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.

Belize - 3. How to tell if your hotel room is just TOO dirty

I travel for work, and am usually away at least once a week at some hotel somewhere. Most of the time, I don’t worry about a mark on the wall here, or a thinning carpet, or a bathroom that looks like it stepped out of your Gran’s 1970s re-make. A hotel room can be worn down, and fringing along the edges, and that’s fine with me as long as it’s clean.

My husband’s grandmother use to get into a hotel and whip back the covers to see if they were smooth and ironed. This was her fail-safe ‘clean’ test. I am sure that we all have pet peeves when it comes to a cleanliness standard. I have friends that are paranoid about bed bugs. Never seen one myself. Ever.

I once stayed in a hotel in Chicago where the carpet by the door had been ripped out in the shape of a body, and the door had a huge dent in it that had been covered with steel bars. Not sure what happened there. But I stayed, and it was fine for the price.

I have also stayed in a motel room in Niagara Falls where they charged extra for a second pillow. There, I woke up to a man vomiting outside of my door. Nice. Those are the low points. My minimum bar of [un]acceptable.

And so, having arrived in Central America, my expectations were already low, but how low can they go before you just can’t live with it anymore? Sure, at the Chateau Caribbean the carpet is falling away in threads, and the walls, judging from their marks and exposed studs haven’t been painted in awhile. The air conditioner didn’t work and the windows were wide open to the street traffic. Still, not worried.

Upon arrival, there was even a small lizard - a ‘makalah’ (“MA-Kah-Lah”) the locals call them in creole- that greeted me on the wall as I entered. Even makalahs don’t concern me. Nope. Not worried about it jumping on my face or anything in the middle of the night. After all, at home we have the odd mosquitos, spiders and flies coming and going, don’t we? And European travellers find those offensive.

No, I was completely content until I woke up last night to go to the toilet, and found two three-inch cockroaches running across my bed. To give me credit, I didn’t scream (although I wanted to). I didn’t even pack my bags right then and there. The one I chased down and smushed flat with the telephone book.

It took five tries, but then these are the creatures predicted to survive a nuclear holocaust after all. The other got away. And I spent the rest of the night with the lights on worried he was going to bring all of his friends back. When dawn finally surfaced out of my nightmare, I said, “Okay, this IS the limit.”

And I packed my bags, took the dead roach to the front desk, and left.

Belize - 2. Finding Homes for Children

If you are a child and become a ‘ward of the state’ in Belize, then instead of being placed in a foster home, you would likely be placed in a home like ‘Liberty’ in Ladyville, Belize (if you’re lucky).

Liberty Children’s Home is a privately-run, donor-sustained residence and school for children without parents. It is located in ‘Ladyville’, an area close to the airport, former area for the bawdy houses, or ‘ladies of the night’ for visiting merchants and sailors. 

Years ago, a large parcel of land was purchased and sustainable buildings erected for the students. There are 40 students at Liberty, and they live as one large family. Both the director and principal live on site with their families, and there are a rotating group of visiting volunteers that work in the school house, or at maintaining the water, septic, gardens, or other jobs that Liberty needs help with on an annual basis. 

Liberty is really a model institution. The residences and buildings are designed in cylinder fashion to withstand hurricanes, and the ceilings are tall to draw the warm air up, and keep the cool air cross-breezes circulating at the living level. There is a grey-water filtration system run by gravity and the sun, and a working garden, greenhouse, and hens supplying the kitchen with food.

There’s even a pet fawn named, ‘Sweetie’ always looking for a handout from Mrs. Tillett the principal.

I was wondering if the lessons on display in the school house – everything from the parts of the country to its shield and even a copy of Hamlet – were there for show, or if the students actually learned the symbolic parts of their history. 

But, sure enough, when I asked a small girl walking by if she could explain the shield to me, she said,

“yes, there is the ship representing people coming to Belize, and the ax and battering ram represent the war with the Spanish who wanted to take over the country. We beat them by surprising them while they slept! Now slaves aren’t forced to mill wood.” Wow. Good enough for me.

Liberty receives an annual income of about $4,000 from the state, and the other 98% of its expenses are raised through fundraising (T-shirts, micro-enterprises, grants) and donations. The director works hard to keep Liberty in the news and to communicate its needs to its network of donors. It is active, well known and well equipped.

Even Radisson hotels have a 50-50 donation policy for Liberty. If you donate any amount of money to Liberty, the Radisson will match it.

There are other state-run children’s homes in Belize which aren’t so well off. They are funded entirely by the state, with no donations, and are often in large cities rather than the country, so the available space to grow one’s own food, for example, is non-existent. If you don’t think just one active person can make a difference, then think of Liberty.