Some projects you haven't heard much about before!

Skipping days of blogging is dumb. Anyway, sorry for no post last night. I was tired and decided to sleep.

Let's begin with yesterday, then, shall we? The day began with a trip to a semi-distant village called Duck Run Three where we worked on the Soilet project (the one we formerly dug worms for, if you remember). I don't think I've ever given a very full description of the Soilet project (mainly because I haven't worked much on it). A soilet is an alternative to a septic tank which filters waste naturally breaking everything down into non-toxic byproducts including clean water. It first uses vermiculture (worms) to initially break the waste down and then passes it through a series of filters over time. Unfortunately, last year's team started but did not finish some of these units, so we've been not only building a new one, but finishing the job that should have been done last year, finding pieces in disrepair. The unit at Duck Run Three was one such unfinished job. The waste box where the filtration happens was built, but that's about it. The box looks like a Belizean coffin. Nobody in Belize is ever buried underground (I assume because of high water table concerns), so the cemeteries are all full of cement boxes above ground where the bodies are laid. The soilet box looks just like those. Our objective at this spot yesterday was to make needed repairs to the box, build a connecting outhouse, and (first) fill in an irrigation ditch and dig in on an alternative path since it ran through where we needed to build the outhouse. Many of the team members were there all day, but I was only there from 9 to noon and primarily worked on the ditch redirection committee, though I was then able to help start the outhouse construction for a short while before leaving.

 Digging the ditch. 

Lots of pesky roots got in the way and had to be sawed out (or else hacked away by the broad end of the pick by yours truly)

 Opening up the unfinished soilet box to see what condition it was in (it wasn't very good).

Can you find the frog we found inside? Can you find the hole in the wall of the box as well?

 Repairing the hole.

Beginning the outhouse frame. It will be built on stilts (like many buildings in Belize) to not only protect from floodwater but the drain properly to the soilet box.

At noon, Megan and I had to go to get some other project work done. We soon discovered that the return bus wasn't for another half hour, so we ate lunch at one of the restaurants run by the German Mennonites (they make really good food and ice cream!), who heavily populate the Duck Run Three area. In fact, we ate at their new location which had this sign out front:

 This is actually not incorrect in Belize. In America we'd say "Now Open," but in Belize they say "Now Opened." Likewise, I kid you not, the other day I saw a sign for a "Becoming Closed" sale at a store. It's always fun to go to other English-speaking places and still learn completely different ways of saying things. As another example, when you go to a restaurant in the US the cashier will probably ask if you'd like your food "To Stay" or "To Go." In Belize they say "To Have" or "To Take" respectively! This is quite confusing initially until you get the hang of it, because if the lady just asks "is this to have?" then you'll probably say "yes, of course I want to have it" even if you do in fact intend to take it away and eat it elsewhere.

After the relatively long bus ride back to San Ignacio and some quick showers (digging the ditch got us splattered in mud once the water started coming in) Megan and I then headed out on a long round of errands. We first needed to print off reports for yet another project you haven't really heard much about on this blog: the suicide study project. This project was done almost exclusively before I arrived. Basically, everyone around here talks about the crazy unusual spike of suicides among teenagers in the town of Benque Viejo (the town at the border with Guatemala, just 2 miles beyond Succotz) over the last year. Some of the team members in the last wave did an in-depth research project for school and public officials' use investigating the cause of the suicides. If you talk to people around here, almost everyone will tell you that the cause is related to witchcraft. The research project, which not only investigated some specific suicide cases but also interviewed nearly 400 teenagers in Benque Viejo, concluded that the primary root cause seems to be parental neglect among a number of other complex causes. Our task yesterday was to print off several copies of the final draft of the comprehensive report from the data and research and deliver the copies to various officials who work at the schools in Benque, the ministry of education in Santa Elena, and other positions of influence of those who work with teens in the area. Hopefully they will use the research wisely to develop better solutions rather than blaming witchcraft (note: the officials we worked with and delivered these reports are NOT among those blaming witchcraft!).

After dropping off the reports we made a stop in Succotz on the way back to talk with a few officials and business owners about some Succotz Revenue project details. We made it back to San Ignacio again just in time for dinner. As Mama Kay is still out of town, we've been eating out all week and had a wonderful meal of rice and fish with a special sauce at one of our favorite restaurants, Cenaida's. 

Dinner at Cenaida's!

After I ate dinner Katie had to do her running so I went to the park and then we ended the day doing another Karaoke party--very fun! 

Today was another computer day mostly, though we did a little at the orphanage this morning. I am happy to announce that we have finished the bag step of the construction process!

Ta-da!

Top of the dome, viewed looking up from inside.

Can you find the white tree frog? He was just sitting inside, asleep and matching in with the bags!

The next step was to begin preparing for plastering by filling the foundation with dirt and then wrapping the whole building in chicken wire, as shown. Unfortunately, we ran out of chicken wire and will have to get more and finish wrapping it and then plaster it all next week--our last full week in country!

The rest of my day today was full of on-the-computer project work. Some was for Succotz, some was for the Rainforest Haven project, working more on the website doing a lot of underpinning HTML code. Fascinating to me, probably boring to you. Anyway, that's my report for another 2 productive days in Belize!

Succotz Revenue Generation Project Phase One: DONE!

Sorry for no post yesterday. At the end of the day I just had lots and lots of little loose ends to tie up for things related to school and my business back in the states and I just never found the time to blog. However, yesterday is pretty easy to summarize. In the morning, 7 of us went to Succotz to finish up the business tracting project there, and finish we did! My companion for this third round was Maren. Overall during the three days we went to Succotz, we collectively gathered information profiling 67 businesses or notable public buildings/organizations in Succotz. That was a very exciting accomplishment! (See my previous posts on Succotz to get more information about this project if you're just joining the blog--it is my personal lead project and the flagship project of my entire experience in Belize).

However, in writing most of my day yesterday and much of today seems rather boring. Besides a break in the afternoon for computer classes at 3 (wherein the students continued to learn about Microsoft Word, specifically how to add and use objects like shapes and pictures), I spent most the time yesterday pouring through the 24 hand-written pages of collected information and entering it into an Access database with corresponding symbols of various kinds filling up a computer copy of the map I created, plotting where each business is located. Pretty boring from the outside, but as the project lead it was very exciting to see some of the fascinating discoveries and trends unfold as I sorted through all the information. This continued into today, interrupted at one point by a shorter-than-usual shift at the orphanage construction project, which I'll talk about a little later in this post. By 6:00 this evening I was finally done compiling all the information. For a taste of the madness of this project, let me show you a screen clipping of the map which has all my annotation symbols on it marking the locations of these various businesses by their types.

Besides the orphanage trip, the other trip I made beyond my computer today was to do some brief research on street sign prices. Rin and I went out to get some price quotes and although we managed to get information from the San Ignacio mayor's office about where they had the nice signs like the one below made for the streets of San Ignacio, we were unsuccessful at contacting the man they referred.

A loverly street sign in San Ignacio. Not sure what the origin of this street's name is, but it sounds awfully familiar...

Speaking of street signs and names, allow me to address that topic once more in relation to Succotz. As you may remember, I worked with the village council to come up with names for the streets in Succotz. The street names in the map I showed you above are mostly accurate, but a couple have changed and a handful have just been traded around. A final map will definitely be given later and tomorrow morning all street names should be final and we will send in our order for the street signs. If you examine the names on the map above closely, you'll find a blend of names with local significance (like Jose Luis St) or traditional association (like "Good Shepherd lane, which leads to the Good Shepherd clinic or Church St. which runs by the large Catholic Church at the center of the village); you'll find names from Mayan mythology (like Itzamna and Kukulkan); you'll find names of native Belizean animals (like Jaguar and Tapir); you'll find Belizean national figures and leaders (like George Price, Manuel Esquivel, and even Queen Elizabeth). You'll also find a couple surprises. I will not comment on or explain these surprises at present, but will showcase them in a later post. 

Now, as I mentioned, we worked a little bit today at the orphanage we are building as well (you may want to see previous posts for a description of this construction project). We had to start late due to rain and finish early because we all still had other afternoon projects to attend to. However, it is coming along nicely and hopefully should be done just in time before we leave Belize! Because it has been raining so much the last couple days, everything was super muddy today and we all came back pretty caked. The muddiest, of course, was our increasingly dwindling dirt pile, where our dirt crater became a lake we had to work around as we shoveled out the number of buckets of dirt we needed for another row of bags:

In the background you see Sarah and MacKenzie leaning over some worms that were found, as we are also still trying to acquire more worms for the soilet project.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Tomorrow should bring the beginning of Phase Two of the Succotz project, more computer classes, and an overnight visit to the Resort with the entire team for the Rainforest Haven project! That reminds me--I'm forewarning you that there will most likely not be a post tomorrow night because I won't have internet access. If I DO post, it will be because the weather is still too bad to make the resort trip worth it and I am thus still at home in San Ignacio. So, let's cross our fingers for good weather and I'll write again on Thursday! :)

Thursday and Friday: Iguanas and Illness

So, as you may have noticed, I have gone over 3 days without posting. :-/ This was not preferred, but will be explained as you read. I will be doing my catch-up work in 2 main installments. This post will cover Thursday and Friday and then I'll write another one to cover yesterday and today. I might write a few more "meet the team" posts in between.

So, let's begin with Thursday! Allow me to preface this day by reassuring you faithful readers out there who may have noticed a brief hiatus on this blog from my formerly standard "Can you find the iguana?" feature; this post should more than make up for the recent lack because in the evening after the work day was over we visited an iguana nursery at the San Ignacio resort where they help raise iguanas for re-population (they are over-hunted for their meat and skins). Perhaps for the remainder of this post, the real question should be: How MANY iguanas can you find? Rather than post them all at once, I'll just spread them throughout the post, starting with this one:

Fun iguana fact #1: Belizeans consider male and female iguanas to be 2 different things. Females are called iguanas and males are called garrobos. This is Bradford, and he is a garrobo.

(By the way, don't fall behind in counting iguanas. This picture has 3!)

Anyway, besides ending the day with an iguana nursery, Thursday was an INCREDIBLE day for the projects I'm leading, as I'll now tell you:

We began the day as 6 of us traveled to Succotz where we broke into pairs and continued to "tract" out the village of Succotz to gather information on all the businesses there. This has been quite the informative project; to our knowledge, it is the most thorough profiling of a single village in Belize ever made to date. While we have very specific immediate objectives for how we will use this information to help adjust and improve the revenue flow to the village, I'm beginning to see as I sort through all of it just how much further use it could serve for future understanding of the economics of small Central American villages and the poverty problems that exist in them. It could be used not only to help Succotz in the future but might give insight into possible solutions that could be applied to other communities. It is quite exciting! Jake and I were "companions" for the morning. Let me show you in pictures just a few of the things we found in Succotz:

This is Glenda's tortillaria. She makes her tortillas fresh right there and you can buy them as she makes them. There's a good handful of little open tortilla shops like this in Succotz. For example...

...this one belongs to Natalie, who uses an adobe stove made in the design introduced to Succotz village by HELP International earlier this summer!

Fun iguana fact #2: Male iguanas change color during mating season from green to a black and orange pattern. Unfortunately, it isn't quite that time of year, so all the iguanas you'll see in this post are green.

Here I am with Natalie, explaining our information collecting project to her, pointing out where her house is on the map we are creating for the village.

These are Natalie's 3 daughters. You might recognize Jewel, the one in the middle, because a close-up picture of her cute face was featured quite memorably in the fundraising video I made a few months back before I'd ever met her or even come to Belize! This is not the first time I've met people who were featured in that video and it's always somewhat surreal to do so, knowing that I'd read about their stories and studied their faces months before coming here and actually meeting them!

Anyway, moving on to other things in Succotz:

This is the police station... at least downstairs. The upstairs might be residential since there are clothes hanging out to dry that don't look like the standard issue uniforms of Belize's finest.

This is the post office. There is no mail delivery from house to house in Succotz. All the mail comes here and then people just come and get whatever has their name on it.

The iguana at center is Gomez, the dominant garrobo of the nursery.

Fun iguana fact #3: iguanas, like cats, always land on their feet. Cats use their whiskers when in free fall to gather their bearings and come out on their feet. Iguanas use the ridges on their backs to do the same thing. When escaping a predator, an iguana can simply free fall 90 feet from a rainforest tree, land on its feet and be just fine!!!

Here's a purified water store in Succotz.

This building seems normal and unassuming enough, right? Well, inside...

...we met a sweet Master's student from the University of Pennsylvania who's part of a team studying all these ancient Mayan artifacts recovered near Xunantunich! We had no idea that any US collegiate organizations had set up camp in Succotz. This is a major asset, especially since they said tourists were welcome to come by and take a look at what they were doing. She also told us that they were interested in helping us in getting more funding for Succotz and gave us some great leads and information.

Fun iguana fact #4: male iguanas "fight" primarily by puffing their dewlap (large pouch on their face) until one backs down. Very rarely do they resort to physical violence.

We found TONS of tiny little snack shops (or sheds, rather) like this one...

...and this one...

...and this one. I could keep going, but I think you get the picture(s)! ;) On a more unique note...

...we found an INCREDIBLE artist who makes these carvings entirely by hand with no power tools whatsoever. He makes custom engravings in Mayan style. I have seen plenty of gift shops offering Mayan-themed carvings, but nothing as fantastic as this work. I'm going to be working a little more closely with him on getting his own business going, so you'll hear more about "Jorge the Carver" in the future. :)

Well, after some very successful information gathering in Succotz, we met up with the other "companionships" at Benny's restaurant, definitely the most successful business in Succotz and a great place for an affordable and delicious lunch! While there, we saw this girl and her pet parrot:

That's all I'll post for today on the Succotz project, but as you can tell, our thorough research is coming along very nicely! Now, before I transition to the next part of my Thursday work, let's have another iguana pic:

BABY IGUANAS! (This was, after all, an iguana nursery!)

Anyway, after tracting Succotz in the morning I was able to do something quite important in regards to the Rainforest Haven Resort project... visit the resort for the first time! So far my consulting on this project has been entirely based on pictures and information. Being able to go and see the property myself was very helpful! In case you are wondering more about the objective of this project, let me explain: Jorge and Shamira are our current landlords at the building we rent at. They are wonderful middle-income people who often engage in locally started non-profit organization work. They have hit some hard financial times personally but have acquired some property that was developed into a resort that never actually opened or took off due to some poor decisions on the part of the former owners. We are helping them turn a financial burden into a profitable venture by helping them get the resort going. By helping them, we not only strengthen HELP International's ties with an important partner, but we enable those in the community who are taking their own initiative to fight poverty locally, help those who will be employed by the resort, and feed other local growing businesses dependent upon the tourism industry (a major anti-poverty weapon in Belize) specifically helping the community of Bullet Tree Falls Village where the resort is located. I helped do consulting on this project my first working day in Belize (see the post for Thursday, July 14, titled "Jumping In"). Here's some pictures of the still somewhat unfinished resort that I took while I was there, interlaced, of course, with some more iguanas!

One of the 2 private Cabanas that will be available for rent.

There's a nice little bar and restaurant already built...

...though the kitchen could use some work!

The iguana tour guide just started throwing baby iguanas on us!

Back to Rainforest Haven...

Viewed through some scenic vines, this is the largest residence for rent at the resort. Very spacious yet hidden away. My personal favorite.

This building has three separate rooms: One where the caretaker lives, another small room on the lower floor for a single visitor, and a larger family-size room for rent on the upper floor.

If an iguana in the hand is worth 2 in the bushel, are 2 in the hand worth 4 in the bushel?
I think so.

Several mounds like this exist along the back of the property. The former owners used them as a trash dump spot. This is unfortunate since it was recently discovered that they are in fact...

...markers for unexcavated Mayan grave sites! We're going to be contacting NICH about this (of course, so far my [attempted] dealings with NICH have been less than satisfactory).

So, that's an intro to Rainforest Haven. Lots more pictures to come later this week since a lot of the team is going to stay the night there on Wednesday so we can do some cleaning and a photo-shoot. Following this iguana pic, I have one more project to comment on to report on Thursday.

How is counting iguanas coming?

With the last hour of our day before dinner on Thursday, Maren, Katie, Megan, and I went worm hunting! We need earth worms for a project called a "soilet" that Katie is leading. It is a special replacement for a septic tank which uses soil, vermiculture, and a system of filters to turn waste from an outhouse into recyclable by-products. We are repairing one of these and building a new one. But first, we need worms!!! Unfortunately, I only got these 2 lame pictures from the worm excursion because by the time we found some, my hands were all gross and I didn't want to touch my camera! However, I'll have you know that I found the very first worm! :)

Worm hunting!

So, that was my Thursday. Now, you're probably thinking, "wasn't he going to post about Thursday AND Friday in this post? This is already pretty long!" Well, fear not. Friday is very easy and can be summed up in a paragraph (the very same paragraph you are already reading!). On Thursday night, as I was just starting to blog about my day I started to feel rather nauseous. So, I put down my laptop for the night without finishing the post you are now reading. Two hours later I started throwing up. Friday I was wiped out all day with food poisoning. Threw up a total of 9 times during the ordeal. Slept on and off all day Friday and through the night, luckily feeling much better on Saturday morning. The team was wonderful, buying some soda crackers and ginger ale for me and helping make sure everyone was quiet all day. They are so awesome! It was not a pleasant day, but at least it's quick and easy to blog about! :)

Now, before I finish I'll give you one last iguana pic (I COULD give you 40!):

Do you think Jake likes baby iguanas?

I think he does. :)

P.S. How many iguanas did you find?

Be honest.

You should have found 45.

;)