This place is crawling with volunteers

Mike at the gardening workshop

For being such a small town, this place is crawling with volunteers. About a third of the twenty people at the gardening workshop were from the US. I guess they were PeaceCorps people since one of the presenters was a guy from the PeaceCorps named Mike. Mike is actually the one who told me about the workshop, and works on gardening projects at several schools in PG, including Claver School. He’s one of the first people here who introduced himself to me, and has been really great in making sure I feel welcomed and not alone (although that so far hasn’t been a problem, thank God). He also invited me to hang out with a bunch of other PeaceCorps volunteers in Toledo on Saturday night. Although I haven’t met the other groups in PG yet, I had some funny observations about this one. Individually, they are all awesomely cool people but as a group, the PeaceCorps folks seemed particularly sexually frustrated and relished in the opportunity to talk about anything from the States from movies to football (Sidenote, now that the Chargers, Panthers, and Titans are all out in one fell swoop I yet again have nothing to look forward to on Super Bowl Sunday except commercials). I guess having been here so long, you just need to take your mind off of Belize for a little while. Altogether, though, they were a fun group.

Other volunteers at Claver alone are Chica, who is here from a Japanese program and teaching computers (note: efficiency crazy Japanese people are really out of their element in laid-back Belize) and a Jesuit Volunteer in the Library (yeah, Josh, it’s an old water tank for sure) who I haven’t met yet. The JV’s live in a house together next to Claver. If you count all of those groups with me, Lauren, the Minnesotans and all those folk I haven't met or heard of (apparently the TIDE office is volunteer central)that means there are a ton of volunteers here. Oversaturation? Possibly, even though I don’t think you’d notice much difference in the way PG operates as a town if we all up and disappeared/were extradited/got malaria/took-the-ferry-to-Guatemala-and-were-never-heard-from-again one day. Yeah, the places we all work for would be hurting and missing the free labor, but I don’t think the average Punta Gordan would notice anything different. Does that mean we don’t do much as volunteers? I don’t think so. I like to think that means that PG would do alright on its own without us. And we do do pretty awesome things like teaching kids how to garden, use computers, and use the word “steal” (if I do say so myself).

The rest of the weekend:
Sunday was a fantastic opportunity to go to Garifuna mass at St. Peter Claver. Briefly (I’ll talk more about the Garinagu after Friday), the Garinagu are a group in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras descended from Arawak and Carib Indigenous and escaped African slaves who were able to blend all three cultures. Marion (who is Garifuna) had spent the previous night teaching me a couple of the songs and dances for the mass. I ended up wearing one of Marion’s Garinagu shirts (which everyone loved) and sitting next to Patricia, who sang a little (quietly) and didn’t dance. Marion’s brother Kenny made fun of me for not dancing but I told him I would work on the lyrics this mass and the dances next time in February. Fr. Perl (the Jesuit who set up my contact with Claver School in the first place) presided and mass was fairly well attended. Marion is the lead of the choir which is mostly drums. I’m excited for this upcoming Friday, because there is going to be a celebration of Andy Palacio, a Garifuna artist who died last year suddenly and at a very young age. Next to Marion Jones (who is of Belizean heritage), he is by far the most famous person to come from Belize. That means that the celebration is going to be one hell of a shindig and a really unique opportunity. Marion even said that Paul Nabor (a fellow artist who is now probably the most renowned in Belize) may or may not be there, an awesome possibility indeed.

Marion rehearsing with the children in the choir

Me in my Garifuna shirt!

Other notes: I finally had mollyapples over the weekend. They're basically bland apples that you have to eat with chili powder to get any sense of satisfaction or sense that you actually ate something. Also, I just got done teaching my first lesson. The students actually grasped onto the material very easily and were well behaved while my supervising teacher was in the room. Now we just have two months to teach them how to put all of their lessons together into writing.