Hard Times

So, today I've been here now 2 weeks. In a way, they've absolutely blown by, while in another I've been surprised that it's only been 2 weeks. I almost feel like I've been here forever and am a part of Belize now. I no longer walk around with that tourist look in my eyes, but rather see the tourists come through and feel like they're visiting my home town. This is just such a welcoming place and I absolutely love it here.

I've been introduced to something fantastic: Hard Times. Hard times are the unofficial national cookie of Belize. They are, as their name suggests, rather hard (perfect milk cookies) like an extra-hard cross-breed of shortbread and sugar cookie. They are perfectly medium in their sweetness level and deliciously addicting. The best part of the story: You can get an enormous bag of 50, like the one pictured below, for $1.50 Belize (that's just 75 cents US!)

Giant bag of hard times!

So, this morning we made lots more progress on the orphanage. The walls are about 9 ft high now, and the windows have their places held by some tires that we put some dirt-brick-bags around in keystone arch fashion today. (For a description of the unique construction process for these buildings, search under the click on the "orphanage" tag at the bottom of this post and it will show you all my posts describing the orphanage project).

 The walls are getting higher!

Building keystone arches around the windows

So, the architect of these unique buildings, Jaime, told us we should finish the bagging part of the construction this Friday, though I'm a little skeptical of that claim. My own estimate is Monday, but Friday would be cool. I'm excited to see the next step of this process. Besides, we're all getting REALLY tired of this phase. It was cool at first, but now it's just tiring hard labor out in the sun with no shade getting dirt all over ourselves. At least it's a worthwhile cause!

After getting back from the orphanage project (and showering to get the sweat and dirt off) and eating lunch it was time for computer class again! Maren was still in Belmopan on another project, so I took Katie with me instead to teach. We had another 2 new students including a nice older man who is missing 2 fingers on his left hand. Katie was showing him how to place your hands on the keyboard and he held up his hand and showed her the missing index and middle fingers. She was stunned for a second and then said, "Well, you can just type however you want to!" I don't think we'll be using Mavis Beacon for him. However, he did make good progress on the skills we learned today. The class is formatted so that the first half they practice their typing and then the second half we learn a new computer skill. Today we began teaching about Microsoft Word. It was very fun to watch them learn about the amazing world of word processing for the first time ever. After explaining the purpose and navigation of the program and the page we started showing them how to do basic formatting changes. At first they nodded their heads as we showed them how to make words bold. Eagerness grew as we showed them italics. Downright excitement emerged with underlining. Before long they could change color, size, font, and alignment and make both numbered or bullet-point lists. Watching their eyes get wider and wider was so fulfilling as a whole new world of possibilities opened up to them! We had so much fun and look forward to picking things up again on Monday. 

After computer class I did some Succotz stuff on my computer for the rest of the working day. At five I went with Katie to the track so she could run her 5 miles for the day while I read a book. We came back for dinner and then all did our own thing throughout the evening. It's been a pretty good and fulfilling day. Tomorrow is looking to be exciting and full as well, like usual. Tune in then, same Ken-time, same Ken-channel!

P.S. I'll bet you all thought this would be a depressing post based on the title. Ha! Fooled you! Hard times are just tasty cookies! :)

Happy New Year!

Today is New Year's Day on the Mayan Calendar. I hope it was a good day for all of you, because it certainly was for me! This is, like yesterday, not a very picture-intensive post, but we did a lot of great stuff today!

The day started by watching Katie run at the track while I studied my scriptures, then a few hours of paperwork and research to prepare for the exciting phase of the Succotz Revenue Project which we launched this afternoon! It has become important for us to make an in-depth profile of all the businesses in Succotz so we've decided to basically "tract" the entire village gathering business information. At one-o-clock Emily, MacKenzie, Katie, and I set off for Succotz to begin this venture. Emily and MacKenzie set off as one "companionship" since they had to leave together after 45 minutes for the writing class they teach. Katie and I covered the newly named Queen Elizabeth St, Church St, and Cemetery Ln. Between our two "companionships" we found and profiled 20 businesses in Succotz and we've only scratched the surface! We're going back on Thursday morning with a much larger portion of the team to try and finish off this profiling portion of the project. We actually took pictures of all the businesses today, but they weren't on my camera, so I'll post some of them probably on Thursday. Meanwhile, here's a picture of Emily and MacKenzie walking off to start profiling businesses on Jose Luis St:

Later in the evening after dinner with Mama Kay, several of us headed off the the home of the Medina's from the Santa Elena branch for FHE. We joined them for FHE last week and loved it, so we went back again this week. It will probably become our Tuesday tradition the rest of our time here (we have a team meeting on Monday nights, so they are doing their FHE on Tuesdays while we're here to accommodate us). They have a wonderful home that is probably the best I've seen in Belize. Going there feels like being in America again, both outside and in. They are among the very few to be so privileged in Belize, but they put it to good use and are very involved in their community and trying to bring about positive change. In fact, Sister Medina is currently running for public office to help make a bigger difference. If she wins, as far as we know, she'll be the first Mormon woman to ever hold a government office in Belize!

The rarity of seeing homes like the Medina's has been especially underscored the more I've spent time in Succotz. The Medina family lives in San Ignacio where a more thriving upper-middle class and even some wealthy people are more common. You may wonder why the HELP-International team chose to set up camp in one of the more well-to-do locations in Belize. It's actually because it is safer here and is in a nice central location to a lot of other poorer communities like Succotz, which is just 8 miles west. Now, San Ignacio still has lots of poverty, but places like Succotz are simply much worse off and thus demand a lot more attention. For example, last Friday night when we had the birthday for MacKenzie in Succotz, we celebrated at the house of one of the village council members we've been working with, Jose Luis. Let me detail his living conditions to you. He lives with his wife and two children in a home much smaller than any apartment I've lived in at BYU; they have an outhouse instead of a bathroom, and also an outdoor shower; they are one of the most well-to-do families in all of Succotz. I must admit that back in the states I sometimes thought of myself as "poor." I will never make that mistake again. As foreign as this world seems to me sometimes, the world I come from with its laptops, movie theaters, subsidized education, indoor plumbing, smart phones, medical care including immunizations, running hot water, etc. is just as if not more foreign to people here. Just one of those luxuries alone seems to many of these people like one of those things they will only ever dream of without any hope of every having. I have felt guilty for ever feeling "poor" or complaining about the dumb things I complain about sometimes. I don't usually go to bed wondering if I'll eat tomorrow. When I get sick I can see the doctor and get reliable and useful help rather than just dealing with even very serious problems untreated my entire life. I didn't have to stop going to school in 1st grade because my parents couldn't afford the $20 registration fee and needed my help with the small family business or farm anyway. Next time you want to complain about having to wash dishes, thank God that you have dishes to watch. Next time you complain about having to go to school, thank God that you are privileged to have an eduction. Next time you complain about cleaning your room, thank God you have enough room to clutter up in the first place since you aren't sharing the floor space with the beds of your other 5 family members. Next time your computer freezes or you lose some file, thank God that you have a computer and the knowledge of how to use it. I've met people who don't have any of those things.

God bless and have a good night.

Wayeb!

So, according to the Mayan calendar, today was supposed to be the most unlucky day of the year. The Mayans followed a lunar calendar, but they recognized that this did not match with the solar year, so the five extra days that don't match up are called Wayeb and they fall from July 21-25. These are unlucky days of limbo when Xibalba (hell) is allowed to unleash its worst demons who wreak havoc everywhere. The last day of Wayeb (today) is especially unlucky since the demons have to get the last of their evil out before being reigned back in the next day. Well, if today was the least lucky day of the year then that is incredibly good news, because I thought it was pretty good, so the rest of the year should be spectacular!

The symbol for Wayeb on the Mayan Calendar

Although it was a good day, it was another one of those boring ones where I did a lot on my laptop again. I worked a lot more on the Rainforest Haven website, which is coming along amazingly and also did further research and paperwork for the Succotz revenue projects. Tomorrow should be a really exciting day for that one, as about half of the team is coming to Succotz with me to tract out the businesses there and start creating our in-depth business profile of the village. I'm really looking forward to beginning the real work of this project! :)

Monday is also one of the days for our computer classes, and I'm happy to report that the advertising we did last week worked and we had four eager learners at our class today! Two of them had never used a computer in their lives! It was kind of weird but cool teaching things like what a monitor was versus a computer and how to turn each of them on. I taught how to use a mouse and what programs and files are and Maren started the class on typing lessons. We are excited to see them all again on Wednesday. We've planned a great 4-week course to introduce the students to basic computer knowledge, typing skills, Microsoft Office essentials, and the internet. It was exciting to see how much progress they made in just an hour today!

Our computer students use "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" 

Overall, it was another fulfilling productive day in Belize, even if this post is rather boring! I hope you all survived the days of Wayeb in relative safety and have a happy Mayan New Year tomorrow! :)

Meet the Team Part Two: Katie Palmer

Welcome to part two of my continuing series of posts spotlighting the members of the HELP International Belize 2011 team. Today's victim:

KATIE PALMER

 You might need to click the picture to see her, but this is definitely the best representative picture of Katie. There are other more close-up pictures of her on my previous posts.

So, you know those new Mormon advertisements where people list various things about themselves and then conclude with "...and I'm a Mormon"? Well, we've decided that Katie would make a perfect candidate for one of those ads. It would best be summed up like this: "My name is Katie Palmer; I'm a civil engineer, I do volunteer humanitarian work in Belize, I'm an Olympic athlete... and I'm a Mormon." Doesn't that just sound amazing? That's simply the word we constantly use to describe Katie around here!

Katie is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada and grew up mostly around Las Vegas. She runs track for BYU and is currently preparing for the qualifying rounds to run for Team Canada in the 2012 Olympics in London next year and has a pretty good chance of making it! So, she runs at least 5 miles every morning at a track in San Ignacio. Since it's kind of a sketchy part of town, one of the men on the team usually goes with her to help defend her from bad guys if needed. That's when I took the picture above. 

Besides being a fantastic athlete, Katie is also a brilliant student, graduating soon from BYU with a degree in civil engineering. She drew up the schematics for the chicken coop we built just by watching a YouTube video about chicken coops and is heading up some other engineering projects currently that you'll probably hear about on this blog in the near future.

Brudda Kennitt

I love the Santa Elena LDS branch so much! Today I spoke in sacrament meeting and subbed for Mama Kay in Sunday School. The Branch President usually calls the HELP International volunteers by "Brother" or "Sister" followed by our first name, always with the classic Belizean accent, so I was announced in sacrament as follows: "An' nah ah concludin' speakuh will be Brudda Kennitt." The "th" becomes either a "t" or a "d" and other letters get similarly substituted or flat-out dropped. Most people speak English just fine (albeit with the accent just mentioned) though they often speak Kriol or Spanish. I can generally understand both of those languages pretty well, though I have a hard time saying my own words in return, especially with the Kriol.

Anyway, my talk was on resisting temptation. To sum it up briefly, I mentioned that the most common temptation defense mechanism Christ gave in His lifetime was prayer (Christ recommends prayer against temptation 8 times in his personal ministries--6 times in the New Testament and twice in 3 Nephi). Furthermore, Christ exemplified resisting temptation with his own experience recorded in Matthew 4, wherein he draws upon the scriptures for protection against Satan's temptations. Every time Satan tempts Him, He responds, "As it is written..." and then quotes a scripture. These things are the absolute basics we've all learned since primary or since we first met missionaries: Scriptures and Prayer! Yet, clearly they are vital to righteous living since the Savior's teachings and example point to these two things as the greatest methods of defense against temptation. And doesn't that make sense? Surely if we are communing with the Lord daily through these divine appointed methods, we will be endowed with greater strength to withstand temptation. Paul taught us that "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man..." Isn't is comforting to know that temptation is normal? We are not sinners because we are tempted, but rather only if we act on that temptation. He continues, "but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it." May we all choose to take that escape given us through the power of God to resist temptation which He imparts as we come to Him in prayer and through the scriptures.

Anyway, Church was great overall and the rest of the day has been pretty laid back. The evening had a brief moment of excitement while I was video chatting my family wherein Ashley came in needing "male assistance" to take care of a "creepy, possessed bat-moth thing." Sure enough, the creature perched on a drying swim suit was just about the creepiest looking insect I've ever seen in my life. It had red eyes and looked like something straight out of Satan's nightmares. I took some pictures:

This bad boy is has about a 3-inch wingspan. So, he's definitely not the largest insect I've seen in Belize (remember Frank the moth?), but he's pretty big.

Captured!

Anyway, that's just one more exciting creature to add to my list of bizarre Belizean sightings. So, I really don't have much else to say about today, but I do have some random pictures from throughout this last week, especially the last few days, including some that are from other cameras and others from my own but which simply didn't fit in earlier posts. So, get ready for a photo potpourri! 

These are actual Mayan artifacts that were on display at a resort I was doing research at on Tuesday (the one I had to drive a minivan through the jungle to get to). The two big ones on the left were probably ritual axe heads used for killing sacrificial victims. The one on the right was probably a gardening tool.

A beautiful garden from that same resort.

This picture would be much cooler if you could see the MUCH bigger frog that the one pictured is sitting on top of the nose of! Unfortunately, he didn't really show up, but he's definitely the largest frog I've ever seen. By the way, can you find the Katie?

Can you find the basilisk (aka "Jesus Lizard")?

Jake is on the right and on the left is Nathaniel, wearing the flower one of the girls picked for him. Nathaniel is our driver we hired. He's also the Young Men's president in the San Ignacio branch of the Church and also hangs out with us when we play. For example, this is right before our Friday river tubing excursion, which he joined us for. 

Can you find the 9-inch tarantula? These are relatively harmless, but more than relatively awesome.

 "When you look under the rocks and plants and take a look at the fancy ants..."

"...and maybe try a few!" (Click to see them up close. And by the way, these are not actually ants, they are termites. They taste like carrots with a slight hint of mint.)

 This is the first cave we tubed into.

Same cave, from the inside.

 Maren and I are tubing buddies.

 Getting deeper into the cave.

 

We explored a side cave full of bats! These pictures do absolutely no justice for this enormous cave. There were literally hundreds of them flying around sending their little echolocation clicks. Does this remind anyone else of Batman Begins? That's what it felt like in there!

 The end of the cave...

 ...is a great place for cliff jumping!

 Heading out of the cave.

Cave exit from other side.

Meet the Team Part One: Maren George

Welcome to an all-new feature of my blog! I'm going to periodically spotlight various members of the team over the next little while so that you can all better get to know my "family" here in Belize! And the first victim is...

MAREN GEORGE

Okay, first of all Maren in fan-flippin-hilarious. She's a 19-year-old sophomore in nursing at BYU and her goal in life is to be able to catch a fish with her hands. She is the youngest of 5 kids and she's from Valencia, California. She is super tough and very intelligent and likes to go on adventures, as seen above.

We frequently exchange the most delightful witty banter and I'm a one of her biggest fans because she actually laughs at my typically lame jokes. She also must think I'm the weirdest person ever because she's keeping a list of all the weird things she learns about me (it currently only has 10 items, so thank goodness she doesn't know me too well yet! :) She plays the piano quite well and doesn't give you an answer if you ask what she likes to do. Every day she has approximately 3 random and loud hiccups.

Maren is heavily involved with the George Price Peace Camp for youth project and co-teaches the computer class with me. She is super excited to be here in Belize and pretty much wants to dig into every project.

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