As I stated previously<\/a>, I would spend the first few weeks of the New Year reflecting on my Belizean experience. I still intend to do that however I seem to have come across a slight problem.
\n
\nWhen I launched this website, way back in June 2004, the thought of blogging had not crossed my mind. I put the site together, picture, personal details and all. Eventually the journal was added and I was very aware of the fact that I was not blogging anonymously. While in Belize the majority of my entries were 100% narrative so I didn’t struggle too much with issues such as offending and\/or embarassing family and friends. The main issue I struggled with was protecting the privacy of those I interacted with, hence my reluctance to refer to other volunteers by name.<\/p>\n

The problem with this next stage of my Belize experiences, is that I am moving away from the narrative and focusing mainly on my opinions and feelings. I want to write honestly and openly about what I have learnt, what I liked\/disliked, what my views were on certain things and so on. It sounded so easy at first; until I tried. <\/p>\n

The good things will always be easier to write about; it’s the not-so good things that are going to be a problem. How do I write honestly about what I can only term as the instutionalised sexism I came across in Belize and the sexist attitude of most of the men that I interacted with, without sounding like an uppity Western neo-colonialist who is insensitive to people’s culture or worse offending the Belizean men who treated me with respect? What of the challenges I faced of being the sole black and African volunteer amongst a group of white volunteers in a predominantly black country without offending those volunteers I consider my friends?<\/p>\n

I haven’t even began to deal with all the self analysis that I shall have to go through; I had planned to share all and I do intend to but Lord! it takes a lot to lay yourself bare and for someone as proud as I am, it will take even more to admit how little I knew or how wrong I was.<\/p>\n

The whole volunteer experience has been a journey for me and it would be pointless to simply talk about the end of the journey without being honest about how I got there.<\/p>\n

Well I guess, this in some way acts as my disclaimer, I have already hinted at some of the things I plan to blog about and this is my way of saying, I do intend to be blunt and brutally honest about myself, my experiences and the impact they had on me. I apologise in advance if anything I say offends or upsets; this is not my intention.<\/p>\n

I shall end by saying that every single person I interacted with and every single encounter I had no matter how good or how bad has in some way shaped my Belize experience and in turn shaped me. I feel I have come back from a Belize a stronger, and more focused African woman. I have grown emotionally, professionally, intellectually and so I am grateful to God for every moment and every person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I stated previously, I would spend the first few weeks of the New Year reflecting on my Belizean experience. I still intend to do that however I seem to have come across a slight problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[88],"class_list":{"0":"post-146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-belize","7":"tag-belize","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Y7Vr-2m","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}