September Celebrations: from fun to no fun. Well, maybe still a little bit of fun.

“No work gets done in the country of Belize during the month of September.” This is what I was told by my boss, Ms. Dorla, while at work during the last week of August. Now that we’re coming to the end of September, I can honestly say that statement is no lie! September has been deemed the national celebration month in Belize in remembrance of such holidays as Saint George’s Caye Day and Belize’s Independence Day – celebrating their 27th year of independence. It is a month full of partying, pageants for all of the villages’ queens of 2008, numerous parades, planned nightly activities, and my personal favorite…not a full week of work in the entire month! (I really think the United States should start thinking about enacting a month like this – I think the whole country could use a break like this once a year). Oh, and word on the street is that the party continues throughout the month of October for Pan American Holiday and goes straight into November for the 19th’s Garifuna Day (we’ll see if this holds true, I’ll keep you posted).

Since the first of September, the streets of Belize have been covered in the colors of the Belizean flag and the spirit of celebration is definitely in the air. One of the September Celebration events I recently attended was the Karaoke Competition Championship. Throughout the first two weeks of September, a karaoke competition was held at a different bar each night. One winner from each night moved on to the championship to compete for the grand prize of $500. Now you would think that with a prize like that and many different nights to try and win a spot in the championship, that there would be a good number of decent singers. No, no, no. I would say two out of the ten were good singers – but boy were the rest of them entertaining. Let me give you a little description of one of my favorite singers: a Belizean man with long curly hair, wearing a flannel cut off shirt and jeans, my guess would be that he was about six beers in, and his song of choice – a classic country song about numerous heartbreaks from the 1970s – and that wasn’t the only 1970s country jam that was sung that night. Due to the fact that the show started two hours late (we showed up an hour late thinking that we’d be just about on time for the start, only to find out we had another hour wait ahead of us) and that it was announced that all contestants would be singing a second song, we decided to head home before seeing who out of the beautifully talented contestants would be crowned the Karaoke Champion – my vote went to the woman who missed a whole verse in her song because she was too into her hip shaking, which in all honesty we all could have done without. About a third of the way home on our walk back the night got even better…torrential downpour. Thank goodness for a sense of humor and a waterproof digital camera, because I captured every moment of it (for your viewing pleasure, see the link to the right).

On Friday night, Emily and I decided to lay low as we knew big things were going to occur on Saturday and Sunday, both day and night. We simply hung around the house, made some freselles (thanks mom for the recipe!), some homemade rice wine (five pounds rice, five pounds sugar, 1 package of yeast, mix ingredients in a five gallon bucket, fill it with water, cover it, and let it sit for 12 to 15 days – I’ll let you know how it comes out), and were in bed by 9pm. At about 1:30am I woke up to some severe cramping and at that point in knew I was doomed – I officially had my first bout of…the dreaded diarrhea! For the rest of the night I did a continuous dance from the couch to bathroom, only to be interrupted during my 3:30am dance when I entered the bathroom, turned on the light, and saw my very first rat, waiting for me in the bathroom. Just as I’m sure you expected if you’ve read previous blog entries, I jumped onto the side of the tub and yelled for my roommates. I think all I got from them was a little groan and a “Really? A rat?” At that point, due to the severe cramping in my lower stomach, I remembered why I had run to the bathroom in the first place, and knew very well I couldn’t sit on the toilet with a rat in the same room. I jumped off the toilet and started to make my way to the downstairs bathroom when I realized we had run out of toilet paper down there. How could this situation get any worse? The extra toilet paper is stored in the upstairs bathroom in the plastic tub where the rat just so happened to jump into when I flicked on the lights. Superb. In the end, I remembered I had packed some frames in toilet paper to keep them from breaking and had saved the toilet paper – why I don’t know – in a plastic bag in my room, which thank God is downstairs.

Saturday was spent on the couch (and of course, in the bathroom) while the rest of Punta Gorda was out in the streets partying – literally I watched them in the streets from the window next to the couch. I managed to pull myself off the couch at midnight to join my roommates and a bunch of our Peace Corps friends on our veranda to watch the fireworks which were set off from the dock across the street. When Sunday rolled around I felt a little better and knew I had to brave the outdoors (meaning an area more than 10 feet away from a bathroom) to take part in some Independence Day celebrations which were taking place in Central Park. These celebratory activities were quite serious and such games as a beer drinking competition (who can chug two Beliken Beers from the bottle the fastest) and a Punta dancing competition for children and adults, both males and females (Punta is a very popular traditional Belizean dance which is very reminiscent of a blend between Beyonce’s booty popping and Shakira’s hip shaking…you should’ve seen the 6 year old girl – she could almost put Beyonce to shame). My favorite activity however was the Greasy Pole. Picture a 25-30 foot greased up pole with a bag of prizes at the top and a bunch of men climbing on top of each other to try and get it down. After many pants were pulled exposing a good number of Belizean bare bottoms, and a few falls from the top during failed attempts, the bag was finally retrieved.

Despite the fact that the majority of my Independence Day weekend was spent in the confines of a 4x6 bathroom, the little bit that I did get to experience was pretty outstanding. What this weekend did make me realize is how thankful I am that JVI is a two year program because that just means I get another chance to party for September Celebrations 2009!