What I love about living in Belize

I thought I would try to share some of what I love about Belize.

I love my home, Nabitunich, which means the stone cottage in Mayan. Nabitunich is the campus which is property that is rented from the Juan family, who also owns the San Lorenzo farm that surrounds our campus.

I love the fact that birds and sunlight wake me up every morning around 7.  If I’m really tired I can take a nap in the afternoon, but I can’t fall back asleep in the mornings with the active birds!

I love that I when I sit on my porch on mornings before breakfast, I see Keel-billed Toucans and Collared Aracaris (another type of toucan) taking short flights between the tall trees.  Yesterday morning I watched 2 hummingbirds fight- one was told to leave the other’s tree.

I love the fact that every moment of my day is filled with an awareness of the air around me.   I cannot be separated from my surroundings; it simply isn’t possible.  I am never in a place where I can’t hear birds in the day or the cicadas at night.  I hear the rain pattering on tin roof, and splashing from leaf to leaf of the tree outside my window as I drift to sleep. I wake up to the damp chill of foggy mornings. I sweat and drink lots of water at noon.

I love that all we don’t have the option of buying fresh produce from anywhere but the local market; almost all the fresh fruits and veggies are grown in Belize and, therefore, are in season!  Some fruits are in season all year long, others aren’t in season yet and so I’m eagerly waiting for star fruit, tamarind, and mangos to ripen! Right now the mango trees on campus have tiny fruits developing (smaller than a jelly bean!), so it will be a while.

I love the clear streams and lush forests, each of them so full of life and beauty to wonder in, to find new things in, and to appreciate more deeply each time you observe the details of life around you. 

I love the people of Belize.  Belizeans are friendly and passionate about their hometown.  You can hold whole conversations with Belizeans about why a certain town or village is the best place to live in Belize.  Belizeans know that their place, where they are from, holds value and they want to talk to you about it.

I love the multicultural aspect of Belize. When I traveled down to Southern Belize, I stayed in a village where a dialect of Mayan is still spoken in the home.  Of course, villagers who have gone to school can speak English and probably Spanish too, but the ladies cooking for us in the thatched roofed ‘bed and breakfast’ spoke to each other the language that Barbara Kingsolver describes as “a language of secrets”.  The day that I left the village I heard conversations spoken in Mayan, Creole and German, and I had held conversations in English and Spanish.  The next day I heard singing in Garifuna, a language of another black ethnic group found mostly in Belize and Honduras.

So that’s a bit of my world right now.  This week I’m the TA for God and Nature 1, taught by Sylvia Keesmaat. Hope you are all doing well; I would love to hear from you!