Belize, Swimming with Sharks

6/20/01

Hello everyone,

I’m writing to you from Caye Caulker, an island off the barrier reef in Belize: baby blue waters, palm trees, rastas, and international hangout galore. Today I snorkeled off the reef with neon-pokadotted puffer fish, plankton eating sharks, and schools of stingrays floating two feet beneath me. It was great!

We had planned to go to a language school in Guatemala after this trip to Belize, but now I’m not sure. When we stepped off the plane in Guatemala, it seemed like there was something screwed up about Guatemala. The customs area had a combination of traditional Guatemalan folk music and policeman carrying machine guns with one hand, and holding the leash of a drug-sniffing dog in the other.

We took a taxi to get to a bus that would take us on an all night ride to Belize. There were men outside the bus station with machine guns. We needed to exchange money and asked the bus station attendant if it was safe to walk down the street one block to get money, and he said, “maybe.” Hmm. We had no choice. We walked to a total of eleven banks to find someone who would exchange money. Each bank came with its machine-gun-toting guard.

I had no idea Guatemala was this bad. We got some money, got on the bus, and headed towards Belize. The bus stopped four times in the middle of the night, and each time, a guard got on and looked at our passports.

We arrived here in the safe haven of Belize only to find out that Guatemala was far more dangerous than we knew. There was a high security prison-break two weeks ago in Guatemala. Thirty of the prisoners were captured, five were shot, and fifty remain at large. The police are out in full force trying to find the prisoners. To make matters worse, there was recently a tourist rape/robbery that happened in the ruins of Tikal in the last month.

Sarah, Michelle, and I had to agree what to do for the rest of our vacation with this newfound info. My friend Sarah is one of the few people I know that is more stubborn than a Dulin. She insists on going to Tikal even though it’s so sketchy that some tours to the area have been cancelled. I, like Sarah, am as stubborn as they make 'em and am thinking of changing my plans and traveling to Honduras to see a friend in Peace Corps. I want to play it as safe as possible.

Agreeing on travel plans can be a pain, and at this moment I’d rather be home. That’s traveling for you.

I’ll write soon, Laura

Guatemala, Chased by Monkeys but not Guerillas

6/25/01

Sorry for the scare everyone,

I’m in Flores, Guatemala, and it feels pretty safe. Looking back on my last email I think that I experienced some type of culture shock. It was a bad combination of having money troubles, seeing too many men with machine guns, and hearing too many horror stories from travelers: the story of the fifty prisoners on the loose, the tourists that were raped and tortured in Tikal, the robberies at gunpoint, and then the final topper, the two cars full of Mennonites that were gunned down.

I asked a travel agent about safety in Guatemala and he responded by saying that sometimes things happen in Latin America, but usually you are safe. I had become accustomed to Costa Rica where the crime rate is low, and there’s no military. I was shocked to see the other side of Latin America.

After enduring a meeting as painful and difficult as a Middle Eastern peace talk, Sarah and I agreed on a compromise that would allow us to remain traveling together. I am now traveling with Sarah and Michelle along La Ruta Maya, which should be remained La Ruta Gringo. La Ruta Maya stretches from the Northern Guatemalan Region of Pitan, down to the ruins of Copan in Honduras. The towns near the Mayan ruins have lots of gringos and gringo luxuries such as email, nice restaurants, and travel connections. These towns are fairly safe.

The Tikal ruins have the worst reputation for guerilla attacks on tourists, specifically Americans. Tikal is in a remote jungle setting with only one road leading in and out, and usually only tourists visit Tikal. The guerillas that are hiding out in this region stop tourist buses as they pass through, lecture, and rob “American Imperialists,” and sometimes rape women. Visiting Tikal is a gamble. Sarah and Michelle took a tour to Tikal today, and I decided to stay in the cozy gringo town of Flores to wait for them.

Flores is a tiny pueblo located on an island in the middle of Lake Pitan Itza. There are quaint cobblestone streets that meander through brightly painted blue, yellow, and red buildings. All streets come together on a hill in the center of the town where a white peeling Catholic Church and a town square rise above town. From the square you can see people paddling around Lake Pitan Itza in dugout canoes that look like they were hand carved from the rainforest around them. The calm water of the lake pushes open the dense tropical forest.

Today, instead of visiting Tikal, I decided to take a boat across the lake to a biological reserve. We skimmed over a lake lit by the soft morning sun and made our way to the adjacent shore. The guide edged the boat ashore and then told me in Spanish that we were at the reserve, and that he would wait in the boat as I went alone into the forest to see Jaguars, monkeys, Peccaries, parrots, and crocodiles. After seeing my look of confusion he explained that the animals were all in cages. I asked him once more, “usted espera aqui, claro? “ (You wait here, right?) and he nodded yes.

I ducked into the jungle and followed the depressing path of caged animals. Guatemala doesn’t quite understand the concept of eco-tourism yet. The last thing that you want to do is travel thousands of miles to see the last of the worlds most exotic wild animals trapped in a cage in the jungle swimming in their own urine and feces. I passed by the caged wild pigs, the caged and cramped crocodile, the exuberant irritated monkeys, and turned around before visiting the Jaguar. I came back to the shore and found my guide sleeping in the boat. He was sleeping in a weird position, lying on his belly with his leg lying over the side. To my dramatic imagination, it kind of looked like he’d been shot, and fell halfway out of the boat. However, he woke up and prepared to take me to the last bio-reserve site.
He cruised the boat over to a tiny island, edged it ashore, and once again told me that I could get out and see the animals on the island. “Oh God, I thought, not this again.”

I stepped off the boat and wandered onto the tiny island. I jumped up into the air when a Scarlet Macaw squawked from a branch behind my head. As I looked around, I noticed things were a bit different on the island. The wild pigs were loose and roaming the island. Hmm…I thought…these things have some nasty teeth, but I’m not going to worry about it. I’m sure they must be fine. Then I swiveled around to see a monkey that was screaming as it looked up at me. The monkey started coming at me, and I was shooing it away with my hat. While shooing the monkey away, I could see lots of monkeys all around the island. I freaked out and started running for the boat. There were five monkeys running after me. I hurled myself from the shore to the boat where the guide was chuckling. The monkeys jumped up onto the boat in pursuit as I hid behind the guide saying, “no me gusto loss moons.” (I don’t like the monkeys.) Laughing, he told me that the monkeys are just friendly. He shooed the monkeys off the boat and we headed back to the little island of Flores.

Truly, everyday is an adventure here.
Next stop Copan, Laura

Living in the Rainforest, Trip to Guatemala

6/20/01

Hello from a lost lamb in a foreign land.

Time to tell the last part of my Guatemalan trip before it’s washed away like the amoebas that I carried home in my stomach. After being chased by monkeys I went back to the island town of Flores and met up with Sarah and Michelle. Their trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal only became frightening when a Mayan man read their palms and declared that they had a short life ahead of them. The man invited them into the secret society of the Maya only to find out that Sarah and Michelle already know many things about the religion. He didn’t understand how they could already know insider information about the religion, and he had no idea that some people in the US have been practicing the Mayan religion-oddities of the information age.

Michelle and I decided to head for Honduras to find my friend Laura who is working for Peace Corps, and fearless Sarah chose to strike out on her own. Michelle and I took a miserable all night bus trip back to Guatemala City and then failed to find a bus to Honduras. Wanting to get out of Guatemala City as fast as possible, we caught a bus towards Lake Atitlan, a lake in the Guatemala Highlands. I planned to spend a week at a Spanish school located along the lake.

While climbing towards Lake Atitlan a new world emerged. We wound around steep hillsides where every bit of land was cultivated, forming a hand-sewn quilt of crops: patches of corn, stitches of onion, beans, and tomato. The indigenous people could be seen farming in their traditional clothes of reds, yellows, green, and blues. The men with their white cowboy hats and the women dressed in their long skirts. The indigenous Guatemalans appear to be a very hardworking people with a pattern of their own that they fight to preserve…resisting assimilation…resisting becoming one fallow field, one color, one language. I saw an old man who smiled with wrinkles under his eyes. He wore red and green striped pants, a bright multi-colored shirt, and a white cowboy hat. He walked past me along a cobblestone street with a thick bound bundle of long white lilies and orange gladiolas draped over his shoulder. I also saw and eighty-year-old man stooped over and walking forward with three twenty pound rocks on his back. With his ant-like strength and endurance, he didn’t seem to notice the weight.

I stayed in San Pedro, a little village next to Lake Atitlan, for a week and attended language school. The lake fills an enormous caldera and is surrounded by three volcanic peaks. It is life for the people. Early in the morning and in the afternoons, the villagers can be seen bathing and washing their clothes along the lakeshore. Water is pumped form the lake to irrigate the terraced lakeside gardens of chive, corn, beans, and Santo lilies. Come mid-afternoon, Michelle and I would take a footpath through the towering corn and onto the lake where we would bathe aside the locals.

We stayed with a Guatemalan family of eighteen while attending language school. The abuela of the house had the energy of a young filly and ran around taking care of four grandchildren during the day, cooking for us, and running a small restaurant. The unfortunate part of our home stay was the toilet, which was something you’d expect to find in a third world prison. This might have been tolerable had Montezuma not taken serious revenge. While suffering from Montezuma, I also came down with a fever. When I went to the pharmacy to get medicine for my fever, I could see a mix of indigenous and western culture. The pharmacy contained aspirins and western medicines on one wall as well as jars of herbs lining another wall. I asked the attendant if she had any herbal remedy for a fever. She disappeared from the store and came back with a bowel of freshly cut assorted herbs. She offered to boil them down to make a tea that would heal me. I accepted, she left again, and then came back 10 minutes later with a hot tea made from the herbs.

My other favorite cultural interest came when I was at a restaurant and asked for a doggy bag. The woman wrapped my leftovers in a palm leaf.

At my language school my private teacher, Tosho, set me straight on the main points of Guatemalan history. This was very important because I had previously been getting my information from a ten-year old guidebook and the guidebook was written while Guatemala was still having a civil war. No wonder I was so scared. He explained that during the civil war the guerrillas fought for the rights of the indigenous people who make up seventy percent of the countries population. They were fighting for equal rights to health care, education, and the right to speak their language, and preserve their culture. According to Tosho it was a dark time with no future, but now, he says, “ A future is possible.” The indigenous are now allowed to preserve their culture and have better access to education and health care. However, there is terrible corruption in the government and he believes that it’s getting worse. He explained how the people work so very hard for so little money and this leads to banditos and corruption. He doesn’t excuse it, but explained part of the reason why it exists.

I met a Swiss man who had a great bandito story. He and his friend had decided to hike up a volcano without a guide. They tell tourists not to hike in Guatemala without a guide, because the chances are high that you’ll be robbed. He said that at the top of the mountain two men jumped out of the bushes with masks on. One had a machete and the other had a gun. The banditos robbed them of everything except for bus fair back to town.

A real danger is riding the funky chicken buses. Guatemalans sometimes cross themselves before entering the buses. The macho driver barrels down the road trying to pass as often as possible. The man in the cockpit assists the driver by leaning out of the open door of the bus and trying to peer around the upcoming corner to see if the bus will hit oncoming traffic. Sometimes the assistant miscalculates and while rounding a corner on two wheels, the bus suddenly swerves back to its side of the road, barely missing oncoming traffic.

The last thing that I can say about Guatemala is that it will make a shop-aholic out of any tight-pursed penny pincher. On Sundays the artisans come down out of the hills carrying their goods and sell them in street markets. Incense wafts through the air of the market. Fresh vegetables, herbs, and flowers are interlaced between indigenous clothing and crafts. Most things are handmade and have the bright colors and intricate designs of the indigenous people. For better or worse, everything is astoundingly cheap. Sarah, Michelle, and I spent every last penny we had. I even missed my bus to the airport because I had to run back and get one more thing from the market. Guatemala was not the most comfortable country to travel in, but I’ve been left with rich memories and some great handmade blankets. Hope all is well in the US of A,
Laura

Living in the Rainforest, Looking Down Upon the Rainforest on a Full Moon

5/05/08

Sarah, a fellow volunteer teacher, and I loved to head out from the school and take long walks in the rainforest.

One evening, during a full moon, Sarah and I put on our headlamps and set off on a night journey. We met on the road and walked down the road with the moon casting a grey-blueish shadow and dimly lighting our way. The full moon cast a silver-blue hue over the tall rainforest trees. You could hear, and almost feel the restlessness that the moon was creating amongst the colonies of insects, animals, and plants of the rainforest. You felt yourself tucked inside its world amongst butterflies curled under leaves, Toucans perched on branches, snakes keeping warm under fallen foliage, alligators lying still in a pond with only their nostrils and eyes peering up at the moon. You weren’t alone in the rainforest-especially on a moonlit night.

As Sarah and I walked down the road in the quiet of the night, few cars passed. We didn’t make our usual stop at the local karaoke tavern, but dept on down the paved small road. This road was deceptive. One minute you felt comfortable walking down it and waving to the country folk in their simple homes, and the next, a Dole Banana truck would pass by you at 80 miles and hour coming so close to you that you felt the breeze it left in its wake. In the eight months that I lived in Sarapiqui, one drunk and two children were hit and killed.

After walking about twenty minutes in the dark, we spotted a dirt road off to the left that led past a hovel of tin roof shacks where illegal Nicaraguan immigrants lived. One time I visited an 8th grade student of mine who lived in one of the shacks. I was taken aback. It’s one thing to see poverty from afar, and have no real connection to it, but another thing to see a child that you know living with so little. When I stepped inside her house to meet her parents, they were sitting on chairs atop a dirt floor. In a separate section of the house were two beds atop the packed dirt floor, one for four children, and another for the parents. They also had a TV blaring in the shack. I watched them watching the TV, and tried to imagine what it must be like to do back-straining work all day, carrying and harvesting one hundred pound bags of bananas and then coming home at night and watching the TV- peering into a world of fancy cars, and big, comfortable houses.

We kept following the dirt road that wound around a hill. We turned off our headlamps because the dim light of the moon was enough to light our path. We reached the top of the hill, which was flat and littered with an old car, a fridge lying on its back with the door flung open, and the foundation of an old house that used to have a phenomenal view. From the top of the hill we could see the rainforest canopy below, the Rio Sarapiqui that snaked through it, the vast, open expanses of cut forest turned into cattle pasture, the points of light from the distant houses in remote regions, the rain forested mountain ridge to the south, and the full moon lighting it all in a phosphorescent glow.

Sarah and I didn’t speak for a time as we stood in awe of the beauty below and above us. The silence was finally broken by the sound of a few local kids coming up the road. They were kids that we knew from our after school program. One boy jumped in the old fridge and pretended that it was a boat that he was rowing out to sea in. Seeing that made me smile, and gave me hope that as long as a child had imagination, was surrounded by the purity of nature, had some rice and beans to eat, and a rusted tin roof overhead, life could be good, and magic could be made by a child playing in a pile of junk on a moonlit hill.

Living in the Rainforest, Trying to Teach English

3/01-8/01

Hello friends and family,

Ever since I arrived here, I’ve wanted to talk about what it is that I do for work here in Costa Rica. However, it has taken me a long time to write about this, because I’m never quite sure what we four gringa volunteers are doing here in rural Costa Rica. I think we’re here to help the impoverished people of this rural Costa Rican community in whatever way we can. My main job here is to teach English as a Second Language. I teach first through six grade in the public schools, private lessons in our school, and one adult ESL class. I also teach music and environmental education. I probably put in seventy-hour weeks, but a fair amount of those seventy hours are spent lying in a hammock looking at the Iguanas in a nearby tree and talking to Sarah, the other volunteer from England.

Sarah and I are the new English teachers. We walk to the public school after regular school hours and teach the kids English.

Our first day teaching Sarah and I walked to the school and admitted to one another that we had no idea how to teach children, and furthermore weren’t too sure that we even liked them. We entered the classrooms, which are open-air rooms with bars on the windows. The rooms have cement floors, and well-used wooden desks, but lack posters, computers, or anything beyond the essentials. As Sarah and I entered the classroom, most of the students left. The students aren’t required to go to the English classes that we offer. I didn’t take this personally because how many children would choose learning English over playing with their buddies after school? I wouldn’t have either if I were them.

Later…….

Over the course of about 8 months there were many frustrations and a few rewarding moments teaching the kids.

Third grade has been my greatest triumph and greatest defeat. For the first three weeks they came to my class, but they didn’t learn a thing, and I couldn’t control them. On the third or fourth week I nearly gave up on trying to teach them. However, right before one of my classes, I came up with a system for controlling the class. The system was that if they behaved and worked they would receive a point, and after they received four points, we would spend the class going for a walk in the rainforest. I went to class, told them the new system, and a miracle occurred. Suddenly the classroom was quiet, the desks were lined up in a straight line, notebooks and pens appeared before me, and glory be- I had the power.

For over a month I was able to teach them ESL through nature. They were learning things like, “the fish swims in the river.” I would take them on walks in the rainforest with a Costa Rican guide, and the guide would teach them about conservation. Many of the children had never been on walks in the forest. The parents consider it a dangerous, forebidden place. During one walk a spirited nine year old, Alba, looked up and said in Spanish that she never wanted to cut a tree down again. She had learned some conservation fundamentals.

Unfortunately, the students’ motivation eventually dwindled. One day I came to class and they looked up at me and said, “No Vamos a Ingles,” (We’re not going to English.) At this moment I lost all motivation for being here and asked myself, “why bother?” Why were we here trying to teach these kids something they didn’t want to learn and with no support from the school or parents. However, I think teaching must be what it’s like to be a parent; no matter how bad it gets, you’re still morally obligated to continue.

The next day I went back to teach my third graders, and their attitudes were awful again. I told one of them that if he didn’t stop the horseplay, he’d have to leave immediately. The boy looked at me and yelled, “Nunca, Nunca voy a recibir Ingles,” (I’m never, never going to receive English.) When he left I tried to resume with class. Then, I noticed that rocks were being thrown through the window into my class. I looked out the window and saw the student crouched in the forest. I was so pissed off. I told my good students to stay put and I ran to the director of the school ranting in broken Spanish about what the kid was doing. He looked at me and said that he didn’t understand what I was saying. I made an exasperated noise and he followed me as I pointed to where the boy was hiding in the forest. I tried to continue teaching as I saw out of the corner of my eye that the director was chasing the boy through the forest.

After this incident we decided to have a meeting with the director to figure out a way of getting better support from the community and the school, or to consider the option of not teaching the kids after school. After the meeting, we decided to send a note home to the parents asking them if they want their child to receive English and telling them that if they do, they will need to reinforce attendance. This caused a breakthrough. Many of the troublemaking kids never came back, and a new batch of well-behaved, motivated kids started coming. They were really sweet. One little girl told me that she hadn’t been coming before because all the bad kids were in the class. Evidently my prior batch of boys consisted mainly of the kids that liked to get into trouble after school. They used the English class as an excuse not to come right home after school and have more time to play around before going home.

All in all, this job is rewarding but tough. It’s been hard to stick to it lately. Often times I’ll be having a hard day and just want to pack up my bags and leave, then one sweet kid will look up at me with big brown eyes and hand me a Guava or a flower that he or she picked for me. Then I think that maybe I can stay for just a little longer.

Hope everyone is having a great summer.
Laura

Trip photos of Granada, Nicaragua with Leah

10/01/05