Keep Riding the Tide

Title from quote by Stanley Lizama of Peace Corps/Belize

Last week Omnibus 2008, my Peace Corps class, gathered for its last time in the sleepy sea side district town of Corozal. At our Close of Service conference, for the volunteers who saw every day of their two years come to an end, but only in ceremony, as we still have at least two months left, we were briefed on; all things needed to be known about reentering the States, hypothesized about what exactly development is, told Peace Corps our two cents, relaxed, partied, said our formal good byes, and decided when we will have to defecate in a cup for Nurse Jackie.

The remaining 25, of the original 40, came from all over the States, from Maine to San Jose, some first generation Americans, green horned college grads mixed with professionals with various levels of experience (all now with a deeper appreciation of Indiana) came to Belize with an array of skill, a bounty of hope for humanity, and a sense of humor. We will leave prideful with much of the same spirit, though challenged on occasion, with stories of breast feeding women on buses, terrorizing village chairmen, maybe a parasite or two, and tails of our first pig tail or toucan delicacy experience. And lets not forget the occasional snake, scorpion, or tarantula who were wrong in thinking of our homes as their dwelling. We also remember our fellow volunteers, our friends, who for various sound reasons are not hear with us to experience our final days as a group in country and we miss them.

I have always been impressed by the skill set that my fellow volunteers exuded during the past two years. I have thoroughly benefited from them as have thousands of Belizeans. They were in education; training teachers, mentoring students, creating/reviving libraries, and were unflustered when 7 year olds contorted their bodies provocatively while dancing during devotion time. They were in environmental education; counting conch, preserving wildlife, revamping visitor’s centers, and handled 8 foot boas. They were in HIV education; passing out over at least 600,000 condoms, showing some teens their first condom, and were a friend to infected persons. They did community development; and are responsible for the first ever realization of lap tops, websites, and a community telephone in remote villages. They built a radio station, and are leaving businesses self sufficient with Maya women using the Internet. Finally, in youth development we impacted the lives (or at least we hope) of some 2, 600 youth, encouraged alternative ways of release, created youth clubs starting with zero dollars, coached them through a 179 mile cross country canoe race, and spent many days at camps (kyamps).

Even though we were; robbed at times, suffered through ‘involuntary celibacy’, shivered with malaria, were lost at night on volcanoes, and missed home, we powered through to see our projects develop with roller coaster amounts of success. Certainly we will leave at some point, but not after making a multitude of friends, once strangers that now call us son or daughter or good friend (balli), and finally, but certainly not least, we now know how to Punta.

And there were those hurricanes...