Back to work!

Well, the weekend is over and we dove right back into work again with another amazing, busy day in Belize. My time was basically divided among 3 projects:

First, a pretty large portion of our team went about 5 miles out of town to help with a continuing project of building an orphanage. We actually are working on some smaller buildings that will be for 16+ year-old girls who are kicked out of orphanages for being too old and need somewhere else to go. When I first saw the type of buildings we are making, two pop-culture references immediately came to mind: The Flintstones and Planet Tatooine from Star Wars. Take a look:

Admittedly not the best picture, but I'll get a better one when I'm there next time.

The process for making these unique buildings is very interesting and I've photo-documented nearly every step (at least those that we did today). So, here's how it works...

First, we get 40 buckets of dirt. This dirt had lots of fire ants in it. Fun times. (Luckily I didn't get bit--I'm slightly allergic!)

Then we add some cement...

...and water...

...and mix it all into a moist dirt lump. 

Next, the moist cement-dirt goes BACK into the buckets...

...and is transferred to these bags...

...which will dry into these bagged bricks. They get their squared, brick-like shape by...

...FIRST: pounding them on top with one pounding implement and then...

...SECOND: beating them on the sides with another.

So, that was my morning project for the day. Once we finish all the bags they will be covered in some sort of plaster to make buildings like those shown above, but I haven't witnessed that step yet. This is an interesting form of construction work that I'm sure I'll get to know a lot better in the coming weeks! :)

After 3 hours of working on the orphanage, I went back home to grab a quick lunch and had to slightly alter my lunch plans after discovering that my bread had gone bad after only one and a half days. :-/ Luckily I still had to tortillas, peanut butter, and one more banana (a genius combination!)

Anyway, after lunch I went with Kyle and Lindsey to a nearby village where the team has done a lot of work known as San Jose Succotz (Just plain Succotz for short). This town is where the Xunantunich Mayan ruins I saw on Saturday were. Unfortunately, despite being attached to the second-most popular tourist site in Belize, Succotz suffers from massive poverty problems and is far worse off than San Ignacio/Santa Elena. This is a very complex problem and thus far the team's projects in Succotz have focused largely on fighting small portions of poverty and its effects. These projects have been quite successful, but the three of us went to Succotz today to begin research and work on an idea much larger in scale. So, today I officially became a team lead on our newly inaugurated "Succotz Revenue Generation Project." We met with the village chairman (basically the mayor of Succotz) to talk about the lack of financial capital available to the village council to fully provide the services that will stave off poverty. It is a very complex issue, but the three of us who went feel we have some great ideas to renovate the financial system of the village council/public funds in order to set off a domino effect chain of events that will ultimately lead to a wide-scale improvement in the standard of living in this charming little village. The explanation is a little lengthy to include in this blog post, but don't worry... you'll hear lots more in the coming days as I think this will be my main project personally. If successful, the model we implement with stimulating the revenue stream in this village could be implemented in lots of other villages and have a massive impact on fighting poverty. It is very exciting work and I'll be sure to keep you updated. You'll hear lots more about Succotz in future posts.

 Google Maps' image of Succotz was just a blurry mess. This is the much better Bing Maps version. We're going to use this to create the very first ever MAP of Succotz!

At 3:00 fellow team member Maren and I went to the Cornerstone Foundation, a local community outreach center, to teach computer classes. We inherited this project from two other team members who just finished their time in Belize and went home. We didn't really know what to expect except that usually 5 or so people come and they are all on completely different levels. (By the way, it's really fun to place "expect" and "except" side by side in a sentence.) We decided we'd get a feel for the class and just wing it, but soon discovered that there wasn't much to worry about; for the first 20 minutes nobody showed up! Finally, two girls showed up but they weren't actually very interested in the computer classes, and just ran themselves through some typing lessons on the classic old school "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing." Maren and I decided we would take the opportunity to at least take some pictures with the girls at the computers being "taught" by us so that we could make some flyers and generate some more interest in our classes. The class was never previously publicized or advertised in any way, so hopefully this will generate some more students before our next class on Wednesday afternoon and we can turn these classes into the most hoppin' joint in San Ignacio! :-P

Publicity shot of Maren teaching

Publicity shot of me teaching

Both of us outside the Cornerstone Foundation (by the way, San Ignacio is built on an enormous hill, as you can see!)

After computer class, I spent most of the rest of the day doing research for the Succotz revenue project, with a wonderful dinner from Mama Kay (did I mention yesterday that she taught the Sunday School lesson and did a fantastic job?). Tonight she cooked us a very American meal of macaroni & cheese, fried chicken, rolls, and vegetables. Overall, it was a very busy, wonderful day. One last evening picture:

At the end of the day, Maren, Katie, and I relax in the kitchen, update our blogs, etc. 

(By the way, can you find the iguana?)