Belize Trip - Mayan Home Stay

 

Right after our stay in Dangraga, we spent one night in a Mayan lodge and one in a Mayan home stay. The lodge was so-so, but the home stay with Alba and Emilio Pop and their 3 children was amazingly wonderful. We were supposed to stay for 2 nights, but there was some mix-up with the Aurora, who arranges the home-stays, so we only got to stay for one night. Alba and her family were so welcoming and so fun that I was really sorry it ended up being for only one night.

Alba's kids were Alvin (11), Amelia (9), and Chimera (5). The house was small and concrete with a kitchen and a bedroom. The Pop's had a stove, oven and refrigerator, so they were doing well. The yard was fenced off with chain-link and there were 2 roosters, 10 chickens, and 4 chicks in the yard, along with a little kitten and 2 dogs that were tied up until they got used to the kitten.

We stayed in a wooden room with a palm-frond ceiling right behind the house that the Pop's use for home stays. It was nice and airy and we all slept on a full size bed that we put mosquito netting up over.

Doves roosted on the ceiling, the dogs ran around at night and liked to bump into the walls of our room, and the rooster liked to be right next to our room to crow BEFORE the sun came up. I thought it was lovely.

Alba made us tomalitos, tamalis made with unripe corn and nothing inside, that all three of us adored. I can hardly wait to have another one. We had chicken and rice and beans for dinner, which was wonderful as well. It was Sunday night, so I went to church that night with Alba and Emilio. It was a Roman Catholic service in Mopan, the Mayan language Alba and her family and the Mayans in the area speak. Alba and her family speak Mopan and English, but no Spanish. Emilio and another man played guitar at the service and someone from the congregation led the service. Every couple of weeks a priest comes from one of the towns to celebrate mass with them. The Mopan language, with it's x's, is lovely.

Isabel ran around with Alba's kids and took the broom to sweep and played with the kitten (poor kitten) and followed Alba around and had a fabulous time. Robert and Emilio talked soccer (there was a match in the field right in front of their house) and trees and building. Alba and I talked about adoption and food and the students she's had stay at her house. The kitchen/dining room was one of the warmest and coziest I've ever been in, and that was because the family was so friendly and close.