Minivan in a Jungle

I want to begin with a picture that tells more of the story of poverty in Belize:

What you are seeing is a power line held up by flimsy sticks in the ground, surrounding a large field where lots of children regularly play football (soccer)--essentially a tragedy waiting to happen. This is the best that can be afforded by the village of Succotz which suffers from serious revenue deficiencies despite being the home to the second-largest tourist attraction in Belize, the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich (see yesterday's post). This is only one of many examples of rather important improvements the village could make with more money. Increased revenue would also allow the village council to subsidize the education of the children in the village, increase funding to programs promoting public health, and improving various facilities.

My day started with a brief meeting about our computer classes at the Cornerstone foundation. We began distributing flyers today to advertise for the classes and hopefully will have lots more students there tomorrow than we did yesterday. I then headed to Succotz with Lindsay and Kyle to do some research on our revenue stream project there. That's where we saw these pitiful sticks holding up power lines. We talked with the village chairman again, as well as another councilman and some other residents and gathered some important information that will greatly help us prepare for our meeting this Saturday with the NICH, an important government agency that could drastically help or hinder this project. I snapped a few other pictures while in Succotz. Here they are:

Succotz has been a major recipient site for the Adobe stoves the team has made in the last few months. This is the quarry for White Maul that the team dug up to use for that project. It's a really amazing project you should learn more about by following the link to the "Sundance Romance" blog or Belize country blog for HELP-International from my favorite blogs list at right.

Can you find the iguana?

The Succotz Branch of the LDS Church (of which I'm a member) just got a brand new chapel 2 months ago! This gorgeous little building--definitely one of the most beautiful in Succotz--is a standing testimony to the blessings of tithing! I love seeing the chapels of the LDS Church: so simple and yet so beautiful and full of the Spirit in their welcoming design.

Gorgeous pic of a little thatch-roof hut in the distance.

So, before I got to Belize the forecast for every day was torrential rain and thunder storms. I have been here for a week now and not until today did I see such weather! As we headed back to San Ignacio from Succotz, we had a rather torrential rain storm that reminded me of the daily downpours of Florida. 

After lunch, I got back in the van with Kyle and Lindsey, joined by our amazing team member Katie who is our best engineer. We headed of to various far-off locations to do research for the chicken coop project, the Rainforest Haven consulting job, and another engineering project Katie is heading up called a Soilet (more info in a future post). We returned to the first chicken coop we built last week and had a wonderful meeting with one of the wealthiest men in Belize who is incredibly interested in philanthropy and wants to perhaps invest in making similar chicken coops to our small portable one in lots of other orphanages/foster homes like the one we built at (he also contributes lots of money to that boy's home).

Showing our chicken coop off to Abdallah (back, middle), one of the richest men in Belize and a leader in Belizean philanthropy and development work. He likes the design a lot. Katie (foreground, right) designed the schematic for the chicken coop merely from watching a YouTube video about chicken coops!

As much as Abdallah likes our chicken coop, we told him we have plans for a slightly bigger model made to incorporate rabbits and vermiculture (worms) into a self-sustaining system and cooperative system. So, our next stop was to visit some other chicken coops to give Katie some design ideas so she can design us just such a system. Some pictures of other coops:

This is a much larger scale coop than the one we built, but still only accommodates chickens. However, just next to this coop is another pen...

...with sheep!

However, the next coop we saw...

...had rabbits and is preparing to add worms! Yay! 

This was a very educational stop as it was at a resort similar to the one Jorge and Shamira are starting that I'm doing business consulting for, so I got some valuable information interviewing people there and looking around that will help me with that business project. We were glad that this stop was so helpful because it was not easily accessed: we had to travel about 8 miles through a very dusty, rocky jungle road. We usually traveled at about 7-9 MPH, so it took us an hour each way on the bumpiest ride of my life in a little mini-van exactly like the one my family in Longmont drives, except blue instead of white! It even breaks down about as often as that van and the driver's seat door doesn't open (sound familiar?) Needless to say, it was quite an experience! The jungles here are so thick! It felt like such an odd combination to be traveling through a Central American jungle in an Astro Van. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see any tapirs or jaguars (this is the only country in the world where jaguars live in which they are NOT endangered, by the way). However, I did see this:

Can you find the dead snake?

So can the ants.

And with that cheery image, I must call it a night! :)