What is a "barbecue"?

If you've been keeping up with the blog, then hopefully the title today makes sense. Otherwise, you'll get it later. :)

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of having to cover 2 days worth of work in one night, yet I keep putting myself in that situation a lot as of the last few days and am about to do so again the next few as well! I'm going to try to make it kind of brief since I have lots of other things to get done tonight, but we'll see.

So, let's start with yesterday, shall we? In the morning, Ashley and I headed to Succotz to fill in cracks in information after mining through all the data gathered in the first phase of the revenue project there. We also had another very important and productive meeting with the village council there and talked about a lot of important details of the project and the next phase which we intend to begin next week--street sign installation! The morning was overall very productive and good for our legs as we did lots of walking around Succotz visiting different businesses to ask different questions. The particulars may seem strange to blog about, but I'll show you a few pictures I took while we walked through the village:

The first time I saw this unusual sight last week, I thought it was an unfinished or destroyed house. It is not. It is the village park. That structure is the play-place. It has rusty nails and rebar sticking out of it. It is boring and not fun for children in any way imaginable. It is covered in trash. With the new revenue flow to the village council resulting from our project, funds will now be available for them to do things like fix this disaster of a playground disguised as an injury factory. On a more meaningful level, the project long-term will give funds that will ultimately subsidize education and public health.

The park also featured this fantastic sign urging us to not litter or bring pigs to the park. Uncertain whether they mentioned the pig part because they are worried for the park or the pigs. Given the park's condition as described above, I pick the latter. Either way, it is a wonderful and absurd sign!

A great view of the village nestled on the hillside, taken from a road near the park.

Can you find the iguana?

We were just walking along the western highway which runs along the river and suddenly Ashley points to the grass 2 feet from me where we saw this beautiful 5-foot male, already turning orange for the mating season. I guess we startled him and he started running off. It wasn't long before one of the many stray dogs saw him and started chasing but he was fast and got to the river where he lunged in and swam out of sight!

So, after Succotz Ashley and I met up with Jorge and Shamira to go get supplies for the Rainforest Haven resort (part of a consulting job project I'm working on) so we could have our team outing there/photo shoot for the website, as will be described later. Along the way, we had to stop off at Shamira's grandmother's house. Her grandmother has a tree in the backyard with 6 iguanas! I couldn't ever get all of them in a single shot, but I have a few pics you can find them in:

Can you find the iguanas?

If you click to zoom in and look closely, you can see 2 iguanas swimming in the river in the background.

Anyway, after the errands we got back just in time for me to go teach computer class. Unfortunately, the Cornerstone Foundation where we hold the class was for some reason locked when we got there. Luckily I had my laptop with me and we just taught our little handful of students out on the porch. It was not very ideal since they couldn't all follow along and do the actions themselves on their individual computers, but at least it got the job done. Hopefully that won't happen again!

After computer classes, I did some work on my computer and also got things ready to go for an evening at the resort! The whole team came out so we could do a big photo shoot in the various rooms and on the grounds for the website. Read my former posts on Rainforest Haven for more details on this project. Ironically, even though it was a photoshoot I don't have many pictures to show you since we did most of the picture-taking on a few of the nicer cameras some of our team members have. I did take a couple, but none with any people; really only shots of the beautiful grounds, like these:

We made a little camp fire at dark and roasted some marshmallows and had a fantastic time together. It was great fun at the end of a productive work day, but also productive in and of itself! I did learn some interesting things while staying there. First and foremost is that domesticating parrots is a really good idea. Why? Because wild parrots are the most annoying creature known to man! Several flocks of parrots live around the property and they make the most annoying squawking noise I've ever heard in my life. They are super loud and all squawk together as they fly in little groups of 7-15; for any other type of bird I'm sure you'd need at least 50 to make that much noise! They are especially annoying at 4:00 in the morning. I also discovered that they are rather violent birds in the wild and like to fight each other. In fact, I witnessed such a battle, as two parrots in one of the flocks got in a fight in midair and wrestled each other in free fall until they hit the ground about 10 yards away from me, whereupon they looked up startled and flew off. 

So, after our beautiful resort excursion I worked most of today on the Succotz project again, most of my time on the computer. Then, in the evening I learned yet another area-based definition of the word "barbecue." Let me explain the history of my experience with this word. I grew up believing that "Barbecue" meant meat, like hamburgers or hotdogs, grilled on a barbecue grill, and possibly served with barbecue sauce. However, when my family moved to Wisconsin when I was 9 I was introduced to an alternative definition of the word, as it was there used to describe sloppy joes. Yet again, later while living in Florida, it seemed to refer specifically to pulled pork. Well, I have another even more unique definition to add to the list. 

You see, last week the branch of the Church here in San Ignacio invited us to have a "barbecue" with them in our honor this evening. We've grown very close to the members in both the San Ignacio and Santa Elena branches, even though we aren't here specifically as Church members doing Church things. We still become very attached to these branches as we offer our services on Sundays at Church and often in the evenings with activities, etc. Furthermore, several of the church members have helped us out a ton on our projects and even given us great leads on places to help out. We were touched and honored to be invited by Pres. Lemos, the branch pres in San Ignacio, to this special barbecue in our honor, to be held Thursday night. So, Megan and Kyle told our cook, Mama Kay, to take the night off since we'd have a barbecue. However, when we got there they had set up a great big branch dance party with some snacks but no actual substantive food. This is when we discovered that in Belize, "Barbecue" means "Get-together" or "social" and doesn't necessarily entail food. After having a good laugh, Megan and I went and got some food for the team so they didn't starve to death while dancing. 

In the middle of the party, Pres. Lemos stopped the music and called everyone together for a bit to bring things down and make a presentation for us. He talked about his love for Belize and how touched he was that we would leave the comforts of our own country to help make his a better place. He bore the sweetest and most touching testimony of service and being where God wants us to be and we were all in tears. He then gave each one of us a beautiful and personalized magnet in the shape of Belize each with various unique pictures painted on along with our names that the branch members had made for all of us. It is a simple gift, but perhaps one of the most meaningful I have ever received in my entire life.

This is my magnet handmade by the branch members in San Ignacio. I was particularly glad to see that mine featured the ruins of Xunantunich as they are the major attraction attached to Succotz village where most of my work has centered and the ruins serve an important role in the revenue stream of that village. Truly the gesture of the gift itself as well as the images it depicts will forever remind me of my experiences here in Belize.

After the gifts and a few more remarks, a much larger portion of the branch showed up to turn the party on! Belizeans absolutely love music and dancing. The branches out here have dance parties (or "barbecues") all the time, and dance parties often just break out at people's homes (like Jose Luis' house in Succotz a few weeks back if you remember). The music is a fun blend of American dance music hits (often slightly remixed) and the native Belizean hits that are in English, Spanish, Kriol, or even a mix of the three! (I haven't yet heard any in Mayan, but that is primarily only spoken down in the southernmost areas of Belize) Do you remember how last summer every other song on the radio was "Hey, Soul Sister"? Well, the current mega-hit in Belize is a song called "The Tornado Song" that is a really silly dance song with a very simple dance associated with it that every man, woman, and child in the country can do. The song tells the listener to "shake your tornado" and some times has bouts of "slow tornado" followed by "faster, faster tornado." YouTube it, as you probably won't hear it on an American radio any time soon. :)

Belizean dance party! Yay!

I have a FANTASTIC video as well that I took, but photos take long enough to load on this internet connection that I don't think I'm going to try a video. I'll just put it on my YouTube channel, probably when I'm back in the states. If sooner, I'll let you know. It was another unique interruption to the dance party that can only be seen and not described. 

Anyway, I guess this post wasn't very short after all! I have to warn you again that I'm going to probably be internet-less again, this time until Sunday! You see, my wonderful team member have planned a birthday getaway surprise trip for me to the Carribean islands that are part of Belize off of the mainland coast. During our time down here, we get weekends off and as you've probably read we've had some great adventures on the weekends. We also get 2 additional "vacation days" and I'm taking one of them tomorrow for this birthday trip with the team. So, it will be a 3-day weekend without internet till we get back on Sunday after Church in San Pedro. Talk to you then!

What's in a name?

If you saw yesterday's post, then you probably noticed that none of the streets in Succotz village have names! This is a hindrance to the creation of a map for tourists, so today in our meeting with the Succotz village council we discussed naming the streets. They had a few streets they had names in mind for already, and then told me to pick the other names according to my best judgment. So, I've been naming streets in Succotz after notable figures in Belizean history, Mayan gods, Belizean animals, and a couple other surprises. I'll show you an updated map with the names in a few days after they are ratified by the village council.

So, my day involved a lot more research for the Succotz project including a fantastic meeting with the village council that Kyle, Lindsay, Megan, and I attended. We finalized some plans for a crucial meeting with some government agencies taking place this Saturday. I'll be attending that meeting along with the village council in Belmopan in connection with a national conference for village councils. I'm quite excited as it sounds like a fascinating and rare opportunity to observe the workings of the Belizean government.

Later on in the day I went to the Cornerstone foundation with Katie and Jake to practice a skit on self-esteem we're presenting at a summer camp for children tomorrow morning. It's interesting stepping into some of the other projects for just brief snippets of time, such as working with some of the youth summer camps. These are fantastic programs focused on helping children learn about peaceful conflict resolution in order to combat the unbelievably high domestic abuse rates that always seem to be disgustingly high in high-poverty settings. The results of these camps have been very positive, introducing many children to ideas of peaceful conflict resolution for the very first time!

This is just one example of a project that has been going on that I haven't yet been particularly involved in. So far, since I've been in Belize, I've helped with the Micro-farm (Chicken coop) project, the orphanage project, the computer class project, and the Francisco wheelchair project. Furthermore, I've been a team leader on the Rainforest Haven consulting project and my personal favorite, the Succotz Village Revenue Generation project. However, that's not even all the projects our little team is working on here! We are also helping construct a diabetes lab at the Loma Luz hospital, constructing adobe stoves to make a cleaner cooking environment, creative writing classes, music classes, ESL classes, the aforementioned youth peaceful resolution camps, a business-consulting project with an organization helping provide support for widows, a rural health campaign project, and a "Soilet" construction project. I might be forgetting a few. The point is, HELP International is making an incredible impact on Belize this summer! (Not to mention the projects additional teams are working on in El Salvador, Fiji, Uganda, Tanzania, India, Peru, and Thailand.) It is humbling to think about being a part of it all! Such a blessing!

Anyway, thanks for allowing the tangent! Anyway, after skit rehearsal I came back for dinner, followed by a meeting with Jorge and Shamira about the Rainforest Haven consulting project. They LOVED the home page I designed and we made additional plans to be able to open the business soon. It may involve me and some other team members spending the night on the resort property some time next week. I'm okay with that. :)

It wasn't a very picture heavy day. Sorry, I know that makes 2 days in a row without very many pictures, but I do have a few for you. I should note that tomorrow already promises to be a particularly picture-friendly day! Meanwhile, here's a few from today:

This run-down building in Succotz made for some fantastic artistic shots. People in Succotz often live in buildings much worse than this.

Megan eats a Wia (sp?) fruit. Of all the local exotic fruits I've tried, this is so far the only one that I haven't particularly been a fan of. The inside is just way too gooey for my taste!

Night shot of our home sweet home! We occupy the upper floors of this building on the hills in the more well-to-do area of San Ignacio. I love this place! Sometime I should make a video tour of the interior for y'all.

Can you find the iguana?

NO! YOU CAN'T! Why? Because there isn't one in this picture. However, there IS a reptile. Hiding somewhere in this picture is a basilisk--no, not the kind from Harry Potter. These little lizards are super fast and can literally disappear faster than the time it takes you to blink! They can be scared away by the click of your camera button, so I was really fortunate to grab a picture. These are the little guys that are so fast that they can run on water, causing some locals to nickname them "Jesus Lizards."

Jumping In

Can you find the iguana?

Those of you who know me well know that I have a chronic addiction (besides chocolate milk); I am addicted to being busy. Few things grate on my nerves more than having nothing to do, and I can usually create far too many things to fill in extra time on those rare occasions that I have any. Well, I’m glad to say that my experience here in Belize has been a fantastic supplier to feed my addiction: my day was filled with delicious productivity that I’m just dying to tell you all about.

In case you missed it, I already posted a short entry here on this blog this morning detailing my morning. Things just got even better from there. This is truly an amazing team of young adults with well over 30 projects currently going on to help decrease poverty and battle its effects here in Belize. All of the projects are come up with by the team members themselves and we all help with lots of the different projects the other team members are heading up. At any given moment there are 3-6 projects going on somewhere nearby that we can be helping with when we aren’t doing research to aid in starting our own projects. 

The first several hours of my day I was helping with the Chicken Coop project. We are building chicken coops at a school for orphaned boys so that they can learn how to raise the chickens as a trade. Several of the boys came to help us build the coop and we taught them how to use the power tools. The plan is later to make an even bigger coop that will house 3 species simultaneously that reinforce each other. This larger coop will have rabbits, chickens, and worms. The rabbits can survive on a very basic diet of plants that, when digested, becomes food for the worms, who multiply and become food for the chickens. Excess worms can be sold for bait and the chickens and rabbits can both be sold for food. This is a very valuable self-sustaining system that these boys will learn how to take care of so they can use it to provide if needs be in their future. 

Kyle teaches Edward how to use the drill.

More chicken coop work with the boys.

We teach true principles... and they build chicken coops themselves! 

(Favorite picture of the day)

Following a lunch of delicious local fried rice, all of the new team members had a training meeting for several hours where we talked about the projects going on, the basic program rules, safety guidelines, etc. 

Next is the most exciting part! Building chicken coops is very cool and exciting, and I’m glad to be a part of some of these other labor-centric projects. However, the kinds of projects I’ll probably be leading will be business-centric and I got to have my first taste of putting that skill set to work this evening. After the training I teamed up on a mini-project with Lindsey, one of our team members and also the wife of the program director for Belize. She and Kyle had recently been talking with the landlords of the building we stay in, a wonderful Belizean couple named Jorge and Shamira, about a resort they recently purchased that is a slight fixer-upper but which they don’t have the money to make major renovations at right now. They wanted advice in marketing it and adjusting their business plan and Kyle has been eager to help them since they’ve been so good to the team here and as they could really benefit from the business counseling and in return have shown themselves to be great pillars in the community who are highly interested in helping to fight poverty. So, at 3:30 I was asked if I’d like to help Lindsey come up with a marketing and business plan to present to them at 6:30 that evening! I quickly read about the resort they’d purchased, saw pictures, and began formulating ideas to help them revise their plan and market to the right sub-groups of the American tourist set. We had an incredible brainstorming session and made a PowerPoint presentation detailing our marketing plan, including our suggestion to rename the resort “Rainforest Haven” as well as other adjustments to their plan and minor, affordable renovations to the resort. 

Then, at 6:30, Kyle, Lindsey, and I met up with Jorge and Shamira and I gave the pitch to them. They LOVED it! They were overjoyed and excited and began to see their purchase of the resort, which was a major risk they had begun to worry about, as a very positive opportunity to improve their financial situation (not to mention that of others that they’ll employ and stimulate other businesses in the area of the resort). We’re going to meet with them again soon to work out more details and I’m going to help them create a website for their resort and teach them how to use PayPal to process online reservations. I was on cloud 9. My first full day in Belize and I’ve already helped counsel a business after hearing about it with 3 hours’ notice and having to develop a full marketing strategy and accompanying PowerPoint. That’s the crazy kind of thing you do in classes in the business school, but I never expected to put it into effect so quickly and drastically in the real world, and especially for it to be such a success! This is a very small mini-project and not quite the same as most business-related projects, but it was a fantastic experience nonetheless and I’m hungry for more! 

Dinner tonight was FANTASTIC! Our cook, “Mama Kay,” made mashed potatoes, chopped tomatoes with corn, Belizean meatloaf, and FANTASTIC homemade tortillas. Later, at the end of the day, the team had a meeting to coordinate the next few days of projects and we celebrated the success of the second wave (the last six weeks of projects) with fantastic Belizean ice cream which, you would never guess this from tasting it, is made with their own soy milk. Anyway, that’s the Cliff’s notes version of my amazing day. I love you all, and I love Belize.

Waking Up

Just a really quick one this morning: 

I woke up naturally this morning around 5:00 and had that split second of fear you get whenever you wake up some place you aren’t used to. Then I remembered where I was and smiled for a really, really long time. J I’m still here, in Belize. This is gonna be a good day and great 6 weeks! 

By the way, the mornings here are beautiful and peaceful, despite the 10 gajillion birds in San Ignacio making all their morning noises. A lot of them have unique sounds I’ve never heard before and several of them sound like the guinea pigs we used to own years ago! I went on the balcony to do my workout, showered, ate, read my scriptures, and planned/coordinated my day. Now I’m writing this, then I’m off to help on several projects for the day and get some more training on creating my own projects with the business sector here in San Ignacio. I’ll write more about it hopefully tonight!

Here's some beautiful morning pictures of San Ignacio from our 5th-story balcony:

Surreal and Real

The Belize City International Airport

Driving through downtown Belize City

More Belize City

More Belize City

Well, I landed in Belize safe and sound and the only word to describe it all is surreal. Everything is so beautiful and green. The buildings all are so small and simple. The International Airport in Belize City may be the smallest airport I’ve ever been to. This is supposedly one of the most developed areas in the nation of Belize, and I feel like I’ve travelled 50 years back in time. As the plane was descending and I got a closer look at some of the “neighborhoods” of the area, I was nearly moved to tears seeing what often qualifies as a “home” here. Many of the buildings looked like they were in terrible disrepair and that impression has largely been confirmed now that I’m on the ground. So far, I’ve only barely walked out of the airport and taken a seat while I wait for the program directors here to pick me up, so I’m sure there will be much more to add throughout the remainder of this day before I get a chance to post these first impressions probably this evening.

*****

Well, it’s now 7 hours later and I’ve had quite the exposure to Belize already. It’s hard to put all my thoughts into words right now in fact. I’ve driven through downtown Belize City, the largest city in the country, and driven 2 hours across the country seeing various little villages and other isolated impoverished rural households. Belize City is a crazy place. Bikers, drivers, and pedestrians share the extremely narrow alleyways recklessly and the streets are lined with lots of little shops where people sell tourist items and other staple goods. The prices are in Belizean dollars, which convert very easily to American dollars: 2 Belizean dollars = 1 US dollar (so something listed as $10 costs B $10 or US $5). You can generally pay in either currency, though change is always given in the local bills. We ate lunch at a local restaurant where I tried a fantastic garlic-roasted lamb wrap. Kyle, the program director for the country, and his wife Lindsey were kind enough to pay for it and give me my mini-tour of Belize City along with their local friend who acted as driver, Nathaniel.

It has been about 85 degrees and very humid. Honestly, the humidity (you’re going to think I’m crazy) has been a welcome change from the extreme dryness of Utah. I actually grew quite fond of the humid climate on my mission in Florida and have never quite felt acclimated to the dry weather since then, so I’m liking the moisture. Another significant change from Utah is a much earlier sunset. It is only 7:30 and the sun is already set, unlike the 9:30 I’ve been used to. This is primarily due to the fact that Belize is in the Central time zone, but doesn’t observe daylight savings time, so they are actually on the same time as Utah but are much farther east. Furthermore, the closer proximity to the equator makes for an earlier sunset, so the daylight in my days just got cut down by 2 hours!

I’m staying in the village of San Ignacio, which is admittedly more impressive than Belize City by way of upkeep and development. As a team, we stay in the upper floors of a 5-story building right in the heart of the village. The view from our balcony is gorgeous and lots of similar buildings to our own can be seen. We have a native cook named “Mama K,” (I don’t know her real name yet—that’s just what the other team members call her) who made us a fantastic dinner with chicken, rice and beans, cole slaw, and fried banana strips. The team is full of great people and I already feel fantastically at home in this foreign land which is far unlike anywhere I’ve ever lived. I’m excited to work here to help fix some of the problems that are glaringly apparent every time I turn around. Nonetheless, while the problems are very real, the other readily apparent thing I’ve noticed is the goodness of the people here. They are warm and genuine and welcoming and I look forward to forming a connection with them in the coming weeks.

I repeat my initial thoughts from getting off the plane, that this experience is surreal. However, now at the end of the day the reality of it is setting in and my purpose is clear before me: to help fight against a very real problem known as poverty. I feel so inadequate, and yet hopeful for the possibilities to bring about a positive change. I pray God will make me equal to this daunting and difficult task. The team that has already been working here in Belize has gotten some fantastic projects rolling and I’m excited to jump in 100% tomorrow and begin lending a helping hand. I hope you are equally excited to share in the updates with me.