Bring it on, Harvey!

To Jimmy Stewart in the classic 1950 film, Harvey was a large rabbit seen only by himself. To me, Harvey is a menacing Tropical Storm expected to reach Hurricane status just in time to give Belize a thorough pummeling this weekend. Now, you loyal readers need not worry, for I am safe, sound, secure, and protected in our pink and white fortress in San Ignacio. San Ignacio is quite far inland anyway, so the storm will be greatly decreased by the time it hits us. If I were in San Pedro, Belize City, or Dangriga, or perhaps northern Honduras I'd be more alarmed, but as it is I'm not worried. If you'd like to watch Harvey's progress, click the link below for the national hurricane center. (If you don't want to watch Harvey's progress, perhaps you'd rather watch the 1950 film).

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ 

 Harvey's whereabouts as of this writing.

Well, yesterday and today have been filled with lots of work! Yesterday I worked a lot on redesigning the non-map side of the brochure for Succotz, and I'm really pleased with the outcome. It is a much more simple, yet much more striking design and I finally feel satisfied with it. I'll give you all a slight preview taste by revealing the all new redesigned cover:

While the old design with the collage of pictures was kind of fun, it ultimately looked too messy and busy once you printed it, so I started from square one again and recast the whole thing with this new theme and look. Isn't little Cathy just adorable? I figure tourists will be helpless to resist that cute little face! :)

Besides redesigning the pamphlet, yesterday, like usual, I went to Succotz to run more errands and put more pieces in place. My primary focus at this point has been solidifying the advertising blocks and locking them in with contract between each business and the village council. Similarly, we've been drafting a contract of usage for the revenue funds generated so that future village council members will be locked into using the funds for specific causes in the areas of village cleanliness/upkeep, subsidizing education, and improving public health. In the evening Katie went running and on the way back we saw a good omen, though I failed to obtain a very good photograph:

You probably can't tell from this rotten picture, but this is a lucky Nissan Altima! I had not seen one in Belize up until this point so I had to take a picture. (Some of you may know that I consider Altimas to be particularly lucky if spotted, so I was quite excited to find one here!)

As for today, we began the day by doing our very last work at the Barzakh Fallah Orphanage, where we've been helping to construct one of the live-in administrator housing units. Our original pledge was to provide materials and labor to finish the first construction phase of one of these unique buildings--that is, the stacking of bags filled with a dirt and concrete blend to create the shape of the building (see former posts for a more detailed description). We got that done early enough that we even began helping this week with the plastering phase, which will be completed by the owner of the orphanage and other volunteers and contracted workers helping him. Today we did more plastering and now the lower 2/3 of the building have their first outside coat of plaster. It is kind of sad that we won't get to see the completely finished building, but we did get to see more than we expected in the first place! Here's some pictures from today's orphanage work:

Any trip to the orphanage or to Succotz (unless we have the team van, which is usually doing other things) begins here in downtown San Ignacio, just a few blocks from our home at the main bus stop. The buses are a very unique experience and waiting here has become a very standard part of my daily routine. The orphanage is in Georgeville, about 15 minutes east of where we live, and we take the eastward-traveling Belize City-bound buses to get there. Those buses usually come about every 15-20 minutes, but today we had to wait nearly 50! First a westward-bound Benque-destined bus showed up; next, a bus to Belize City pulled in, but it was an express bus that doesn't make stops in little places like Georgeville; then ANOTHER Benque bus came before finally a normal Belize City bus arrived. At least we had the company of...

...our loyal dog Shadow! So, Shadow is one of the many strays in Belize, but she took a liking for the team before I got here (which couldn't POSSIBLY be the result of certain team members taking pity and giving her food...) and though we don't let her inside or try to entice her to stay, we don't mind her either. In fact, she basically lives outside our main door and guards us. She'll growl at other dogs who may not be as nice and even people if they seem menacing. We figure she makes us a little more secure down here. We TRY to refrain from feeding her (she probably mostly eats garbage from dumpsters like most of the dogs), not because we have no hearts, but because we don't want her to develop a dependency on us when we are only here temporarily to begin with. She usually follows us down to the bus station every day and then walks back to the house to take a nap on the porch after we get on the bus. Heaven knows we never touch her since she is still a wild dog and thus has lots of fleas and who-knows-what-else. This is hard because she is very likable and loyal and so sometimes we find sticks to scratch her back with or use our feet. But, you were expecting more on the orphanage, so let me move on...

Can you find the baby iguana?

We did more plastering, but first, we needed to add a few more edges to the foundation for landscaping purposes. You may have noticed in previous posts that the foundation of the building is made of tires. These tires are stuffed completely full of dirt and rocks. They were laid before I got here, but I'm glad we added more today so I could document the process as follows:

A number of large rocks are put in the tire.

A wheelbarrow is filled with dirt.

The dirt is poured into the tires and pounded in very tightly. In fact, this way astound you (it did for me!) but each tire, besides the rock already put in it, is additionally filled with THREE wheelbarrows full of dirt each! You simply compact it more and more and squeeze it all in! Those tires ultimately are super solid, and you additionally pour dirt around each one and fill in all the cracks just as tight. After filling 5 of these tires, we moved on to more plastering work, as described in my last post.

Meanwhile, that little baby iguana continued to make cameo appearances on both the outside of the building...

...and the inside!

Mixing the plaster. For whatever reason, most of our shovels were missing today and we only had 2! Luckily we are done with the bagging stage or that would have been really inconvenient. Speaking of the bagging phase, we actually still needed to put one last bag on top and we waited until today, knowing it would be our last on this project, to do so. Before filling it...

...we all signed it! :)

Emily and Mackenzie (the project leads for this project) precariously climbed atop the building to fill the bag as I shoveled buckets and sent them down the assembly line, up the ladder, and to the filling point up top. It was a fulfilling and memorable moment. :) Of course, it still needed to be pounded as well, so...

...Sarah, who has been a very significant contributor to this project, also made the climb and did the pounding job. Yay!

Here's the welcome sign to orphanage at Barzakh Falah, that will soon be able to drop the word "future." Writing about "lasts" is kind of sad. The orphanage project has resulted in my dirtiest, sweatiest, most exhausting hours in Belize, but it has been fun to build it alongside great team members and worth every sweaty minute invested. 

After the orphanage we hoped to have the street signs done for Succotz and begin installation, but the sign maker didn't have them ready and told us Monday afternoon!!! This is rather alarming and means we'll have to work very quickly on Monday and Tuesday to get all of them hung. At least we all had lots of great backup plans. Some people started packing, others wrote year-end reports. As for me--yup, you guessed it: I headed to Succotz, as usual, to do more errands etc, just like yesterday. It was a particularly productive run to Succotz and besides the street signs, everything is just about done and ready to go!

Upon returning from Succotz I had 15 minutes to catch my breath before an evening meeting with Jorge and Shamira about the Rainforest Haven resort consulting project. I had done a lot of work on the website during my down time recently and it was exciting to show it to them and really hammer out business plan details. Additionally, they treated us (Kyle, Lindsay, and myself) kindly to dinner at their favorite restaurant and I had one of the most delicious meals I've had here--fish and chips with curry mustard (the fish and chips are a traditional hold-over from the British occupation period). 

I think that's all I have for today. It's been crazy busy, and will continue to be until I'm back in the states! Meanwhile, help pray that the Hurricane Harvey will be short so as to not linger and hinder our project efforts on Monday!