A Beautiful View

This is a rad picture of Bella Vista, the “beautiful view.” Scott took it when we were walking after language class late one afternoon, and I took a similar shot that did not turn out nearly as rad. We had reached the edge of town to the northeast, toward the sea, and a storm was brewing. The clouds were moving east to west, which can throw someone off when that someone is from the west coast of the United States.

I am infatuated with the clouds above this country. They never sit still. They shift, sifting light, and heave, and toss themselves into great heaps of color and robustness; they float softly, then swiftly, darkening and sweeping the sky with curtains of rain.

It is the rainy season, and this week has been proof of that. Our moods have mirrored the weather in some ways. It rains torrentially like a good thunderstorm in Alabama, sudden and surprising, except that the surprising thing to us is it continues at that rate for hours on end. A thousand tiny hammer-blows on the zinc roof. We have to repeat ourselves to hear each other over the roar. The improvised bridge between the sites in the south and Belmopan flooded, I suppose a fairly common occurrence considering it consists of a pile of stones and planks a scant 5 feet above the river at its normal level.

Despite it all, our training team, a group of 11 assigned to promote Healthy Communities, has built a latrine together and planted gardens at three different sites. The other two community training sites are Maya Mopan-speaking and are called Maya Mopan and San Roman. A helter-skelter fence, made of random boards, some wire screening, a gate, and the rusted hood of a car from the dump, guards our garden from the many chickens that peck and scratch about as they please.

Healthy Communities training is led by the world’s best cheerleader, Jamie. As Peace Corps Volunteers, one of the most important roles we can fill is that of cheerleader, or change agent, or advocate, in our communities. Jamie is pictured below wearing the t-shirt proclaiming, “Everything is possible,” which is indicative of the way she lives her life. She is sort of my hero. She is just too happy to be a realistic role model for my personality, but I admire her very much and would like to emulate at least some aspects of her character and sunny disposition. She describes herself as having a big heart for people, which is true. Somehow she is able to overlook all of the annoying, petty obstacles that stand in the way of helping and encouraging people, without being naive, and in the end, community goals are realized. And she smiles all the way through it.

La Cueva

One afternoon last weekend, we had welcome relief from the adjustment to the oppressive heat and climate. A friend of our host family took us to property owned by relatives several miles distant from Bella Vista, toward the mountains and the rocky cliffs covered in thick jungle in view to the west. We were to visit a cave. Una cueva.

Scott and I piled into a little pickup with four others, all men. As dark clouds gathered over the mountains, one man decided to wait for another day and hopped out. There is not a paved road where we live, except for the Southern Highway, which slices through the outer edge of town and separates the bulk of the town from the banana farms. We took this highway west at surprising speed, the wind in our faces and a storm ahead.

Large drops fell during most of our drive along a heavily rutted dirt road, but hesitated long enough for us to walk among towering cornstalks at the roadside to pick a few cobs to roast over the fire at the farm hut. A young woman lives at the hut with her husband, who is a kind of caretaker. She cooks and paints. She is from Guatemala, and she has no legs. I am not sure if she was born this way, or if she had a terrible accident. Either way, she has one of the brightest dispositions I have seen and is more optimistic than I ever could imagine being in her position. When we met her, she proudly showed us a stack of paintings of different scenes on cardboard, each one featuring a smiling woman with beautiful legs.

It was pleasant in the thatch-roofed hut, with an open fire over which to cook (the woman was pressing tortillas to bake over the fire when we arrived). It was in the middle of an open meadow, surrounded by lush vegetation, a stream on one side, neat gardens, many chickens, and a pheasant or two. They grow tomatoes, chile dulce, green beans, beans, squash, pumpkins, okra, and cucumbers.

The nearest rocky mound was roughly a half-mile away, and our friends led us up to the entrance to the cave, cutting vines and undergrowth with their machetes on the path. The holds on the rock face were awesome. Very nice pockets. Scott kept saying, “Sweet,” and gesturing to the others about climbing. They just smiled, crazy Americans.

Ducking into the cave’s mouth at waist level, dozens of bats whizzed past my head. I could feel the wind of their passing on my ears, their tiny wings seeming to brush my forehead. Scott took many pictures, one of a huge beetle the length of his finger and twice as thick. The following pictures scarcely capture the vast interior of the cave or the intricacy of its features. Some of them were like gigantic curtains and enormous chandeliers in an underground castle. Our friends had walked for more than an hour and a half straight into it on a previous occasion. The rooms varied little in depth, and the air was dank with the smell of bats and was exceedingly humid. We also saw an example of broken pottery from a Mayan vessel for carrying water.