Integration

My blogs have been random! Potlickas and football...hahaha. But lots has happen in the past two weeks!
I have to give you the highlights of last Monday, because I had some especially interesting conversations and happenings...

Monday (6/7):
I woke up and ate a nice fried chicken breakfast (yes, that;s an important detail). I headed to work excited because Samuel was going to take me around PG to meet major people and find potential places to rent.... Well, he never showed up for work..... fail! I left work in the early afternoon to head home.I hung out with the fam for awhile...Mrs Assi kept asking me if she could wake me up at 4am the next morning to help her with lunch. I kept telling her she could try, but chances are I would be dead asleep and not wake up....We repeated those lines to each other about 8 times.... Very deep conversation. lol. I really think she wanted to wake me up! But I wasn't having it.... I cherish my sleep on weekdays.... I still have to go to work! lol. After awhile I headed to Tonya's teacher's house, Mr Chun--he's the one who's mom was Matt's host mom in San Martin. I headed over to his house to visit because Na, as we call her, was in town. Na is tooooo cute! She is such a little old lady, (which I really found out she's only 50!) Mayan women seem to age like statues! The girls are all cute and then they grow up to look stoic. I guess hard lives = hard on the body. They all look solid! Anyway, I was shocked to learn this little old woman was younger than my own mom! She's got 14 children! And WHO KNOWS how many grandchildren! Dozens! But she is still such a cute, happy lady. She's always wearing her traditional Mayan dress with her hair clipped up...and she smiles a big gapped smile, because a lot of her teeth are missing from over the years... Still, I just love to talk to her! I found out that she is the oldest of 4 children and also the only girl--same as me!! She went on to practice some Mopan with me and then tell me various stories--some true, some way false. She did tell me a cool story about the "white Indian" who lives in the hidden ruins of Santa Elena. Basically, it's a ghost who you can see far in the jungle if you find the ruins. Maybe I'll visit Matt in his village and go see! haha

I got home and before even saying hi, Mrs Assi told me to come flatten tortillas in Q'echi---which I don't understand! She does this thing where she says phrases I know in Mopan in Q'echi instead and then laughs but never translates for me! Just laughs! So finally Cor told me what she was saying and I told her to give me a minute to put my bags down and that was the phrase she repeated for the rest of the night: "Ish Mally. Gimme minute!" oy vey! So while we were flattening tortillas, Mrs Assi shared lashing stories with me... Basically, the details of how she beat her children. Oh boy. She told me about her belt lashings they all got, (and apparently still do!). And how it's Maya tradition to lash so kids will behave.... because no other culture has a history of doing that before! Anyway, I told her how most Americans were the same way, but nowadays we have adopted new methods, realizing kids don't respond as well to beatings alone. I told her my parents' generation got more beatings than kids do now, things have progresssed, yada, yada, yada.... all of this using smaller vocab, of course. She really didn't care or understand, so she goes on to tell me about how Junior and Nester once found $5 on the ground and bought a bunch of candy with it when they were about 7 and 10 years old. They came back and Mr Assi made them strip down to their underwear and lay in a red ant hill for punishment!!!!!! That way they got bit all over.... Can you believe that???! I was completely shocked! I admitted to her that if a parent did that in the States and people found out, there would be big problems with the law about it....She didn't really understand, but just laughed at me. Oh man!

Finally, it was time to eat! Save me from the stories of lashings!!! I tried a cool little critter called "tut" in Mayan... it's a conch shell type food, but smaller. Then put it in a really nice waha leaf kaldo. It was nice nice.

I finally had some relaxation time after dinner. I played with Pachy and the whole family gathered around to watch tv. It was fine family time until Antoinette mentioned that her cousin was eying me last weekend at the party.... oh great. He asked who I was and what I was doing with them, and then apparently used the line: "do you have ketchup......because I wanna get a taste of her." Wow.... really boy? Since Ant tells this story IN FRONT OF Mrs Assi, Mrs Assi gets all excited and asks me a bunch of questions. She asked me if I'm gonna go to the next graduation party--which I had already said I would. Then she asked if I would dance ... again, I said yes. Then she asked if I would dance with the guy.... I tried to be diplomatic and said "I will dance with everybody!" hahahaha Then she told me that if I don't go he will be "vexed with me"  What??!! Crazy lady! She got a kick out of asking questions like that for the rest of the night. I think I'm getting married into the family...... Oy!

Yay for integration!

Football!!!

So my easiest way to integrate in Belize has come via football. And it has been a blessing, for real! At first, I was just dying to get active and play a little.... But now, it's become my "thing" here in PG. I'm playing almost everyday!

First of all, it's fantastic to be in a country where everyone is watching the World Cup someway or another! It's the highlight of the summer! In PG we had a blackout for the opening match and people went CRAZY! Love FM, the infamous radio station, was BLOWING up! People were calling in really pissed at the power companies for scheduling this blackout on the same day as the most important thing in television. (It was a planned blackout from 6am-12pm one day-I don't think they realized it was the start of the WC when they scheduled it). Some lady even called saying that the WC was the most important thing in her life, she'd been waiting 4 yrs for it, the companies are so selfish, yada, yada, yada. The radio guy mocked her, saying it was more important than her family, religion, her job.....that's how she made it sound!!! Pure madness!
Needless to say, the WC has made football even bigger than it already is here in Belize..... which has been awesome for me!

So along with the World Cup, I was in search for a team to play with.... I already blogged a little about my team experience.... but I really got so lucky with football here! First, I played with the PC team against the women's Esperanza, Cayo team... (it's in the middle of the country, north of PG). This was back during training and I met a guy who asked me if I wanted to play with their team.... I was stoked and agreed, only to never hear from him for a LONG, long time! So then I moved down to PG and continued my search for a team. Samuel, my co-worker, happened to know the women's PG coach and set me up to play with them one weekend....I just blogged about that game in my last post. That weekend I scored and got on TV! (I was also interviewed and it was shown on tv! ahhh!) That was an awesome game, and now people have recognized me as the white girl who was on tv for it! haha The guys in the post office knew me when I stopped in, the people in my office saw me, some guy at the Ministry of Works recognized me, and some lady riding her bike past me said she saw me on tv! So it's definitely helped me integrate in PG....hahaha. BUT the team never practiced or had a game again! So it was a one weekend deal......  and I was bummed. Since that weekend I've been going to the field to try to find out their practice times and in my efforts met some of the Rasta guys who play for the PG team called the Jah Roots.... They told me they never see the girls play, but that I could play with them. So I've been going out and scrimmaging with them a few nights a week --even though they kick my butt! I can hold my own most of the time....but they are fast and big and really good!!! But they are great sports about letting me come out and kick around and it's definitely helping my game out! It's a great time and really fun... Plus, now I recognize them around town and it makes things a little easier! Maybe I'll get dreads so I can fit in with them....yea rite, hahahahaha!
Meanwhile, since I've been practicing with the Jah Roots and haven't heard from the PG women, I finally got in touch with the guy from Cayo! So now every weekend I've been traveling around the country playing with this Cayo team in this women's national tournament!! We just won this past weekend and are going to the semi-finals next weekend!!! The Cayo team is really good! And they are so fun! My first game with them, they started me in center-mid--- I didn't even know if they knew I could play or not! hahaha. Last weekend we were down 2-nil til about 70 minutes in and we came back with a 3-2 victory over Placencia! (We were like the US...except no bogus call! hahaha)  It was AWESOME! The game was in Placencia, but we still had a bunch of fans and we partied after!! One guy brought some beer he got from over the Mexican border--non Belikin beer! (since that's all you can get in Belize!) It was amazing! Such a great experience! They taught me some Kriol and we danced and it was really just fantastic!

So basically, thank you soccer because you have helped me find my niche in Belize.... =)  I'm so lucky for this experience!

Potlicka....

In Belize, the kriol word for mangy street mutt is "potlicka." And boy are they ever-present! Potlickas in the streets, chasing people on bikes, coming out from the jungle--everywhere! But boy it is a sad state for these poor dogs. As my colleague put it, "potlickas are the only dogs that can survive the streets of Belize." Which is sad, because they are barely surviving. If there's one thing I hope I to never integrate with the Belizean culture on, I hope it's the complete disregard and lack of emotion towards animal pain and suffering! This may sound very animal lover-ish and over the top, which I don't tend to be, but it really is sad. The dogs are filthy and bare-boned, usually either limping or punctured by some attack --probably with one another for a measly scrap of food. It hurts my heart because every sad dog face I see I want to take in and rescue, but then I walk 5 yards further and see another. It's impossible to help them all, yet it is so painful to see... In fact, I can honestly say that most dogs in Belize actually look sad. That sounds silly, but you don't pass the potlickas on the road and say "oh how cute!" or "what a beautiful dog!" like you would in the States. You just look away and try not to hit them with your bike or car. They are scrawny and sickly. Their eyes just look to you with pain. I feel like it should make any decent human an instant animal lover.

Just 2 nights ago, one of my host family's potlickas had puppies. This dog was so scrawny, I had no idea she was pregnant! She had them amidst a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. I woke up to learn of the pregnancy and the puppies all at once, and that one of the five born had already died. I was devastated because I knew that it wasn't just by chance the one pup didn't make it. So I took it upon myself to make sure I feed the mom and try to help her as much as possible with the remaining four. Just over a week ago, a fellow volunteer had a similar situation where his host family's dog had puppies. Slowly he reported to me that the puppies were dying because their mother was so malnourished she couldn't provide milk for them. After a few days, every single one was dead. It was devastating to hear about. And yet, even if these pups survive the initial time with their mother, they still have to weather the horrible conditions of the world of potlickas in Belize. So I was sad the first puppy died, but I don't know whether it's really a good or bad thing for him.

Nonetheless, I am going to try to help these puppies at my house as much as I can. I don't know much about puppies and I don't really have means to take care of them all, (which my host mom has already asked me to take them when I move out), but I'm going to try what I can.  This is a sad little blog entry, but I needed to express my feelings towards these poor potlickas!!!