Starting the surveys - San Miguel and Silver Creek

These pictures are views of San Miguel from one of the homes we surveyed. It was raining and were hanging out under the eaves for a few minutes.

Last week we started doing surveys in a couple of the communities to see what people knew about the old Maya (as they are called around here), what they would like to know, and if they would be interested in seeing a movie if we brought one to show in their village. Let me tell you, nothing is more awkward than walking into someone’s house and asking if you can talk to them about a random subject. It was an interesting task, unlike anything I’d had to do before. Shoshi decided to hang back and let Morvin and I do most of the talking, since we’d be responsible for the project in the coming weeks.

I’m not sure if I’ve written about Morvin before. He’s the person who was in charge of the MACHI program here originally. He attended Tricia’s field school last year and received lectures and other training for getting the workshops started during the last school year. He is very quiet and reserved, not just at first, but pretty much all the time. Honestly, after meeting him I was not at all surprised that the MACHI classes were not engaging people. I actually really like him a lot it’s just that his personality is not best suited for the kind of work we were asking of him. One of my main jobs is going to be providing him with further training about archaeology and conservation, as well as getting him to loosen up around the kids.

Anyways, so our plan of attack for this fall is to target nine villages instead of the twenty two they were working with before. This way the workshops can happen intensively for several weeks before we move to the next place. The villages were chosen based on their proximity to the major archaeological sites in the district, Uxbenka, Lubaantun, and Nim Li Punit. We want to get down to the villages around Pusilha eventually, but they are much further away. I expect they’ll be the first to be involved when the project expands. In any case, we’re now working on surveying 10-12 houses in these nine villages. This was supposed to happen over the last two weeks of June, but now it’s more like the last week of June. I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes.

So we approach the first house in a town called San Miguel, it’s just your typical cement block house with hammocks hanging, a separate kitchen structure, pigs and chickens running around everywhere. The guy gets out of his hammock and eyed us extremely suspiciously, like what the hell do you people want. I was totally nervous, and since I was pretty sure Morvin wasn’t going to say anything I just jumped in. I don’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t eloquent! I was kicking myself for not preparing a schpiel (how do you spell that??) ahead of time. This guy was not into it. It was interesting actually, because he said that there are always people (gringos, I’m assuming) coming around asking his opinion about programs and initiatives, and then he never sees any results from his answers. It was a good dose of the reality of the most marginalized district in Belize, and one of the poorest in Central America. I can imagine that there are plenty of people with the best of intentions who promise a lot and for whatever reason are incapable of delivering. There was nothing to do but agree with the man and thank him for his time.

So that was awkward, but things went uphill from there. We went further into town, and talked to the school principal who had good feedback. As we continued, sometimes I would start in English, but the more we did the more Morvin started speaking in Q’eqchi’, especially to some of the older women we met. Eventually, I would just shut up until he started talking; it seemed better coming from someone from the area who can communicate in the indigenous language. I felt really out of place and useless but I think we got better reception when Morvin did the talking. Especially in the second village, Silver Creek, which is Morvin’s hometown. He knows everyone and is on the PTA at the school, so that made things a bit easier. I think from here on out when we need to start something we’ll go there first because Morvin can facilitate things so easily. It was also great because it became clear that this was an environment in which he thrived – small groups, speaking in Q’eqchi’. His English is perfect, don’t get me wrong, but I think that it hits home for everyone involved if he is speaking about conservation and educational programs in the native language. Today we go back to Silver Creek to finish up the surveys there and next week we’ll have some long days in the other seven towns.