Guest Post: Don’t Stop Belizing

Today’s guest post comes from Liz of L’appel du Vide. Liz is a 20-something living in Washington, D.C., and trying to see the world one country at a time. Right now she is only a part time traveler since she is still a full time “try and and make the rent”-er. Check out her blog  L’appel du Vide or follow her on twitter.

Don’t Stop Belizing

During my third year of college, I spent my Spring Break volunteering in the small town of Armenia, Belize, along the Humingbird Highway near Balmopan. With a population of only about 1,000 people, you could easily walk through the entire town in under a day. Our volunteering focused on helping out at the school, cleaning up trash along the river, and painting murals at the local community center. Although the experience of volunteering was wonderful, there are a lot of questions that arise when participating in this kind of work: Am I really making a difference? Is it presumptuous to assume these people need my help? Am I simply promoting my way of life rather than a better way of life?

A big part of my first week there was spent trying to address these questions and wondering about the purpose of my trip. Years later, I am still working out my conclusions to some of these issues — but ultimately there was one very large benefit that motivated me to return to Belize the next year, and allows me to continue to support this type of volunteering. Although the impact I made on the town of Armenia may have been small, the impact that my stay in Armenia had on me was huge. At 20, I had only been out of the country a few times before — always to Europe, trips spent on tour buses, speaking English, eating at tourist restaurants, and sightseeing. Suddenly I was in a tiny town in rural Belize, staying with a local family who didn’t speak English and eating food from the local cantina. No phones, no toilets, not showers and limited electricity — and I loved it.

My host family was a Mom and Dad with two small children and a new puppy. I brought them a pineapple as a gift. The first day my host “mom” cut up the entire pineapple and served it to me as lunch. I felt horrible, but I didn’t know enough Spanish to explain to them that it had been a present. On the second day she taught me to make tortillas. She asked me how old I was and was shocked to find out that I was 20 — she thought I was much younger. She was 23.

I explored the village with some of the children. They took me to see the town corn grinder who lived near the edge of the village. The kids taught me to carry rocks to throw at any stray dogs who looked at you funny. At first I was shocked that they could treat man’s best friend like that… but after getting snapped at by a few mongrels, I soon realized it was a “them or you” situation.

It was amazing what life without electricity was like. The night felt like it went on forever. I played with the kids and dog at my house a lot. I walked down the street to the one restaurant in town where I ate with the other volunteers, and I read by flashlight. The first night I finished both the books I brought. My host family’s new puppy came and visited me the next night and I played with him until he fell asleep. After the first two nights, I went to bed so early that I started waking up at 6 a.m. when the sun came up.

I’m not sure how much I taught the kids in the classes I helped out in. The fact of the matter is, besides a few words of English that they probably forgot a week later, I don’t know more than the trained teachers they saw every day. I did learn a lot of Spanish… but not before a few horribly embarrassing conversations. Let’s just say the word for “years” and “anus” are very similar… and you don’t want to mess this up when asking a kid how old they are…. I signed up for Spanish 101 the next semester.

One night I got up to go to the bathroom, which was in a shed behind the house. I turned on my flashlight and happened to look down. On the floor near my bed was the biggest, hairiest spider I had ever seen. I sprayed him with bug spray and then threw things at him until he died. I left his body there as a warning to other spiders. I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night and the puppy was permanently invited to sleep in my room.

The next day, a gigantic scorpion was hanging out over my bed. Since it was during the day, I got my host mom and made her quickly come see it. I was speaking in pretty fast English, so I am not sure she knew what I said — but she could clearly tell I was upset. After a quick “are you crazy?” look, she calmly took out a machete, hacked the bug to pieces, and then wiped the blade on her skirt. One very obvious roll of the eyes later, and I was left alone with the scorpion’s remains. I soon figured out that giant man eating bugs weren’t anything to get excited about.

I was only in Belize for a week — but its an experience that I’ll never forget. It gave me a brand new perspective on the world and the different kinds of people who lived there. And in some ways, that trip kick-started my love of travel.

I went back to Belize the next year, to the same village. The next year I went to Japan and Peru.

And, well… the rest is history.

——

Have you ever had your eyes opened by a volunteer experience?

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