internship – Hello

Resolved. 13 to 3.

Goodbye, 2009. You were Awesome. Let’s look at the list of things I promised you:

Wear less sweatpants. This is the beauty of a tropical climate. You own a thousand cute outfits that are perfectly wearable year round. Hello? After writing this last year, I immediately went to the outlets and bought 2 pears of comfy warm sweatpants from J. Crew- including the infamous “yellow sweatpants” from Vegas. However, after Mardi Gras, I did go organic and accidentally lose a bunch of weight which allowed me to wear pants without elastic waistbands more often. I even got new jeans. Resolved.

Do not wait until the last minute to read an entire semester’s worth of articles. You are paying a trillion dollars for this education, so you might as well learn actual theories and not just Marva Lewis’s notes on attachment via overhead (read: iChat). I never took Marva Lewis again. Resolved.

Get more than 6 hours of sleep per night. This will likely mean limiting midnight back-to-back episodes of Chelsea Lately and Sex and the City. You will manage. Ummm. Mostly resolved. It resolved itself when I went to Belize.

Remember the athletic center you are forced to pay $900 a semester to use? Go to it. Your friends used to have to come pick you up because you rode your bike too long and too far. Figure out where that bike riding joy went and reinstate it. Except, don’t ride yourself silly in New Orleans. You will get kidnapped. I never bought a bike. Unresolved. But I joined the ABT class at the Athletic center and started swimming when the weather got warm. I also took up running again for about 2 weeks. Resolved.

Do not drink Diet Coke for breakfast. Start each morning with a giant glass of water. End each day with a giant glass of water. If you must have the Diet Coke, at least buy it from the machine where Molly won $1.25 and haunted house tickets. Unresolved. End of Story.

Stop writing emails on Ambien. If you send an email after 10 pm, there’s a good chance it was written under the influence (cough, Judy Lewis). You are not more hilarious on Ambien. You simply have no filter. Find the tool on gmail that screens for irresponsible emailing and enable it. I’m 5 months off the Ambien! Resolved!

Stop being so afraid of new things the first time around. They always turn out just fine. Unresolved. I’m always afraid of new things. I just don’t like change.

Be patient. Timing is everything. Patience is not really my thing, but in this particular circumstance (and I remember what it was when I wrote this) I was. And it paid off. Resolved!

Clean your apartment so you can begin hosting the over-promised, under-delivered hot tub reading parties and Sex and the City Sundays. Your home should be your place. That means you should be able to walk through it without having to scale piles of clothes. Cleaning- Unresolved. Hot tub parties- Resolved!

Purchase cleaning supplies and hangers. Resolved.

Be intentional with keep-in-touch-Sunday even when other things try to crowd it out. Relationships are most important. Don’t forget. You tell me?

Ski. You know you want to. Un. Re. Solved.

You are about to become an intern again. Be yourself and trust that who you are is good enough, cool enough, nice enough, honest enough, funny enough, pretty enough, smart enough and competent enough. Resolved. Right, Mia? Riiiight?

Embrace the next eight months and try everything. You’ll never get this season back. Resolved. Mostly- with a few grass is greener… moments.

Graduate! It’s sort of the point. Re-to-the-solved!

Allow God to lead your heart. He did a fantastic job in 2008, and if you pay attention, your whole life could be as amazing. Resolved :)

Being a tourist in my own city…

So. Things have been kind of busy and spectacular lately. Last last week, Dr. G came from the States to meet my supervisor and do a site visit. She was able to sit down with A and the Mary Open Doors founders, a couple of volunteers, Antonia and the fam, and visit both Faith Nazarene and Santa Familia schools. She also went to PG for a day to find out about possible internship possibilities in the south. Everything went really well, and I think both sides (Tulane & Belize) are excited about the potential internship placements here in the future, which I will henceforth refer to as My Legacy.

We also finally managed to pull off my first training with the staff and volunteers at Mary Open Doors last Tuesday. We’ve been trying to arrange this for 5 weeks, and even though it was an hour late, it happened. Even a client from Mary Open doors sat in on the training and asked if she could come back next week to participate in the therapeutic activities, which I had just thrown in for good measure. I was trying to demonstrate how the program feels to the kids, but everyone accidentally got a lot out of it.

Also, I had a beautiful moment with an 8 year old who hadn’t wanted to participate in the program at all to begin with—she has been very depressed and withdrawn—but she agreed to one session, which I disguised as “art activities” and “games” and “little stories”. At the end of the session, she said she would come to one more session, but no more. At the end of that session, she agreed to one more session, but that’s all. At some point, she started asking which day I was coming back, and would I bring play-dough next time, and can she use the orange pencil case next time instead of the pink one, and can she bring a picture of her dad to show me how their teeth are alike, and could I bring gummy bears instead of chips, and do I want to come to her cousin’s party this weekend? It’s been fun to watch her grow and smile and play and open up a little, and I already feel anxious about starting the termination process. Lucky for all of us, my supervisor A has been involved in these cases from the beginning and will be taking them over after I leave. She’s incredibly competent and caring and I trust that the kids are in good hands entirely. Con permission:

Also… smile… J came to visit. Inez gave up her room for a couple of nights, Antonia and Ricardo and Antonia’s parents welcomed him and then grilled him do death for incriminating information about me, the Chinchilla family took him canoeing and then drove us all to Spanish Lookout in the back of the pick-up truck for ice cream. We also walked up to Mr. Neil’s house, the tallest hill in the village, and Mr. Neil invited us in for a coke on his deck, which has the most spectacular views of San Ignacio.

After a weekend in the village we went to Cahal Pech (a village resort in San Ignacio) and spent a couple of days in town, and also lots of time on the cabana hammock. I introduced him to one of the founders at Mary Open Doors and went on a little walking tour of my day-to-day routine between the office and the school and the Ministry and the French Bakery and the juice guy and the bus stop, and all the other little places I like to eat and shop and check e-mail and sit. We also got to join a trip to Tikal, this old Mayan city outside of Flores, Guatemala. It has over 4,000 structures, including the tallest one in the Mayan world, and more are still being excavated. We saw howler monkeys (which sound like a horrifying combination of chainsaws and dinosaurs) and spider monkeys and toucans and one snake, all in the wild. We had our own private tour of the grounds by a really interesting guide, and I’m still not sure how that happened, but it was great. Mayan Ruins aren’t even my most exciting to-do list items, but I’ve always wanted to see Tikal, and the views and history were amazing.

After a few days in Cayo, we headed to Caye Caulker and, thanks to Hugo, got a free stop at the zoo and lunch at Old Belize. The important thing to know here is we saw jaguars and ate Pirate nachos.

We arrived at Caye Caulker via water taxi just in time for a panoramic view of the island at sunset, from the very top of our discounted low-season gorgeous hotel/condo, which was still being renovated since it just opened in July and tourist season doesn’t start until November. In all the times I’ve been to Belize, I’ve never gone on vacation. But THIS was one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever stayed, and we found it on accident! Two days before we arrived! And it was cheaper than the cheapest Holiday Inn Express! We had the building to ourselves, a sea-facing balcony with a hammock at sunrise, a sunset-facing bedroom over the other side of the island, and a rooftop Jacuzzi with a panoramic view of everything. Also, because it’s still slow season, the island was quiet and calm and sleepy and peaceful. Only a handful of places were open for business and the only sound we heard was an occasional golf cart, water lapping and some island music. It was a perfect recharge. With perfect company. And good food. (Except the cereal we bought from 2007. That was gross).

This week I’m back to the real world. Trying to finish papers, find a job, counsel kids, train volunteers, and begin the process of leaving… one month and I’m home to graduate. Weird.

More pics of San Ignacio: here

More pics of Caye Caulker: here

More pics of Tikal: here

Snacks Facilitate Anything and Everything

I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I guess its part of the process, so I’ll disclose. Honesty and growth, make way. I’m coming.

I spent all morning looking at my classmates’ pictures from India feeling jealous and regretful. There are mountains there, and silk, and friends. Now most of them are back in New Orleans finishing out an easy last semester at places like The Rue and Superior Grill, which sound like heaven to me right now… and I’m still here. In Belize. Again. Still. (I know, I know—Belize? You feel real sorry for me. You know I’m not on the coast, right? I’m in the jungle.)

While familiarity makes things easy and comfortable here, it also takes the new and exciting back to ordinary and routine. The exotic fruits aren’t so exotic—although, coincidentally, I did just eat a guava for the first time today. Rice and beans are just rice and beans, not: Rice and Beans! Cattle stop and stare at me when I hang my laundry. I walk past iguanas and step over roosters and make tortillas and wait for electricity and stockpile water, and never ever wash my underwear with my socks, and brush ants off my bed and eat mangoes and catch parasites and hail bus drivers and sit on stoops and walk up and down giant hills from school to school for work like its nothing. Like those things are normal. If you know me, this isn’t me! My specialty is finding extraordinary things in every day life—unless you’re that crazy life-changing story lady. If you’re her, then, no, you’re right, I suck.

Anyway. India would have been new and exciting. And besides that, I don’t think I was ready to be done with New Orleans yet. When I return, graduation will happen and this part of my life will be over. Why did I decide to spend the last half of it in another country? The work I was doing in New Orleans was good and meaningful, and Belize is always gonna be Belize. Here my work seems like a drop in the bucket. Then I started wondering: why did I think these kids deserved this program more than the kids in New Orleans in the first place? Is it just because they live here and not there? Kids are kids. Need is need. Was I being selfish in wanting to do this? I could have stayed in New Orleans, gone to India for a month, learned a bunch of new things about a new culture, and then continued to help kids in the exact same way I had been, right there. Did I waste this whole semester on something I’ve already done, that doesn’t even really matter in the big picture, when my heart really was in New Orleans all along?

I don’t know. But because I am a social worker, I have been knocked over the head with a variety of coping skills. I told myself there has to be a reason I’m here, and that I just have to trust God is doing something, somewhere, outside my view—that I may never even get to see. Maybe it’s the family I’m paying $100 per week to stay with. Maybe they were having a desperate time with finances, and I was their secret answer to prayer or something. Or maybe there is one specific kid who really needed something this program offers, and for that one kid, all of this will be worth it. Maybe Mary Open Doors or my supervisor were overwhelmed and overworked and kind of just wanted a person to have a Sprite with at lunch to recharge. Who knows, but I decided to be okay with everything because a bad attitude would be like poison, and deciding that there is still purpose for me here even if there’s not makes me feel better. Plus, there was that really undeniable string of events that happened in November… Everyone said: write this down, Brooke. There will be a time in Belize when you say: What am I doing here? and this story will be your proof. Hmm.

BUT.

Then I met the actual kids. Real-life little kids, shy and hyper and adorable and desperate: an 8-year-old whose dad committed suicide last year, four elementary kids whose dad tattooed his own birthmark on their faces, a 7-year-old who saw a knife fight between his mom and grandpa, a 15-year-old who dropped out of school after his friend committed suicide.

It’s like my heart recognized something my brain couldn’t catch up to. In New Orleans, there is a waiting list, a protocol, a budget and a set number of counselors. The same number of kids would have been seen with or without me in 3 months. But in Belize, there is only one school counselor. One school counselor for the entire country. The 7 kids I saw today and yesterday wouldn’t have even been on the radar had Mary Open Doors not said- Brooke, these kids really need help, and had I not said- A, these kids really need help, and had there not been this ready-made program for their exact need. The school system has to focus primarily on behavioral problems in the classroom. There’s no time or manpower to waste on things like grief or trauma—even though the result of those things is behavioral problems in the classroom… but social work isn’t even a legitimate field yet. There are no standards, no associations, no practices, no codes, nothing. My supervisor keeps records for the Ministry of Education only because she wants to and because that’s how she was trained in the States. She has to constantly fight for confidentiality. She makes however many appointments per day she thinks she can fit in, and transportation is always an issue. No one has cars. The Ministry does not reimburse. She covers a hundred square miles, and we walk or take the bus or taxi on our dime. I see kids at 3 schools, and spend half my day walking up and down hills to get there. If she does home visits, she stays for a couple of hours because she knows it could be a couple of weeks before she gets there again. Her caseload is about 50 students. Every time she goes to a new school, she gets another list of 10-15 students she knows she may not even be able to see. Sigh. And yet she gives her absolute best to each family I’ve seen her with…

One thing I feel good about in this realm is that we’ll use the coping skills program I brought to train a team of 6 teachers in Santa Elena to respond to their kids, in addition to training the shelter workers. Maybe those 6 can feed 5,000…

Anyway. Some funny similarities between the kids in NOLA and the kids here—

No kid wants to miss computer lab

Every kid asks for a quarter

Schools never have space, and finding space with privacy is next to impossible

The schedule changes every day

Other kids walk by, stop, and ask if they can come too

Snacks facilitate anything and everything

In short long: I still really want to go to India. And I still miss my friends. And I still miss my little apartment and margaritas in New Orleans. But I trust that something here is happening outside my control, and I’ll gladly pour as many drops as I can into this bucket in the tiny amount of time I have here. Thank you for contributing to this trip if you did, and for believing in the project. I spent all these months convincing you guys this was important and almost completely lost sight of it myself. It turns out grass is everywhere, greener than ever…

So there you have it. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Brooke vs. Flu (vs. color wheel)

I got the flu. (Not the stomach flu—the coughing, fever, swine-ish flu.) I went to the doctor and discovered there is also a bacterial infection in my stomach. Perhaps a visit from my old friends Samantha and Jon? I spent a week in bed eating toast and rice and Dayquil and Nyquil and Cipro. Caye Caulker is closed, schools in Cayo and Belize City are closed and half the schools in PG are closed, because of flu. I had to go to town on Tuesday to see the doctor, and buy some meds and phone credit, ran into my supervisor for 10 minutes, and by Thursday, she had the flu. Everyone has flu. Everything is closed.

In the meantime, rainy season came! It started raining the day after Independence Day and hasn’t stopped. We welcomed the change for a few days, and then got stir crazy, and now can’t do laundry because nothing ever dries. I am still enjoying the cooler temps though…

Laundry is still the exact same.

On Monday, providing flu has passed and schools are reopened and supervisor is healed, I’ll have my first four clients. On Tuesday and Wednesday, hopefully the next 8. The majority are kids who have been through Mary Open Doors and are now in area schools trying to adjust. We’ll see them on an individual basis during the school day—once a week for the next 8 weeks, Children’s Bureau style. No one had really considered seeing the child during the school day, during art or some other enrichment hour, instead of at the end of the day. As noted from years of programming at the Boys & Girls Club, after school is a frustrating time to get kids to sit down and do some more work, even if you throw in a game and a pencil case. My supervisor got permission from the school system and principals, and we’re all excited to see how this goes. She’s anxious to learn from the ideas and resources I’ve brought, and I’m excited to learn from her expertise with families. A volunteer from Mary Open Doors will accompany us to co-facilitate the sessions and learn how to work through the manual for use within the shelter. She’ll take over facilitating halfway through, and my supervisor will continue with the school kids after I leave.

In the village schools my only task is to do a lesson with the Standard 4, 5 & 6 classes on how to write an autobiography. This is so they can enter CFI’s writing contest this fall and be awarded when the CFI comes this spring. No biggie. I thought it would be easy, and I reserved Thursdays exclusively for this purpose. But, as you might have guessed knowing Antonia and/or BZ in general, nothing of the sort has happened. The first Thursday Antonia whisked me off to take pictures of each class and of each building to send to the Ministry of Education for a report. No problem. I insisted on coming back Friday to at least award last year’s winners to generate some momentum toward the project. Somehow I ended up in Standard 3 doing a color wheel with Richard. Not only that, actual color wheels were never even created, because as an art teacher, I suck. They were pages of smeared red or blue paint. In some cases a long brown streak with a splash of yellow. I think the kids missed the point. Antonia came in, looked at me and Richard, who were covered in red paint, looked at the kids who had obviously not learned how to mix colors properly, and laughed about how she sent two perfectly capable people into teach the kids 6 colors, and we couldn’t pull it off. The following Thursday I showed up, and they sent me to build a float for the parade. The following Thursday- flu. Everyone. No autobiography.

Next Thursday: Autobiography, come hell or high water or color wheels or parades or flu.

All kinds of things

Essentials: On the plane next to me was a girl from the UK spending a month in Belize and then a month in Fiji doing some kind of medical internship. On the other side was a lady from Belize City who told the med student and me everything we need to know about Belize City. She had been visiting her daughter in Florida and thought it was hilarious that we came from the UK and the US to study in Belize, and her daughter left Belize to study in the States. She wrote out her address and phone number on an index card and gave one to each of us. She told us to call if we need anything, like lunch in Belize City. We’ll go out, she said. Unless it’s hot, then we’ll order in.

After spending an hour in baggage claim and immigration, and another 15 minutes with no power—200 of us clamoring for carts and luggage and air—somehow the three of us landed right back in a row in the customs line and were able to say goodbye as our personal items were spread on a table for all to see.

Onward!

The minute I caught that first campfire and coconut smell and saw my first raccoon on a chain in the back of a truck (what?!) I knew I was home.

Racoon

David picked me up, and when I turned to thank the baggage guy, he was climbing in the front seat**. That’s Belize. Your luggage guy is your neighbor. The postal guy is your grandpa. The checkpoint guard is your cousin. **This guy would turn out to be Antonia’s principal at a new school 2 years from that point, and a good pal of mine.

We took off down the Western Highway at sunset—my exact favorite way to drive the Western Highway—and an interesting topic came up. I learned that the city is having a meeting tomorrow about a dam that was built a few years ago. It was contested by the Belize Zoo lady, along with many different environmental groups, and pushed forward by the electric company, the Belizean government, and those who wanted Belize’s electricity to come from Belize, not Mexico. The only problem was the entire dam. Environmentalists warned that the rock wouldn’t hold, the river would suffer, the quality of the water would decline, energy prices would go up, and the flooding would kill off the Scarlet Macaw (side note: The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw is a must-read. It’s a story about the Belize Zoo lady who fought against the dam, and the rich descriptions of the Belizean government and the people here are unbelievable. It’s full of history about Belize and Cayo District. And the author is funny. His first impression of Belize City had something to do with a pedal-by shooting.) Anyway, I read this book before I came, got really into the dam issue and had meant to ask about it, then right there out of nowhere, David brought it up. He said they were calling a village meeting to discuss the dam. Apparently the water is orange. The orange water is downstream from the dam, right in San Ignacio. This is the water they bathe in, play in, clean with, wash clothes and dishes in… It has something to do with the chemical makeup and silt that have filtered out and around the dam, and worse, in order to remove or fix the dam, they’d have to release the wall, which would flood all of San Ignacio and the surrounding valley villages, like Santa Familia. David said they came around this week to the villages with a blue siren and said: If you hear this sound, you have 2 hours to get out before the flood comes. Omg. I just knew that Zoo Lady was right!

I arrived in Santa Familila to a welcome surprise, and also termite season in my room. Antonia, Ricardo and Inez had spent the day rearranging all the rooms so Inez and I could be roomies and each have a bed in the room that doesn’t rain!

Welcome1

Welcome2

Welcome3

Before I could even unpack or think about how tired I was, they whisked me off to the Miss Bullet Tree pageant.

(I am trying to upload a video of a punta dancer, but it’s taking forever…)

Sunday I went to church, and then to Guatemala in the back of a pickup truck, then squeezed into a cab with 6 people and spent an hour in the Melchor hospital. Richard (the son of the principal I am staying with) had a cough that wouldn’t lift because of the dusty roads and needed to see a doctor today for asthma. But there are no doctors in Cayo on Sundays, and so we had to cross the border. There are apparently also no doctors in Melchor on Sundays, which is how we ended up in the hospital. He got his treatment, and I bought all my little Belize gifts for you all at 1/3 price from the Gulatemalans. Finally a Guatemala stamp in my passport… although I’ve already been to Melchor. Figure that one out. Wink!

Today I am supposed to meet with my supervisor and she will accompany me to Mary Open Doors to begin the internship. But I have not been able to reach anyone. None of us have ever met each other, and the last contact I had with them was 2 weeks ago, by email. I still took (read: chased after) the 8 o’clock bus, and if I have to hang around the French bakery eating Mennonite cookies until I figure something out, so be it.

I have a phone number, and I will soon have a phone- hopefully by the end of the day. I can receive calls for free, but your carrier will charge you for the international call. I can make calls sometimes. And I can text sometimes.

My phone number is: 011-501-621-8102.

If you see this number, answer it! It’s me.

Lets get this party started.

Dear B,

Wear less sweatpants. This is the beauty of a tropical climate. You own a thousand cute outfits that are perfectly wearable year round. Hello?

Get more than 6 hours of sleep per night. This will likely mean limiting midnight back-to-back episodes of Chelsea Lately and Sex and the City. You will manage.

Stop being so afraid of new things the first time around. They always turn out just fine.

Be patient. Timing is everything.

Purchase cleaning supplies and hangers.

Be intentional with keep-in-touch-Sunday even when other things try to crowd it out. Relationships are most important. Don’t forget.

Ski. You know you want to.

Embrace the next eight months and try everything. You’ll never get this season back.

Graduate! It’s sort of the point.

Allow God to lead your heart. He did a fantastic job in 2008, and if you pay attention, your whole life could be as amazing.

Love,
B.

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