Good Bye For Now!

We all headed for home on February 11.  It was sad to say good bye.  We will miss the children and their families, the teachers, the excellent food, DandE's ice cream, the turquoise water, the Belize Chocolate Company and all of their tempting delights - especially the moccachinos, the cool breezes, the long walks along the beach to and from the school, and each other.  I'm sure I have missed things that others on our trip are also missing and I just haven't thought of yet!

Here is a view from the small airplane we take between San Pedro and Belize City.  The flight is breathtakingly beautiful with views of the islands and water below and puffy clouds at eye level.  

Here we are safely on the ground and ready to head off to our various flights out of Belize.  Now you can get a good idea of the size of the airplanes that make that final hop.  Sarah and I rode in the front on the way to San Pedro and the back on the way back to Belize City.  We definitely prefer the front because the view is much better!

San Mateo

Below is a map of the general area that we spent our time in.  You can see San Pedro Airport near the bottom, where we arrive and depart from.  Up near the top is the channel that we cross over to enter San Mateo.  San Mateo is the area to the left after you cross the bridge.  To give you a sense of scale, it takes about 20 minutes to walk from Ruby's (our hotel which is about 2 blocks from the airport) to Holy Cross Anglican school which is pretty much the first thing on the left after you cross the bridge. A 20 minute walk is about a mile.  You can also see that our section of the island is only about 1000 feet across at it's narrowest points.  It makes for a community in which everyone who is not a tourist seems to know everyone else who is not a tourist and even the tourists get to know each other and the local community fairly quickly.

Here are a few views of San Mateo from the bridge.  Below is the view to the left, facing west.

And to the right, facing west.

Note the newer, hot pink building that looks a little out of place in the pictures above and below?  Since the roads have been built, people are starting to build nicer buildings in the area.  

Here is an other shot of the prolific amount of trash dumped in the area as fill.  

A completed road.

Teacher's bicycles at school.  

Students

Here is another set of photos, this time of some of the students at Holy Cross Anglican School.  They were energetic, sweet and funny.  A delight to spend time with.

 Soccer practice after school

 Lunchtime!

Watching a video about building the road.

Around San Pedro

Here is a series of photos about what it's like to be in San Pedro.  They'll never do justice to actually being there, but you can get an idea anyway.

So this is how coconut trees get started.  Found this on the beach.

At our favorite ice cream store, DandE's, they post your birthday.  Look carefully, you may recognize more than one name here.

Sarah was definitely one of them.

Golf carts are the number two way of getting around (right after feet).  You see them everywhere!

A local graveyard, just off the beach in a walled in garden.  You'd never know it was there if Jim hadn't stumbled across it.

Well, maybe bicycles are the number 2 way of getting around and golf carts are number 3?  I don't have the stats.

Sunrise from the hotel porch.

Gifted Story Teller

On Wednesday and Thursday, we discovered that Don is a good story teller.  He went to several classrooms and had the children help him act out several stories from the Gospel.

First he warms up his audience.  Notice the bright window in the back.  Another one of the contrasts on this island is light to dark.  Inside the classrooms they depend mostly on lighting from outside so the classrooms are dark.  Outside, the light is shockingly bright. 

He lets them know what he's going to tell them about...

Next, he gets his audience involved.  Here the kids are acting out bringing the lame man to Jesus for healing.  

Mr. Jones, the class teacher looks on from the back of the room.  

On Thursday, Don had the chance to perform in front of student chapel.  First everyone gathered to recite prayers together.

Then Don told his story.

We finished with group singing.  

High School Business Fair

On Friday, Nancy and Mary Beth went to a business fair at Holy Cross High School.  The fair was an opportunity for high school students who had been learning how to form a business plan to showcase their work.

Above is Nancy grabbing a cab.  Most cabs in San Pedro are minivans and are shared by everyone going the same direction so the cabs act almost like little buses, except you get to decide where the stops are.  You don't have to look around for an official stop.

The business fair had dozens of booths.  We checked out two of them...

Island Paintball Warzone was a well thought out plan for a paintball theme park.

One of it's creators was also a student being sponsored by a family at Saint Luke's.  She is shown in the middle below.

The students recognized that there isn't a lot of recreation for youth in the area and that paintball would probably sell well with tourists as well.  So they created a mission statement,

some objectives,

a scale model of their proposed park and building,

and even examples of the equipment they would provide to customers, along with a flyer.

Next we headed over to Inspiration Inc, a business proposed to help unemployed people figure out how to gain the skills they need to find a job.  

Here are close ups of the Mission and Vision

Another Saint Luke's sponsored student was part of the team for this booth.  Here you can see her with Nancy.

And here are shots of their scale model, the front...

a waiting room, 

and an office.

Roads in San Mateo?!

Before I came to Belize, I'd heard about how the people had built their town and then their school over a mangrove lagoon, but I could not fathom how it was done or what the before and after was like.  Here is the story with pictures.

Enter Kim Shackleford (on the right), a social work professor from University of Mississippi.  As part of a 3 hour class, she brought her students down to do a community assessment.  The person on the left is Katy Gominger, a former student who still visits regularly with Kim.  The students went door to door in San Mateo asking what people felt that they needed and what sorts of troubles they dealt with on a daily basis.  Kim felt sure that they would need a medical clinic because there was so much illness, but when all of the information was gathered and examined, what they really seemed to need, and have the energy and desire to build for themselves, was dry land and roads.  The whole town was built on stilts connected by narrow board planks.  They even already knew how to build the roads, they just needed financial support and the encouragement to organize.

The students went home to the States and started a series of fundraisers, raising enough money (book drives, karaoke nights, 5k runs, yard sales, and soliciting large donations through social media) to pay for supplies and some labor (digging up the rock and sand - the people of the community provided the labor to build the roads once they had the materials).  People in the community of San Mateo began to organize and appointed a board.  Below is a picture of Maggie.  All 7 of her children helped to build the road, including baby Miley who toddled around with a little shovel and lifted everyone's spirits.  Maggie cooked for the workers and helped with keeping communication going between everyone.

Once the money and organizational structure was in place, they went out to the edge of town and started breaking up limestone from the bottom of the lagoon and shoveling up sand.  Here you can see the area where all of the limestone and sand came from.

For an excellent video of how the road was built, narrated by Morgan Freeman, check out this link.

Here is the first road once it was finished.

Once the road was finished and people had dry land under their houses, it was possible to install electricity and septic tanks.  Coconut trees and other plants were planted.  People no longer fell off of the plank bridges into the sewage contaminated water.  Illness and injury rates dropped.  Life improved.

While there were a few squatters in the houses on stilts, most of the plots of "land" where the houses were built had been divided up and sold by the city.  People had paid money and were paying property taxes for the right to live over the water with no sewage, water or electricity.  Once the community got mobilized and built the first few roads, the politicians were shamed into building more.  To save money, they decided to use trash as fill instead of limestone.  The trash as fill leads to some odd contrasts (see previous post "Contrasts" from Feb. 6).  Below you can see another dump pile waiting to be packed down and covered with sand (just beyond the wooden fence in front).

And here is one of my favorite contrasts.  "No Dumping"?!!  Dumping happens everywhere to add to the roads!

The resulting roads are not as high quality as the original.  The organic matter breaks down and the plastics get compacted over time resulting in enormous potholes, but at least there is dry land to walk and drive on.