Hurricane Dean Photos

Sunday I went up to Corozal Town, in the north of Belize, to help distribute meals to families affected by Hurricane Dean.  I went with a group of lively ladies from the YWCA in Belize City along with my friend Maggie.  The damage was not terrible, but families who already had very little to begin with were especially affected.

Winds of Change

As hurricane Dean passed over this place, a new purpose and sense of being was dropped in my lap. The year of struggle, adjustment and waiting was swept up and carried away, leaving in its place another 11 months of hope, promise, and action. Tears of excitement approach each time I think about what I have to look forward to. Here is why.

Blue Creek, my home, has a cave (just in case you’re just tuning in to this adventure). That cave is spectacular, people love to visit, swim, and bask in its mysterious wonder. Unfortunately, one person wanted to guard that cave as his own, charging visitors to walk across “his” land to reach the cave, refusing to share with his own community. The community knew that this was wrong, riverbanks are public access and caves are national monuments, but where to begin? Without money to pay for the trip to the capital and the knowledge to protect their rights, Blue Creek allowed this person to continue his selfish practices. Until now.

The village council approached me and sought my advice on this issue. Of course, living there for a year I had tons of opinions and advice, but had not offered it up yet, waiting instead for them to come to me. They had some information, but needed more. I promised to do what I could while I was in the capital before I was collected and planted there for the hurricane evacuation. Two days of free time, waiting for a storm, was spent emailing, calling, walking, meeting, and sweating – here is what I now know:

* Blue Creek Cave (Hokeb Ha in Maya) is an archaeological site has already been identified as a potential Community Co-managed Protected Area. Basically, the Institute of Archaeology was waiting for someone to come to them and offer to assist the village creating a protected area to be managed by the community (that would be me).
* The village will be able to collect fees and will receive training with all the money going back to the village.
* They will be able to get up to $60,000US in grant funds to build a visitors center, buy safety equipment, and support the women’s craft center.
* The private land owner will no longer be able to collect fees.

THIS IS BIG. Not only is this the kind of project that I am passionate about, this is something that will have a major impact on the community. Eleven months is such a short time, where have the past 14 gone?? One year ago I could have never imagined this, and here I am, scared of running out of time, scared of leaving this place too soon

all clear

Hello All,

 

Some of you may have noticed that there was a hurricane that came pretty close to Belize, and thanks to those who sent me notes letting me know that they were thinking about me.  All is safe and well now, my first hurricane experience was frankly a little anti-climatic.  I was evacuated from my site, in the south of Belize on Sunday and have been in Belmopan, the capital with all the other volunteers in the country.  We were locked down in the hotel, watching CNN and snacking on rations (peanut butter and crackers), preparing for the worst.  Lucky for us, the worse never came.  Dean landed just north of Belize, bringing lots of rain and wind here, but no damage in Belmopan.  The northern areas are still getting surveyed and may have sustained some damage and where I live may have some flooding, but we are all safe and the weather is pleasant today.  I will be up here for the next couple of days until they can get reports of damage, so I will try to write again with a more detailed update.  Thanks again for your thoughts.

Editor's Note

My mother is NOT the one I was referring to in the semi-fictional account below.  She does a wonderful job of selecting books/food/other random things and mailing them to me.  My intention was to speculate on the poor selection of books available in the communal Peace Corps library at our main office, which consists of volumes sent over many many years by many many parents, all of whom love their volunteers dearly and would never intentionally provide their sons and daughters with less than quality reading material.  Now that that is all cleared up, I calmly await the arrival of the final Harry Potter and some cookbooks (thanks mom!)

Memoir-ies

And now...a rant. 

I can not possibly read one more memoir.  At first I was all into it, delving into the crappy lives of bitter, yet amusing authors, glad that my own life has escaped extreme freakishness (for the most part).  I guess i needed to feel normal, but now I'm done.  All the whiny, self-pitying, rising above dysfunctional childhood rhetoric is making me sick.  I'm to the point where a stack of 2-year-old Newsweek's are more appealing than another David Sedaris wanna-be (to say nothing of the man himself) pouring his/her soul onto the pages of a book.  I think the problem originates in the fact that that memoirs are best savored as isolated reading experiences, rather than the 15-book memoir marathon I am coming off of.  One life story to grant a busy professional a little perspective may have its time and place, but the long evenings of Peace Corps village life are best spent memoir free. 

It's not like I meant to read so many memoirs, it just so happens that about 75% of the books that I have at my disposal are autobiographical teat-jerkers.  My theory on this concentration of memoirs in the hands of PCV's is as follows:
A caring mother back in the USA just finished reading a touching true story passed on to her by a coworker.  The book is an account of a thirty-something's arrival at success, despite countless obstacles, barriers and breakdowns.  This mother thinks of her dear child who is slaving away as a Peace Corps volunteer in the wilds of Central America and can't help but draw some comparisons. My lovely and spirited offspring will enjoy this book, she thinks as she packages up said memoir and ships it off to her pride and joy. Her beloved PCV will read it once before passing it off to the PC library while searching for yet another Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut adventure. 

I show up to the PC library once every 3-4 months after a 6-hour bus ride and conduct a similar search for one or two Robbins/Vonnegut's that have slipped past me, only to find stacks of gut-wrenching personal sagas of strife and survival.  I take these books, well, because they are better than no books.  I should have learned after the first ten depressingly uninteresting experiences, but I didn't and will problem continue to read them due purely to the ideas of classic economics.  The whole process has turned me off from writing my own memoir (because I was actually thinking about this).  Maybe I do have a funny/sad/unique story to tell, but then again, maybe not.  Who am I assume that someone else is so interested in what I have to say that they would be willing to put down $24.95 on a hardcover edition of my unlikely rise to success (that is when I get there, or course)?  But then again, you are reading this, so maybe there is room for one more story of a lonely youth who rises above it all, joins the Peace Corps, and single-handedly saves the world through ice-breakers and flip-charts.