Leaving Otoxha: Comments from Brian and Andra

Brian:

This communiqué is from Bella Vista fresh from our last day in Otoxha. Four months of living in the village is over and a new future awaits. We haven’t posted in quite awhile, we’ve been busy!!! And now I can finally reflect a little.


Just this last week Andra and I organized a marathon/open day in the village. A marathon is a football(soccer) tournament and the open day is sort of a mini carnival for the community. The point of the marathon/open day was to raise money for St. Marks RC Primary School upcoming school year. It was a great success, 10 teams showed up to play. Along with St. Marks we were able to find many partnerships to make this an all around great day for the community. The Honorable Eden Martinez came for a short bit and supported the marathon with money and uniforms for the Otoxha football team. We were able to get a donation of toothbrushes from the Ministry of Health to give out to the children. Red Cross came to give out information and materials along with our own. Humana donated a bunch of clothes to the women and children, as well as fixing the latrine before the open day so visitors had a comfortable place to do their business. We had a successful raffle of chicken wire and other prizes, including a punchboard and piñata. We had various other games organized such as volleyball and sack races. It was an amazing day and we were both really proud of ourselves for organizing the event, in total we raised BZ$2880 or US$1440 for the school. The principal and PTA were really happy with the results and were already planning school trips for the kidos.

It was sad to finally leave but we also were ready. We held a little goodbye party and gave the children in Kids Club graduation certificates and had a nice 30 minutes of constant pictures being taken in a machine gun fashion with all the families. Now were really excited to organize our thoughts on the accomplishments and mistakes of the last four months so we can aid future Poverty Fighters in their solidarity work with communities. But now Colorado is in our hearts and minds, but keep on checking for new posts they should be coming in more rapidly these next few weeks!!!




Andra

Wow. We are in our final, final stretch. This morning Brian and I left our village and headed down to Bella Vista with our back packs packed. I can’t believe it! As we walked up the road in Bella Vista towards the Humana office we were remembering the first time we made the trek with our backpacks on when we first arrived here 4 months ago. Now we are wrapping up, preparing our final presentations and getting ready to make the journey home. The last week after our open day marathon was a bit of a whirlwind of emotions. It actually seemed like it took forever. We started to say our goodbyes to people and started mentally preparing to leave (as well as a lot of packing and cleaning!) which really put us into a state of limbo- half in Otoxha and half already home. There were moments where I felt so sad to be leaving and was reminiscing about all of the people I got to know and the river and beautiful environment and unique living situations and then there were other moments where I was day dreaming about seeing my family, reaching home and what it would be like to see my precious nieces and nephews, about what lies in our futures.. I got so far into this feeling that I really felt like I was already home. This has been such an incredible experience, one that has really offered some enlightenment in many important areas. There is much more time and reflection needed in order to fully conclude on all that I have gotten out of my time here. For now I just want to share my excitement- we did it! There were times in the middle where it felt like such a long time, with no end in sight and now that we are finishing up it feels like it wasn’t that long ago that we came to this same office, nervous and anxious with anticipation as we had our welcome meeting and awaited our arrival to our new villages. Now we have adapted to a completely different life then we are used to, had so many new experiences, and have grown so much. Of course this is something I am so grateful to have done and something I will never forget and at the same time it is time to go home. Tahocaray and Shequay Otoxha! (Kekchi for: Thank you and Goodbye!)

The Final Month and The Kids Club

One more month of Fighting Poverty in Belize. Now that were 3/4ths of the way finished everything is coming together smoothly and also with a sense of urgency. I think this last month we have really found our bearing in the community and more of an understanding with the people and its culture.

This last month has been very successful and I would like to highlight the Humana Kids Club one of our bigger successes in the village. We started in early July to organize the Humana Kids Club, we decided to do this in concert with other "kids clubs" being organized throughout the country by Humana, the only difference being that the other Kids Clubs were for tots going into school and ours was for kids of all ages. This was due in part because we aren't fluent in Kekchi and the tots don't usually speak English. Anyways consistently we have between 10 and 20 kids attend, it is every Tuesday and Thursday at 10am. The Kids Club is focused on education and especially getting the children active in their communities so obviously that's what our activities focus on. Getting the children involved in the community is also a main point in the Humana People to People Child Aid projects throughout the world and I think we have really done some good work living up to "Child Aid." Here is a chronological list of the Kids Clubs so far:

1st Kids Club(KC): We taught the children about being gracious. And stressed the importance of saying thank you and your welcome (since we've been in the village the only times we've heard these two common phrases is from ourselves). We stressed to them that they should go home and tell their mom thank you for cooking for me. After later investigation I'd say at least half improved. We ended with a tag game called shark and minnows.

2nd KC: We had a geography lesson about Belize. The children located where on the map they lived and also drew pictures of Belize marking important towns and places of cultural interests. We continued with lessons in graciousness and also emphasized empowerment in the community, the kids were running around yelling "POWER TO THE PEOPLE". Sharks and minnows marked our conclusion of the day.

3rd KC: We started with cleaning the community center and around the area, then we made cards for those we love and appreciate. The kids also talked about sharing with each other and respecting boys and girls. The children had a good time and after a game of very muddy baseball took their cards home and gave them to their parents.

4th KC: The children learned about the importance of keeping the environment clean and the devastating effects of plastic in water sources as well as on the soil. The children broke up into groups along with the help of a local high schooler and came up with phrases regarding the environment, such as: "Keep the river clean for us to play," "Keep the environment clean and healthy" ect. They then painted the slogans on wooden signs we prepared earlier.

5th KC: We went around the village and placed the signs in strategic locations near the river and at high traffic areas (high traffic in Otoxha hahaha). This was particularly a fun event, the children were all beaming with pride on their success of working towards raising environmental awareness.

6th KC: This was our latest KC and a very empowering one it was. We had a "Kids Congress" in which we discussed points to make into a "Declaration of the Kids Club." A particular problem throughout the KC's is the little girls are shy and maybe due to their culture not promoted to speak up (which parallels with the village women). But Andra especially worked with them to speak up at this event and voice their opinion along with the often loud overpowering boys. We started with a first strong declaration that everyone voted on and approved saying "All kids are created equal." We came up with about 10 or 11 others my favorite being "Adults should respect the opinions of kids." We were really proud of the little Otoxhains and it is clear the KC's are having an effect on them.

In the future KC's we will paint the declaration on a community latrine Andra and I are in the process of renovating and they will present it on the Open Day/Football tournament we are organizing for the village.

I can already tell this month will fly by, soon we will be in our homeland where humanity will continue to guide us. For now we are committed to Otoxha and ensuring that this last month is a memorable one.