My First Full Day in Belize

I slept well my first night and woke up to the birds chirping and even the roosters making noise in the morning. It felt great to finally have some sleep again. We all got our scrubs on and went down to the kitchen and had eggs made in coconut oil with beans fry jack (a fried dough without sugar). I usually don’t like eggs but that was amazing too. My roomates and I walked the 15 minute walk through San Ignacio to ProWorlds building and we were told the clinic for the day was cancelled due to all the rain. This was kind of a bummer but at the same time it worked out because we were able to walk down to the market they have every Saturday and buy fresh exotic fruits and simple handmade souvenirs. I walked into The French Bakery, one of the few places that served coffee and talked with a man who knew I was a foreigner and wanted to know why we were here and how I liked Belize so far. It was nice that random people were so friendly and just enjoyed our presence. He showed me how to order the coffee and I paid 75 Belize cents, which is about 37 cents American money. Everything was so cheap! As we walked around town we would great everybody and they would smile and say hello back. San Ignacio is a small town and so we needed to leave a good impression since we were not only representing ourselves but ProWorld and our country. So we still had down time so we walked to Cahal Pech a Mayan ruin only a 5 minute walk from our house here. It was very neat we were climbing on ruins that were thousands of years old. We met back at ProWorld a little late and listened to a doctor from the San Ignacio hospital tell us about health and the way healthcare runs in Belize as well as the main issues with the Belizean disease states such as a high rate of HIV and diabetes along with hypertension. Belize does no preventative treatments to protect against this they just treat people who come in to the hospital. One weird thing we learned was that ambulances in Belize do not go to pick people up who are sick the people take taxis or walk. The ambulances only transport people from one hospital to another. There is no tertiary level of treatment for open-heart surgery or plastic surgery they only have primary and secondary treatment. Malnutrition didn’t seem to be a great issue but many people could not afford vitamins and their diets weren’t very diverse.

Part of downtown San Ignacio

Waiting for the bus to go to the clinic

Butcher holding up a pig heart