Orange Walk

I was in the Orange Walk group. Orange Walk Town, in Orange Walk District, is north of Belize City. To get to it, we had to drive east on the Western Highway for about an hour and then north on the Northern Highway for another hour. We went through a lot of uncultivated scrub, some of which had been burned off, and passed one sugar refinery. After a few wrong turns, we found the Presbyterian School, which is a fairly large three-story building with a couple of water tanks on the roof.

I had e-mailed Rev. German (pronounced Herman) Cob, who we thought was the director of the school, to ask for an appointment. He responded that he was no longer associated with the school, and that he had forwarded my e-mail to Rev. Rafael Ku, who is now the general manager. I e-mailed Rev. Ku to reiterate our interest and to say that we had decided to come to Orange Walk hoping that we could see him. We left this morning without receiving confirmation from Rev. Ku, so we were uncertain what to expect. As it turned out, he was waiting for us. He had been unable to get an e-mail out, so he decided he would just be sure to be there when we arrived.

We learned that Rev. Ku is general manager of all Presbyterian schools in Belize, not manager of the Orange Walk school. He told us the sordid tale of how the first director had slipped from Presbyterian ways and was disciplined by Presbytery, but refused to abide by their rulings. He managed to shift the license for the school from the Presbytery to himself, and he diverted funds to his own pockets. Presbytery couldn’t manage to take the school back until recently. German Cob was hired to direct the school, with his wife as principal, and he gradually caught on that the lack of any financial records covered up the embezzlement. Apparently he decided that he couldn’t take the pressure from Presbytery, so he didn’t come back from spring break, effectively handing the school back to Presbytery. They got a temporary license to finish the school year, but they have a shortfall of about $5500 US for June salaries. They don’t have records of tuition payments, so they can’t track down parents who are behind. Ku expects to get a gift of $3000, so he is left needing $2500. Then to get a license to reopen in the fall, he has to have an education plan, a staffing plan, and a business plan (which will include government grants). A very tough task in a short time.

The school has about 120 students, down from about 180 before the parents realized that the administration was corrupt. The school is clean, the children are happy, and I was impressed with some of the things they were learning—Standard 1 (3rd grade) was learning about vowel diagraphs, and Standard 2 was learning about magnetic fields. Everywhere there were pictures of Jesus and religious slogans (this is typical of Belizean schools, even those with government support). One wing of the school has not been completed, including classrooms, restrooms, and a gymnasium; I think the capacity of the school could be doubled. They have one unisex restroom, which is functional but not attractive. They have city water, but they don’t trust it, so each classroom has its own bottled water dispenser (bottled water costs $2.50 US for 5 gal.) At the end of the school day we saw teachers and students emptying the garbage and mopping floors.

Eventually we got to see the Living Waters system that had been installed in 2003. It is intact, although one pump appeared to have seized, and I couldn’t tell whether the other one would turn. I think they might be repairable. It looks like there are pipes leading to the classrooms, but I told Rev. Ku that if we were to rebuild the system, we would set it up so they would bottle the water and carry it to the classrooms. We agreed that although there was potential to get it running again, we couldn’t do any planning until we knew that the school was going to remain open.

Rev. Ku is a remarkable man. He is one of five ordained Presbyterian ministers in Belize, and the only one born in Belize. He oversees about nine schools, many of them preschools only, all over Belize. He actually lives in San Ignacio, west of where we are staying, but he was in Orange Walk for two days to do school business there. He has started a Presbyterian church in Santa Elena, the across-the-river sister city to San Ignacio. He also teaches in a seminary that he established in a church in Belize City. He has seven candidates whom he hopes will soon be ordained, and he hopes they will remain in Belize to strengthen the church. He was educated in the US, after having been kicked out of Guatemala when Guatemala was being combative toward Belize. He then accepted a standing offer to attend a Reformed Church of America Bible college in Grand Rapids, MI. He told an amusing story about arriving the first of January with only his Belize clothes. He said people had to shop for warm clothes for him because it was too cold for him to go out. It had been 100 degrees at home, and it was below zero for quite a while in Grand Rapids. He stuck it out, and then went to a Reformed seminary in Jackson, MS, where the temperatures were a bit better. He really impressed us with his dedication to his job, his concern for the church and for the children.

We concluded that this is not the time to be concerned about water purification, but it is definitely time to pray for the success of his efforts to keep the school running.

Chuck