More to love in the jungle

I was invited to go to Belize with an organization called The Word at Work. A mission trip was being organized, and I just so happened to be going through a terrible divorce with a growing need to break the monotony. They could have been going to do anything worthy down there and I probably would've gone, but they were going down there to build bookshelves. Bookshelves! And there I was: a bookworm with a travel bug.

I joined the mission, and in July 2019, I spent a week in the jungle of Belize and a night in the Cayes.

The first seven days were an experiment in acclimatization. As you can imagine, July in the jungle of Central America isn't for the weak. The heat, although not a degree higher than our highs in Central Texas, was unrelenting.

I later learned that electricity is wildly expensive in Belize, thus reducing the number of locations offering air conditioning. And, as though we Americans didn't test the theory, even the locations with air conditioning (like our hotel room), the maid services often cut the air off during the day to save electricity. In any other season of the year, I would have tipped my hat to them for lowering their carbon footprint. After a long day in an non-air conditioned school in the thick of the jungle, however, not so much.

I was hot, I was sweaty, I was salty. I was also quiet, observant, and ashamed of myself and my own country and my own children.

We went to build bookshelves for a school in need, which we did. We built eleven bookshelves total that week. We also went to host a reading seminar for girls between the ages of six and fourteen, most of whom had just immigrated from neighboring countries and spoke only Spanish. As new students in Belize, these girls are expected to receive all of their schooling in English when their home countries often taught and read in Spanish. There were about thirty of them, some of them sisters or cousins to each other.

Every day, they walked to the turquoise school on dirt and gravel roads. They were never late. The Valley of Peace is poor - quite literally dirt-poor. Some houses still don't have hard flooring. Roads are terrible. Cars and trucks are broken down all over the sides of the roads. Maybe one day they will get the parts they need, but probably not.

But regardless of the conditions of their roads or floors or houses, these girls didn't bicker and cause fights or trouble; they helped each other, they giggled, they played. They weren't acting like bullies or stealing from each other; they were sharing and helping each other learn words and write sentences, braiding each other's hair, and laughing at my very poor Spanish.

After six full days at the school, we took a day to break and go zip-lining and spelunking through the caves before heading for a night in the Cayes. By the way, did you know coconuts are actually very hard to open for not a lot of reward??

There's a lot to love in life, and more to love in the jungle.