The third and fourth week

It has been some time since I last wrote down my thoughts and experiences about my visit to Belize. This has been partly due to the fact that my computer has been on the blink and I have had to use other people?s equipment to get things done. This has meant that there has been not much opportunity to use the equipment for personal use. But now, as you can see, the moment has arrived. My time, since last I wrote, has been divided into two sections; the workshops with teachers and a 6 day trip with Chris Newman to Guatemala to get catechetical resources and visit the parishes where we worked in Izabal.

There were three two-day workshops to organise for three areas of the Stann Creek District. In all approximately 165 teachers took part. These were teachers from the schools that the Parish is responsible for managing. To call a school ?catholic? in Belize is not the same as in England. A Catholic School in Belize is not a school built by Catholics for Catholics.

It is a school managed by the Catholic Church for all the children in the area. While it is intended that the values of the Catholic faith will permeate the ethos of the school it is not intended as an institution to form just Catholics. Prior to going to Belize the information from people was that the teachers were in need of animation and encouragement. Conscious that the last thing they would need is a outsider coming in to tell them what to do, I organised the workshop so as to help them explore the situation they faced and to explore and propose their own solutions. Each of the three workshops followed a similar pattern but each developed a different focus due to the differing interests of each group. Each workshop began with me acknowledging that there were some people that were probably feeling that it was going to be a waste of time since ?what could an outsider tell them?? Acknowledging that they were correct and the sentiment contained a lot of truth, I asked them to explain to me what they perceived their roles and responsibilities to be. The picture they painted was one of a wide ranging, demanding yet fulfilling challenge which often resulted in frustration because of the lack of teaching resources. The workshop then moved on to explore attitudes and behaviours that need to be encouraged or avoided for children to have a better learning experience. In the light of this work the teachers were invited to set for themselves personal targets to aim for in improving their own teaching. Having spent time focusing on the teachers themselves, the afternoon of the first day in each workshop shifted the focus on to the situation in which teachers find themselves.

Each of the workshops dealt with one of the following focus questions:

From the responses to these questions the focus was set for the second day. The main theme differed for the second day of each workshop.

Issues relating to teamwork and encouraging parental participation also emerged in each workshop as a focus of discussion.

After each workshop finished I collected the ideas and information and then prepared a report for each teacher. This part of the exercise enabled me to experience yet another aspect of the frustration of working here in Belize, the problem with equipment. At every stage of the process I met problems due to equipment failure (not because of being old or lack of maintenance.) Within the matter of two or three days:

By the 11^th December after spending 12 hours the day before printing and collating the reports for the teachers to collect on the 12^th December all was ready for me to leave the workshops behind me and to leave for the next part of the trip: a visit to Guatemala.

An eventful few days it turned out to be

If that introduction hasn?t caught your attention I guess nothing will!!!! Chris and I left Dangriga at 8.30 am and began the journey to Guatemala. As we crossed the boarder into Guatemala there was a sense of homecoming the whole feel of the country was different. The road immediately deteriorated, the houses ceased to be of block and were instead of more natural materials. After 15 miles the road was again asphalted but with many holes and bumps to be avoided.

The journey was 250 miles and it was about a five and a half hour journey with an hour to get through the immigration at the Border. If there was a direct road between Dangriga and Rio Dulce the distance would have been about 80 miles. On the way we stopped off at San Luis to do an errand for Fr Dominic and happened to meet in the street Marie Elena a Guatemalan woman who used to work for us ten years ago in Rio Dulce looking after our clinic and training health workers. Who says it isn?t a small world!

On arriving at the parish centre we discovered the priests were out visiting villages and so we left a message that we would be passing through the following week hoping to stay for a few days. We continued towards the city taking the opportunity to visit with people we had worked with. Because of the dangers of travelling at night we found a cheap hotel to stay in (about $10 for a twin room) and began the last leg of the journey to the city at about 7am.

Everything was running smoothly until a couple of minutes after eight. Chris, who was driving, and I became aware of a pickup trying to overtake us. The men on the back were shouting. Then we realised two of them were waving guns at us, telling us to pull over. Chris put his foot down to try and get ahead of them again and the chase began. They rammed the back of the pickup we were in. It was difficult for us to accelerate because we were on a steep part of the road in a diesel pickup. Shots were being fired and the sound of our pickup being hit could be heard. The other pickup began to pass us and then rammed the driver?s side of our vehicle as Chris tried to cut them off. I have vivid images of other vehicles passing the commotion ignoring what was obviously happening. At some point the other pickup got in front of us and we were forced to stop. The men jumped off their vehicle and surrounded ours. One of the men with a gun got in the back of ours while the other with a gun opened the drivers door and tried to get Chris into the centre of the car. Two men were at my side of the door and began to hit me and push and pull. In all the confusion it was unclear what they actually wanted. They didn?t seem to want us to get out of the vehicle . Chris took the key out of the ignition so we could bargain to get our bags with our passports in return for the vehicle. The shouting continued and a gun went off twice inside the pickup. For a moment I thought Chris had been shot. The men at my side continued to hit me telling me to get in the back. At one point they shut the door trapping my foot in the closed door. Still trucks and cars continued to pass us. And then suddenly it was over. They left us taking a bag and telling us to go. As Chris turned on the ignition to drive off I opened the passenger door to release my foot, and shaken we continued our journey, the final 25 miles to Guatemala City. As the adrenaline rush subsided we felt shocked and sickened. The feelings of homecoming less than twenty-four hours before had now transformed into fear and unease.

We did our business, buying Spanish catechetical materials, as quickly as possible and soon we were leaving the City to make our way to Coban to buy Q?eqchi? catechetical materials. It wasn?t till some way past the 30 mile mark that we both heaved a sigh of relief. The finding of a 9mm lugar gun shell in the vehicle a few weeks later was, however, a forceful reminder of just how dangerous the event had been.

The rest of our time in Guatemala was relatively uneventful. A time for catching up with work colleagues; visiting parishes and projects where we had worked. The Central American Claretians gave us a warm welcome and we visited El Estor, Santo Tomas and Rio Dulce. We were given the opportunity to see how projects were progressing. The education system we had set up was producing Q?eqchi? teachers able to return to their villages to teach. One village was being presented the title to their land, a process that had been initiated years ago. It was a true sense of what we had planted years ago bearing fruit now. In addition to the joy of meeting old friends there was a sense of sadness to see how little we have in common now that our daily lives are not so entwined. Time was short and we visited many, catching up on the lives of others. The advent of electricity into the Rio Dulce parish had brought with it a wealth of changes. While people are better off than they ever were, there remained a sense of poverty as if the gap between rich and poor had continued to widen despite the progress that had obviously been made.

Our journey back to Belize was almost as eventful as the earlier journey. The constant drizzle of rain had left the road like a sheet of ice and we passed a number of cars and trucks that had slid off the road. Even for ourselves, aware of the danger and taking care, the car went into a skid as we came out of one curve. Thank God there was nothing coming the other way. The vehicle made a 180-degree spin and came to a halt on the other side of the road. Even I was impressed with the way I had controlled the vehicle in the spin! After that we used four-wheel drive to give us more traction. The journey continued and while uneventful it gave us the opportunity to witness people who had not been so lucky. The worst part of the journey was that of the 15 miles to the border. With the rain it had become a sea of mud and articulated lorries, buses and cars had become trapped and even overturned as they had slid off the roads as they had tried to pass vehicles where the road was too weak. At one point the road was completely blocked and we had to go through a fence and across a field to get past the blockage; the advantages of 4 wheel drive. And so it was, that having left Rio Dulce at 8.30am we arrived back at Dangriga at 8.10 pm having made the 250 miles journey which only a few days before had taken us less than 6 hours.

And so to the end of my visit to Belize. I find myself impressed by all that the team here are trying to do. The challenges facing them demand more resources both in terms of materials and personnel. The accommodation the community is living in needs attention but the demands of the work and all the ?bits? that happen make it difficult to resolve this problem. This is due in large part to the community?s priority obviously being that of the pastoral service of the people, rather than their own personal comfort.

Back in England I have been frustrated, like many, at the lack of information. Observing the way they quietly keep working my concern is that they are in danger doing too much. Hours on the road, lots of differing projects being juggled, all make it difficult to find time to compose ones thoughts to keep others informed of a life and a world so different than the one to which we are used. Promises have been made about future efforts for better communication but whatever does happen, let this observer assure you that the lack of information in no way reflects a lack of anything happening. It is a case that the opposite is true.

On this trip I?ve had the pleasure of seeing the ?harvest? of our missionaries labours from our commitment to Guatemala and our present missionaries ?sowing? a future harvest. It makes me wonder who are the ones God is calling today to take up this missionary life to reap the harvest of our present missionaries and in turn sow the Gospel in the future.