My home stay experience

As I said in my last post, part of the in country orientation entails a two night home stay with a local family. My home stay was with a Mayan K'eckchi family in the village of Santa Theresa. The family was made up of Juan (34 years old) and Gloria and their three children Nigel (10 years old), Karen (8 y.o.), and Ronda (5 y.o.). Juan is the brother of Mario and Francisco, two guys around my age who work with the organization that I work with and my boss, Miss Dorla.

The home stay experience started out by Miss Dorla and Francisco driving me out to the village - which was an adventure in itself. Because of the large amounts of rain at night, the bridges were covered in flowing water due to the river water being so high. I was honestly a little scared for the first bridge because Miss Dorla kept asking Francisco if he thought we would make it over the bridge or if he thought we would be pushed off by the flowing water. The second bridge however is what really scared me, due in part to the fact that Dorla hesitated on the gas and our pickup truck got stuck in a ditch right at the entrance of the water covered bridge. As the wheels continued to spin I decided I better take off my shoes and roll up my pants as I thought I might need to start pushing the pick up truck. Francisco then jumped into the driver's seat and after a great deal of going into reverse and then forwards over and over again we were able to get out of the ditch and across the river. Once we got across we all began to laugh - mostly because of how scared I got. Miss Dorla responded by saying, "Well Pat, welcome to Toledo!" She then proceeded to say "Your mother is going to think your boss is crazy!" I agreed.

When we finally made it to Santa Theresa, alive and dry, I had lunch at Francisco's house. His mom made us corn tortillas and caldo, a traditional Mayan soup - a tad spicy with some chicken in it - delicious! Francisco's house was a thatched wooden hut with dirt floors. The house that I stayed in with his brother's family was a little different in that it had concrete floors. The family had three little houses - one with a kitchen, one for storage, and the other was split between their little shop and the room with the hammocks where we slept.

The kids - Nigel, Karen, and Ronda - were absolutely hilarious! They seemed to warm up to me pretty quickly and in no time they were showing me their chickens, dog, and cat. They also quickly become my personal tutor in their native language of K'eckchi. They got a real kick out of me trying to pronounce the very simple words of their language. I've been able to get a couple sayings and some words down but I still have a long way to go. They also thoroughly enjoyed quizzing me every now and then to see how much I was able to retain. I had Francisco and the mother, Gloria, literally on the floor laughing at one point when I said a sentence that translated to "I want your crabs"...apparently they thought that was funny and mildly inappropriate! Ooooh well!

Not only did Nigel, Karen, and Ronda become my personal tutors, they also became my personal tour guides through the trails of the jungle. While on our walk, Nigel kept saying to me "Pat, soon we will come to a very cold water creek, Mr. Pat (they really enjoyed using my name in sentences, haha). It very nice." Thirty minutes later, he was still saying the same thing. When I asked him later if he thought the walk was long he said not at all - difference #1 between Americans and Mayans...the definition of "long walk."

As my time at the house progressed my conversations with the family shifted to talk about the States. We talked a lot about the weather where I'm from and the difference in seasons from the States and Belize (Belize has two seasons - wet and dry). In talking about the States, Juan shared that he had always wanted to visit America and hopes to one day get the family there. Nigel, the 10 year old, then asked me if its scary in the states because of all the violence. He asked me if he would get shot there only if he were to get in an argument with someone or if he would get shot for just walking down the street. This question and topic of violence caught me completely off guard. I was well aware of many of the stereotypes other countries had of America, I had never heard one in regards to violence. I explained to the kids that American violence is very much like that of Belize. Various cities, like Belize City, are often times less safe than the country's towns and villages. After talking with the kids I realized that this was my first teaching and clarification experience of America and now assume that there very well may be many more to come.

Another new experience I had was sleeping in a hammock. I have not decided as of yet if it was comfortable or not, but it sure was interesting to say the least. During my first night of sleep, I was woken up at one point by the crowing of the roosters. I thought to myself, "Wow, awesome, I slept through the night.' Then I utilized my handy-dandy light up watch (which the kids were overly entertained by) to find that it was only 2:30am. AT that point I was ready to go and kill the rooster for Gloria to cook up for dinner. Eventually I was able to fall back asleep, only to be woken up an hour later by American Country music which was being blasted from a hut down the road. After finally falling back to sleep AGAIN, at around 5:30am I heard the voice of Nigel - "Hello Pat?" At first I thought - "I won't respond. Maybe he'll just let me sleep." Just as my dad always told me when I was little...I thought wrong! He continued to call my name until I responded and then was asked, "You done sleeping?" At that point I decided it was time to wake up. Soon after, little Ronda came running in the room, "Spot? You awake Spot?" (for some reason she started calling me Spot. I just went with it.)

Later that day when I was hanging out with Francisco at his house, his dad returned from hunting and had caught a gibnut. A gibnut is a strange rodent that is often times hard to find while hunting (I have a picture of one in my August Album online). Francisco's father took the dead gibnut out of his sack and placed it on a dried leaf on the floor. I sat in the hammock for the next 45 minutes watching his mom prepare it for dinner. This was the process: boil the gibnut for less than a minute, scrape a knife on the body to remove the rodent's hair, rinse the shaved body, cut off the head and boil it for the dogs, cut down its belly, remove its insides, cut off its feet, cut the body into four pieces, and finally cook it. As I sat in the hammock watching his mother prepare the gibnut, I was in complete awe as to where I was in that moment. I was actually in a real Mayan village living among the natives. It was absolutely wild!

Throughout my time in the village, being wrapped up in the traditional Mayan culture, every now and then I was hit by something of the American culture. One of the best examples of this is when I was laying in the hammock at Francisco's house watching his mother and sisters prepare meals over the fire when on the radio, out of nowhere, the song Total Eclipse of the Heart came one (a personal favorite of mine - shout out to all you amigos back home!). Other artists we heard included other classics such as K.C. and JoeJoe, Celine Dion, and most notably...Prince (which both Francisco and Mario thoroughly enjoyed the story behind the changing of Prince's name throughout his career - they both got a good laugh out of that). Another great example of this involves Ronda's toy doll. Her doll was a giant white doll, almost the size of her, with blond curly hair (opposite of her long, straight, black hair). The greatest part was that the doll's name was Jessica - which they all insisted was the most beautiful name they had ever heard! (no offense to all you Jessica's out there!)

My home stay experience proved to be one of my favorite parts of my in country orientation. It allowed me to live inside the home of a local family and experience their lifestyle first hand. I am so grateful to have been placed with such a kind and generous family with such amazing and lovable children. Big thanks and much appreciation to Juan, Gloria, and the kids!