During our disorientation last month we were told to think of “our story”, what is it we will tell people about our time here. Which had me thinking… “What is my story?” Not necessarily the two minute elevator conversation version but the longer, truer story of my time and life in Belize. Due to my hectic work schedule and trying to wrap everything up before I leave I haven’t had a lot of time. Not to mention, I am a natural optimist and a pain avoiding “7” on the enneagram , so sitting with feelings of loss and the pain of leaving are hard for me. My mind naturally runs to what home is going to be like or how much I am going to enjoy seeing my nephews again.
Here I sit in the old, weather beaten, falling down shack of a house that has become my home over these past two years. I am sick, again, despite only having a week left in Belize. Part of me thinks this is my body shutting down from the stress of this wild transition, another more rational part of me thinks it may have been the food and water from the village where I was visiting some friends to say goodbye last weekend. (Soup made of pig tails was the dinner, mmmm!) Regardless of what caused this seemingly poorly timed illness it has given me ample time to sit, review, and reflect. So with that in mind, I am grateful for a time to just lay on the couch and think about what has happened, what is happening and what is about to happen.
Away for two years. That’s a long time to be out of the country where I was raised. Previous to this, the longest I had been out of the country and away from home was to study abroad, and that was in Rome, and only for four months, quite different than Belize for two years. Being away for that long hasn’t been the hardest part about my time here, actually its been one of the easiest. Once you realize you aren’t leaving it gives you the freedom to settle in to your new host country and build relationships. It’s the going “home” that is hard part for me now. Leaving all that I know here to go back to that place I used to know. That scares me.
Last week my second year community mate, Emily, came back for a visit. Which was consoling, talking with a former community member who has made the scary transition home right before I am about to make it myself. I was expressing some nervousness and she asked “Matt, do you feel that you have done what you needed to do in these two years? Do you feel you have completed the reason you were sent here?” Questions that caught me off guard, in the best possible way, and after a moment I thought to myself an unequivocal affirmation, “yeah, I think I have”.
My placement is to lead retreats through out the Toledo District in 30 different villages, most of which are indigenous Maya populations. I have loved my job, creating a safe space for people to talk about their greatest joys and deepest hurts in a culture that does not generally talk of such things has been incredible. Doing nothing to “fix” their hurts but just being with them, sitting with them, listening, and validating all that they are feeling is what I have attempted to do. I have worked with both students and teachers and I think when I leave next week I will have facilitated somewhere in the ballpark of 160 retreats and helped prepare nearly 600 students for the sacrament of Confirmation. This is not to say it has come easy, not in the least. Especially in the beginning, as I attempted to lead a retreat in a remote village 2 hours from the town where I live, in the middle of the jungle, to a group of adults, for who English is their third language, they were twice my age and are members of a culture I knew little about. It was certainly challenging (not to mention: heat, sickness, bugs, culture shock, bad dirt roads in old trucks, and loss of power and electricity on a frequent basis). However, it is in spite of, or rather, because of, those challenges that after two years I am so in love with this place and these people. Those villagers who were silent and skeptical of this lanky gringo in the beginning have become my friends, mentors and teachers.
So what has come of my time? In JVC we talk a lot about accompaniment, not “doing” but just “being” with the people we work with and for. Simply being present to them with our full selves. That is something I think about a lot, especially given that my job is to run retreats. Though another term that I feel is more fitting for my “story” has been “communion”. A term used in a religious sense for that moment at Mass when we receive God and the spiritual nourishment that comes with that. God enters us and we enter more fully into God. Communion also draws to mind other images, “communal union”. The idea that we are communal, that we are community that lives together and takes care of one another, and we are in union with each other, oneness. A group of individuals brought together, interconnected in an unbroken bond. And I think that is something I will take from my time in Belize, that “oneness”. That communion with the poor of Toledo is also something that I hope to bring back to the States to those people who are not materially poor, and I hope to recognize that communion with those in America, rich and poor alike. That oneness, I am in them and they are in me. The moment I forget that, then it is in that moment, I have failed.
During my time here I’m not sure how much I have “accomplished” in the American “to-do list” sense, but I have grown in self knowledge, which seems nearly selfish to think after two years in Belize the thing most changed is me. Well perhaps that’s the point. I can change nothing but myself. So as I depart for “home” I leave this place that has become my home different than when I arrived. The loss of this time, along with my identity as “Mistah Mot” is going to be hard. But I was never meant to be here long term, I knew that the day I arrived, that scorching day in early August 2009, that the next time I would be on an airplane would be to leave. That being said one can’t fully learn from the experience they have had if they stay. Perhaps more growth, self knowledge and life is to be found once I take this time home with me and unpack it then. I am nervous for the next leg of the journey but I find solace in the fact that the God I found here in communion among the poor is the same God who will be with me as I go home. She was with me, is with me and will be with me.
Thank you Belize for all you have taught me. Thank you for incredible jungles, and sparkling Caribbean Sea that mark your borders. Thank you for your people, diverse and beautiful, who despite their suffering have taught me to love beyond the limits I previously adhered to. Thank you for your mangoes and coconuts fresh from the tree. Thank you for challenging me, taking me in and shaping me. Thank you for your tremendous thunderstorms, your cheap rum, your rhythmic drumming, and warm corn tortillas. I will miss you and I will carry you with me.
There is an ancient Maya saying when one departs “I’na k’etch” and it means “I am in you and you are in me”.
“I’na ketch, Belize, I’na Ketch.”
