Hello Wednesday
What’s that theory in science where if something can go wrong it will? I’m kind of feeling like that right now, it’s been a long 2 days. Yesterday the business group took the afternoon off to go to Tobacco Caye, which actually didn’t go wrong at all, it was wonderful! $10 US for the boat ride there and back, and $5 US for snorkeling equipment. This island is tiny, no bigger than a football field, but the snorkeling is incredible. You can swim right out from the dock to a coral reef, and the water is crystal clear. I saw a sting ray, giant starfish, and tons of tropical fish, some of them absolutely huge! About 40% of the coral was bleached, thank you tourism, but the rest of it was gorgeous, there was a lot of really pretty fan coral. We did have some incidents, thought. We were snorkeling through some shallow water and I got attacked by coral, there’s a pretty sizable gash on my leg now. Then, Elizabeth and I had swam out a little further where there was a bit more of a current, and her contact popped out. She was treading water and bobbing up and down in the waves with her snorkel in one hand and her contact in the other trying to figure out what to do, we just had to laugh about it for a good 5 minutes before we decided on a plan of action—which was to put her contact in the nose of her snorkel mask until we could get back to shore and use my rewetting drops. We also all got completely soaked on the boat ride back, he was running low on gas so instead of riding fast above the waves we just had to rock with them and hope for the best, the nose of the boat was starting to get pretty low! Finally, exhausted from swimming and salty, we arrived back at the Jungle Huts (our hotel) to discover that…the water wasn’t working! I was so disgusting, but I did get a shower in around 11 that night.
Yesterday was finally back to business as usual, and it was pretty uneventful. I taught a class in the morning and a class in the afternoon at Sacred Heart, they both went really well. We’re working on word problems (they call it problem solving) in the context of business math. The kids have to take a test that determines whether or not they can go to high school, and the teacher of one of our classes said that the word problem section is always “a complete disaster.” It makes sense, for most all of these kids English is a 2nd or 3rd language. Most all of them speak Creole, Garifuna, Spanish, or a combination at home. They can do the math, they just can’t figure out what number they should pick out to set up the problems, so that’s what they’re working on now. Another class we’re working with at Christ the King wants to learn how to actually run a business. The teachers have to fundraise a certain amount per classroom to pay for the school, so they want to incorporate learning business math into running an actual business. Right now we’re working through simulation and making the classroom a market place to learn about things like profit, loss, expenses, revenue, pricing, etc., and later we’re expanding it to the students running their own businesses, it’s really exciting.
This morning was another seminar with the POWA women. Last week we gave them notebooks to write down all of their expenses and income daily throughout the week, and this week all the women brought their notebooks back to go through. We categorized the expenses into wants, necessities, and business expenses, and then we looked at ways to trim budgets and start saving. Going through their books was such a wake up call for me. These women really live day to day, and a lot of them don’t have consistent sources of income, which makes planning hard. Michelle Irving, the head of POWA made the comment that planning ahead is a privilege. For people that don’t have that privilege, living is reactionary, not proactive. That statement really rung true today. Regardless, I think we made progress. The women are all in different stages of saving, but they all have goals. Many want to be homeowners (homes are payed for in cash here, loans charge about 20 to 25% interest), and others would just like to have money set aside for emergencies or their children’s education. One woman committed to saving $400 a month, while others can only do $5 a week. Next week we’re going to keep going through the notebooks and talk about savings goals, but we’re also going to start talking about small business skills and ways to sell and market products, it should be really good.
So back to the things going wrong theory, this morning after teaching at POWA, we came back to the Jungle Huts to discover that, while we now have water, the electricity is off. This means no fans, and that is simply not okay. It’s been ridiculously hot here, I thought last week was hot, but this week is worse. You know it’s bad when the Belizeans are complaining about the heat! It’s just that something like this has never happened to me, you’re working so hard, and it’s so hot, and then the electricity goes off, plus you haven’t had internet in your room for about a week now, and you’re too cheap to pay for it so you’re typing your blog entry on your word processor so you can just copy and paste it at Vals’, which is where I’m at right not. Val’s is a hostel/laundry service with internet to pay for, ice cream, cookies, and 2 working fans, pretty much the best place to go and take refuge on a day like this. I’m also drinking an ice cold Coke Light that tastes incredible. I’ve started up drinking soda again, which is bad, but it’s the only thing that’s cold, so I decided to at least switch from Coke to Coke Light, better than Diet Coke and only 6 calories as opposed to 200. Now that I’m here I really can’t complain that much, as hard as it is to deal with the heat, I’m going to miss Belize when I leave. Dangriga is a small town of about 12,000, so I’m already starting to get to know people. I’ll see POWA women at the bank (that was the best part of my day today, I went to find out about savings account for the women and I got to spend about 15 minutes in the AC waiting in line), or I’ll see the secretary from the Mayor’s Office at King Burger (yes, that’s right, not Burger King, there’s also a supermarket here called The Price Is Right, I’m not even kidding), and I’ll see kids from some of my classes walking to and from school. I’ve also seen a lot more tourists around Dangriga this week, I’ve gotten asked how to make an international call (buy a BTL card, they work at the pay phones) and today I was approached by a completely clueless tourist couple about how to go to Tobacco Caye (Go down main street until you get to the bridge, and ask one of the fisherman to take you out, make sure and ask around to get a good price. The best supermarket is The Price is Right, but if you want meat you need to go to the market). I think I’m getting to be pretty legit if tourists are asking me for info. I just uploaded some pics from this weekend to post, then I’m heading back to Jungle Huts where, cross your fingers, the electricity will hopefull be back on. If not, all the more reason to go to church tonight, they have fans there!
2 years ago