Beyond Orange Walk

Jan 25, 2008

Today was my first day with Elodia. I really like her; she’s completely overworked but clearly cares deeply about the kids. I also met Carmelita, a student at Trial Farm whose bone conduction hearing aid recently broke. Her right ear is fine, but her left year is closed over, so she’s been having surgeries to reconstruct it. They don’t know if she’ll need a hearing aid or not once the surgeries are completed. Elodia invited her to compete in the Deaf Spelling Bee that’s coming up in May, but she wasn’t interested. I’m sure she gets along pretty well in school and doesn’t see herself as Deaf. I helped Elodia do assessments on 8 students with possible learning disabilities. They are all in Standard 6 (=8th grade), which is the last year of required education, so they should be going on to highschool next year (if they can afford it), but all the students we tested today were functioning way below grade level. Elodia conducted the reading comprehension tests and I did the ‘Point to the picture that completes the pattern’ section. The kids were really nice, and I was certainly a novelty:). I heard one “hay una gringa!” when I walked in, and lots of kids were coming past the windows that looked into the classroom where Elodia and I were meeting with the students. Most of the white people in town are tourists (except one man who’s always drunk, wandering around town; Nancy figures he lost his passport or something and got stuck here who-knows-how-long-ago because he’s too out of it to figure out his way home), so having me at the school was pretty interesting. I also got to speak lots of Spanish, which was great. I’ll be with Elodia most Tues, Wed, & Thurs, and at Nancy’s school on Mon & Fri. Elodia also invited me to travel to a remote community called Indian Church to visit Mayan ruins sometimes. I’m looking forward to that. I had to smile when she said that the church “esta lejisimo” (super far), about 4 hours away:). Lejisimo is always relative, si? Then again, Nancy said at least an hour of that is pretty bumpy, so maybe I’ll be thinking it’s lejisimo too.

Bueno, tonight we have Girl’s Night at Nancy’s, a Bible study for any girls at church. I know I always emphasize using the word "women" instead of girls, but I actually mean girls in this case, b/c there are no church members over the age of 15. Lately I've been thinking more about what it means for any white North American to be doing mission work in another country. While I still don’t think anyone can separate themselves from some of the perceptions they bring as white North Americans, I am more struck now by the importance of being Deaf in a Deaf ministry, regardless of the country. Nancy, for example, is committed to developing Deaf leadership in the church and the community as much as she can, encouraging Deaf and hearing alike to realize how much Deaf people are really capable of. In contrast, some of the other missions in the area (there is a Canadian group and a Jehovah's Witness group) have been here for years and have shown zero interest in involving the Deaf people they work with in church leadership. So, in this context my perspective shifts some, from "missionaries shouldn’t 'colonize' the Deaf” (true) to “the Deaf should have as much access to church as anyone else so they can make their own decisions about religion” (also true).

Just some musings I've had of late.
Ok, I'm off to see about activating my phone here now. I should have a Belizian phone number by tomorrow.

& Can I just say that it’s totally beautiful out today? It must be about 80F. Ahhhh.....

New Vocab
63. línea atrevasada: horizontal line
64. hard-headed/takes a while to learn: (alva) Cl-shell (p-facing Cs make circle)- m=OPEN Cs (shell cracking), put Cs on head, OH, UNDERSTAND. She’s stubborn, it takes a lot of work to explain thing so she understands
65. USA (Belize): (all the kids) AIRPLANE. You’re from the US? Your mom and dad are in the US?
66. broccoli (Angelica): TREE GREEN. Alva’s picky. She doesn’t like raw broccoli.
67. black/creole (person/skin): Rh p-d B rubs p-d L forearm
68. Bible: (Alva), LAW, marked w/ B. The Bible says Matthew left everything to follow Jesus. (Nancy clarified that this is the Jehovah Witness sign for Bible)
69. bean: Rh x tap++ Lh p-d index. Tostadas have beans, lime, cheese, & tortillas.
70. lime: p-L L, thumb touch chin, m/nms= SOUR
71. Christian (Belize): Lh p-R 1, Rh p-d 1, make cross in front of heart, Rh in front, pushes both hands onto heart. Does being a Christian mean we are perfect? We don’t need Jesus help anymore? No, of course not.
72. gangsta rap: (Alva) G on heart, flicks up-- #RAP. I like watching gangsta rap on TV, but Nancy and my mom don’t like it.
73. Yelitzia: p-o W signs GIRL
74. Y.......: Y at R nostril (where her mole is)

Anyone know the Spanish word for ¨pattern¨?