Just around the river bend

Okay, I've officially decided that taking a night off from the blog is an absolutely retarded idea because it's hard enough to try and describe just one day here in Belize in a blog post let alone two! But, here goes:

Yesterday began with the skit I mentioned on Thursday. In case you missed that post, three of our team members (Katie, Jake, and I) helped give a skit on Self-Esteem to a bunch of kids at a summer camp, in connection with the Cornerstone foundation--another organization we often team with for various projects. Here's the audience for which we gave the performance of our lives:

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of us actually performing the skit (which was REALLY cheesy--but don't blame us; we didn't write it), but I do have this picture of Katie hold the "Self Esteem Shield" (Exciting, huh?)

My part was easy. Mostly, I just pointed and laughed at Katie while throwing things at her.

Afterwards, we met up with the others at the orphanage we're building. For a very detailed description of our construction methods, see Monday's post. Meanwhile, in that post I promised to give you a better picture of the buildings the next time we're there. Well, I've kept my promise and have both inside and outside pictures for you. Now you'll know what I meant when I said they remind me of the Flintstones:

The one on the right will house 3-4 teenage girls. The bathroom & shower facilities are in the one on the left, which is designed to catch and recycle rain water (it's like a giant bowl).

The buildings in the first picture are a vast improvement over these flimsy and rotting buildings currently being used. Can you imagine having to live in a building like that? We are currently using this one to store our shovels and other tools when we aren't there, and that's about all it's good for. The new living arrangements should be quite a lot more comfortable! Here's a look at the interior of the new buildings:

 Going through the doors...

 ...you are immediately greeted by a living room area with some comfortable couches and a staircase which leads to...

...a little bedroom upstairs!

So, this is the building we're currently working on. The guy to the right with the backwards hat is Yan. He's from Holland and came out on Thursday with a British non-profit and heard about the orphanage project so he came to help us out that day. He's a pretty cool guy who has done humanitarian work in at least 3 other 3rd-world countries. He's octo-lingual (he speaks 8 languages, all fluently)!!!

 Katie, Pete, and Emily take a moment to smile for the camera.

 When completed, this smaller building will house the caretaker who lives on sight.

Sarah and Jake pack a bag with our special moist dirt concoction. Once again, for a more detailed explanation of the crazy construction process used to make these buildings, see my Monday post.

Emily has a dirt-funnel on her head. Does this make anyone else think of that song from "The Jungle Book," where the girls says, "I must go and fetch the water, til the day that I am grown..." :)

Well, after our time building the orphanage, Kyle and Megan decided to let our weekend start early in honor of the productive week we've had and even more so in honor of our team member MacKenzie's birthday! So, we headed to my favorite little village--Succotz!--and river tubed along the Mopan river! It was great fun. I don't actually have any river tubing pictures myself since I didn't really want to risk getting my camera wet, but Katie had a waterproof camera and tomorrow I'll get some pictures from her to show you all. 

After the tubing , be headed to the house of Jose Luis, one of the village council members I've been working with on the Succotz Revenue project, where we had a Belizean chicken barbecue in his backyard and played with his two adorable kids, like little Calvin here, who loved my hat:

The evening turned into a dance party, having fun dancing to the Belizean music, which is always an interesting techno-reggae driven mix of English, Spanish, and Kriol songs. As you know from yesterday's lame and short post, when we got back home I was actually tired (a rarity) and went to bed without blogging. Deepest apologies.

As for today, it started out on a somewhat frustrating note. Even though Saturday is typically our day off, this morning the Succotz village council was invited to a special meeting at the University of Belize for all village councils, but they were also going to have a special one-on-one sit down with the Belize Board of Tourism and the National Institute of Culture and History to discuss their current improvement initiatives and petition for funds with a proposal I spent hours this week writing with them and perfecting. They invited me to come along for the meeting and I was very excited to get an in-depth look into how the Belizean government works. Unfortunately, they stood us up! The big meeting for all village councils was cancelled and they forgot to contact a few of the councils to tell of the cancellation, so a small handful of councils were waiting there with nothing to do after paying to get all the way there and setting a good portion of their days aside for the event. Anyway, we were of course quite frustrated, but we used the time to have another small meeting amongst ourselves to discuss our game plan from hereon out. Then we headed west, I to San Ignacio and the council a little further to Succotz. Anyway, it was frustrating but we still feel very good about our proposal for the BTB and NICH; hopefully it will happen next week.

However, the rest of my day has been an absolute blast! After returning to San Ignacio, eight of us headed on a Saturday adventure (so, of course I wore my Orange Adventure Pants!). We went with our fun and knowledgeable guide Feliz on a jungle hike and cave tubing adventure. The jungle hike was the most gorgeous hike I've ever been on in my entire life, hands down. The rock ledges and exotic plants, the beautiful flowers, the smells--everything was amazing. Unfortunately, like yesterday, I didn't always have my camera with me since most of the hike I was in my swimsuit as we headed to the river where we would cave tube. However, once again Katie did have her camera with her and I'll get some pictures soon. I did take a few gorgeous jungle shots though, as shown below:

That braided vine actually grows that way! Crazy, huh? 

 It may look gorgeous, but it's a noxious weed.

 Not a weed, just gorgeous.

 Leaf-cutter ants! My favorites! A much better picture that I've managed to get in my previous posts on this subject. Be sure to click the picture and zoom in to get a good look at these crazy buggers!

Left to right: Katie, Jonathon, Kyle, Lindsay, Ashley, and Maren all prepare for our jungle adventure!

Okay, so tomorrow I will post a lot more about my Friday and Saturday adventures when I have more pictures to show you. It's really hard to describe how amazing the jungle and the cave tubing were. The caves are enormous. The Mayas used them anciently to send sacrificial victims to Xibalba (hell). Cheery, huh? Some of the caves still have Mayan artifacts in them you can see, though we went to a less expensive cave. :) It was still phenomenally impressive though, as you'll see tomorrow.

After the cave tubing and jungle adventure, after eating some dinner and going to the track with Katie (I'll describe that more in depth at a future date) the team got a karaoke bar almost entirely to ourselves and rocked the night away. It was such a blast with these amazing people I work hard with all week and then can have such fun times with on the weekend. I'll leave you this evening with some karaoke pictures:

Crowded into the van on the way there (you can't see the other 8 people also in the van!) Left to right: Pete, Megan, Katie, Jake, Maren

TTYL

Sorry, crew, but I'm going to depart with the tradition I've set thus far of posting every night and record today's events tomorrow. I'm actually tired tonight and those of you who know me know that this is a rare occurrence so I'm gonna try to actually get some sleep.

Most sincerely,

KENNETH KENWORTHY

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."

Coding and Cartography

Probably won't be a very long post this evening because although my day was incredibly productive, it was really quite boring once you try explaining it to others. Most of my day was spent inside on my computer doing work that is vitally important to the projects I'm working on, but not very exciting.

The first part of the day, I created a home page for the resort I'm doing business counseling for, "Rainforest Haven." So, maybe I say this every time I create a new website, but I feel like this is my greatest work yet. While I'm not ready to show you the entire front page, as excited as I am about it, I will give you a slight preview of the top introduction bar to the home page:

I actually took and Photoshopped the picture of the large frond-leaf myself from a large potted plant in our living room! The background pic is actually from the resort. I am excited to show you all the rest of the home page, which turned out just beautiful! Hopefully the entire site will be ready in 2-3 weeks. So, while I was excited about the results today, the means to get there largely consisted of typing HTML code into Notepad (because REAL nerds never use editing programs! We code in the raw!!!) :-P

Later I did a little bit of shopping with about the half team, came home, and made lunch but not before first getting a Choco-banana from the vendor near our house (as mentioned in last Saturday's post)! Delicious! 

Eating a choco-banana while wearing my lucky shirt! 

Disneyland price: $4.00

Belizean Vendor: One Shilling (about 12.5 cents American)

We also ran into a man named Francisco on our way home who Lindsay is leading a social media project to get a wheelchair for. He has several severe physical disabilities and it takes him an hour to walk 3 blocks with a cane! We also filmed a segment for the YouTube fundraising video Lindsay is making for him. Here he is with Jake and Lindsay:

By the way, some of you may remember him from the fundraising video I made a few months ago. Watch it again and see if you can find him!

While out and about town we also distributed some flyers for our computer class, which we will begin again with a set curriculum on Monday. After that, we headed back home, as I mentioned before, and I was back at the computer again, this time doing more research for the Succotz revenue project I've been telling you all about. We made some VERY exciting progress and brainstormed some great ideas to help solve the revenue stream problem of that poor impoverished village. I also used satellite imagery from Bing Maps (see Monday's post) to start creating a map that will be very important in our plan. We are going to compile information on all restaurants and attractions in the village and put them on this map as a guide for tourists to draw them into the village more when they come through to visit the Xunantunich ruins. The reverse of the map will feature advertising space for some of those locations, the revenue of which will go to the village council to help make further improvements that will infuse additional capital into the village. This is just one part of plan to increase revenue in Succotz. Of course, for the map to be useful, we're going to need to coordinate with the village council to name all of the streets since most of them are currently nameless! We also will probably be installing street signs with the selected names in a few weeks. Take a look at my preliminary map (don't worry... it will be a lot prettier when it's done!):

I am, admittedly, not trained in professional cartography, but I must admit that making maps is really fun! It's also much easier when enabled by modern satellite technology. :)

Later in the evening we had our dinner from Sister Kay: heart-shaped waffles, sausage, Belize-style scrambled eggs (don't know what she did to them, but they were incredible!), and tossed fruit. Having "family dinner" together as a team is always one of the highlights of the day. We all get along so well and have such good times:

From left to right: Sarah, Emily, MacKenzie, Pete, Jake, Megan, Rin, and the hands of Ashley

Well, I told you from the start today that it would probably be a shorter, more boring post, and I seem to have delivered on that promise. But, of course, I have one last picture before I sign off for the night:

Can you find the iguana?

(Special thanks to Megan Swan for today's iguana pic since I was holed up on my computer all day!)

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! :)

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?)

The Sabbath--Belize Style!

So, yesterday's post was mostly pictures and little text. Today's will be largely the opposite: I didn't take any pictures today! Mostly, it was a pretty standard Sabbath since the Church is true everywhere, so taking pictures just didn't enter my mind! Despite lack of visual interest in this post (I don't even have an iguana for you to find!), hopefully the contents of my post aren't boring as it was still a great day.

To begin, let me explain the status of the LDS Church (of which I am a member) in Belize. The country has 2 districts (no stakes yet): one in Belize City and one in Cayo (that's the one I'm in). San Ignacio is part of what's called the "twin towns" with its sister town across the river known as Santa Elena. Both towns have branches of the Church. The branch in San Ignacio has a nice little chapel and is bilingual with services in both Spanish and English. That chapel is about a 5 minute walk from our place. The Santa Elena branch meets in a nice little house that's been converted into a chapel, meets only in English, and is about a 15 minute walk from our place.

I originally planned to go to one of the units this week and one next week, but those plans have changed now that I've attended the Santa Elena branch and fallen in love with it. It may be a farther walk, but five members of our group (myself included) decided to make the extra long walk to attend those services. It was absolutely phenomenal! I would estimate about 70 people were there. They've been told that if they can start having 80 consistently, they'll get a real chapel. The people are wonderful and they loved us (so much in fact that 3 of us are speaking in sacrament meeting next week!). They are also very missionary minded and I attended a baptism this evening for the branch, held in the San Ignacio chapel where the font is.

Well, I'm probably going to head to bed a little early tonight. However, I just remembered that I lied to you. I DID take a picture today. We were moving the male members of the team from one room to another and while moving my laundry bag I found the cutest little gecko inside! We named it Gertrude and I took a picture.

Can you find the Gecko? ;)