If you heard the dogs barking...

I had my second drum class last evening, and while I will say that it was a vast improvement from last week, the title of this blog is not a hyperbole. At one point, when we stopped drumming, and I was able to hear sounds other than the almost deafening rhythm of the drums and my drum master, Emmeth’s, soulful “Yep” and “Hey”, the dogs were performing a soulful tune of their own. Here’s to hoping they were barking at some passerby, and not my attempt at the “Welcome Song”, traditionally played when someone important comes to your village.

Second drum class with Abril and our instructor, Emmeth.

Emmeth Young, drum master and our instructor. 

I went through a bit of a transformation between this week and last week. Within fifteen minutes of my first class, Emmeth was informing me that I needed to relax, to which I cried, “I am too high strung to play the drums!” Relax soon became a common refrain during that first class, and yesterday, bolstered by a particularly rough day at my internship, I went in with a different mindset. Drumming should not be a stress inducer, I decided. In fact, if Emmeth thought I was stressing about classes, he would likely tell me I should not come back.

Letting loose!

And with that change in mindset, drumming became my Belizean stress reliever. There’s something calming about zoning out (that’s not to say Emmeth did not yell at one point, “Breathe, I can see you are not breathing, breathe, let it flow”) while performing the same rhythm, your instructor making something out of nothing, adding additional accompaniments. There’s something great about the sting on your hands and fingers after an hour of drumming, so different from a day in front of your computer. There’s something fulfilling about finally getting a rhythm that your instructor quickly pounded out, and the smile on his face when you achieve it. And there’s something invigorating about letting your stress out as you pound on the drum, putting a smile on my face for the rest of the evening.

I'm pretty sure this is after I screwed up and he told me I needed to breathe. 

 

Drumming is so different from anything I’ve ever done, or would normally ever do, and that’s why I like it. No longer high strung, I’m back to the childhood photo my parents have had for years, hair wild, head back, a loud laugh on my lips. 

A Smile on My Face

Punta Gorda, and Belize in general, is a place of such extreme contradictions and hilarity that I started a daily list of things that make me smile. Below are a few of my favorites so far:

Arrival 6/15/12: Catching a reflection of myself, loaded down with my large backpacking backpack, crossover bag, and carry-on backpack, hair wild from the boat ride, clothes clinging to me from sweat, as I walked along Front Street to my hostel. I sure do know how to make an entrance.

6/16/12 While attempting to find an apartment, I caught a glimpse of Badger red as a hustled past a stall. I stopped, backed up, and sure enough, hanging from the ceiling of the stall, the only beach towel in the place, was a Wisconsin Badger towel in little PG. 

6/17/12 Walking back from dinner, and along the central park (a pitiful, litter-strewn triangle with a slide and stage), I stopped to watch some sort of town picnic that was currently in the midst of a dance off. On the stage? Girls no older than 8 breaking it down better than I ever could.

6.18.12 After my first day of work, I joined a Spaniard, a Brit, a Mexican, a Burundian, and a German for dinner. I don’t think I stopped smiling the entire dinner.

6.20.12 I awake to a Rasta man (who I now know as King) waiting for me at my hostel. He has found me a bike. I declined his offer to take me to the bike immediately, and ended up not going with this bike, as I am relatively certain it has been stolen.

6.23.12 Moving into my new apartment, my landlord tells me to wrap all my stuff in plastic if we have a big storm, and advises that if we have a category 4 or 5 storm, I should probably get out of town.

Beautiful view from my apartment porch. My apartment is kind enough to allow me to experience the rain indoors!

6.25.12 I leave a shop to see a Rasta man rolling a joint while sitting on a speaker blasting Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger”, while nodding his head to the beat.

7.5.12 I went to the water store to order my next 5 gallon jug, and watched in horror/disgust as 2 men walked by with a quartered pig, exposed, carrying it through the store. I attempt to make a break for it, and am almost hit in the face by a piece of raw pig.

7.7.12 On our way to the tourist beach town of Placencia for the weekend, we passed through a Police Check Point before we made it out of Punta Gorda. Were they asking for license and registration? No, they were extorting money for some distant relative that was supposedly missing a leg. This is a common occurrence.

7.13.12 My Rasta friend, King (who has taken to calling me ‘my queen’) told me I was a true Belizean beauty because I was tan. Later that day, he presented me with a ring he made for me. Have I, due to the complicated fist knock/handshake I do with him on my way to and from work, somehow entered into a common law marriage?

At it Again: Belize

I’ve been toying with the idea of resurrecting this blog for a while. To this day I regret that I never finished all my Ecuador stories, thanks to a hasty departure initiated by the Ecuadorean government. I didn’t know it at the time, but that last blog entry I wrote was actually a good way to end things, in a way. Ecuador was an amazing experience, and I have great memories from my time there. Perhaps it is because I am in another developing country that I keep thinking back to Ecuador, the passionate organization I was a part of, and the wonderful people that I was surrounded by. People that joined me on hospital visits, brought their kids to my house so I could feel like I was part of the family, and stopped by when the power was out to make sure I was okay. People that brought bananas over to ensure I had plenty of fruit and invited me to their family gatherings. No, it was not the exotic rainforest trips and the swims in the rivers that made Ecuador so memorable. It was the people that made my time in Ecuador.

And after that difficult yet amazing stint in Ecuador, I am back at it again, but in a new country: Belize. Sometimes, Belize seems so similar to Ecuador it is remarkable, and other times I feel as if they couldn’t be more different.

And so, with that introduction, my newly revived blog will cover the more personal stuff about my time in Belize than my work blog does, answering questions such as, but not limited to: How many gallons of sweat have you lost today? What are you doing to occupy yourself in such a tiny town? What makes you smile every day? What is it like to be a part of a bike gang? If you could care less about these trivial things, I suggest you meander over to my other blog that I am keeping for the Advocacy Project that actually documents the work I am doing, and not just my musings.

If however, stories of Rasta man waiting outside your hostel for you in the morning with the latest bit of news, the documentation of the War on Cockroaches, and that time I almost burned my apartment down while making popcorn for dinner sound interesting to you, I suggest you check back often.