This morning I had planned to visit the fruit and veg market again, this time to buy lots of vegies. The produce had looked very enticing, good colour and form I could see from a distance, and fresh coriander herbs as well. I was itching to get down there and have me a market experience. Even though it was in 'office time', I figured it was a cultural activity enough to qualify for orientation.
The market is a small one row of stalls on the edge of a large concrete square. On the weekends I hear it fills right up with all manner of wares and food goodies. I spend just over half an hour perusing and buying. All the stall owners spoke Spanish and were probably from Guatemala. The produce was tidily presented, some fresher than others, and most of it seemed very expensive. Not sure if this is because I am the whitey or not... But it's $3 Belize for a lettuce. This is $2 NZ or $1.50 US. And we're talking a tiny lettuce. There is nothing too exotic away from the norm, apart from a basket full of pink spikey artichoke looking things at the last stall, which are called dragonfruit. Think I have heard of this before but not tried it. Perhaps the Saturday market is cheaper and has more selection. It can't be hard to grow things here as it is always raining at least once a day and the ground is very fertile.
After the market is the cultural orientation with Carmita. Carmita and I sit in Rita's cosy office (the general manager), me sinking into one of the blue cane chairs with rose patterened cushion as Carmita reads through a sheet of advice sitting behind the desk. The desk shows a Jesus plate propped up and a piece of cloth with a prayer stitched on it. The orientation includes warnings about advances from local men who very commonly sleep around on their wives. I mention the the dude who called out to me the other day, and Carmita confirms that the guys are pretty rude here. I haven't actually had anything said to me like that, the whole time travelling on my own. It's only a small thing, nothing scary, but says a bit about the differences in the culture here as compared to other latin countries. The men kinda rule the streets.
After the cultural orientation I went to do more reading of the UNICEF Situation Analysis on Children & Adolescents (2004). It's the most recent stats I could get my hands on, and it's been invaluable at identifying areas of need.
It seems that women have a very difficult time getting employment here. They finish school, and are literate, at equal or better rates than the guys, but post-education they are expected to get married and have kids I guess. According to this study women are only 20% of the workforce, so I guess people just don't hire them. This results in another cycle of poverty and violence. If a women has children or not, she is almost forced into having a relationship for financial support if her parents cannot support her. This creates a large power difference in the relationship and breeds circumstances of domestic violence due to a womens inability to leave the financial protection of the relationship.
Sound familiar to anyone back home? This can also occur in Australian and New Zealand culture. But at least there is welfare support, even if it does mean raising your family in near poverty. It is probably closer to the time in which our grandmothers grew up and raised families. But at least they probably had more opportunity to work, even if in a limited range of occupations.
At 1pm it was time to help the 'House Manager', Miss Nellie and her assistant Miss Martha, to feed the school children on the food program - I love how the women here are called 'Miss'. Miss Nelly and Miss Martha are two middle-aged women who arrive everyday at 8.30am to start cooking up the lunch for all the volunteers and 25 school children (about 35 people). They start by creating a mound of white rice and a mound of red kidney beans piled onto the wooden kitchen table. From there, they can pick out the stones and bad beans and then start the cooking. It ends in a tasty feast that sometimes leaves leftovers for another meal at dinner.
A number of small plastic bowls filled with food are taken downstairs to an area at the back of the office where the school chilren come to eat every lunch hour. Rita joins us, and I ask her how they choose who is eligible for the lunch and she explains that they get a notification from the school at the beginning of the year on which of the children don't bring lunch with them. Cornerstone then makes an investgation into the childs home to assess their level of need and places them on the food program. The kids arrive and all look pretty healthy and normal. They are all about 12 and under.
After lunch Carmita invites me to go with her and Darlene to meet Melissa Jenkins at the Women's Department. I was a little reluctant at first, but it turns out to be a very valuable excursion.
The Women's Department has emerged progressively from the first grass roots womens organisation in the Cayo District, called the Women's Desk, in 1979. It started out focussed on violence against women and that has continued as it's core focus, with government adopting them in 1985 and now they are housed under the Ministry for Human Development in the center of town. Melissa is a funky gorgeous young woman who couldn't be older than 27 but gets a helluva lot done with a lot of energy. Melissa introduces us to the Safe Schools program that is starting next week and it sounds like just the sort of work I wanted to do with teenage girls. It is also already resourced and has the approval and support of several school principles.
The department also needs people to do 'Skills Training' that teach local women any type of skill, as a hobby or as employable skills. So I've shown my enthusiasm for both the school program and the skills training and will go away and assess the options and work involved.
Back at the ranch that night, Darlene, a fellow volunteer from Alberta, Canada, cooked up an impressive amount of spag bol for everyone as part of a regular dinner night. Ends up being 'just the girls' including Miss Carmita and Miss Nellie at the table, all sitting around a big pile of spaghetti and salad over a blue checked table cloth and tropical flowers in vases that Darlene picked today. We chatted, watched geckos on the ceiling, over fed ourselves and afterwards watched "Sex and the City the movie". A true girlie evening.
