some pieces of life.

These little pieces of life have been hiding in my computer for quite some time without a flash drive to save them. Better late than never.

Women
January 10, 2010

I am of the firm believe that the issue of women’s rights is the single biggest social, economic, and political issue in Belize. With it, comes the opportunity to preserve, restore and maintain the very dignity of the country, and ultimately, the world. As cultures and countries embrace the power of women and their place in society, countries transform themselves.

If we want to empower youth and nations, we must work on both ends of the spectrum providing education for young women which promotes an awareness and understanding of sexual reproductive rights while still working on a broader scale of outreach and advocacy against all forms of gender discrimination, sexual exploitation, and abuse, so that we can ultimately affect gender policy here in Belize.

By fighting this issue from both ends by providing education for young women, we provide them with options and opportunities for a life free from poverty, which often comes with increased vulnerability for economic and gender discrimination. This is not to promote a lifestyle different than or better than, but rather an alternative to their current life circumstances.

These issues are intricately interwoven; at their roots lie education, and the opportunity for alternative options. In order to begin thriving, we, as a world, must adopt a new found understanding of the interconnection among economic, social and psychological issues in the implementation of women's issues.

We must begin to transition the focus from just intervention strategies to a balance between prevention and intervention. By fighting for women's right on a local and global scale, community and individual level, will we see change-- slow, but tangible change.

The statistics prove the urgency of action and reformation of ideals, particularly for Belize:

19% of teenagers had at least one pregnancy in the last 5 years and 66% of pregnant teenagers did not plan their pregnancy. Belize also has the highest rate of HIV infection in Central America and the 4th highest in the Caribbean, with an estimate that as much as 90% of the population has not been tested. Additionally, Belize’s biggest issue is the price of its booming tourism industry: CSEC (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children) and ‘sugar daddy’ syndrome, where older Belizean men are abusing young girls, often in exchange for help with the educational or family expenses, and done with the acceptance of, or even arranged by, the mother; CSEC is seen as a culturally accepted practice rather than as a crime against a child, against which YES is slowly fighting. These conditions put Belize’s young women and girls at high risk for sexual abuse and exploitation, HIV/AIDS, unemployment, poverty, and teenage pregnancy.

No, our nation’s fate does not just linger waiting to be claimed by its most powerful, or most wealthy, or those who bear the title of prime minister, or mayor. Nor does it rest on the shoulders of just young women or men, but on everyone.

Women’s empowerment is just as much, if not more, a male issue rather than a female one. We can work day in and day out to empower, to advocate on behalf of, to promote women’s rights, but this can only be achieved through the partnership of men. If we want to stop cycles of domestic abuse, and gender discrimination, we must educate our young men. As a brilliant Belizean woman said at a weekend Gender Based Violence conference, “because boys grow up to be men.”

This past weekend I was graced with the utter privilege of attending that conference. I learned more in this weekend than perhaps I have in the entirety of my six months here. I learned about the real cost of the tourism industry. Yes, as the cruise ships come in, not only do they destroy Belize’s beautiful coral reef; Belize loses so much more than that. With those cruise ships come child trafficking, and the sex tourism business as a booming enterprise, a hot commodity. I learned what marriages are really like-- that fidelity is the exception, not the norm; I learned that gender discrimination pervades this culture, engulfs it, even. I learned that we may lose an entire generation of young women and men to HIV/AIDS.

But I also learned about Mary Open Door, an incredible support group in Belmopan who formed simply out of three women taking care of one another in their home, many of whom were victims of domestic violence; I’ve learned about Regina, a small women’s group who has slowly formed in the poorest area of Belize, to come together and work for change among their community. I learned about nearly every NGO in Belize that fights relentlessly to educate the general population about women, about gender-based discrimination and exploitation, and the way it has permeated culture.

When we start to place the priority on sexual and reproductive rights of our women as the cornerstone of development; it is then that these nations we refer to as developing, will stand developed.

YES continues to be one of the major NGOs in Belize tirelessly fighting for the rights of women; rights that have been dignified to women of the US since roughly 1919, contrasted with women in Belize who are just now, in the past few decades, gaining these same rights. Seems odd to think that I, a young woman who has never not known a life of such; that I, since I can remember, have always had a daddy telling me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. Seems odd to think that I’m witnessing something that I could have missed by a few decades in the US; (not to say that the movement is at all over anywhere in the world). Seems odd to think that women, who are entrusted with bringing life into the world, creating it and cultivating it, are deemed unworthy of much more.

In the spirit of women, check this out:

Girleffect.org

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Under the Shade I flourish
January 17, 2010

It’s been land of the eternal shade these past three months; days where the temperature falls below 80 and you have to take a raincoat in your backpack rather than a sweat rag. You transition quickly from the urge to shower twice a day to rid oneself of sweat and dust and filth, to terror at the thought of it; ice cold water against an already chilled body: traumatic. I’m serious.

“Under the shade I flourish” is the motto written on the Belizean flag: ‘Sub Umbra Floreo’. I have been flourishing in the shade now for nearly two months, when in late November the heat disappeared into cool breezes and nights’ sleeps covered in thick blankets, believe it or not. The absence of the heat has revealed the deadening effects of it as we feel it creep its way back into our lives and down the back of our necks.

The heat and humidity of the city make it nearly impossible to do anything with much zest. It leaves you feeling eternally lethargic. It is like a dead fog that follows you around in the day and keeps you up at night. It has found us again in January and is making me hate myself for any night that I cursed the cold when my thin blanket and thin sweatshirt fell short of warming my body from the cold wind and broken windows of my bedroom.

In land of the eternal shade, life is easier. Days aren’t quite as long, bus rides less sweaty. Laundry and showers are less of a requirement, and more of a suggestion. Your life is not pervaded with sweat, and the quest for a piece of shade, or a fan to cool your sweaty face.

Me? I guess I flourish under the shade, too.

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A Few Thoughts on Haiti…
January 17, 2010

The Belizean newspaper this past week, and really always, is filled with the ugly. I read it and I cringe. In fact, I hate reading the paper: it makes me feel helpless; it makes me feel hopeless, but I read it anyway. Nearly anything newsworthy around here is the political corruption, the shootings of the weeks, the latest scandal or monopoly. I read it in the paper, read it in my girls’ poetry; I hear it at night, too.

But with this week next to our Belizean newspaper rests another: the New York Times, which came in the suitcases of visiting parents from the States. Its front page is full of Haiti’s devastation; the photos and articles haunt me each morning between my sips of tea and spoonfuls of oatmeal. Maybe it’s because I’ve always felt particularly interested in Haiti as a country after spending time in the Dominican Republic; always cringing upon learning the way they are viewed by nearly all Central American and Caribbean neighbors. Belize is certainly no exception. Maybe it’s because it is absolutely horrific suffering at the hands of natural disaster and failed infrastructure, and the deadly implications of such a lethal combination. It seems that just as minimal progress is happening, natural disaster strikes and unhinges any hope or optimism as a binding force for its people.

And yet, we sit in our homes and watch catastrophe strike on our TVs. We see bodies lined on streets, clay-caked children’s feet dangle off of garbage stricken streets. We look on, we shake our heads, we change the channel to something more interesting; after all, how can we begin to process the suffering the glares from our TVs. We were not designed to see such suffering, let alone process it from a distance. It has only been in the last century that we have been exposed to such diametrically opposed ways of living and life, suffering and celebration, until the advent of the television.

Sometimes it seems like instead of standing amazed, in awe, in solidarity, we stand divided and disillusioned, nearly numb to it—to life’s differences. The media has the potential to be an incredible tool through which we come together in solidarity—marked by seemingly entirely different existences, but instead, it seems to do the opposite. It stares at us. We stare right back, simultaneously amazed and unfazed, desensitized. We’ve seen enough, and yet, we’ll never see enough. We will never see enough of the suffering that encapsulates Haiti, and every Haiti that is out of the headlines, who is in such a constant state of disillusion, that it is no longer newsworthy; no longer romantic or interesting.

I, too, sometimes, feel my numbness as the zeros behind the numbers add up identity-less bodies. I, too, feel helpless and vulnerable in the face of destruction. No, I’m not asking all of us to pack up our bags and make a pilgrimage to Haiti to do relief work. I’m not sure what I’m asking for; I guess just that others’ suffering doesn’t go unnoticed. And this doesn’t just mean those who are flashed on the screen in the face of complete and utter devastation at the hands of natural disasters, but those who suffer daily on the dirty streets of cities and structures that have failed them. They deserve our attention, too. And no, it’s not just dirt ridden faces in the “developing world”, it’s perfectly clean ones who live in the city, or even suburbia. They need to be noticed, too.

It appears to me that, contrary to the very nature and point of media in the first place, its presence has led to complete indifference in the face of suffering. Still, we persist. We no longer stand daunted and perplexed at the idea of suffering, but rather desensitized and immune. We are used to seeing the destitute suffer and die. We watch idly from our comfy couches while our furnaces warm our cold bodies. We watch, we mention it on the phone to our friends. Haiti, as of the Human Development Index 2008 was 146th of 177, what will it be now? Dead last? Dead being the operative word.

Maybe all we can do is keep watching the news and reading the paper, to stop for a second and accompany someone, even from a distance, in their suffering. There is such profound suffering going on in the world, and often times, we never know a bit of it, let alone inquire as to the root of it. It hurts to see such suffering; it scares us; it questions and compromises our safety, as nations and individuals. Maybe we all need to feel a bit of vulnerability, as we watch Haiti, and any other individuals suffering at the hands of natural disasters, economic disasters, personal disasters. The least we can do is acknowledge their suffering; show them, in some small way, that their suffering does not go unnoticed.

I guess what I’m saying is, we should keep listening to the radio. We shouldn’t stop. Keep looking on. We cannot allow ourselves to be desensitized to the world’s suffering. Though it hurts, we can’t turn our heads. Keep listening. Let us not forget about Haiti after they leave the headlines on the New York Times for something more interesting.

I will end this with a quote from an editorial to the Belizean “Amandala Paper” which you can read here: it is such a testament to another country’s take Haiti’s situation.

http://www.amandala.com.bz/index.php?id=9431

“As people who have lived under the umbrella, so to speak, of white supremacy for the last centuries, we Belizeans, both consciously and subconsciously, tried to move ourselves and our families from blackness into whiteness. Our slogan was, “Raise yu colour.” It was real. We believed this was the way to self-preservation. We turned our backs on our own blackness: we shunned our black brothers and sisters. We were ashamed of Haiti, and did not accept Haitians as our brothers and sisters. But they are our brothers and sisters. They are our brothers and sisters from way back in the West African reality. Embrace our roots, Belizeans. Feel the pain. Reach out to Haiti. Pray for the Haitian people, created in the image and likeness of God. Solidarity with Haiti.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.”

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Why Hope?
January 10, 2010

Paulo Freire writes that “as long as I fight, I am moved by hope; and if I fight with hope, then I can wait.”

Why do we hope? In the face of homelessness, senseless violence, deplorable living conditions and seemingly solution-less poverty. The answer to this question is as subjective as the question itself, but my answer is this: The older I get, the more I learn more about the buearocracies and structures, I’ve been left feeling hopeless rather than hopeful, powerless rather than powerful, meaningless rather than meaningful. I ultimately felt helpless in the face of adversity. But never before have I felt so integrated into and a part of a struggle, hope tangible, in faces and the movement. There is collaboration and community- solidarity. Each one a piece back to the puzzle named hope, wreaking of equality, and dripping with dignity.

I am acquiring, slowly, knowledge; with this, I have been stirred by a new sense of hope. I am learning about this country, its politics, its progress and setbacks, its slowly evolving movement. Belize, like any country, is slowly unfolding itself, just as is the States, as Barack spoke to in his State of the Union. It must be a relentless preservation of hope, if nothing else, that a nation possesses. It is in solidarity and community that we will learn to thrive, as nations--divided to united, as people trying to take care of themselves and each other.

The hope that rests in the back pockets of women and men alike, whether it be in thick cement houses, or thin wooden structures. There’s hope. It is in the chorus of the dogs, and the symphony of the children. It is in the coming together of people, and the raising of voices. It is the anger and frustration-- the lessons learned, lives and opportunities lost. It is in meeting rooms and conference calls, the gathering of women on rickety back porches all over the world. From the bottom to the top, and the top to the bottom-- there’s hope.

I learn with Belize, and without it. Perhaps I still don’t have much to show for myself here, maybe I never will; maybe I’ll never have any tangible evidence of my ever being here, except my name on old faded envelopes, a carving into my wooden desk, or a few amusing stories left on the lips of my coworkers or students, but I keep learning. As Freire writes “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” And so I keep learning; I may do nothing else for these two years, but learn. And with that, I am okay.

I continue to learn more and more about YES as an agency, and am inspired, moved, humbled to accompany this organization. After six months, and several missteps and confusion, I feel that I am just now transitioning from a place of apprentice to accomplice. It continues to fight, without permission, for women’s equality, as each staff member of our team of ten firmly believes in the power of young women, especially those who are most vulnerable and oppressed by their gender and their socioeconomic status. I am but a small part, if any, in this movement.

I continue to teach two days a week, with counseling, home visits, proposal writing filling my other days. We are also in the process of putting together a website for the organization, some tangible evidence that we exist, and to share a bit of YES with the rest of the world, with the rest of Belize. I cannot wait to share it with you all.

More than anything, I think, I have realized how much of the education for these girls, their current situation at hand, demands real life applicability. When it boils down to life, education becomes the key in the lock. No, this isn’t about the worksheets in math, not even long division. The academic focus has shifted from an emphasis on formal traditional education to non-traditional trades such as sewing, cooking, etc, with the understanding that these are the skills that will proved these young women with the opportunity to return promptly to the work force, while a hand full will be reintegrated back into the formal Belizean educational sector. Education loses the idea of “education for education’s sake but education for survival’s sake. Everything from English to science to math must be related to life skills, to sewing to cooking to charging money; it must be directly related to moving from a place of survival to a place of thriving.

It’s about posing questions and creating a space where the essentials and the questions can coexist around their reality. It is this co-existence, this atmosphere, that I am still trying persistently to create, promote, maintain, sustain. It’s getting easier. Yes, it’s getting easier. Life is finding itself a rhythm.


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Morning
January 17, 2010

Each morning, Belize city, desolate and dirty, is awoken by bus horns and fruit carts. The streets are swallowed whole by the dust and debris; we choke.

This cement structures too big for its own good-- rooms too large for any semblance of coziness. Dust collects in the corners of each room; each weekly slop of the mop missing it by mere centimeters. We squint our eyes as the dust wafts in through the window slates and collects on our house, on our lives. If for no other reason, it reminds us that we can’t sit still for too long; it’ll be physical proof of any place where life wasn’t.

The books align themselves from their height; they collect dust on their edges and smell of years, latent, waiting to be read. Some bindings are now cracked and aged, tinted brown from their accumulation of the dirt. These walls, they scream for love; for some eager soul to paint them and love them. They need new coats and a good scrub like a child needs a mother, but it’ll never get done.

Our flip flops slap against the floor, two by two, from the moment our feet, dangled from our bedsides are aimlessly fumbled into their rubber molds. Music wafts in most days with the dust; both of them louder and thicker than we’d like. They invade our space, not that it was ever our own, in the first place, as if there is ever such a thing.

The empty laundry line begs for clothes, as if the sun exists only to warm, and light, and dry. Trash litters the streets, so do the bodies; the regular faces are stirred by the movement; their beds have become the walkway of the city. They stay asleep, somehow.

Most women are left inside, most days; some peer out behind barred windows, others from their wooden frames; they fasten their children’s shoes and button up their blouses. They scoot them out the door and start the wash. They begin dinner for that night at 9:00 am; if not, it won’t be ready on time.

A man pedals by on a child’s bike, his knees barely missing the handlebars. He turns from a man into a boy when he sits on its seat-- no matter how strong he is or how much money he makes. He looks silly on that bike. It’s too small; he looks like one of those men in the circus, or in a parade. It always makes me laugh. He carries a jug of water, and a rake under his arm. On the other bike, is carried a family heading out for their day. They ride on their way to work like the family in suburbia in their SUV

They’ll ride their bikes to work, pumping their legs, fighting against rusty chains and strong winds, not to mention their wife on their handlebars. The bus is full. Some stair out the window, fondly, others text on their cell phones mechanically; others still smoke their cigarettes and watch life pass them by with foggy morning eyes.

The streets are filled with colors, each school uniform an billboard for its institution. You dare not misbehave while you’re wearing it, the teachers say, everyone knows where you go to school. You wear your identity for everyone to see. Like it or not.

projects and sleepovers. They spend their days clutched next to mom as she washes the laundry. They spend their days in front of the TV. It’s probably too hot to play outside, or its just plain unsafe.

The dog barks and incessant remarks from the nightly card players, beer in right hand, hand of cards in the left, cigarette tucked behind their ears. They wear beaters and sagged shorts; they play their music too loud and cursing adjectives accompany nearly every noun. No, these aren’t up and coming adolescent boys; they’re grown men. I like them very much, actually.

Some women in the streets wear stylish pantsuits and high heels, but you don’t see many of them on the South side. You see tattered t-shirts, faded by the sun, pulled and stretched out by the line, and uniforms made by poorly trained tailors. The arms uneven, the fabric frayed after one wash.

The rain that slaps against the corrugated tin roofs, soon is poured into drinking cups. It falls from the sky and into our bellies, replenishing the water which has fled from our bodies quickly, dripping from our faces and into our laps. We hide under it by our big umbrellas; we shuffle along in the puddles, track marks on our back to prove it, as it kicks up behind our dirty flip flops, or along our bike tires like a small squirt gun.

I stand, among the masses, waiting for my bus; I carry life on my back. It’s zipped up tightly, hidden from plain view. Life is heavy some days. Some days it’s so heavy I think I might fall over backward. I am little girl who wears a grownup backpack when she should have a little girl one. It wears patches when it should have Barbies. I topple over backwards at the weight of it. Sometimes, life is too heavy.

My hair is messy from the wind and last night’s sleep. I don’t look right to them, and to me. I wear Chocos instead of heels. I’m not like the pretty American women they see on their televisions. I think we both resent me for that. Regardless, I stand with the rest, and I wait for my bus. I step on and carefully choose my seat; I look out the window. I read my book. The bus delivers me slowly to my day.

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Gwennie,
under construction, always

Allow me to introduce you. Her name is Gwennie. Gwennie’s not particularly nice, or pleasant. Gwennie’s different than the rest. And this is precisely why I like her so much. No, she doesn’t remember my name, she hardly remembers yesterday. She’ll never remember my name. But that’s not the point. The point isn’t for me to be named, or her to distinguish me from any other of my American friends. The point is to sit on a step with Gwennie and share a day with her, an hour, or even just a wave across her crumbling cement fence. That’s the point.

Gwennie sits on the back stoop every day, the front porch in the night. She sees everything, Gwennie; she sees nearly everything that happens in our neighborhood. What she doesn’t see, she’s the first to hear on the radio. She sells her plums. She yells at the neighbor kids when they try to steal them from her trees. She gets dressed up for church on Sundays, and she walks the block to St. Lukes.

“She’s lonely,” she says; I think she’s right.

“It’s my husband, my boyfriend, my best friend” she utters emphatically as she clutches her radio under her arm. It’s always under her arm, that radio. Like a little boy carries his teddy bear, or his blankie. We all have our teddy bears, I think.

A tattered bandana tightly wraps around her frenzied hair; its adorned with marijuana leaves. She doesn’t care. She watches the people come and go; she knows the sounds of the city by heart. Her mind is a keen watch; she knows the day’s events instinctively, maybe even before they happen—40 years she’s sat on that stoop and watched life happen.

The deep creases in her face don’t hide, but reveal her real thoughts, not that she’d ever hid them from you. You can see the remains of her once smooth brown skin that graces the photos on her wall in her young age. I was beautiful once, she thinks, the corners of her mouth turning up; those deep creases hold years of being. There’s life hiding in those deep lines and fine wrinkles. They are tucked away in a safe place, never to be taken away.

Just one tooth left, twisted in the front of her mouth. “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,” she says in her gruff voice. She doesn’t smile. When I ask her if she likes Barack Obama, she responds “Is that that new rapper?” I can’t help but laugh.

She moves slowly, almost meticulously across her yard. The laundry dangles all above her among the low hanging tree branches. She ducks beneath them, swatting at the hanging clothes like mosquitoes.

The sun beats down on her tired face as she watches it fall back behind Martins. She’s seen the sun fall back down for years from that porch. She knows it all too well, I think.

Her children have moved to the states, and taken her grandchildren with them. Her husband died of prostrate cancer, or from what I’ve gathered of her vague description. She says this happens, you know, but “I don’t have to be happy about it.” She’s lived, she’s loved, and now she’s savoring life’s moments from her front porch, with the program announcer and her next door neighbors to accompany her. Her once grassy backyard has turned into one big bald spot that sometimes resembles an old soccer field.

Gwennie moves slowly, methodically raking the small plum leaves from the dirt; she puts them all in their designated pile, before consolidating them; every week the same day. I know. I watch her. I’ve always watched Gwennie, from my window since August – every Sunday morning, raking her plum leaves.

Her habits have become so repetitive and uniform; even the paint is wearing away into the silhouette of her body, the paint on the wall where she sits to watch TV. The walls too have spoken back to tell her they notice her. We know you are still here, Gwennie. There is proof.

The irony, though, is this; I don’t pity Gwennie. In fact, I envy her. She’s not waiting for life to happen to her like I am; it already has. She’s had life, already.

Yes, she was once pumping her legs on a worn out bike; she was once toting a toddler on her hip, wiping drool from her chin. She was once setting the table for five, and tucking kids into bed. She was once smiling across the room at her husband, and chatting with her girlfriends outside the schoolhouse. But now she just sits, her face in her hand, and watches life. She listens to it, too. I bet some days, she can still taste it, life.

You see, Gwennie is proof of life-- etched in her face, her callused hands, her tired feet. Life dangles from her; it has already happened.