Actually, we’re leaving tomorrow!!! Woohoo! I’m so nervous and excited, mainly because I’m finally getting a chance to make a change in a developing country. See, I regularly go to India so I won’t exactly have the same level of culture shock as others but my previous experience has made me want even more to make a difference in places not as lucky as America. My excitement is mounting every day as we learn more and more about the country and they days are counting down. They have a very different culture from us.
A little about the culture: The main languages spoken, in order of popularity, are English, Creole, and Spanish. There are multiple other native american languages spoken here but these are the most prominent. Garifuna is the name of the main culture here and Dangriga is its cultural capital. As history goes, a spanish ship filled mostly with slaves crashed onto the shores of Belize and these Garifuna slaves ended up escaping into the land. They eventually established themselves there and
because of this heritage, most Belizeans resemble Africans more than Latinos.
Fun Fact: I love to dance and have choreographed quite a few performances in my time. So, I had to find out what the modern dance was like there. Turns out, it's just a lot of intense stationary hip shaking. My hips couldn't stand up to that so I instead looked up the traditional Garifuna dancing. I'll just let you see what I found.
There are so many amazing projects going on but it will be interesting to see which ones are accomplished. For now, it seems we're biting more than we can chew. Just in engineering about half of our group are project leaders for a task yet some of these projects will require many more than 2 people.
I'm really excited about my project, combatting beach erosion, and with my presentation and the actual intense impact it's having on the land seems to have gotten everyone else concerned/excited about it as well. However, the solutions for these kind of problems usually involve the government, many giant corporations, and the expenditure of millions of dollars. The mayor of Dangriga and his council have already drafted a plan for this so my first step will be to talk to him. I hope we will all be able to make some kind of impact for the country. So many of these projects start out with much thought and inspiration only to not be kept up or truly match the needs of the people. But this fact has only made me want to fight harder to make whatever project I do a success. These kind of chances are like cold days to Belize, rare and precious.
Well, that's all for now but a lot more to come!
