Jungle Chess, Staph Infection and a Short Trip to Punta Gorda A few weeks ago I left Belize City full of idealism for a chess camp at a rustic jungle lodge. After meeting half the campers at the bus station in Belize, we took an “express” to Belmopan to meet the other half of the campers who had risen at 3 in the morning in Corozal District up north in order to meet us in Belmopan by 10:15. In Belmopan, I had enough time between buses to visit my favorite mestizo food stall in the market. During training, when I first started frequenting her establishment, the owner and cook wore a huge cast on her left arm so, naturally, I dubbed her Cast Lady—completely lacking in imagination, I realize. This is especially true considering there are a few more outstanding qualities about Cast Lady. First of all, she makes my favorite salbutes in Belize and salbutes are my favorite thing to eat on the street here. Salbutes are small fried corn tortillas about four inches across topped with shredded, spiced chicken, salsa, cabbage and sometimes some cilantro—delicious. This along with the coffee or horchata she plies me with depending on the time of day and I’m a happy man. Cast Lady’s got the golden touch with these things. About 55 years old, she wears a long colorful skirt, a white puffy shirt a la Seinfeld, black hair braided, red lipstick, has several gold teeth in her smile and, most importantly, a maniacal gleam in her eye. She doesn’t speak English and yo no habla espagnol pero when she steps up and puts her eye to mine, smiles her gleeful gold-toothed smile…I’m pretty sure I see just a handful of marbles banging around in there. Put it this way, I love this lady but I have a feeling she finds violent movies hilarious. But I was on my way to jungle chess camp…We met the Corozal campers, the bus from the lodge, a short rig with canvas windows rolled up, met us all and we drove the forty minutes or so south on the Hummingbird Hwy. to our jungle digs. The Hummingbird Hwy. is considered the prettiest road in Belize, with rain-drenched mountains on either side, an orange plantation now and again, the road crosses and recrosses a clear-running river. We arrived, 22 kids around the age of 11 and numerous adults, and after lunch immediately began training in chess—and during the course of the week, I would learn as much about chess as many of the kids there. The training and eating area was on the third floor, the top storey, of a large thatched building while the bunk rooms were on the second and first floors. I roomed with four kids and my co-coach, Edgar, a wilderness guide/chess coach for the lodge. These particular chess camps are the work of a Russian woman who is married to the owner of the lodge; she pronounces the word “pawn” as “pone.” I don’t think there’s anyone in Belize working as hard to give Belizean youth what I call “total education” (after the Dutch-style of football: “total football”). In days that ran from a quarter to six in the morning to ten at night, the kids only played chess about 30% of their time. We started early with mandatory, timed runs and calisthenics we recorded to measure improvement and effort. After quick showers, it was chess instruction including puzzles, exercises and individual coaching. All the kids had to read a book while they were there, give a short oral report on it (in the form of a interview on a talk-show); there was geography study and a geography bee; all the kids had to take part in afternoon sports, rain or shine. Many of the kids swam for the first time in their lives, and none of them had ever been swimming in a jungle river—they were in heaven. As for me, I swung between tenderness for these sweet kids and bouts of hair-pulling (my own hair). But let’s back up a minute, because I missed a turn in the story right between afternoon sports rain or shine and jungle swimming, the turn that concerns the origin of my staph infection. Football on a small field in the jungle, a quarter of the field under water up to children’s knees: we were covered in mud. I took countless spills over the days of football but there were a couple in there for me, and I think for everybody, that had me wondering if I was going to be able to get back to my feet unassisted. You might try to accelerate from a standstill and find yourself, as if in a cartoon, churning your feet but not moving for a moment—just before you fell flat on your face. And the opposite was also true: trying to stop mid-sprint: bad idea. I was really talented at that one, flying into the air, flat onto my back, head smacking the ground and everyone having another good laugh. So far, these crazy football games are some of my favorite memories of Belize: kids and adults-become-kids in a wild melee, a laughing pile of people suddenly on top of one another in the mud. Somewhere in the fun and games, or maybe after, cleaning up in the swollen river, one of my many, many bug bites picked up a little infection that soon had my foot swollen and the rest of me taken with fever-chills, a vicious headache and other more graphic ills. Long story short, Peace Corps medical folks took quick care of me, had me back on Cipro and feeling better so fast that I have to wonder what the heck is in Cipro, anyway? Now that the black and grayness (rather than the usual redness of infection) of my foot is going away, the skin is peeling off in such sheets that…well, you get the picture. Soon as I got better, I was off to the southern town of Punta Gorda for a 30th birthday party. The entire trip took about eight hours from Belize City because you have to go inland to Belmopan and change buses before you go south. The bus trip south took about six hours and the bus was so cold that everyone on it was pulling every piece of clothing they had out of their bags and piling it on top of them. The exterior of the bus was actually streaming with condensation from the temperature differential but when I asked the conductor and driver if they could turn down the AC a little they just laughed at me. P.G., as it’s known, turned out to be a nice little town on a jungly coast. Because it’s so far from Belmopan and Belize City, the Peace Corps folks who live there and in the surrounding Toledo District tend to be a group unto themselves. When my friends and I from the north arrived mid-birthday bash there were forty or so people enjoying themselves playing Cornhole and ladling rum and juice concentrate (called “squash” here) from buckets on the floor. Peace Corps folk tend not to have the money for anything more fancy—beer is out of the question on the scale of a party—and it all ends up the same anyway. Later that evening, a couple friends of mine got robbed at the point of a filigreed letter opener—which my buddy Dan was able to describe in great detail although he couldn’t recall anything about the robber’s appearance. The next day, I spent some time caring for a buddy who was laid up in town with just a slew of oozing staph infections on his calves. He lives in a village and village people tend to get a lot of these things since they are under constant attack by bugs. While here I am today in my air-conditioned office about to load this onto the internet—if a thunderstorm hadn’t just knocked out the internet across Belize City.

Summer in the City Mid-Summer here in Belize City, the sun has been gaining in force, percolating the clogged canals, drainage ditches, the marshes on either side of my house and all other random stagnant water. The marshes belch gas and breed mosquitoes but they are also home to frogs which I love to hear in the evening as I go to sleep or settle down on the couch as I am right now. Though the weather’s been breezy lately, tonight it’s fairly still so…yes, I’m sitting here sweating. Not a whole lot on going on with school being out. Moving into and outfitting my apartment kept me occupied for a time but I am now settled in and have a fairly lax schedule. Much of my schedule is built around avoiding too much navel gazing (something some of you may know I excel at), so I do keep myself busy even if it is just busy-work for now. I’ve been working on building a pergola over the garden which I will eventually use to shade the plants because the sun will fry an unprotected tomato plant in a day or two here. It’s been interesting, to put it nicely, trying to get a building project going with no tools and no transportation. The other day I needed to buy a shovel which meant a trip of almost two hours by bus and by foot—I like to think I got some street-cred around here as walked through the city with a shovel albeit a shiny, new one. There have been many stops and starts to the project but I think I can see my way through to the mid-way point without too much trouble at this point.* The garden itself is a terror; turn your back on it for a few days and you’ll be looking at a jungle complete with fire ants, iguanas, land crabs and a shocking, tenacious tangle of vegetation. Luckily for me, the idea behind the garden is to involve the students I work with in its upkeep. Not only will it be good for the students to get outside and get dirty but I think it’s good for them to nurture and maintain something healthy in their lives. I’m sure there will be students who disagree and think gardening isn’t doing them any good but since the buck stops with my program I have been given great power to persuade them just how good it is for them. I’ll also grab students who’ve been suspended and been given work details and put them to work in the garden. In the heat with the bugs…weeding is horrendous; a half hour of it and I’m begging for mercy. During the next couple weeks, I’ll be coaching at two chess camps: one up north on Corozal Bay and one in central Belize. It’s not that I’m a great chess player because I’m definitely not but there’s a big push in Belize to get kids playing chess so many chess camps and many teachers are needed to help kids learn the basics. All over the world, studies have shown that kids who play chess frequently, no matter how skilled they are at the game, improve their existing math and reading scores and have fewer behavior problems. For those of you who have spent time playing chess, I’m sure you understand the truth of this from an anecdotal standpoint. Playing all of this chess these days, I often find myself reflecting on my chess heydays in Kingston, Jamaica…As my folks will remember, my teachers frequently didn’t show up to class so I spent many hours in the library with a Jamaican kid and an Israeli kid playing chess. I’ve played chess only here and there since then but that year of daily chess still comes out in my play today— yet, it’s not clear that the many corollary benefits alluded to above rubbed off on me. Thus far life here is a lot like life everywhere else: sleeping, eating, reading and working take up most of it. Thanks for reading, perhaps I’ll have something more exciting to write about next time. *I was wrong about this.**The first picture is my tropical breakfast; the second is of my kitchen, for those who are interested in imagining my day to day life ; the third, is from the kitchen window of the dogs next door who pretty much live on the roof .***Still haven't figured out how to format pictures and text...really starting to chap my ---.

Wow, so it’s been some time since I wrote a blog entry…I like to think I’ve got more than a few legitimate excuses (such as the mosquitoes gnawing at my legs and feet) but, really, I’ve had more than a few spare moments in which to write. Those moments, however, might have been the hour before going to bed or at HQ in Belmopan which usually turns into a long social call so no one gets much of anything done there in the volunteer lounge. Seriously, what is biting me under this desk? “What is biting me?” is a common expression of mine these days although, I admit, there’s almost always an F-bomb in there somewhere and probably an exclamation point.

So I’m writing you all from Belize City…and will begin with a couple of statistics concerning this freewheelin’, gritty Caribbean town. The Economist magazine pocketbook recently named Belize City the murder capital of the world and it’s the sixth most likely city in the world for you to die of a gunshot wound. Now, I was aware of these stats awhile back: just a few days ago we had to watch some Discovery Channel-type show with a manly British host flying around Belize in a chopper marveling at the violence but I said to myself, “I’ve been to violent places lots of times.” Well, I’ve spent one night here and the first thing I heard from my new host family this morning as I was leaving to go to my first day of work was, “A teacher from your school was shot and killed last night.” My first day was nothing like I expected.

My office is in the counselor’s office and I sat at my desk most of the day talking with kids I’d never met while they wept over the death of their teacher. Didn’t do anything that was on my schedule and I think, understandably, the faculty pretty much forgot I was there. I’ll report more later on my job but will say now that I’m working as a sort of counselor in a high school that is considered the best in Belize. My job is an amorphous one and supposedly, technically, I am working seven days a week. The Peace Corps is full of vaguely defined positions and hazy goals--something the PC clearly keeps in mind when choosing among their volunteer applicants. If you can’t roll with it, if you can’t show up somewhere thinking you were supposed to do one thing and then be told you are say, going to run a radio station with no training for two years (as happened to a recent volunteer) or need to give an impromptu speech or class then the PC isn’t for you. No matter how much the PC communicates with the people they are sending you to MUCH is lost in translation.

For instance, two other volunteers and me were going to work with a Salvation Army youth group for six weeks so we show up for our first day in the ramshackle building still decorated with dried out, beribboned palm fronds from Palm Sunday. We meet the boss man, Major So-and-So, and he asks us what instruments we play…When we gently say none of us play any instruments it doesn’t seem to faze him because he continues setting up the keyboard and drum set and microphone---and I don’t think I was the only one beginning to sweat as the place started to fill up with excited kids. The Major was going full-steam however, and we ended up having to lead some sort of singing and tambourine beating hymn---let’s just say it sounded like a nightmarish funhouse in there. The Major never heard what we said and never noticed our musical disabilities that night nor any other and we had to bale from the project. He had requested PCV’s months ago who played instruments and though he had been told that would not be possible months ago he never truly accepted the bad news.

Life outside of work (wait, I almost forgot I’m always working) has been good but really there isn’t a whole lot happening in that sector. If I’m not working I’m usually on a long bus ride or with my host family and you just can’t really be your whole self in any of those environments---somehow, it’s a pretty taxing lifestyle. As I sit and write this, I feel guilty that I’m not out in the living room with my host family (who are all really nice) even though they’re just watching. I CANNOT WAIT to rent my own place at the end of June and daydream about it almost every hour.

I have lucked out with both my host families however. Many volunteers have some tough, frequently gross, stories about their host family living situations while me, before I came to Belize City, I ended up living by myself in the vacation home of a Swiss couple--it was pretty sweet.

Here in Belize City I have a big room, big bed, etc, while one friend of mine sleeps in a hut, in a tiny room with six other women. I remain here in Belize City for ten days and then go back to Belmopan for one more week of meetings with the whole crew before we get sworn-in. We all go back to the hotel we stayed at our first week here and I am sincerely a little concerned about the excitement level among all of us---there’s a powder keg getting ready to blow, I swear. It’s not just the night of the swearing-in party, or the reception at the Ambassador’s later that night or the keg being donated to us at the hotel’s bar even later that night…I think the whole week is going to be, hmmm, Animal House?

OMG, I CAN”T WAIT TO BE MY WHOLE SELF!

PS The group picture is with the Ambassador at HQ (I was in the bathroom, go figure).

And the other picture is me with my first host Mom, Auntie Mar, on a hot day at the river.

As we walked off the plane in Belize City, we were greeted by deafening cheers and applause from the current volunteers and staff in the open-air viewing area. As we left customs one at a time, we walked out into a huge group of people waving signs, beating on pots, and giving us a generally raucous welcome. It was insanely heartwarming. And it was about that time that I started to sweat and I haven't stopped since--unless you count when I'm standing in an icy shower.

By the time the plane landed in Belize, all the new volunteers, all 38 of us, were pretty much best-friends-forever. Our first night in Belmopan, the capital, we partied with the current volunteers in an abandoned bar on the top floor of our hotel, the Garden City Inn. Because volunteers don't make much money and the alcohol:cost ratio skews more favorably toward local rum, we enjoyed our first tropical drinks. I did manage to slip in a couple of Belikins (the local PBR), however.

The next day was training, and the day after that, and the day after that...I won't go into much detail but we spent our days at Peace Corps HQ (I much bigger operation here in Belize than I thought it would be--it could pass for an Embassy) learning about Belizean culture, history, how the Peace Corps works, talks on development, safety, the security situation, etc. As I mentioned on my facebook page, I learned to get up and run very early in the morning. And despite what I'll relate later in this post, I'm pretty sure I'm healthier now than I have been in a long time. Early to bed, early to rise, regular dawn runs, lots of sweating, no snacking...this awesome tan I've got...

After our long training sessions, we were, thank god, left on our own to explore tiny Belmopan. There is a beltway of sorts that circles Belmopan called Ring Rd that is about 2.5 miles around. Scattered, sparsely, along this road is pretty much all the city has to offer (you can see some of it in the picture I took from the hotel). There are some great food vendors and some not so great--my friends Zach and Kaitlyn dug into a tamale with a chicken head and foot in it--but mainly the food is tasty. A couple weeks ago, maybe three I don't know, we all moved into our Community-Based Training sites. Our sites varied according to project (I'm in youth development, the others are healthy communities, education and business organization) and language. I was furious and then depressed to be put into Kriol training rather than Spanish but there's wasn't anything to be done about it. The other languages people are learning are Garifuna down south, and Maya dialects: Mopan, Queche and Yucetec.

I ended up in Georgeville, pop. 750, (pronounced Jaajvil), a Kriol village locally known as Zooville. I lucked out with my host family whose small spread is called the Rocky Mountain Ranch. I live up a big hill, somewhat isolated from neighbors, overlooking Belize and town. I have a pretty nice room and comfy bed and a fan, god bless it. My house-Dad used to be the village chairman, and the family is well-off. Their daugther, Angelique and adopted son Horace live here; both are adults and have jobs in Belmopan and Belize City. Auntie Mar (Maria), my house-Mom, is very sweet to me and is constantly trying to gauge my diet and how she can best get more food into me.

The food is a solid rice and beans and bread diet with some stewed chicken and plantain usually, and lots of hot sauce. I've had lots of other stuff to eat but I'll leave it at the staples. In town (meaning Belmopan) about a 40 minute bus ride away, I eat mestizo food--tacos, garnaches, sambutes (my favorite), etc. All volunteers travel to Belmopan every Friday for a day of training and togetherness so we usually go get some ice-cream and talk about who got bitten by what, who got chased by a duck, who was robbed and all the intra-group shush--which is the Kriol word for gossip we've all lovingly adopted.

Monday through Thursday, I'm with the three other people in my village along with our language trainer--I am the only male. The other half of youth development, the Spanish-training group, lives west of here near the Guatemalan border in the town of Succotz. Succotz sits on the pretty blue Mopan river across from Xunantunich, a collection of Mayan ruins. During the week, we go there and they come to Georgeville a couple times, and in the whole of youth development I am the only male (except for a married guy so he doesn't count). Women make up more and more of a majority of the entire Peace Corps.

My evenings, I walk up the hill home where there usually isn't anyone home. My dinner is on the table and I eat alone then lay in a hammock on the veranda for awhile and let the breeze cool me. We always have to be in business casual during training (five and half days a week) and there's no AC so by the time I get home my pants and shirt have been sticking to me since 8:30AM. I read and try to ignore the dogs, and farm animals making a racket right next to my window. Not to mention the immense beehive in the wall of my room--I spend part of every night wacking bees before they can aggregate into a swarm.

My mornings, as I mentioned, I frequently run the dirt road leading through the foothills into the Maya Mountains. There are lots and lots of birds and I see two toucans every morning, the same two parrots (bright green, with flouresecent pink circles on opened wings) and myriad others. Mornings here are foggy, and humid, and I quit wearing a shirt while running about a week and half ago--the Mennonites' modesty be damned. Which brings me to Mennonites....I love them. The other day while running, I drew abreast of this Mennonite in his homemade cart and horse and gave him a little wave. A few seconds later, as I was drawing ahead of him, I hear him making kissing and clicking noises loudly to his horse and all the sudden the race was on. I'll be modest and tell you that I won without really trying--but only because the road is so rough this guy would have shaken his cart apart if he really put his crop to his horse (?).

I visited a Mennonite colony last weekend called Lower Barton Creek. While wisiting this guy named, Henry Dyck (born in Chihuahua, first languages Low German and English), I asked what his daughter was picking under some bird-netting slung over a large bush and he said they were mulberries. So I started asking him if any colonies had ever tried raising silk worms, etc, and he said they had tried at a colony in Paraguay. I asked if anyone had ever had any success in making silk and Henry replied, asking: "Success...is that a type of cloth?" I swear, every time I hang out with Mennonites or Amish people I think to myself: 'I'm not going back this time. This is it, I'm staying."

So this has been an unusualy long post, as you will see over the next two years, and you may be wondering why all the sudden I have all this online time. Well, I was supposed to be visiting Yo Creek Village in Orange Walk District (all trainees are scattered all over the country for the weekend) but Thursday evening I couldn't sleep because my stomach cramps were so severe. So instead of a five hour bus ride on Friday, I decided to come home to Jaajvil and be near a bathroom. And now here I sit on....Cipro.