Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Stella Maris

Our next two days were spent at Stella Maris, which is a school for children with disabilities. We were not ready for what we were about to experience...

We each got separated (against our will) into classrooms of varying ages. Sulls was in the youngest classroom of 5-8 years olds with disabilities including down syndrome, CP, and hearing impairments. Cat had the hooligan classroom of 6-10 year olds who were basically the most rowdy group of children possibly in all of Belize. Poh had the tamest class of all with angel children who sat quietly and listened intently to everything she said (sulls and cat were beyond cheesed when they found this out). Recess is just the wildest time we have ever experienced. Some highlights include:

-playing frisbee with a metal hubcap
-poh getting attacked and subsequently had a heat related freak out
-being introduced to a new childs game here in Belize City the rules are simple...shove your friends face into the dirt, as hard as possible, pull out your plastic automatic rifle, hold it to the back of their head and pretend it goes off....we think this has a lot of due with the new casts we hear each night over dinner
-another game included throwing cement rocks at each other...nice and simple

Kit and Poh got to attend a violence lecture, with 30 kids crammed into a boiling hot classroom. It was put on by the Belize Police police department (aka sketch). It consisted of extremely graphic photos of bullet wounds and the police saying "sometimes we gotta rough dem up real good". Another line was "so daddy got extra woman, den momma points gun at dadas head" "wat kinda abuse dat"? needless to say the children all got this answer correct.  Overall it was quite the experience for kit and poh bear.

On a more serious note most of the teachers at the school are saints as the classrooms are very difficult to handle, they do the best they can with very limited resources. It is very different from what we are used to in Canada where a child with a disability has an EA with them at all times. This is not feasible in Belize due to lack of training and funding. The children all have so much potential and this was an eye opening experience for all of us.

That is all for now loves

xoxox
Cheesy-Pie, Krusty-Pie, Poh-Pie

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