Week 18 and 19: Giving Back and Becoming The Patient

One of my favorite opportunities I had serving my community was being able to connect with locals through their local “love week” which is a campaign created and sponsored by Dunamis Ministries. This is a time of outreach to students, elderly, first responders, and any citizen by sharing a meal, snack, or even a haircut. I spent a week during this campaign helping reach out to as many people in our community as possible. Waking up at 5am and preparing meals before the day got started and waking up the next day to do it all over again. There was joy in bonding with people I had not met as of yet and learning more about their stories. Becoming a familiar face in the community has brought so much warmth to my time being here.

At the end of the week, “love week” concluded with a fair giving out free clothing, haircuts, health checks, car washes, and food! It was the perfect opportunity to meet more people in the community and truly get to serve others by being a part of a little joy in their lives. During this week I was able to talk about Tennessee, Belmont and the Lumos award to many people in the Cayo district. They were all interested in everything and anything that had to do with life in the United States and the education system.

As I was getting ready to close out my time in Belize, I became sick for the first time while being here. Roles became reversed and I became the patient. Although it felt like a really bad flu, I was concerned that it was a bad case of dengue. Body chills, fever, and nausea were the main symptoms I had that made even standing up a difficult thing to do. Through this experience, I was able to meet two doctors at different clinics. One of the clinics had a Cuban doctor that recommended a more osteopathic way of treating my sickness by loading up my body and immune system with vitamins. The second doctor I visited gave me multiple steroid shots and antibiotic medication. Although these medications slowly helped, it took some time for me to fully regain my strength.

Overall, I felt like my health was at its prime while being here. I did not get sick as much as I do in Tennessee, my skin was hydrated, and I could breathe better. As someone who has grown up with asthma their whole life and has struggled to breathe during the winter, being in Belize gave me a quality of life I had never had health-wise. Growing up, my pediatrician always told me that I should live on the coast due to salt water naturally opening up airways. Although I wasn’t directly oceanside, I was close enough to the coast to benefit from the ocean. The humidity in Belize also helped and almost acted like a natural humidifier which I had not even considered happening until I was actually living there.