for any kind of animal, I am torn between sympathy for the sad dogs and just utter annoyance. According to the stories, the dog problem used to be worse, but then the town of Benque decided to go around and collect all of the dogs in the night, and have a mass extermination of them. It was probably sad for the people of Benque, for a great majority of my students (all of which are female) stated that their favorite animals were dogs. All of the cool animals in this country that you can practically see in your backyard; toucans, monkeys, lizards, jaguars, and the girls chose dogs. It’s way beyond me.

It will be interesting to see how my relationship to this town changes in the next several months. Now I have this romantic notion about the simplicity of life and yada yada yada, but will I feel that way in May? Who knows? I don’t.