Cultural Celebrations

Belize is full of culture. The country is a beautiful mix of many people, all from different backgrounds and with different stories and traditions. This past weekend I had the privelege of going north in a van full of people from Benque, a few of which I will be working with through CACHE. We arrived in San Jose Palmar for their cultural celebrations. It was the 6th annual festival of its kind and included dancing performances from people of all backgrounds - Mayan, Guatemalan, Belizean and Mexican. The dresses and dances were absolutely amazing. Even on the scorching hot day, I felt chills from watching one of the performances. I looked down there and no, there were no goosebumps. Hahaha, yeah right. Its so hot here. In the next couple days I will post pictures of this festival that we went to.

After some hours of watching dances I went with three gentlemen to the house of a wonderful woman named Carmen who was also heading up this event. She is very active in her community and has a job with the department of education that keeps her plenty busy. On top of all the rest in life, she finds time to dedicate towards these cultural celebrations which don't bring in plenty money but are priceless in their mission. The idea that I'm pondering, along with many others here is that of finding ways to make cultural preservation a sustainable effort. When we went back to Carmen's house she fed us traditional food, rellenos I think - it was a black soup with chicken that was stuffed with pork sausage - delicious! We also had ceviche with shrimp, tomatoes, onions, cilantro and lime - amazing! And her husband graciously kept each of us with a cerveza in hand - which was not a Belikin! Truly a wonderful day. We discussed (meaning: they discussed in Spanish, I listened intently) culture and the necessity to preserve it for future generations. Near the end of the afternoon, Carmen read us a beautiful poem in Spanish. I did not understand a word to be honest, but she will email it to me and I will use to write an article very soon.

David Ruiz is the director of CACHE, a wonderful mover and shaker in the community as well as an accomplished and well known author. He took me last week to see Arenal which is a small village a little ways out of Benque. We were doing research he said. This entailed going to a couple schools, the police station, and tracking down the mayor and "vice" mayor all for a chat about the village, the problems and accomplishments, issues with drugs, human trafficking, customs and borders issues, etc. It was an enlightening experience - and probably would have been more so if I could have understood more of what was said.
Anyway, on this same day David talked to me a bit about what he'd like me to be doing here in Benque and with the House of Culture. Priority one will be to get the newsletter for the HOC back up and running. This will be a 4 page publication that covers cultural and current events that are happening in Benque and surrounding areas. It will also detail upcoming events and feature an article on something as well. The details are vague as of yet, but my first article will cover the cultural celebration of San Jose Palmar. I will also write a seperate article on the importance of cultural preservation. This is very exciting to me as I love to write and the experience of publication as well as public relations will be a great one. I was thinking today that it would be great to get kids of the schools and from the community involved in writing sometime, perhaps a creative writing contest, in order to feature local writers as well. I will report more as time goes on. Hopefully we will have the first newsletter out by the end of November or December.

Yes.. December, when some of you will be experiencing the bliss of snow... ahhhh... :-) The heat continues here but I feel that I'm adjusting more and more. That or I am just getting used to the feeling of sweat trickling down my body. Oh well.