Not yet "boated" off the island

Today is our last full day in Belize. Our Wifi here at the Conch Shell Inn on the Ambergris Caye is much more reliable than the satellite service at Jaguar Creek. That's my excuse for late posts. This morning after our devotionals and breakfast on the beach, Dan led the group on a half-mile walk to the Holy Cross Anglican School for first through eighth graders. We met Mr. Freddy, who gave us a tour of the school, which has 450 students, making it the second largest school on the island. We saw the cafeteria and two classrooms with kids. They were attending Saturday school to prepare for a major test. He then showed us the Living Waters system that Dave Mullins, Douglas Flores, and Dan installed inside the school last August. Dan pointed out the pipe that brings sometimes unreliable, chlorinated city water into the school and the pipe that carries rainwater collected in a tank to the LWW system. Inside two vertical blue cylinders next to the wall are carbon membrane filters of different sizes to filter out particles and some bacteria. Ultraviolet light is beamed into the relatively clean water to kill the remaining bacteria and viruses, or at least disable them so they cannot reproduce. But there's a problem. The Belize health department told Douglas that the school would be shut down if the rainwater was not chlorinated before being used by the school. So the Belize unit of Water Missions International (for whom Flores works) will eventually install a chlorinator that will be inserted into the delivery pipe. Dan expressed surprise that the health department called for a chlorine level of 2-3 ppm (parts per million) since 4 ppm is the maximum allowable level in the U.S., and the LWW-treated water is perfectly safe to drink without chlorine. Also it tastes better; many people don't like to drink chlorinated water. Hmmm. Is it possible that the local water vendors don't like the competition? Who knows? In 2003 Bowen & Bowen, which distributes Crystal bottled water, donated a half million dollars to the prime minister's campaign. In Belize the politics of water may be colliding with church efforts to bring clean, less expensive water to poor Belizeans in small villages. May God help us combat this social injustice.--ck