Arrived

Welcome to Belize!

Well, I finally made it. I am in Belize. I left early Sunday morning and got here without any difficulties. I don’t have the best luck with things running smoothly when I fly, so I was fully expecting to miss one of my flights or have my luggage get lost (which has happened more than once to me). After I arrived in Belize with no problems I was pretty surprised and grateful. As the bags started coming around on the conveyer belt I got worried as more and more people received their luggage and I was left waiting. I was one of the last, but lo and behold my luggage showed up and I was on my way.
Grant, hospital administrator, picked me up at the airport. It was about an hour and a half drive to the hospital La Loma Luz Adventist Hospital, which means light on a hill. The hospital is in the small city of Santa Elena on the western outskirts of Belize about 30 minutes from the Guatemalan border. The area is beautiful, set in a more “mountainous” area of Belize. They would only be considered hills by Utah standards, but none-the-less the town is set among these beautiful mountains with lush green rain forest, interspersed with tropical pine trees. I was getting pretty excited at this point even though I was missing my family back home already.
That evening I ate dinner with Grant and Ardis in their home. They are Adventists and prescribe to a strict vegetarian diet. In fact, the hospital only serves vegetarian food. Obviously, not what I’m used to, but the food was delicious and we had a good talk. I’m going to have to get used to not eating meat for a whole month though.
Next Ardis showed me a bit around the hospital and gave me a short tour. The hospital was built in the 70s so it’s pretty ghetto and wouldn’t be considered too nice by American standards. I guess that’s to be expected for a hospital in Central America, but I was actually surprised by how advanced the hospital is. Belize is the richest country in Central America and has a pretty good health care system. The hospital has all the departments any other hospital would have like ER, Labor & delivery, internal medicine, surgery for major and minor surgery, etc. They have a pretty good radiology department with x-ray, U/S, but their CT broke so they don’t have that anymore, and no MRI (thought you’d want to know Jess). Kind of crazy they don’t have a CT for trauma and head issues, but I guess they just have to send people out to Belize City. Anyway, the tour is good and next Ardis takes me to my room.

She took me out to the “Mission House” where big mission groups stay when they come in. It’s pretty big with many bunk beds and I get a room with a double bed. I had pretty low expectations coming here being that I was coming to Central America and good thing because this place was pretty ghetto. There are no furnishings except the bed, some plastic chairs, and a small dresser. There were lots of spider webs in all the nooks and cranies, the floor was coming up in places, and there are holes in the ceiling that kind of look liked they had been chewed away by a rodent or something. The bathroom is disgusting. The bath is really dirty with black streaks and a nasty moldy drain. The toilet was pretty dirty too along with the sink. There were also some shelves and on the top there was a bunch of rodent feces. Basically, everything just seemed like I would get dirtier by using it. Ardis says, “Well, it’s not the Hilton, but livable.” I’m thinking, “Yea, barely.” Her house was not really nice, but like a Hilton compared to this place. I remembered Grant saying something about a TV so asked her and she says there is another apartment that is normally used by an older couple who comes here for missions which has a TV. She thought about putting me there, but she assures me that this place is better because of the nice breeze that blows through the windows at night. She assures me that if it was up to her she would definitely choose this place, but if I really needed a TV then she would see if she could move me over. I don’t want to seem demanding and she said the other place isn’t any better so I tell her not to worry about it.
Well, to make a long story short, after she left I just sat on the bed and stared at the wall for about an hour. I kept repeating in my head that I had chosen this knowing what to expect and that this would only be for a month long. On top of the bad living conditions, being in an unfamiliar place and missing my family made me consider for a moment that I had made the wrong decision to do this medical mission. After fighting with myself in my head for a while, I decided that I might as well make the most of it and started to unpack a few things. I didn’t unpack much because I still considered moving into the room with the TV. If I was going to live in such a crappy place I met as well have a TV, since I had only brought so many books to read.
I went into the bathroom to inspect for any creatures living in any cupboards or under the counters that I could dispose of. I didn’t want to run into any unexpected friends while I was just stepping out of the shower. Well, I didn’t find anything for a while thankfully until I glanced in the bath again. There down by the drain was the weirdest looking spider thingie I had ever seen. I’m not sure what it was. It looked like a cross between a scorpion and a spider. It had huge claws like a scorpion, but 8 really long legs like a spider. The leg span made it about 3 inches across, but I bet the body was only about a ½ inch. Anyway, it looked really freaky and mean. I didn’t want to mess with it. It didn’t move at all for quite a while so I thought I would spit on it to wake it up. I spit and it didn’t move a millimeter. So, I got a big loogie and hocked away. It still didn’t move. Could it be dead? It seemed to be, but I swore I hadn’t seen it there before. Well, I spent a while looking around for something long until I found a metal towel rod that was lying around. I decided to give it one deadly blow to the body just in case it was alive and was fast. I lunged forward with the rod into its back and was glad I did because it’s disgustingly long legs started flipping around like crazy as I crushed it dead. Yuck! I threw it in the trash and continued my search for any other creatures I didn’t want to meet unexpectedly. Luckily I didn’t find anything too scary; just a few spiders of many different sizes.

My bedroom The house from the outside

The nasty bath spider

My bathroom

Well, this is getting way to long, but I at least need to finish with my experience that night. I was absolutely exhausted because I hadn’t got much sleep the night before. I thought I would go to bed early to get some well needed rest and I didn’t really have anything else to do. As I laid in the dark I was introduced to the magical night sounds of the Belizean rain forest. Missouri was a pretty noisy place, but I think Belize could give it a run for its money. There were all sorts of bugs chirping and whistling. Not being used to that, I just laid there and couldn’t stop thinking of all the bugs that may start crawling on me while a slept. There where screens on the windows, but those surely can’t keep out everything. Then all the sudden I heard this odd noise I don’t really know how to describe. It sounded more like a bird than a bug, but was right by my window. No big deal I thought. Then I heard the same noise and I swear it was coming from my closet. It startled me obviously so I reached for my trusty flashlight and shined it at the closet. . .nothing. I scanned around the room, but didn’t see anything. I was pretty nervous for a while and knew it would be a long night, but I was determined to get some sleep. What could happen anyway, I thought. It was likely not anything that could hurt me so I tried to get some sleep. Well, after laying for a while with no luck at sleep I then started hearing funny noises coming from the closet, seemingly the ceiling. Sounded like little feet scurrying around in the ceiling. On top of the rodent feces in the bathroom I put two and two together and figured it must be rats or mice. What could I do though? I imagined if I went and complained to my hosts about rats in the ceilings they would just laugh and say, “welcome to Belize,” so I just buckled down and tried to focus on getting some sleep. I must admit that I laid there for who knows how many hours listening to all of the noises from the night and imaging waking up with rats running around my head or pooping in my mouth or even worse the brother of the spider/scorpion I had killed coming back for revenge. I did get some sleep, but I kept waking up over and over from different noises of the night. I woke up unscathed though and happy that I had survived my first night in Belize even though I was definitely not looking forward to the next one. One down, only about 27 to go!