The Bella of Bella Vista

I would like you to meet my new friend Bella. She is from Guatemala and is fully committed to learning the English language. In late March, she started coming to our house every afternoon for several hours to study with me. She also wanted to learn new recipes, especially pizza, so one night we kneaded wheat dough and made healthy pizza together, which her husband shared when he came to pick her up on his bike. They are both very young-18-years-old-and don’t have their papers to be here. Bella gets up at 4 o’clock every morning to make her husband breakfast, sometimes biking all the way out to the farm to take him lunch also.

Bella, which means beautiful, is her nickname. She is very light-skinned with bright, light eyes, and everyone here equates those traits with beauty. Her in-laws and friends in Bella Vista joke that I am the mother of her niece because she is white like me.

Bella and I have become good friends. It is wonderful to get to know someone in another culture who actually cares that you exist and wants to know more about you, where you are from, and where you have been, without prejudice or judgment. This kind of friendship is rare. Many women in Bella Vista have mentioned that they have few friends or none at all, partly due to the fact that people are from different countries and situations and have not necessarily lived in BV long. Bella has only lived here for 1 year.

Our friendship is a fun cultural exchange for us. She is teaching me Spanish almost as much as I am teaching her English. She is also helping me improve my methods of teaching Spanish speakers. Now I show my students not only how to spell each English vocabulary word correctly but how to write the pronunciation for a Spanish speaker as well so they can practice at home.

Bella and I have had fun making jewelry with beads my mother-in-law Joyce generously sent me, sharing pictures of family, and talking of our homes. We are each learning about the world of the other. She doesn’t know much about snow, mountains, or sports. When we were going over vocabulary for sports in a book, she said climbing and skiing sound terrifying! She told me all about Carnival in Guatemala. The circus came to Mango Creek last week, and you could enter for free if you donated a live dog to feed the lions! Really!

Bella taught me a saying, one of the hundred or so “piropos” or “flores” boyfriends tell girlfriends she has compiled:

No quiero perlas del mar ni perfume del oriente solo quiero tu amistad y cariño para siempre.

I don’t want pearls of the sea nor perfume from the Orient, only your friendship and affection forever.

Everyone is All Smiles

His mom says he likes to make sure everyone he meets is his friend. He is worried if he doesn't gain your affection. He is remarkably thoughtful for his age, and remembers every face. This is Jared, the 4-year-old son of the Nicaraguan family I mentioned before in a blog, our former neighbors behind our first host family's house in BV. They have recently had a new addition to their family, a baby girl, though they still live in one room, the same size as the one we lived in. I cherish this family picture. Gretchen, Samwell, Jared, and Ashira. They visited us weeks ago, brought delicious coconut bread to share with us, and I showed Jared's mother, Gretchen, how to bake a marbled chocolate and vanilla boxed cake, at her request. They wanted to use our oven to bake the coconut bread and the cake. The kids thought it was a terrific time, though since it was late, their mother curtailed their sugar intake! Jared's sister, Ashira, is pictured here as well. She has changed dramatically since we first met her in August. Now that they can afford to pay for Jared to be watched at another woman's house while they are at work, Ashira is free to go to school! Gretchen used to tell me her daughter had no idea what life could have been like for her, how lucky she is to be here. Ashira used to pout and pick fights with Jared sullenly, ever washing dishes or shoes or sitting on the front stoop listlessly. I never saw her smile in all the time we lived next door, but now she is all smiles. She visits me before or after school and climbs on the climbing wall or plays with Holly. She is confident, friendly, and curious.

More favorites

My friend, my grandmother, me as mentored and mentor

She was sitting primly
On the wooden love seat
So pretty & young & fresh & sweet
Seawater light eyes
Freckles high on her cheeks
Wavy hair held back at her neck
The sun from the day
Beaming out of her skin & her teeth
Aqua blue flowers
Against a silky white dress
Glittery flip flops
The color of an American pool
Her sobrina malcriada
Me as a child
Unkempt, barefoot little girl
Wild hair of straw
White face, wide eyes, blue jean skirt
After the phone call
Staring at my tears & trying not to
Mi abuela se murio
She took her leave
A white ghost, an angel
But not before
A quick squeeze y un beso
In my ear, tranquila
May God give you peace.

~4 April 2009

Una Bella Vista Mas Bella

The community clean-up day was mostly a gratifying success for everyone involved, beautiful even. I was amazed at how organized community leaders were in mobilizing groups of volunteers first thing Saturday morning. Many groups picked up trash, including a large number of kids sent by their mothers to help us. They were eager to be included once they saw us working, despite the hot sun! I think it was easier to ignore the heat when we were working together toward a common goal. I was informed that in a single day 9 dump truck loads of trash were driven out of Bella Vista!! Another group, including Scott, painted and cleaned the water tank, and parks were constructed by several other select volunteers. Already I have seen the children enjoying the parks built in different community spaces. Nurseries were planted. On Saturday night, a movie projected on the side of the water tank was enjoyed by all. It was meaningful in that it conveyed a message that resonated with the people of Bella Vista, people from many Central American countries and different plights. The movie was from El Salvador, called Innocent Voices. It caused people to think more deeply about why they came to Belize in the first place and how they will move forward for the benefit of their children.

This is the first time I can say with conviction I am proud to be a part of this community.

Para una Bella Vista Mejor

COMMUNITY-WIDE CLEAN-UP
“For a Better Bella Vista”
“Para una Bella Vista Mejor”

Topic: Health and Sanitation, and on a larger scale, the Environment and Conservation
Events: Drainage cleaning, Road maintenance, Water tank cleaning and painting, Construction of 4 new parks, Park beautification, Health information distribution, Community movie night, Minister’s speech, Trash pick-up!

The purpose of introducing this topic is to bring to our attention some of the vital aspects of daily living that perhaps many of us take for granted. For example, trash bins. For another, the Earth. Where does your trash go? How do you dispose of it? What impact does it make on this planet?

We’ve all heard a lot about pollution, greenhouse gases, global warming, etc. But let’s take a step closer and simply look at the land, the streams and fields and trees (maybe there aren’t too many streams near you), around us. Also, let’s observe the physical make-up of our communities, the streets, the water system, the parks, the sanitary landfill. How does your city maintain an organized and safe way of life for people within its particular environment? What infrastructure is necessary for a city? How does it protect people’s health and the environment?

Where I live in Belize, the landscape is the typical gloriously tropical kind, with lush vegetation thickening toward the horizon in the west and toward the karsts of the Maya Mountains (Scott calls the separate mounds of rocky cliffs covered with jungle where he has put up an outdoor climbing route karsts; the people here call all of the terrain in the bush and the mountains, monte). However, the landscape is marred. The streams and the countryside around Bella Vista are filthy, littered with everything from baby diapers to Coke bottles to plastic wrappers to tin cans. Food scraps are quickly torn into by the stray dogs, which are plentiful and pitiful. There are no trash cans. No trash bins. No regular trash pick-up. No dump trucks.

As I said before, infrastructure is lacking.

The responsible citizens of Bella Vista collect trash inside their houses in the kind of small, flimsy plastic bags you get groceries in and then rake all of the trash in their yards together with the bags into a huge pile to burn. Kitchen scraps are either thrown to the animals or taken by them, or used for compost in the garden. Frequently, especially on weekend nights, the air is full of smoke from the burning trash piles behind every house. The smoke cloaks the village like a thick blanket with the humidity. Everyone in the community breathes trash during these times.

The less responsible citizens tend to toss their trash every which way at the outskirts of the village. The amount of trash along a path we ride our bikes on to the next village has increased at an astounding rate in the time we have lived here. It is stinky and strung out on the beautiful land and disgusting. Believe me, when your tires are splashing through puddles full of soiled diapers and rotting heads of cabbages, this is what you think: this is hideous and a despicable and senseless waste. The emotional reaction to littering is quite strong at that point!

Don’t worry, I have good news! There has been planned a community-wide clean-up and beautification project for this weekend. It is merely a first step, mobilizing, but at least a step in the right direction of bringing this need to the attention of the common person in Bella Vista. Changing minds and attitudes is necessary.

The village council and the Humana organization, also doing health projects, are coordinating with the big banana farms to use the equipment to clean out the draining ditches full of stagnant water, pressure spray the water tank and paint the outside, grate the bumpy dirt roads, build playgrounds for the children, and transport all trash to the dump near Mango Creek. I am coordinating with the health workers to have a health booth and first aid on site for the volunteers working and for the community at large. At the end of the day, there will be an outdoor movie, an inspirational one about a community changing for the better in El Salvador, projected in the main field for families to enjoy. I would say almost no one in Bella Vista has seen a movie projected on a big screen.

The entire event sounds phenomenal, but we will see how smoothly it goes. I look forward to letting you know the results!

A Few of My Favorite Things

My husband, climbing, and our dog! These photos were taken outside our village down a rad bike trail, al monte, toward the Maya Mountain karsts. Along the trail, a blue morpho, the vibrantly colored butterfly of Belize, fluttered beside my head. Scott found a treasure of a boulder and a wall, and we biked out to check them out together for the first time a couple of weeks ago. He also found the ideal swimming hole for us and bathing spot for Holly the dog. She is growing fast and able to keep up her pace on a fairly long bike ride, but alas, running the entire distance to the climbing wall is not within her limits of endurance yet. I brought her home in my backpack on her first attempt this week. She is such a sweet and patient companion that it is difficult to remember why I liked cats so much!