ansoncfit

Na Luum Caj – Mother Earth Village

ansoncfit — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 03:56:20 +0000

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to spend five nights with the Sho Family at their house in Na Luûm Caj, a small village in Belize’s Toledo District. My visit, coordinated by the Maya Village Homestay Network, was an amazing opportunity to learn about Mopan Maya customs and life. The coordinators stated that I would be treated like a family member, “not as anyone ‘special,’” and I found this to be true. I was thankful for the family’s openness in authentically sharing their life with me. Around the dinner table the family spoke Mopan (translating into English for me occasionally), and I was welcomed to the Sunday church service they hosted on their patio.

Na Luûm Caj, which means Mother Earth Village in Mopan, is home to approximately 125 people. According to the Maya Atlas: The Struggle to Preserve Maya Land in Southern Belize, a project for which Mr. Sho was a community cartographer, the village was founded in 1986 by a group of progressive farmers from nearby San Antonio. They received land grants from the government and set up their model community, complete with environmental and ecological protections such as riparian buffer zones, just down the road from the village of San Antonio.

I arrived by bus on a Friday afternoon. After introductions with the mother, father, and five children, I sat down to a late lunch of corn tortillas, beans, and ginger tea. As I expected, fresh handmade tortillas and beans were a staple; I ended up having them at twelve of fourteen meals with the family. On a couple of occasions, I tried grinding the corn and shaping the tortillas; my efforts towards the latter inadvertently resulted in some creative shapes. By the time I left early on the following Wednesday morning, I was most grateful for the family’s laughter; after weeks of traveling, staying with a family in a home full of laughter was a centering experience.

Mr. Sho took an interest in my project and we spent a few afternoons talking to some of the local bus owners (including his brother). Other highlights included washing my clothes in the river (steering clear of a scorpion on the rocks), using the outhouse (and steering clear of a tarantula on the wall), and hikes through the mud (and not being able to steer clear of some deep mud).

: Fireflies in the front yard in Na Luum Caj

: Shelter in the field

: Flowers in the front yard

: Giant tarantula (slightly larger than the one I encountered in the outhouse)

: Dining room and kitchen

: Bath facilities

: View of San Antonio

: Young chicken that wandered the house

: House

: Rooster

: House in San Jose

: On a hike through the jungle

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Belmopan

ansoncfit — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:11:35 +0000

After Belize City was leveled by Hurricane Hattie in 1961, government officials began planning a new seat of government. The initial phases of Belmopan, Belize’s capital city, were constructed between 1967 and 1970. To me, the resulting master-planned city of 16,000 people felt the closest to Woodbridge or a college campus that I’ve been since leaving home.

A highlight in Belmopan was my research at the national archives. The staff there pulled up a couple of great reports on buses for me, one of which was a Masters Geography thesis from 1989 entitled “50 Years of Buses: A Case Study of the Bus System in Belize, Central America.” It was fascinating to read this report and consider how the system had changed (and, in some cases, remained the same) during the course of my life.

An interesting facet of the Belmopan Bus Terminal was the prevalence of signs reading “No Standees Permitted.” While a nationwide law prohibits standees on buses, this bus terminal is the only place I have seen it enforced. One of the concessionaires in the terminal even takes it upon herself to warn passengers of the surprising enforcement, shouting “push your way through the boarding gates and to the bus, otherwise you won’t get a seat and you won’t get a ride” when buses pull in. Indeed, Belmopan is the only city in which a government Terminal Management Unit employee boards each bus before departure and ensures all passengers are seated. Being in geographical proximity to the seat of government seemed to increase concerns with the law and government regulations. Yet this effect also seemed to have quite a limited radius; once the buses left the terminal and headed towards the Western and Hummingbird Highways, they stopped to pick up numerous standees.

: Holding the fruits of my research at the National Archives

: Well maintained lawns and storm drains

: Government building in the style of Willets

: Government buildings

: Pedestrian walkways

: On Bliss Parade at the Belmopan Bus Terminal

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Boatbuilding in Sarteneja

ansoncfit — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:05:47 +0000

In Belize, I had the opportunity to meet Juan Guerrero, an artisan boatbuilder. Since he was 14, he has been taking locally harvested timber and transforming it into beautiful sailboats in the town of Sarteneja. Located in the northeast tip of Belize, Sarteneja was historically a fishing village and is still home to many of the country’s small boatbuilders. Quite a few of the sailboats I saw in Belize City and Caye Caulker had their origins in Juan Guerrero’s workshop.

The lifecycle of these sailboats presents an interesting contrast to the typical lifecycle of the buses I’m studying. Instead of being produced from thousands of anonymous industrial parts on an assembly line, these sailboats are uniquely crafted from various local woods by one craftsman in his backyard. Instead of heading south like the old school buses, the boat I saw being manufactured was, according to the wishes of its future captain, going to head north making no/low-emission trips to Cuba ferrying organic produce grown around Sarteneja.

Pictures below:

Back to School

ansoncfit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:28:58 +0000

Swarthmore's Big Chair and its minions

At 8:00 this morning, I’ll be starting an intermediate Spanish class. After four years of having to drag myself out of bed on this day of the year, I seem to have been conditioned to report to a classroom despite my supposed freedom from Swarthmore. For the first time in four years, I didn’t spend the last night of my summer vacation watching The Graduate; though I have to admit having some delicious cerdo asado y gallopinto with friends here in Managua is an excellent substitute tradition.

I’m now in Managua, but I’ve left my blog updates behind in Northern Belize. I’ll catch up this week, when I find time in between my homework and twenty hours of classes.

Flat Stanley in Belize

ansoncfit — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 05:32:10 +0000

Here are some of my travels with Flat Stanley, for Mrs. Nishibayashi’s second grade class. Click on the pictures to read more.