Hocking College Group Visit
by Connie Burk

When Rebecca Wood and I talked about co-hosting groups of students in Columbia a couple years ago, we both quickly became enthusiastic. And last December, Rebecca, who teaches at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, brought a pilot group of four students. It was a rewarding experience for all of us.

Rebecca and the students planned to stay and study for several days at the Belize Agroforestry Research Center, just upriver from the village, and to participate in Columbia Village activities for several days. I was asked to coordinate the village part of the visit. It was a fun challenge for me. At our welcoming lunch at Margarita's in the village, we all introduced ourselves and discussed our schedule. Then we talked awhile about the planned homestays with village families. I had learned earlier that the two families scheduled to receive two students each for two nights had become nervous. They were especially concerned about meals and sleeping arrangements. I had done my best to answer their questions and to assure them that everything would go well. Now, as I saw the same tentative looks in the students' eyes, I became nervous, too!

Their first night was spent at villager Thomas Shi's new guesthouse up at the Source of the river, about two miles from the village. After traveling miles underground, the river leaps out of the ground at the Source, a very special place. They relaxed, hiked around the area and tasted traditional K'ekchi' food for the first time.

The following day, they were introduced to their host families, and invited to meet us at the Village Community Center that evening to hear K'ekchi' music. Jerry, Rebecca and I went home and made many batches of popcorn and a woman from the village made buckets of limejuice and we went to the dance. Although they had only been with their host families a couple hours, the students arrived with big smiles. Several children, also with big smiles, were hanging onto each of them.

The musicians (left) play on instrumentsthey carve themselves from wood from the forest, and play from a large repertoire of traditional K'ekchi' songs. We had posted signs inviting members of the village to come. Most of the attendees were older women and young children. It was fun. Afterward, we said goodnight to the students and their entourages, and headed home.

The following day was a busy one, as we all met again after breakfast and hosted a workday at the Opportunity Center. I had invited the children who used the computers to come, and many did. We split up and worked on several different projects. Outdoors, we "planted" posts for a chicken wire fence for a pig-proof garden, and a second crew painted the front windows and trim work.

Meanwhile, inside the house, magic was happening. Rebecca's assignment had been to work on mask-making in preparation for an upcoming play. Her volunteers were mostly little girls, and she used her art supplies and her charm effectively to win them over. After they completed some very nice masks, Rebecca improvised on a second project. She knew that I was frustrated by failed attempts to encourage the children to throw their trash in the trash bins instead of out on the lawns and the roads. Announcing that they were going to have a "trash parade," she began to make each of the little ones a "trash queen crown." I actually giggled with delight as I saw them emerge from the house, parading in a snaking pattern across the yard, with Rebecca leading and humming a marching song, while the girls, many of them litterbug culprits, happily picked up the trash. There were a lot of highlights for me during this first experience co-hosting a group in Columbia, but none can top the image of Rebecca and the Trash Queens parading down the road!

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