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