Belize - 5. Late Students and Dangerous Books

Every conference has its emerging themes and this one has been about the increasingly difficult task of getting students into school early. In remote locations in Belize, preschools are not available, or if they are, many of the teachers have little or no formal education in teaching and learning according to the Minister of Education. The government has been preparing an ‘early childhood education policy’ for the past decade, and hopes to increase the level of teacher education to at least an ‘associate degree’ for 50% of its early and primary teachers by 2015. Preschool, the Ministry has found, results in children staying in school longer. It raises the national literacy level. Early childhood education (ECE) and all-day kindergarten is a Worldwide trend now.

Yet in Belize, some preschools have unsafe facilities, no fences by highways, a ten foot drop off a porch, or toilet facilities located in a backyard, but cost little: $5/month per child. Others, have highly qualified teachers and model facilities, such as the ‘A to Z Learning Play School’, complete with a literacy and numeracy curriculum and assessment, field trips, and parental involvement, but the monthly cost is as much as $280/month per child. As in many parts of the world, your beginning in life is determined by your income gulf.

Secondary school also costs money.

Parents pay anywhere from $2,000 and up per year for a child to attend school past grade 7. Some students receive scholarships to go; others drop out to work.

Education is a highly valued, and expensive, commodity in Belize. Book stores on the college and university campuses had armed guards with machine guns. book store, they were fully visible. This was a surprise. I asked if I could take the guard’s photo.

 There are not even armed guards at the liquor stores, or the international markets, or even noticeable at the casino. But at the

He said, “yes”.

“Do you work every day?”

“Yes.”

“Is it because there is a lot of theft?”

“No.”

“Is there a lot of violence here?”

“No.”

And that was the end of the conversation. Words are dangerous. The books sold are carefully selected. Texts chosen and approved in advance. And yet, those words require armed guards, machine guns. We complain about the increasing commercialization of thought, but the next time you purchase a book online at Chapter’s, or pick up a selection walking by a book store, think of the guns that guard those words in Belize.

This is the day that I leave my clean hotel writing desk

and say goodbye to the uncomfortable duality of pools and palms: poverty and power.

May the gulf, one day, be bridged. 

Belize - 4. Natural Wonders: Use what you've got

It’s a new year – time to take it back to the essentials and begin again.

The Mayan calendar ended last Winter solstice (December, 2012), so it is only appropriate at this new moon that we travel through one of the best examples of the Mayan architecture today: Altun Ha, just beyond Ladyville in Belize province.

Altun Ha, the sun god, is unique because it is not just a temple or a couple of monuments, which like standing stones in the UK are quite common, but an entire Mayan city preserved and studied by anthropologists and architects. The temples, sacrificial mounds and burial grounds, water and sewage system, houses, meeting spaces have been left completely in tact. anything we build today will last that long? Most products today barely have a one-year warranty, let alone 4,000.

Any artifacts found at the site, including the World’s largest jade pendant, are stored in the national museum. What’s remarkable about Altun Ha is how much sheer knowledge and scholarship this civilization had produced 4,000 years before us! The Mayans were known for mathematics, astronomy and architecture. They had a very accurate working calendar, Pythagoras theorem (before Pythagoras), and architecture and building designs that are still modeled today. The very bricks used to erect temples and monuments are the same shape and style we are using in our own houses in 2014. I wonder if mine will still be here 4,000 years from now? How many of us can say that?

And climbing the temples is such a pleasure – the stone staircases, sculptures of Altun Ha, and the views!

Stunning. Every square angle perfectly aligned with the movements of the sun and our day.

It is here, also, that the ‘bush men’ (as they describe themselves) sell their wares, in the very same place and row where the common people would have lived all those millennia ago. They use what they’ve got to make a living and provide food and drink to tourists coming through: coconut milk, bananas and plantain, sweet sugarcane to chew on while you are climbing.

There are even sculptors which carve and design bowls and birds out of the shells.

They all trust the local land to provide the organic gifts of today.

So on this dawn of a new year, give thanks for what is around you. Use what you’ve got! Who knows? In 6,014, someone may be studying your land and home and wondering about you.