Journey's End

Dave didn't want to end this journey with a picture of the A-Team (see post below). Neither did I. I'd much rather end it with the picture above of Harrison and his daughter. There's something about the look of deep satisfaction on his face that captures for me the sense of fulfillment I felt on the successful completion of (our part of) this project.

Of course, since we're Oak Ridgers, we couldn't return from Belize without an incident of some sort. Let me recap:
- In 2005, we were almost routed to Honduras due to the lack of a fuel truck to refuel our plane;
- In 2007, Chuck and Dale...
- In 2008, there wasn't enough fuel in Belize, so each of our several flights had to stop somewhere (Cancun, Cozumel) to refuel;
- In February of this year our flight was canceled and we were rerouted from Atlanta to Charlotte where we rented a car and promptly ran into a snowstorm.

This time around we figured there was little chance of a snowstorm. Indeed, our flight from Belize to Miami proceeded without incident. Instead, the flight from Miami was delayed due to bad weather (including tornadoes) in Charlotte. When we finally boarded a half hour late, we were put on ground hold due to weather in Charlotte, then we needed an extra 800 lbs of fuel in case we had to divert to another airport, then we needed 4 volunteers to deplane to compensate for the extra fuel. Good thing there was only 3 of us! They trundled out the fuel truck, only to discover a broken fitting. They brought it back and swapped for another fuel truck and finally got us in the air only an hour and 45 minutes late.

We landed in Charlotte a little after 1 AM with a 5 hour drive ahead of us. Thankfully the shuttle was quick to pick us up and return us to the Best Western where we had left the van over a week earlier. Dave and I searched for classic rock stations to keep us awake as we drove through the fog and the drizzle and the mountains.

We rolled into Oak Ridge in time to greet a cloudy sunrise, tired and satisfied and wondering where the next step in this fascinating and unpredictable journey might lead.
- dan

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together!

1983 had George Peppard, Mr. T and the "A-Team". Every show had a complicated task, careful planning, a million things that could go wrong, lots of improvisation and ultimately success. Of course nothing ever went according to plan. At the end of every show George Peppard lit up a big cigar and said "I love it when a plan comes together" as the rest of team shook their heads and rolled their eyes (Mr. T growled and grunted a lot). If you've followed the Yalbac saga for the past two years you get the connection.


Yesterday we drank clean water, prayers of thanks we're raised, children sang, speeches were made and a few tears were shed. For me the biggest "Hallelujah" moment is captured in the pictures below. After the ceremony / service I was prepared to play tour guide and explain the water treatment system to the villagers and guests. I got myself a glass of punch and to my joy and surprise, Mirna had gathered Victor Tut and a group of villagers to explain the system.




A few minutes later she was joined by Harrison inside the building. They were speaking in Spanish but it appeared that they were sharing the explanation tasks equally.


We leave tomorrow. The system is now theirs. Whether they have clean water in the future is now up to them. With God's help I have no doubt they'll do it.


Let Clean Water Flow!

Dave

More about celebrating

Dan has described how the church had been prepared for the celebration, but I have a few additional comments. The first is in the line of a confession. I was surprised that so much had been done to clean up. I thought we were going to have to continue sweeping up our crafts trash, but the place was neat and ready for display. I was touched that Mirna thought so highly of the occasion that she had put a white altar cloth on the table that is their altar and changed the plain blue fabric backdrop to an embroidered white one.

I was gratified by the turnout of visitors. We weren't sure if any of the people who had said they would come would actually get there. Mr. Banner made the kind of warm and fuzzy remarks that you would expect from a politician, but he did seem engaged. Most of the San Ignacio Rotary folks had not been to Yalbac, so the project took on greater reality for them. I had thought we were rather peripheral to their attention, but we are going to dinner with them tonight; Sherree and Aki will be there only if their church board meeting finishes early.

It was a special privilege to serve the water to the folks. Victor was first in line, but I skipped over him to serve Mr. Banner first. Many people came back for seconds.

I will miss the Yalbac folks, especially Mirna, with whom I kidded around a lot, and Jerome, who for some reason attached himself to me after he finished the operator treatment. Mirna's pudding of bread was a treat, as was her cheese dip. And tamarind juice was a new one for us.

Relationships changed in several ways yesterday. San Ignacio Rotary had been skeptical that we could finish on schedule and are now much more on board. I was amused to see Ernest Banner, Dan, Dave, and Harrison clustered around the back of Aki's truck. I thought "Bubbas are Bubbas wherever you go." But it was in the spirit of co-Bubba-ness that they were doing fairly important political business, probably more effectively than if we had been in Banner's office trying to accomplish something before he had to go to another meeting.

In a few minutes we will be off touristing and maybe checking another well. I guess we aren't completely wasting our time if we get another data point on the same trip as climbing Mayan temples.

Peace,
Chuck

Celebrate!

I've heard countless times at Clean Water U that a celebration at the end of a water installation is essential. I've even taught the concept in my CWU 101 classes. I bought into the idea intellectually. Yesterday I experienced it.
We convened in Yalbac around 2:00 Belize time, which means we really started around 2:15. The church had been swept and decorated; the trench with the water line from the well had been filled in, the grass had been mowed around the church. Somebody was ready to party! Ernest Banner, Director of Rural Development for Belize showed up, as did his Cayo district deputy Orlando Jimenez. A handful of Rotary folks from San Ignacio joined us, along with a good turnout from the community itsef.
The dedication ceremony itself was about as I expected, with invocation, introductions, thanks, etc. The kids singing water songs was endearing. Anne did a great job as "emcee" and got pretty choked up talking about the meaning and value of clean water. We ended with a communion-like sharing of the water with all takers. First in line was Victor Tut, owner and operator of the newly opened Emerald Resort Eco-Lodge where we spent one night on our last trip. He's very interested in 'copying' the design for a treatment system at the lodge.
The feeling of celebration really kicked in after the ceremony. Mirna Castillo, the one-woman whirlwind, was giving tours of the water building and explaining how the system worked in Spanish; then she was supervising her kids serving fruits and juices and 'pudding of bread'. Harrison McColloc, the council chair was expansive in his plans for the future: "When you come back we will have the building painted and flowers planted and the grounds graded; it will be beautiful!"
As the celebration wound down and people drifted away, there were heartfelt goodbyes, and hugs and pictures all around. We have definitely made new friends in Yalbac.
God is good!
- dan

Nearing the Big Day

A varied day today. After breakfast at Pop's, where the locals go and the tourists don't, we roamed about the market to buy fruit for tomorrow's celebration. There were many fewer pineapples than I had expected. Other times we have seen them by the hundreds. We bought a few pineapples, at $1.25 US each, and a couple of watermelons. The local watermelons have
small golden-brown rather than large dark brown seeds.

Anne and I didn't start work at Yalbac until 1 PM, when the future operators arrived for training, accompanied by a gaggle of children. By then Dave, Aki, and Dan had the system assembled and ready to go.

When the kids came, we sang the "Use This Water" song a few times, made paper chains, and made paint handprints on a white cloth. To a large extent, we were doing child care for the operator class. I was getting used to the cadences of Spanish (which most of the kids speak in preference to English) when I was blindsided by a burst of Creole. It was a bit disorienting, although I didn't understand the Spanish either. It just sounded strange, whereas Spanish didn't.
Eventually we sent the kids home and cleaned up for tomorrow's celebration. It was a bitter-sweet moment when I realized that in 24 hours my task in Yalbac would be essentially finished. We have worked for two years to get to this point, and sometimes it seemed that we wouldn't get there. Thanks to all of you for your support along the way.

I don't have a clear picture of what will happen tomorrow. We may have a couple of government people, several San Ignacio Rotary folks, Victor Tut (a world-class character and resort operator), us, and an unknown number of Yalbacistas. Mirna said she would make "pudding of bread", and I told her that if there were too many people for me to get some, I would beat them up. She laughed and promised to save me some.

Tonight we had Italian food again, Ray's treat. He had left the restaurant owner some lira which were worthless to him but could be exchanged by an Italian who had had a bank account in Italy before Euros replaced lira. The food was delicious, apparently from some region of Italy other than the origin of other Italian food I have had.

Essentially it seems that the pressure is almost off. The job at Yalbac has almost been accomplished. But we have plenty of other opportunities in other villages, so the project will go on.

Peace,
Chuck

Good Morning

It's a beautiful morning. Dave and I are sitting on the patio as the sun brightens a blue cloudless sky. I'm reading email & blogging, and Dave's listening to Morning Edition on his computer. In about a half hour Sheree and Aki will be picking us up for breakfast at Pop's. After that, Aki and Dave head back to Yalbac to finish up the water system. The rest of us will be participating in the San Ignacio Saturday morning market scene -- largest in Belize!
We'll meet up later in Yalbac to do a little more health education and the operator training.
Prayers requested for productive (and short?) day of final activities today.
- dan

Black Water

We took the first left off Hummingbird Highway just past the river as the soldiers at the Police Station had told us. A few blocks into the village we turned right and found ourselves in the courtyard of the St. Margaret’s School. It was late in the day and we were going to try for one more sample. The school buildings were deserted, but we knew St. Margaret’s had a water distribution system, so we walked around the buildings looking for a spigot. A little boy, maybe 6 years old crossed our path, looking at us with curiosity. We asked where we could find some water. He pulled us between two buildings and pointed across the courtyard to a row of pit toilets with a Rotoplas tank mounted on stilts next door. As we started to tell him that wasn’t exactly what we were looking for, I noticed a spigot in the ground next to the tank. Closer examination showed that the tank wasn’t collecting rain water, but probably served as a backup supply for when the distribution system wasn’t distributing. Which must be pretty often to justify the cost of a tank.
We pulled out our test supplies and began sampling the water. Within minutes we were surrounded by about a half dozen beautiful Belizean kids and bombarded with questions: Are you looking for that flyin’ flu – no swine flu? Why are you testing our water? What are you looking for? We ran thru the battery of chemical tests and each time the kids wanted to know what they meant and whether their water was good. They read the TDS meter: it’s 620! No it isn’t. That’s upside down. It’s 029. Yes, and that’s very good. What color is this closest to? Yes, the light blue means hardness is less than 100; your water is very soft. The orange means the pH is around 7; right where it should be. Your water looks very good. Do you drink this water? Oh yes; either this or from the river.
What have we not tested for yet? Ummm…germs? That’s right, but the germ test will take two days for us to learn the answer. Will you come back? No, but we’ll try to let your village know what we learn.

I checked our samples this afternoon. They all looked fine. Except St. Margaret’s, which was as black as coal. Definitely germs in that water. And the kids were drinking it. Could be that the tank is dirty and needs to be cleaned. Or it could be open to airborne contamination. Or given the other measurements, this is probably surface water from the Pine Ridge Mountains and already contaminated in the pipes. We need to know more, but this is definitely a candidate for a water system. And given that it’s in the beautiful Pine Ridge area about a dozen miles south of Jaguar Creek, it would be hard duty to volunteer for this one…
- dan

Happy Labor Day

Happy Labor Day from Belize (a government holiday) This has definitely been a day of labor for our team working as they build the puzzle that is the system, as well as working with the children and mother's here in Yalbac. The best news of the day is--we now have water in one tank and the water system is almost finished!

Chuck and I have been building a relationship with the community which has been fun and rewarding. The small village of Yalbac has 17 families, a church, a two room school house with 12 students 1 teacher and the principal. Family Grouping is at it's core. Everyone is a cousin or sibling most come from large families. The children care for each other and treat each other with warmth and affection. The older children have been quite helpful, not only with their siblings, but also helping me with projects. It is fun to once again be back in the classroom watching the younger children following directions and learning from the older children as they color, cut and paste. One of the older boys helped by reading one our new books (from the Del. Valley Reading Council) to the whole group in Spanish. The crafts and projects have varied from creating play dough germs, coloring a creation picture, learning new songs-even singing in rounds. Yesterday we spent two hours together and today four hours plus. We have been enjoying the time together.

All the individuals we have met have been very generous and welcoming. It has been an honor to work with the Mother's developing "the each one, teach one" concept as they learn about the system and the responsibilities they will have to keep it running. They have dreamed of the day that their village would have clean pure water.

All of God's children deserve clean water.
Anne Hansen

And the Water Flowed!

Okay, technically not clean water yet, but we're really, really close! As Chuck noted, my impression of yesterday was that we made incremental progress. We got a lot done. We put the new pump in the well, got a lot of the board put together and had exciting interactions with the students. But we still had a few potential show-stoppers ahead of us. The biggest of which was that we still hadn't gotten a drop of water out of the hole in the ground. Many of the parts that we picked up for the well, eg. electrical connectors and big PVC pipe, turned out to be incorrect. Despite my earlier comment about the Belizean Home Depot, in practice when we discover that we need a different part out on the job site it's a two hour proposition to get a replacement.

Things seemed to come together much better on Friday morning. Dan and Aki began figuring out the electrical part and developed a good plan for the well. While they made a dash to the hardware and electric stores I spent the morning putting together lots of PVC. By lunchtime I had accomplished a lot but was beginning to stagger a bit from PVC cement fumes. The picture shows my handiwork on the board as Dan and Aki put the finishing touches to the electrical.

Outside the well connections were also coming together. As the final pipe was laid and glued, I scrambled back on the roof to make sure that all of the connections on the raw (dirty) water side were in place so that we wouldn't dump water all over the floor or ground when (if?) the pump worked.

At 4 pm we still weren't quite there. We were running out of necessary parts (a PVC elbow is cheap and simple but hard to work around if you don't have one). Complicating things is a country-wide shortage of the size pipe that we need. We're substituting the next larger size where possible but in some places we need a specific size. We're down to counting the inches we need to complete the job. At 5 pm we got today's payoff. Dan threw the switch, the pump started to churn and several minutes later raw water started to pour into the cistern!

We need to complete the final pieces before "operator training" at 1 pm tomorrow. By then, by God's grace, Let the Clean Water Flow!

Peace,

Dave

More Tomorrow…

If you see the water tower for Cotton Tree, you’ve already passed the road to More Tomorrow. That’s what happened to us as we looked for this village with the quintessentially Belizean name. We took a chance on the next turn a few miles down, because Mr Jiminez, the Director of Rural Development for eastern Cayo District had assured us that the two roads looped together and formed a “U” at More Tomorrow. The road was a relatively new and un-potholed gravel road with a string of electric poles peeking out of the jungle on the left and newly cleared land on the right, probably soon to be planted in orange trees.
We reached a “Y” in the road and were concerned about which jungle path to take until we saw a small hand painted sign saying “More Tomorrow” with an arrow to the left. After another mile or so, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a weatherbeaten village of several dozen dilapidated houses and a bright blue school with chickens in the courtyard. We located the hand pump at one end of the school yard and set up to do our water testing.
Within minutes a large black man (dark dark, as they say in Belize) rode up on an old bicycle. He was probably in his mid 30’s and introduced himself as Mike Mynette, the council chairman. He was quite interested in what we were doing, and why. He helped Sheree fill out a Water Issues Survey form while I completed the water testing, and then led us down to the Belize River for another quick test.
The well water at the school at More Tomorrow is crystal clear. There’s no iron in it because, as we found out, the government had just recently replaced all the steel piping and the wellhead. There will also likely not be any biological contamination because it was also “shocked” with chlorine a week ago. This is because the council hounds the government to shock the well every few months. If they don’t, their kids start getting sick.
The well water is also very hard (> 500 ppm CaCo3) with high dissolved solids (>500 ppm). We asked if it tasted bad. Mike said it didn’t matter. It was the only choice they had, except cistern (rain) water, although some villagers still preferred river water.
We left More Tomorrow, a village of about 40 families (~165 people and growing!), mentally adding them to the list of candidates for a future LWW system. The hard water will be difficult to treat, but at least they now have electricity. The people, represented by Mike, are eager and aggressive to improve their lot. They’ll make good Living Waters partners.
One the other hand, their very real water problems are being addressed with regular chlorine treatments to the well. The government may not like doing that, but it's being controlled. Should we put a system here rather than somewhere else where the problems might otherwise remain unaddressed? There are no clear-cut choices, just a series of prayerful best guesses.
- dan

Different directions

Dave says it’s my turn today, since I haven’t been keeping up. We had breakfast with the Rotary club this morning. They are involved in a huge number of projects. One of the hot ones coming up is a canoe race. I’m not sure how long, but first prize is $1000 BZ and there’s a big party at the finish. We met a young woman from Telluride CO who is studying sustainable development here at Galen University for credit at U of Vermont. That sounds like a good thing to do during a Vermont winter if you can arrange it.

Dan and Sheree took off on a site visit trip look for other potential sites. The Director of Rural Development, whom we had met last February, had suggested a few places to look at, and they went to check on them. It was a pretty long day; they didn’t get back until around 7:30. I’ll leave the findings to Dan.

Anne Hansen got a ride with the Rotary president to a village where Swarthmore Rotary is sponsoring a preschool. He owns a huge amount of land with timber and cattle and builds super-expensive houses and owns a couple of hotels. I think she got an eyeful of how the other small fraction lives. She caught up with us at Yalbac in time for lunch.

Dave and Aki and I went to Yalbac to work on the treatment system. On the way, we stopped in Spanish Lookout for some PVC for the well. I ran into Mike from In His Will Ministries, where Dale and I stayed on our survey trip in 2007. It’s interesting to run into people at different places from where they fit in your picture of the country.


Dave says progress on the treatment system was incremental. I thought it was very exciting. We got the new well pump into the well, with wire for power into the treatment building but no plumbing beyond the wellhead. Dave and Aki are much more patient than I am: I would have hot-wired the pump to the generator to see a geyser from the well.


Anne and I had a teaching session with the kids. We kind of commandeered them for the afternoon. The teacher went home and let us do our thing. We talked about germs and illness and handwashing and when to use the clean water they would get from their treatment system. They were pretty excited about the songs and games, and they didn’t want to go when we declared the session finished. We had to shoo them out with the promise that they could come back tomorrow afternoon.

My wildlife report isn’t very exciting because we haven’t been in the right places. Yesterday I saw clay-colored robins at the resort and great kiskadees and green parrots at Yalbac. A gecko almost fell on Anne at the resort. This morning at the hotel where Rotary meets we saw blue-gray tanagers, a female shrike-tanager, a hummingbird that the local record suggests was rufous-tailed, and a basilisk lizard, which has the interesting behaviors of running on its hind legs and running on water. The flowers are beautiful, especially several varieties of bouganvillea.

Tomorrow we will have teaching sessions with some of the women in the morning and the kids again in the afternoon. I’m really looking forward to that and to seeing water from the well.

Peace to all,
Chuck

Joe Petrof

He was sitting on a barstool at the counter when we walked in; a large heavyset man with a silver flattop and an interesting carved cane. I didn’t pay him much attention as the Mennonite sales clerk asked how he could help us in heavily accented English. As Aki and I began asking questions about how to plumb a well with an electric pump, the clerk questioned another clerk in Low German. The second clerk looked at us and said “You should ask Joe about that. He does wells all the time.” Joe had gotten up to leave, but turned when he heard his name. We outlined what we were trying to do. He gave us a classic you-guys-really-don’t-know-what-you’re-doing look and said he would tell us how he would do it.
After a lengthy and detailed crash course in how to plumb a well, he finished by saying “You don’t have to listen to me, but that’s how I would do it.” We assured him that his plan sounded a lot better than ours, and he said “OK then. Let’s go shopping.” He helped us pick out everything we needed, becoming more jocular and engaged in the project the more we talked.
We discovered that he was an American ex-pat who came to Belize 12 years ago and never went back. He’d screwed up his knees and hips playing football for the University of North Carolina and found Belizean weather much more friendly to his joints. He had a degree in mechanical engineering from Penn State, and owned a well drilling business in Santa Elena, not far from Aki’s house.
As we were checking out, he asked again if we thought we could handle it. I asked him with a grin what he was doing the next couple days. He said “What time will you be in Yalbac tomorrow? I’ll meet you there after I get my crews started.”
People in Belize are like that.
- dan

We Accomplished What We Needed to Accomplish

We made it out to the first day on the site with some trepidation. The potential show-stopper was removing the old hand pump from Yalbac's well. The government said they would come and do it last Friday, and then on Monday or Tuesday. Over dinner on Tuesday night our team started discussing what Plan B, C or D might be if the government didn't show. At around 10:30 on Wednesday morning a pickup with four guys arrived to dismantle the pump. As with repairing your car the job was essentially pretty simple but without a few key pieces of know-how and one or two critical tools it would have have been nearly impossible for us to tackle ourselves.

The picture shows the workers extracting steel pipe fifteen feet at a time, disconnecting a section and then extracting another fifteen feet. The pipe went down ninety feet. The top of the water in the well is at sixty five feet and the bottom of the well is at 102 feet. Tomorrow will will install a submersible electric pump at the end of ninety feet of PVC.

Dan and Aki made a mid afternoon trip to Home Depot (or the Belizean equivalent) to pick up parts for installing the new pump. While there they met a local who ran a well drilling business who gave them tips on everything they needed to know for installing the new pump. He even promised to drop by and inspect our handiwork to make sure we have it set up right.

While this was going on, I was laying out the components for the water treatment board. I then started installing the plumbing for the external water tanks as shown in the next picture. Anne and Chuck made their initial contacts with the nearby school and have setup a teaching session for Thursday afternoon. Friday is a national holiday (Labor Day / May Day) so this will be their only chance while school is in session.

Harrison, the Yalbac village council Chairman, dropped by several times during the day to review our progress and lend a hand. Several locals helped out during the day and thankfully dug the ditch from the well to the water building. At the end of the day Harrison treated us to fresh coconut sliced open with a machete under a coconut tree next to the water building.

We could have accomplished more but we certainly could have accomplished much less.

To God be the glory,

Dave

First Day on the Job

My room at the Midas Resort.

A room like Dave's at the Midas Resort



We head back up to Yalbac village from our digs at the Midas Resort in San Ignacio this morning. At dinner last night with Sheree and Aki, our Rotary hosts, we formulated a fuzzy plan of attack. The two biggest unknowns at my end of the dinner table were whether and when the Department of Rural Development will show up to pull the hand pump from the well head so we can install the electric pump, and how many (if any) villagers will appear to pitch in with the installation.
Anne and Chuck were conspiring with Sheree at the other end of the table about the educational component and a variety of Rotary issues. There's an undercurrent in many of the conversations regarding "what next". Assuming this project completes as we pray it will, we're beginning to peek shyly toward the future to see what can be done in the next phase.
The weather conditions are shaping up to be more typically tropical this time around. Temperatures are 5- 10 degrees warmer than last February, but not much different from those in Oak Ridge when we left. The big difference is the humidity. We were greeted with a brief downpour at the airport shortly after we arrived, and rain announced itself on the tin roofs of the breakfast patio and in my room both last night and this morning. We're not in the rainy season yet, but it's definitely much wetter than two months ago.

Prayers today requested for flexibility and ingenuity as we evaluate the "lay of the land" and identify the challenges ahead and the directions we'll need to move in to address them.

- dan

We made it (again)!

Not much to say. Dan filled you in up to this morning. Our flights and connections were pretty uneventful. Chuck got busted at Charlotte's security for the foil bag around his Fig Newtons. We cleared Belize customs without incident and we were met by a thunder storm and hot and humid weather (Not much different from Oak Ridge at the moment I guess). We were also met immediately by the hotel shuttle so that went smoothly as well. We'll meet Sheree and Aki for dinner soon and plan tomorrow's schedule.

Please write! (Think I've made that point enough?)

Peace,
Dave

Back To Yalbac

We're on our way, once again. It's becoming routine -- maybe a bit too much so.
It's early here in the Best Western lobby in Charlotte. I slept pretty lightly last night, my mind racing with all the things I might have forgotten and all the things that could go wrong on this trip. That's probably because we spent a half hour last night looking for our hotel.
We left Oak Ridge on time, after spending 15 minutes redistributing the weight in our 6 large checked bags. They're all now within 10% of the allowed 50 lb limit.
We made it to Charlotte in under 5 hours, including a stop for dinner.
Then we realized that no one knew specifically where the motel was. After asking and driving and phoning, we finally found our home away from home for last night and settled in.
We leave at 7 this morning on a shuttle to the airport; our van stays here for the week. We meet up with Anne Hansen from Swarthmore in Dallas, and then on to Belize City mid afternoon and a shuttle to San Ignacio and Sheree and Aki Fukai, our local Rotary contacts.
The picture above shows Aki in front of our poured concrete water building. I think he's describing the fish that got away. He spent yesterday mounting water tanks on top of the building; We'll spend tomorrow beginning the job mounting water treatment hardware inside the building.
Prayers requested for traveling mercies today and for humility and flexibility the rest of the week. We're honored to be representing you in doing God's work in Belize.
- dan

Read it all

The entries in this blog were not always made in the same sequence as the events they describe, partly because we were sharing computers and were not always able to connect to the blog, and partly because Chuck is slow.

To get the whole picture, read down the blog to find entries made since the last time you looked, or read up from the bottom to see how the trip developed.

Farewell and wrap-up

About 7 AM Sunday we walked down to the Lamanai restaurant, expecting to go to Holy Eucharist at the Anglican church after breakfast. The restaurant was on the river, which was beautiful in the early morning light. We saw gallinules, great blue herons, great egrets, a little green heron, and several cormorants along the river, as well as grackles, kiskadees with their bright yellow colors, and several other species of open-space birds. Pat, who both is a fisherman and was facing the right direction, saw a few "honkin' big" tarpon jumping a bit upstream of us.

I had considered leaving my cell-phone at the hotel because I didn't expect to need it, but I hadn't been able to find my watch, so I had the phone for a timepiece. You can see from Dave's post that it was very fortunate that I had it.

Concerns about travel and slowness of the breakfast service combined to change our minds about church. We went back to the hotel to inquire online about our fate. Dan and I had been rescheduled for Monday, but Dan was to arrive in Knoxville a couple of hours earlier than I was. Dave and Pat couldn't find even a notice that the flight had been canceled. Pat couldn't get through to Delta by phone, so we decided to go to the airport and see what we could do. Delta was trying very hard to avoid having to put on extra equipment for Monday, so they managed to book us out on US Airways to Charlotte. As it turned out, we might have enjoyed staying in Belize the extra day more than driving in the snow, but as on several other occasions, what was less than optimal turned out OK.

So we are back, tired but happy with our accomplishments. During the Rotary meeting on Thursday I had a vision of our progress. We have worked toward a Yalbac installation for almost two years, during which there has been a sunrise glow of hope on the horizon. The sun has now begun to rise, but most of it is still below the horizon. Soon the dawn will be complete, and as the sun of Yalbac's success continues to rise, I will look forward to a time of multiple clean water suns brightening the day with God's love.

There is still much to be done. Continue to pray for Yalbac and Orange Walk, and pray for discernment of God's will as we continue to learn of people in need of clean water. Pray for Sherree and Aki and for the San Ignacio and Swarthmore Rotary clubs, that their efforts will continue to help the people of Belize. Pray for First Presbyterian of Cody as they deliberate whether God is leading them to an installation at the Presbyterian school in Orange Walk. And pray that our congregation will continue to experience the joy of Christ's living water flowing through us to others.

Peace,
Chuck

Homecoming

The last few days of our journey didn't exactly work out as we expected. Friday was a somewhat discouraging day where I felt that we didn't accomplish very much. I was beginning to feel that maybe the trip was a day or two too long.

Saturday turned out much better than we anticipated. We had a very productive visit at the Orange Walk Presbyterian School and even met a group of students from Vanderbilt who were working there.

We spent Saturday afternoon visiting the spectacular Mayan ruins at Lamanai and even got a bit lost on the way back. Perhaps that was a foreshadowing of things to come. As we were relaxing over breakfast before church on Sunday, Chuck's phone rang and Dale informed him that our flights home had been canceled. Soon after Delta called to tell him the same thing. We scurried to the airport where Pat found an alternative set of connections back to Wyoming. We got a flight back to Charlotte where we planned to rent a car to drive home. You can see from the picture how that worked out. After a white-knuckle hour to drive twenty miles, we pulled off and spent another night on the road in a hotel north of Charlotte. The drive was a still a little slow going early Monday morning but roads eventually improved and we were rewarded with a gorgeous winter wonderland drive through the mountains on the way back to Knoxville.

As I said, things didn't always work out as we planned. At times when prospects looked the most pessimistic we achieved breakthroughs that gave us hope for the future. Then when we got feeling pretty good about ourselves, we made decisions that looked good at the time but may not have been any better than doing nothing at all.

The Lord surely does work in His own time and in mysterious ways.

Peace and farewell until we return to Belize in April,
Dave

The rest of Saturday

At the end of our technical breakout upstairs where the defunct board is, we were called to lunch. The school cooks had come in to prepare lunch for the seminary class and the college visitors, and we were invited to join them. We had jerk chicken (what a surprise) and beans and rice, unless it was rice and beans (even more a surprise). I am writing this on Friday (or from the perspective of someone who sees the blog as being in the present on Saturday I will be writing it on Friday), and which meals were beans and rice and which were rice and beans has become blurred in my memory.

After wrapping up our business at the school, we hit the road for the Lamanai ruin. The ruin was 28 miles from the highway, but the first several miles were paved or smoothly graded gravel. Eventually we ran out of smooth and got back to our accustomed potholes. We went through Mennonite country again and saw many horses and buggies, some driven by children. Since they do have cars and trucks, I speculated that fodder is cheaper than gasoline when you have a farm. We were amused to see a buggy carrying several 10-foot pieces of PVC tubing. We just never associate modern technical activities with people who use horses as their major means of transportation.

Dave guessed correctly at every unmarked turn (when Ray was with us we were always urged to go to the left), and we reached the ruin shortly before it was scheduled to close. With what I am beginning to think is typical casualness about closing time among park rangers, we were told to take as much time as we wanted. I don't know what they could have done anyway other than close the visitor center and the gift shop, since the parking lot was outside the gate.

Lamanai means "Place of the crocodile". It is unusual among Mayan ruins in being spread out along the banks of a lagoon, the New River Lagoon on the New River, the longest river that is completely within Belize. This is the river that our hotel and Sunday's restaurant are on. Most of the Mayan temple sites are compact and built around a central plaza. Diet and economy were probably very different from those at temple sites in the jungle away from water like Caracol, the capital city of the Mayans in the Belize region, but there are in fact several ruins within an easy walk of a river.

We climbed the High Temple, which was indeed high. The steps are 16-18 inches high going up and higher going down. They had a rope hung along one of the sections so you could go hand-over-hand, which especially made the descent easier. It will be Thursday before the muscles in the front of my thighs stop hurting.

The view from the top was great. You could probably see into Mexico, although there was nothing to indicate the border. My globe has Belize in yellow and Mexico in blue, but the real thing was mostly green. To the south we could see the Mennonite farms, to the north the lagoon. We were joined on the summit by a group of Mennonites. Their speech sounded more Dutch than German to me, especially when one asked another to point out "dain huis". A couple of grandmothers had made most of the climb. They didn't go the final few steps to the summit, but sat and chatted just below the top. I certainly wouldn't put in all that effort to get to the almost top and not finish, even though the open space without a railing at that height makes me uncomfortable. Especially when I am staggering from the strain on my legs to get up there.

On the grounds we saw keel-billed toucans, white-fronted parrots, and several black howler monkeys. There was vegetation in profusion, with many kinds of flowers. I saw an aloe tree and a few varieties of spices. There were many bromeliads growing on the bark of trees.

We went home a different way. I think you could say we weren't lost since we ended up in Orange Walk Town just a few blocks from the restaurant where we had decided to have supper. We had been reassuring ourselves about our direction by looking at the sun, but suddenly it was gone, and very shortly thereafter it was dark. No long twilight here.

At the restaurant I spoke to a group of people who had been trying to help me see a parrot, which I eventually saw when it flew. They are ex-pat who run a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center a few miles south of Orange Walk. They said there used to be a lot of marijuana growing in the cane fields (did I mention that we had seen trucks lined up for maybe half a mile delivering cane to the mill?). I got the impression that alcoholism is pretty serious, but they are not so far from the modern world that they are not also into crack cocaine.

After supper I strolled around downtown again. I had to do some shopping for a few items that I always bring to Shirley Knight as a reminder of our first trip to Belize. I was also supposed to find the Anglican church and the restaurant for tomorrow's breakfast. I walked between 16 and 20 blocks and found the items for Shirley and the church. I was several blocks from the restaurant when I was accosted by a couple of women sitting on a streetlamp base with their little girls. They wanted to know if I was lost, and I told them I knew where I was going at the end of my search, but I didn't know where the restaurant was. I think they were concerned about my safety, because after they told me how to find the restaurant they told me not to go down there because it is a dangerous place at night. I enjoyed the interchange, especially flirting with the little girls (about 2 and 3 years old). After I got back to the hotel I wrote this blog entry, but it didn't go through and I didn't think to save it, so I am writing it again. Silly me.

Peace,
Chuck

Presbyterian Pre and Primary School of Orange Walk

We pulled up to the fence outside the courtyard/playground right at 9 Saturday morning and were greeted by lots of activity and about a dozen college kids. A sharp contrast to the previous afternoon, when we stopped by to get a water sample only to find no one around and everything locked up. The kids were from Vanderbilt University on an Alternate Spring Break mission trip through an organization called the Belize Project doing micro-business projects in Corazol on the northern border of Belize. We explained we were with Living Waters for the World, associated with the PCUSA, and several kids volunteered that they were also PCUSA. Small world. We were ushered into a classroom with about a half dozen Presbyterian lay pastors who were being “treated” to a lecture on Medieval Church History by a retired professor from the US. Interesting to consider what was happening in Belize during the Medieval period… After making introductions and small talk, it became apparent that we were needed elsewhere, mainly because there wasn’t enough room for us and the kids from Vanderbilt. That suited us just fine!

We rounded up some chairs and clustered into Ruth Ku’s office, actually much more spacious than the Earnest Banner’s government office in Belmopan on Wednesday. The conversation was a bit awkward at first. I suspect neither side expected much to come of it, since our conversation with Raphael Ku, Ruth’s brother-in-law on Wednesday had led both sides to the conclusion that a water system might not be feasible or appropriate at this time. Our concerns were primarily whether there was a real and demonstrable health need, and theirs was whether they could afford the costs in terms of both dollars and administrative time.

We began with small talk; I asked Ruth to bring us up to date on the history and progress of the school, so we could all be on the same page. As the conversation developed, it was as if a dark cloud began to lift. I began to realize that although our objective evidence indicated that the municipal water in Orange Walk was safe, the people of Orange Walk believed that it was not, and went to great lengths and expense to drink bottled water if at all possible. Perception is reality, and the school simply could not afford the perception that it wasn’t doing everything possible to protect the health safety of its students. Thus, they would continue to provide purified water whether we decided it was safe or not. This was further reinforced for me later in the conversation when we mentioned that although the very high hardness and dissolved solids in the Orange Walk water was not a direct health issue, it did create a bad taste, and was counter-indicated for people with kidney or gallstones. A light went on in Ruth’s eyes. She said everyone she knew had kidney stones including herself and Mario, her husband. And yes, the doctors did recommend that anyone with kidney stones avoid the hard municipal water. We had, in my mind at least, our medical justification.

Ruth’s first concern was cost. She had gotten the impression from Raphael that the expense of electricity for softening and reverse osmosis would be prohibitive. Add to that the fact that roughly half the water in an RO system is thrown away, and all would need to be purchased from the town, and it looked cost prohibitive. We did some back-of-the envelope calculations and concluded that the discarded water would only add a penny or two per gallon to the delivered cost, and even the high electricity costs in Belize would only add another nickel or so. Estimating wildly, we proclaimed that the school should be easily able to produce water for less than 50 cents (Belize!) per 5 gallon, far less than the $3 they were presently paying for bottled 5 gallon jugs. Ruth convinced us that the administrative burden wouldn’t be much more than the current process for buying commercial bottled water, and that her teachers and parent would volunteer to run the water system.

We were trapped on a virtuous cycle. The complications and objections seemed to melt away. Each side seemed to find more reasons why this could work and would be a good idea. Ruth recounted how the floods last fall had forced them to purchase large quantities of bottled water to bring upriver to the families who had been flooded out and left with contaminated wells. They were left for weeks without stable water supplies. She spoke emotionally about how a water treatment system in that situation would have allowed them to serve those needs at much lower cost.

Concluding our conversation, we settled back to reality and due diligence. Pat intends to bring this prayerfully to his congregation in Cody. We assured him that we would offer support in any way that made sense for future collaboration. Chuck promised a more detailed cost analysis, knowing her costs for electricity and water. I promised to provide some contacts from Presbyterian churches in the Yucatan where similar Living Waters systems were up and running.

As we stood to leave there were warm smiles around the room. Ruth extended her hand for a departing handshake. I couldn’t help it; I gave her a big hug. She returned it in kind.

To God be the glory.
Dan

Pain in the...

What a great congregation you must have. Dan, Chuck and Dave were driven nuts by me for a week while they focused on the Yalbac water project with diplomacy and efficiency. I cannot imagine how relieved they were to have the pain from their ass evaporate after kindly taking me to the ariport yesterday on the way to check out LWW's first Belize project in Orange Walk. Overall I focused more on food, so perhaps there emerged some awareness of food security in the midst of water parting while we traveled from Gales Point area to the poor South of Belize [Toledo district] to Cayo and project prospects there as well as the Yalbac covenant and details that are largely settled.

In case anyone is interested here is our church's website; we are far behind in blog and website development however.

http://www.swarthmorepres.org/home.html

Yours in Christ,
Ray Hopkins
Presbyterian elder and Rotarian from Swarthmore.

Friday travels

Today we took Ray to the airport and ended up in Orange Walk. On the way out of San Ignacio Ray had to drop off a sweater at the Octavia Waight nursing home, and he had to deal with a half-million Italian lyra (worth maybe $300) that were useless to him but of potential value to the proprietor of the Italian restaurant. I'm not sure what deal he worked, but it was amusing that he had to come to Belize to get rid of Italian currency.

We got to Belize City early enough for lunch. After wandering around the city, which is crowded and has chaotic traffic, we found the Indian restaurant Ray was looking for.
Soup for lunch was tasty and agreeably light. Above the bar a cricket match was being shown on TV. the picture wasn't really clear, but I think it would have been incomprehensible anyway.

After dropping Ray at the airport, we came back into the city to try to meet with the operator of the government water laboratory. He didn't show up, but I did have a brief chat with the woman who does microscopic identification and diagnosis at the malaria lab. Because the other guys were eager to get on the road, I resisted the urge to stop in the Maternal Child Health office to see what they are doing.

Up the Northern Highway the houses along the road were in somewhat better condition than most in the little villages in Cayo District. We were passed by a fast-moving pickup truck that had a small sofa in the bed, up against the cab. In it were two elderly-ish plumpish ladies in long Mennonite dresses, holding their straw sunhats on their heads and chattering away. It was a photo-op that we regretted missing.

In Orange Walk Town we first found the school and then found our hotel. We teased Pat for driving the wrong direction on the one-way street in front of the hotel, as well as having run a stop light earlier, because he is a former police officer (Previously Pistol-Packing Police, Presently Presbyterian Pastor Pat). The hotel is on a river and is forested down to the water. It looked like something out of the Amazon or African Queen.

After supper I wandered around town for a while. There were shops of a variety of sizes, from a large appliance store to room-sized shops stocked with CDs, T-shirts, and jeans. I found a grocery store with five aisles and one-hundred-pound sacks of sugar stacked by the front window. These stores generally do not sell produce, which is mainly sold at the open-air market.

Orange Walk town, with its town square park and central boulevard, has a more open feel than San Ignacio and Belize City. The people seemed more inclined to gather and socialize in the park than I had seen before. I was definitely more comfortable there.

Peace,
Chuck

Cristo Rey

Chuck and I drove out to Cristo Rey from San Ignacio just as it was getting dark on Thursday. It's not far; maybe 20 minutes. It felt much farther on a rough road in the dark. Especially since the news I knew we were about to deliver wasn't good.
Chuck, Peggy, Lynn Kszos and her daughter, and I visited Cristo Rey last spring. We learned that their well water was very hard, harder than Yalbac, with high dissolved solids. We also learned that both the well water and the river water are biologically contaminated. However, we had also learned that Cristo Rey had a government sponsored water delivery system with a tank and a chlorinator, but that they weren't using the chlorinator at present. I had decided in advance that we had to tell them we wouldn't treat the well water.
We met with Giovanni Montalvan the mayor, and Alfredo Guerra the chairman of the water board, and a few others. We told them what we had learned and that we wouldn't treat the well water. They confirmed that the pump had broken on the chlorinator but that they didn't like the taste anyway and were concerned about what the chlorine did to the concrete when it spilled, so they had never fixed it.
We then offered them a carrot and a stick. We suggested that we could put in a system to treat their river water to give them the same quality water as in San Ignacio or Santa Elena if they could locate or build an appropriate building. I handed them a blank Water Issues Survey and said we could meet again on our next trip and discuss things further. I also suggested that they could check out Yalbac to see if something like this would be appropriate for them.
As we were leaving Giovanni said that they were opening an internet cafe in the next couple weeks and he would have an email address. I smiled and said we'd keep in touch. On the way back through the hills to Santa Elena, Chuck's cell phone rang. Dale was calling. The contrast between our communication expectations and those in Belize was striking.
Dan

Golden Corral

We retraced our steps from earlier in the week toward Yalbac. This time we stopped in Spanish Lookout, the Mennonite community south of Yalbac. Our destination was the Golden Corral, a restaurant, where Chuck and Mike Sale and I had eaten with Sheree and Aki last spring. This Golden Corral has nothing at all to do with any Golden Corral at which you may have eaten in the US. This one has Belizean rice and beans (not stewed beans and rice) on the menu, along with German pirogues. I ordered the regular sized beans and rice with beef, thinking that a $5Bz small portion wouldn’t be enough. My $8BZ ($4US) arrived stacked high on the plate and dripping off the edges. And on top of that, it was delicious.
We were meeting Harrison for lunch and further discussion of the Yalbac project. We showed up about 15 minutes early (US time) and he showed up about 15 minutes late (Belize time). Although we were eager for Harrison to sign our covenant agreement it became quickly obvious that he was not, setting it aside and changing the subject instead of saying no. Belizeans hate saying no. Harrison was much more interested in a conversation with Dave and Aki about having the company he works for, Belize Concrete, build the water building. Aki reviewed the proposal and decided it was about the same cost and much simpler than hauling concrete blocks up to Yalbac and building it with volunteer labor.
After lunch Harrison picked up the stack of covenant copies to bring back to Yalbac. They’re having a community wide meeting on Sunday afternoon to discuss and hopefully approve the covenant. Signed copies will be delivered to Sheree and passed along to us, completing the preliminary stages of this project.
Dan

Wildlife comment

One other note about the trip back from Spanish Lookout. While we were waiting for the ferry, we were visited by a warbler-sized hummingbird, which flew around the car, peering through each of the windows as though it wanted to come in and join us. It was a female green-breasted mango, a beautiful bird, gray on the front with a black stripe down the center and burgundy-violet colors on the underside of the tail. The beak was about 1 1/2 inches long. I guess it decided it couldn't get into the car, so after a tour all the way around, it flew off.

Although there is much poverty, Belize is blessed with much beauty.

Peace,
Chuck

Encountering the Men on the Bridge

As we were standing around “debriefing” one evening this week I was struck that we may be in a situation analogous to the “Man on the Bridge” story from Pastor Kerra’s sermon on February 15. We are clearly in a situation where may accept someone else’s burden and be trapped in a long term dependency where we can’t extricate ourselves. (Okay, so maybe I’m a little slow on the uptake but I wasn’t even in church that week so cut me some slack.)

The analogy isn’t perfect but I’ve never met a metaphor that I can’t extend and stretch to the breaking point. Rather than accepting a burden unbidden from a stranger, we are seeking people already dangling from the bridge who we want to help. As in the parable, some want us untie their ropes from the bridge and accept their burden with no expectation of helping themselves back up.

Some are simply out bungee jumping and don’t need any help, thank you very much. (One of my favorite sayings during this trip has been “When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”)

Finally there are those who are truly in peril, are seeking assistance and are certainly willing to help themselves back up if we can help them (if you want to keep extending the metaphor, sometimes we need to convince them that they are in peril).

The trick is to discern which is which because it certainly isn’t always obvious. That’s where God’s grace and the ability to wisely use our God-given gifts comes in I guess.

Peace to All,
Dave

Rotary

The weekly San Ignacio Rotary meeting is held from 7 to 8 AM every Thursday in the elegant but slightly shabby (this is Belize) San Ignacio Hotel, owned and run by the wife of the current Rotary president.
I presented the standard Living Waters PowerPoint with embellishment to focus on our Rotary partnership and the Yalbac water project. The 20 or so attendees were interested and receptive, asking quite a few questions as I wrapped up.
Afterward, the president and I signed three copies of our three-way covenant agreement with Yalbac. Ray and Pat then headed off with John, the president, to San Antonio, a village south of Cristo Rey, while Dave and Chuck and I headed back to our rooms to prepare for a lunch meeting with Harrison Mocollock, the chair of the Yalbac village council.
Dan

Ash Wednesday

The morning was pretty quiet. We had a leisurely breakfast and did paperwork until it was time to go to Sherree and Aki's to regroup. On the way we dropped Ray off at the Octavia Waight nursing home, which we have visited on previous trips, to take care of some business. He was on his own to walk back after that, so he got a bit of exercise.

Aki drove us to Belmopan, where we located the office where we were to meet. The office was not in the government compound, but according to Sherree was on a road a ways around the ring road in a building like the ones a block over but under the tall tree. It turned out the be the last building on the way out of the loop where the King's Children's Home is located. We had a very producutive meeting there, as I think Dan has described. I was pleased but somewhat boggled by being able to phone and set up a face-to-face meeting with the head of a government program in just a couple of days. Sherree made it a very relaxed meeting because she and the director were joking about various other projects and what a nuisance she had been. I'm convinced that if the director actually comes to watch the installation, he'll be hooked and really supportive. Maybe putting plumbing together is a guy thing.

We went immediately from that meeting to Raphael Ku in Santa Elena, the sister city of San Ignacio. Raphael is beginning to burn out from the load of school management, which he seems to do with no staff; church development, which worries him because church growth is not keeping up with school growth; and seminary concerns, which he didn't say much about but had talked about quite a bit when we saw him last year. Fortunately, a new general manager is coming and in a couple of weeks he will have three seminary graduates to share the load of pastoring. That will double the number of ordained Presbyterian pastors in Belize and increase the number of English-speaking pastors from one to four. He didn't specify, but I think the students are Belize-born, as he is, so he will no longer be the only one.

We went to Ash Wednesday service at St. Andrews Anglican Church, where Dale and I initially met Sherree and Aki. Dale and Ashley phoned me during the sermon, so I missed most of it, but it was given in Spanish and translated inaudibly by a teenager who had trouble with some of the words. I got the feeling she was also having a little trouble with the Spanish, which seemed really strange.

After the service, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant operated by an Italian. The food was excellent and certainly different from Italian food I have had in the States.

All in all, it was another very productive day. Thanks to Sherree and Aki for greasing so many skids for us.

Peace,
Chuck

Raphael Ku

Arriving about 15 minutes late (we’re now on Belize time) we greeted Raphael Ku in the courtyard of his small church in Santa Elena, the sister city to San Ignacio. Raphael is one of 3 ordained ministers in the Belize Presbyterian Church, and the only ordained Belizean. He’s also the general manager of 10 Presbyterian Schools in Belize. Raphael invited us into the preschool and showed us around while answering questions. Then he ushered us into the sanctuary where he hosted a long and frank conversation about the future of the Presbyterian Church in Belize and the situation in Orange Walk specifically. This was a valuable preamble to our visit on Saturday with Ruth Ku, Raphael’s sister-in-law and principal of the Presbyterian Pre and Primary School where a defunct Living Waters system resides. The focus begins to shift from our work in Cayo to future possibilities on the broader Belize landscape.
Dan

Earnest Banner

We all piled into Aki Fukai's Honda SUV for the trip from Santa Elena to Belmopan. All except Ray, that is, who spent much of the day at the Octavia Waight Retirement Home. We encountered a light rain on Western Highway, foreshadowing the deluge that poured down while we had lunch and conversation at Perkups in Belmopan. Pat and I had watermelon juice to drink - a firstfor me. I wonder how you squeeze a watermelon?
After lunch Aki and Dave dropped us (Sheree, Chuck, Pat and me) at the Government Rural Development Board where we met with Earnest Banner, Rural Development Coordinator for all of of Belize. He grilled us about our plans for Yalbac and showed a high level of interest in what we are doing there. He promised that if we called him in advance he would be there for the installation. He also wanted to send his people to learn about the workings of the system while we installed it.
When Sheree asked about other possible sites with water needs he quickly listed three locations in desperate need: St. Matthews, Biscayne, and Franks. All of these are desperate for clean water and located in the Belize City district to the east of Cayo. Sheree and I plan to explore these options during our next trip. It's amazing how one thing leads to another...
Dan

Pat's first post

Hi, I am Pat Montgomery from First Presbyterian Church in Cody, WY. First I need to compliment FPC, Oak Ridge on a number of things. Your commitment to the Living Waters program is tremendous. What you are doing in Appalachia and working towards here in Belize speaks incredibly well of your congregation and the faith. I also must say (at the risk of creating impossible egos for the rest of the week) Dan, Dave and Chuck are wonderful ambassadors for your congregation and for the Living Waters program. Together they form a beautifully balanced team to further your Belize efforts. Both I and all of FPC Cody are blessed through being invited along on this trip.

Thus far we have been in the southern and middle parts of Belize. New friends have been made and future work has been explored. My previous LWW work has been in Guatemala and I am struck by how similar…and yet how different the two countries are. Obviously they are at about the same latitude and the climates are very similar. Yet the differences are many.

Belize has much more ethnic diversity Mestizo, Mayan, Garifuna, Anglo, etc. Belize has much more tourism; Belize is much less densely populated, has much more wildlife and in general is much cleaner. The Belizean government seems to be much more “hands off” than that of Guatemala. We see far less police and military presence here than we did in Guatemala. It is far easier to drive one’s self in Belize and simple tasks are just easier here. In Guatemala our water tests revealed biological contamination about 95% of the time while here in Belize tests so far indicate biological contamination only about 50% of the time. Here in Belize there appears to be less litter. Even the poorest homes and yards appear a bit tidier, the cars appear less road weary, and perhaps most helpful of all, the majority of folks speak English.

This last point makes a huge difference when doing the relationship building part of the LWW program. Much more can be accomplished in less time with all parties having a far greater understanding. Even in the Yalbac situation where FPC Oak Ridge is working, many of the young and several of the village council members speak English. A translator still needs to be present, but it is much easier to form a relationship and come to an understanding. It also allows the LWW team to split up and work on multiple points at a time. When the people from Cody went to Guatemala for their early visits, the translating was great, but the process was just so much more slow and cumbersome.

The Yalbac community members Oak Ridge is working with are good hard working people. They know the creek water makes them sick, they know the well water is not pure, but they also have little ability to make significant change without the contributions and technical help of LWW (FPC Oak Ridge) and the contributions of Rotary. As an outside observer to what you all are doing in Yalbac, your project seems to be coming together very well and I believe your efforts will be well worth while.

Despite all the differences between Guatemala and Belize one thing remains the same. The key to success is not found in the purification system itself (good as it is); instead what is most critical is the cultural change that takes place through the educational efforts and the empowerment that happens when people are equipped to change their lives for the better.

After my crash course introduction to Belize over the past few days, today (Ash Wednesday) I start doing things more directly related to FPC Cody. We still have some details to pin down for the Oak Ridge folks in relation to Yalbec, but later today we meet with Raphael Ku who is the director of Presbyterian Schools in Belize. This should prove useful for our visit to Orange Walk on Saturday, where FPC Cody may have an opportunity to work with the local Presbyterian School there. Not only is Raphael the Director of Presbyterian Schools in Belize, but his sister in law, Ruth Ku is also director or principal of the Orange Walk School. (In Wyoming we like to say that the state is just a small town with very long streets. In that regard Belize is very similar.) I may get put to work on this trip yet.

I am constantly grateful to Dan, Chuck, Dave and Ray for bringing me along on this excursion. Without their allowing me to be a fifth wheel on this trip I could never have had such a good experience in such a short period of time. Thanks FPC Oak Ridge.
(P.S. One of your team members snores tremendously.)

Pat Montgomery

Yalbac Resort

We stayed Monday night at Victor Tut’s unfinished resort just outside Yalbac village. It’s on a hill within easy walking distance of the well site where our treatment system will be placed. The building is a pretty impressive poured concrete structure, with three stories embedded into the hilltop. The top floor is a big concrete slab bigger than a basketball court and covered with beautiful tile. There’s a kitchen at one end and a bar at the other end, and no walls with a railing all around. The hammocks suspended from the concrete beams were inviting and the views of the mist rising from the distant hills were spectacular. The thatched roof soared 30 feet overhead and created a wonderful jungle ambiance. All our rooms were on the floor below this community area, and none of this was finished and ready for “prime time”. We had the place to ourselves, except for Victor, his wife, and a handful of their staff. An interesting juxtaposition of wealth; the potential luxury of the resort, still in a raw and unfinished state; and a short walk away, the subsistence level living of Yalbac village. A country of contrasts.
Dan

Small Country

Belize is a small country. I was reminded again of this Monday morning at Jesus Guerra’s house. Jesus is on the Water Board for Cristo Rey. Chuck and I had been introduced to him by Atiliano Jones last March. This time we had just come from Victor Tut’s Crystal Paradise Resort, where Ray had negotiated prices for a stay at Victor’s unfinished resort within walking distance of Yalbac village. The only thing separating Jesus’ property from Victor’s in Cristo Rey was a 16 acre parcel owned by a friend of Ray, and some old and deep-seated animosity.
Yalbac is nearly an hour’s drive away from Cristo Rey, even though it’s only 25 miles or so in distance. Even so, Victor himself hosted us at the lodge in Yalbac, with his wife doing the cooking. I negotiated to stay again at the lodge in two months when we come back to install the water system. I wish I knew what price we’d agreed on!
Tomorrow, Wednesday, we head to Belmopan, about an hour to the east. Sheree asked if we might be interested in meeting with someone on the Rural Development Board. When we said yes, she promptly got on the phone. When she got off the phone, she said we had a meeting scheduled for tomorrow at 2 with Ernest Banner, the Minister of the National Rural Development Board. So tomorrow while Dave and Aki go on a scavenger hunt for water parts, Sheree and Pat and I will be meeting with a National Minister.
Belize is a small country.
Dan

A few pictures

Here are a few pictures to help you envision where we've been so far. I hope they'll be in roughly chronological order (since I haven't played with pictures before on the blog I don't know how they'll turn out).

This was our first stop in the village of Gale's Point. This village appeared to be possibly the most needy of the various stops we have made but they also appeared to have access to water resources that they weren't currently utilizing. This was also different from the other areas we've visited because it's located along the coast.

Heading back in the other direction, this picture was taken at Hope Creek. This is situated at the junction of two major roads so although they didn't currently have a good supply of water, they potentially could get bottled water delivered easily. The village was devastated by a major flood that swept through last October. Based on the water marks we saw, the water in this location looked like it rose to about the height of the trailer bed in the picture. In the picture you can see the homeowner who's water we were sampling along with Ray Hopkins, Pat Montgomery, Chuck Hadden (back to you) and Dan Terpstra.

We then headed further south into the Toledo district. Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures from the Hope Mission in Mafredi. This picture was taken in the village of Santa Cruz which is located further south (west?) This was another unique location nestled in rolling hills and consisting mostly of thatched building. Here Ray is explaining what we want to do (test water) and negotiating over crafts they were trying to sell. I don't think they saw too many cars come through and all along the road the locals tried to get us to stop and buy their crafts.

We then headed north to our current location near Yalbac. This picture was taken in Yalbac and we're re-testing the well that we plan to use for our installation in May. The hand pump will be replaced by an electric pump powered by the generator that we need to install for the water purification system. In addition to Dan and Pat, Aki and Sheree Fukai are shown providing the "people power" for the pump. They are our local partners from the San Ignacio Rotary Club.

This picture was taken looking back toward the Catholic church and school. This is the spot where we hope to see the water purification building standing two months from now.

As the first visible sign that we plan to return and make something happen, yesterday we pounded some stakes in the ground to mark the approximate location of the new building.
To God be the glory!
Dave

Tuesday, Yalbac to San Ignacio

I spoke with the principal of the school this morning. His main question was when we were going to get started. He was very cooperative and agreed to use Living Waters arts and crafts in the classrooms. The children don't go to school on Friday afternoon, and he said he would ask them to come back after lunch on installation Friday, when we anticipate being ready to have the village adults teach the children. I noticed a poster on the classroom wall about hand-washing that could have come from Living Waters literature, so I was very encouraged about their receptivity to hygiene education.

On the way back, we saw many cattle egrets and some of what Dave insisted were horse egrets. I assumed the cattle egrets and horse egrets were willing to intermingle, but we didn't stick around long enough to see. (At the resort I saw a bird that looked very much like a wood thrush. When I Googled Belizean thrushes, I found that it was a wood thrush.) The trip back to San Ignacio included an essential stop in Spanish Lookout for Mennonite ice cream. Then to get back we had to cross a river on a hand-cranked cable ferry that held a maximum of three cars.

We made a fortuitous contact with a woman in the Agriculture Ministry pesticide control field office just outside of San Ignacio. We had been told in Yalbac that the villagers were concerned that pesticide runoff from rice farms upstream might be getting into their groundwater. The woman at the Ag office was gratified that the villagers were aware of and concerned about pesticides, and she promised to have one of her staff research what chemicals might be in use.

Dinner was at a Sri Lankan restaurant. My fish curry was really tasty, but what I thought would be Sri Lankan mild and Gringo spicy was really pretty mild. Their papadum was also very good, but much different in flavor from Indian papadum.

I am being dragged off to a meeting (I am actually writing this Thursday morning). More later.

Peace,
Chuck

Monday in Cayo District

We got to Hanna's restaurant in San Ignacio shortly after 6 AM because Ray said it would be really crowded by 6:15. Actually, maybe four other parties had come in by 6:45. I had papaya and pineapple with homemade yogurt and granola. A nice change from eggs and beans.

We went up through Cristo Rey to the Crystal Paradise resort, where Ray negotiated with Victor Tut to set rates to stay at Tut's resort in Yalbac. We saw hummingbirds twice as big as those at home, brown jays the size of small crows, and a collared aracari, as well as several birds and flowers I couldn't identify.

After dropping off a present for Nadean Jones's grandbaby at Cristo Rey, we picked up Sherree and Aki and went up to Yalbac. I talked to one of the teachers about or education plans. He thought it was a good idea but couldn't comment on whether we could use any class time or whether he thought we could use the church, and he clearly did not want to stay after school to help with the teaching.

Meetings with the village elders were successful beyond our expectations. The folks at the evening meeting of the village council were enthusiastic and seemed savvy about what we were planning. We left feeling that we really would end up with a signed covenant. One of the council, a 17-year old who had interpreted for the afternoon meeting, felt this was so important that she came in her church dress and earrings.

Monday night we were treated to a howler monkey chorus and then a heavy rain shower. Another interesting feature was that after we went to bed the generator was turned off and didn't come on again until just before breakfast. It was very dark with the overcast and no city lights around.

Chuck

Cayo

We made it to Cayo. This is the name of both the largest district and the nickname of the largest town in western Belize. Formerly known as San Ignacio, it’s smaller than Oak Ridge, but the jumping off point for our adventures in Yalbac.
We attended the Anglican (don’t call us Episcopal) church in Placencia this morning, after which we all had brunch. Ray headed for a swim, as the rest of us headed back to the guest house to pack and dispose of some water samples. So far two of the samples we collected on our first day have shown positive for biological contamination: the creek near Gales Point at the old pumping station, and the spigot in Ramon’s village of Hope Creek. The second of those, Ramon’s village, may be a good possibility for a future water site.
On our way back up Hummingbird Highway, we decided to stop at Jaguar Creek and look around. As we drove down the dirt road in a light drizzle, we came upon Matteo and his wife walking toward camp from the bus stop. Matteo was a security guard during both of our previous stays at Jaguar Creek. He remembered us after a brief puzzlement, and asked if Sarah was still playing soccer. He invited us to look around, and since not much had changed, it brought back a flood of memories as we showed it off proudly to Ray and Pat.
We continued on to Belmopan and headed down Western Highway toward Cayo town. We rolled in about 5:30 and checked into 5 little stand-alone wooden bungalows in the back near the river. A flurry of phone calls was mostly unproductive, but I was able to talk to Lucy, the young daughter of the water board president in Cristo Rey to let him know we would stop in briefly in the morning to arrange a longer visit later in the week. We also set up an early morning meeting with Victor Tut, owner of a resort south of Cristo Rey and a camp near Yalbac where we hope to stay tomorrow night. As we prepared to walk to dinner, we were surprised to see Sheree and Aki, our local Rotary contacts roll into the parking lot. We took them to dinner and had a long and productive conversation over a good meal. They are a class act, and have everything under control. I’m more confident than ever that this trip will be a success.
I hope to post this entry if I can find a wireless signal. After that it might be a couple days before I get another chance.
It’s gratifying to see the comments on the blog and know that someone’s reading this. Keep commenting. And keep praying for us. So far this trip has been blessed with few and minor glitches. I’m grateful and confident that we’ll be able to achieve our major goals.
Dan Terpstra

Placencia, Jaguar Creek, San Ignacio

Ray and I started the day with coffee at dawn at Yoli's restaurant on the pier. Sunrise over the ocean didn't really happen. There was a line of clouds on the horizon that rose as fast as the sun. I guess that means the clouds were moving east to west, which seems strange to me.

At church we were treated to a baptism, whose participants were not readily identifiable except the baby, Mom, and the priest. There were two other women and a man in the group, whom some thought were godmother, aunt, and father, but I thought were grandmother and godparents. I think Dad slipped in after the service for the family picture. The priest took the party to task at one point for not answering the questions loudly enough. The baby was wearing white slacks and jacket and a lovely ecclesiastical stole, which is not common in Belize but is in Guatemala, where the woman I thought was grandmother had bought it.

After brunch, at which I had a french toast sandwich filled with chocolate and topped with a white sauce containing a berry liquer, we checked out and headed back to the Hokey Pokey water taxi.

After stops in Jaguar Creek and then at Ian Anderson's to look for Ray's daily requirement of iron-in-Guiness, we arrived at our resort in San Ignacio. The resort comprises a number of cabins in a row of trees that have labels giving the scientific name, common name, habitat, and medicinal uses. They included avocado, almond, trumpet tree, and custard apple. It was a great surprise that my cabin had a large cable TV. There were at least six soccer channels, and channels 110-113 were in Chinese. What I heard later seemed to be that most of the cable service was pirated from somebody else's signals.

Sherree and Aki arrived just as we were contemplating supper. We walked up the street to a restaurant where the tables were under an open roof. We had great food and conversation, and also kids on bicycles and dogs running around among the tables.

It was really nice to catch up with Sherree and Aki again and incorporate Sherree's enthusiasm with ours. Aki's support is strong and quiet. He really seems to be key in getting projects done. We are blessed to be working with both of them and have them mentor us on the ways of Belize.

Transitions

I’m sitting on the veranda on the second floor of Dianni’s Guest House, enjoying the pleasant ocean breezes and feeling the slight glow of a mild sunburn. It’s late; 11:00 back home, but only 10:00 here. Dianni’s is in the town of Placencia on the tipoff a 17 mile peninsula about halfway down the coast of Belize.
Today is an early R&R day, between our commitments at Hope Mission in Mafredi last night and this morning, and our commitments in San Ignacio and Yalbac beginning tomorrow evening.
It’s been a pleasant day. We woke up to the sound of the ocean in Punta Gorda and trekked back to Mafredi for breakfast at Jerry Parham’s house next door to the Hope Mission Center at 7:30. We arrived right on time – very American. After breakfast we had a long and engaging conversation with Jerry and Valerie Osborne about future directions and opportunities. I’m optimistic we can together make something happen to God’s glory and the benefit of the people of this area.
Around mid-morning we headed deeper into the mountains toward the Guatemala border. Our goal was two-fold:
First, to visit a small Mayan village that Rebekah Pound mentioned to us yesterday. She said we would find it representative of the small poor villages in the area. It was. While collecting a water sample from the pumping station, we were accosted by 3 generations of Mayan women and children eager to sell us their handmade wares. Ben now has a new bracelet and Sarah has a brightly colored handbag.
Second, to visit a waterfall that Ray remembers from a visit over a decade ago. When it became apparent that Ray, the oldest member of our team, fully intended to jump off the bluff nearly 30 feet above the pool below the falls, Dave and I couldn’t let him be the only one. We stripped to our skivvies and joined him in the water. Thankfully no pictures accompany the event.
A long ride on rough dirt roads finally brought us back to the paved Southern Highway and north to Independence. On Ray’s insistence, we parked the SUV and took the Hokey Pokey ferry from Independence across the lagoon to Dianni’s place in Placencia. After some sight-seeing and fruit gelato, we wandered down to Yoli’s place on the beach. Ray wanted to know who was cooking dinner. Yoli herself came out and gave Ray a big hug along with assurances that she was the cook tonight. We had a couple rounds on a pier over the bay, watching some big catamarans reposition themselves, and talking to Yoli’s husband Ragan. He’s a Canadian ex-pat with some valuable knowledge about the goings-on around Yalbac.
Dinner was excellent; shrimp, grouper and black snapper. The conversation matched the meal, including a rollicking tale from Pat Montgomery about how he single handedly salvaged the merger of the Northern and Southern Presbyterian churches oh so many years ago. An after dinner walk took Ray and Chuck and me on a scavenger hunt to find the daughter and son-in-law of Jerry Parham. This morning his wife told us over breakfast that they both work at restaurants in Placencia. We found them, and embarrassed them at their work place by showing up as three old white guys they’d never met with a message from mom and dad. It’s a story they’re sure to repeat.
Now it’s late and time for bed. Tomorrow it’s off to Northwest Belize and another adventure.
Dan Terpstra