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