Challenging Questions

I have been in Belize now for about 3 ½ months and finding myself at a challenging yet stable point in life. Amidst the beauty of Belize’s diverse natural beauty and cultural groups, my motorcycle riding privilege, and waking up to the sun rising over the sea, I am also funding many struggles and frustrations about life here as a foreign volunteer and the life here in general. I have found there to be a great reliance and expectance on foreign aid and foreign volunteerism by the people. Being a colony up till just over 25 years ago, being an English speaking country, and being a relatively safe country, it has been a perfect dumping ground for other countries, organizations, and volunteers to come on help out, or more so to dump some goods and money. It has made me question aid, donations, assistance and volunteering. If it creates a dependency and reliance by the people, allowing them to sit back and wait whenever something needs to be done, then maybe the form and support is the problem itself.

The most impacting experience I had was last Sunday when I was asked to speak on behalf of the Catholic School management at the opening of the computer lab in the largest Maya village in the Toledo district. This was an exciting event for the village although the situation surrounding this event made me very uncomfortable. The computers were donated by CHx Oil Corporation and the purpose of the donation was to demonstrate to the 5 most southern villages the kids of gifts they could receive if they allow and cooperate with the oil drilling in the villages. Surrounded by hundreds of Q’eqchi Mayas villagers and sitting at the head table were the five leaders of the villages where the most oil is known to be, the oil corporation representatives, and myself. I guess I knew this kind of bribery and exploitation took place, but never saw it first hand and surely never sat at the head table next to those taking advantage of the people and land, and who happened to be the only others who just happened to have the same color skin as me. (I write a more detailed reflection of this on an earlier entry)

As the days pass I learn and experience more and more that make my thoughts and opinions change. There are always two sides to the coin and you must see and consider both or else that ignorance. And I will never understand what goes on here. After two years of being here I will not be able to claim that I know and understand what life is like here and why things work the way they do. Grappling with these questions and thoughts have brought more meaning to my life here. At first I was searching for meaning and what this would lead me to, since teaching the Catholic to a group of Maya children in each school is sometimes hard to convince myself that this is the best thing I could be doing right now with my life and that it is inline with the way I view the world and how improvements and changes can come about.