A Portrait of San Mateo

It’s difficult to grasp the effect of the Holy Cross Anglican School without understanding the surrounding community. The main town on Ambergris Caye is San Pedro, but San Mateo is a neighboring town to the north of San Pedro that most tourists don’t even know exists. Last year, the Red Cross did a study of Belize to determine what area would be hit the hardest if a major hurricane hit Belize. They went to every town in the country (both inland and along the coast) and San Mateo was their last stop. They were appalled at the living conditions when they walked through San Mateo and it became number 1 on their list.

The plots of land in the town were given away/sold by the Belizean government in order to gain political votes. The area was supposed to have roads, landfill and access to water and electricity. When the new land owners arrived, they found swamp land that was covered in trash. Given no other affordable options, there are hundreds of people living there.

The residents of San Mateo are extremely hard-working, but the economic situation on Ambergris is a constant uphill struggle. On the mainland of Belize, unskilled labor earns about $15USD per day while skilled labor earns about $30USD. The island is a popular tourist destination so unskilled and skilled labor earn $30USD and $50USD respectively. Many people come out to the island with the prospect of higher wages, but are instead met with a 30% higher cost of living. Housing is very expensive in San Pedro. An apartment in San Pedro is about $100 a week for one room with no utilities. People earning $30/day can’t afford to live within town limits, so they are forced to move to neighboring communities such as San Mateo. As if making $30/day wasn’t hard enough to survive on, the economy is very volatile. When the tourist industry slows down, the jobs disappear. Many of the hotels shut down for 3 months a year and then their workers don’t earn a steady income. Despite the awful living conditions in San Mateo, their residents are unable to move out because they can’t afford to go anywhere else.

The swampland of San Mateo is underwater 6 months a year. It originally didn’t have any roads or sidewalks, so residents navigated along wooden planks. At the last election, the government wanted more votes, so they built up a sandy footpath. There is garbage and old appliances everywhere. All the homes have an outhouse, but they can’t get rid of their human waste. Those who can afford a septic tank have one, but they do not function in swampy sand. In order for septic tanks to break down biological matter, they need oxygen in the soil in order for the bacteria to break down the organic waste. The island is sand (no soil) so the waste doesn’t break down before it exits the septic system into the leach field. These people are living surrounded by pools of their own waste. Some homes have water lines and many have electricity, but living there is anything but easy. The water lines run through the waste-filled swamp water, so one can only hope that there are no leaks. The sad thing is that these people aren’t lazy or people who have given up, they are working hard to get by and raise a family.

When Francis and Vern Wilson started building their school, the government wanted them to build south of San Pedro. There are already 3 schools down there and the Wilsons knew that San Mateo needed more help than anyone. The school is built on swampland, but luckily they have been able to bring in tons of sand to backfill the area (they still need more though!). Within 2 weeks of being asked to start a school, they broke ground in the summer of 2006. The first year they had 62 students in the fall and about 140 students in the spring semester. This is the second year of operation and the school educates over 400 students. In the summer of 2007, they built 9 new classrooms and several other necessary facilities for the students.

It still amazes me how much this school has accomplished in so little time with so little resources. The school doesn’t turn anybody away. It costs $10-20 per semester for students to attend depending on the number of children a family has. There is a fee for uniforms, but only if families can afford it. They have a feeding program that gives the students a high-protein breakfast, a fruit snack, and a full lunch. The final cost is $1 per student per day. This amounts to almost $500 per day in food alone. The school doesn’t charge for food, but does ask for donations from the parents. Those who can afford it give about $10 a month. Over the summer, the school did a study looking at incoming students’ heights and weights. All of the students were in the lower 30% of their age group. About 60% were under the 23^rd percentile. Malnutrition is a huge problem for the students at the school. In many cases, the food that the school provides is the only food these children get. In order to help fight vitamin deficiencies, the students get chewable vitamins tablets every morning. The school is the only one in the country that has a dental clinic. All the students receive free dental care thanks to volunteers. It is also only 1 of 7 schools in the country to accommodate children with special needs.

The Belizean government claims to support and require primary education (through 7^th grade) for all of its citizens. After reading the fine print, it becomes apparent that the government only pays the teachers’ salaries. They do not fund administrative staff, school supplies or buildings. Schools like Holy Cross Anglican School could not function without the support of people like Francis and Vern and outside contributors. The fact that our school supplies are still stuck in customs is personally appalling. If the government doesn’t want these items to be donated, they should allocate more funds for the educational system. Without donations, the schools would be unable to operate because their citizens can’t afford to purchase supplies their selves.

The progress and accomplishments of Francis and Vern is absolutely amazing. Not only are they feeding and educating hundreds of children everyday, but they are helping to build a strong community in San Mateo. The school has created a central meeting place to bring families together. Vern has also been an advocate for the people. He keeps pressing government officials to right the wrongs of San Mateo. It should be noted that the school was intentionally built before putting up a church building; living the Gospel, in this case, is more important that preaching it at this time.

A Thankful Thanksgiving

Work is slowly but surely getting done. Greg and Julie have been working inside the air conditioned office and dental clinic building trying to wire-up some electric lights, wall switches, and wall. The problems they have been having are lots of wires (none of them marked) and a missing bag of wire nuts. They have struggled with trying to figure out which wires are hot and what did previous volunteers had in mind, if anything, when they installed dysfunctional outlets and switches. Julie swears that she will never be an electrician in Belize again!

It has become a standing joke with Mr. Freddie (the maintenance and security man who lives on site) that Greg and Julie work well past the time that the other volunteers do. He is always available to find or acquire supplies you may need, and is amazed by Julie’s skill as a carpenter, electrician, and painter. He even complimented Carol on her use of the router.

Carol has been doing just about anything that needs to be done. She spent: one sunny morning painting fence supports and the entire side of a new 100 ft. porch building and the afternoon routing wood for shelving Greg and Julie were building: a morning sorting a shipment of reading and math workbooks for the teachers: an afternoon in a classroom helping a teacher clean up vomit (the kids didn’t like the fluoride treatment Dr. Brian gave them), reading stories, and helping out the kitchen staff by washing stacks and stacks of dirty dishes. Miss. Rosalea and Miss. Vedi will be teaching Carol and Julie how to make tortillas, Johnny cakes and if we are lucky, fry jacks on Friday.

Kathryn has spent most of the last 2 days helping out in a classroom, where she has really enjoyed spending time with the kids and her new friends from Wyoming. Ask her what a past participle is next time you see her. Yesterday, she brought in a pair of clean white tennis shoes and a pack of Sharpie markers, and asked the kids to sign her shoes. She got the shoes back, but her bag of markers is now a bit lighter.

A note on the group from Wyoming: There are 4 families here, consisting of 4 Occupational Therapists, a dentist, an internist, and an engineer. The therapists have been working with the teachers, evaluating students and giving them techniques in getting and holding the attention of their students. Holy Cross has a special education class room, one of only 7 in the entire country, and the only one on the island. The students have disabilities ranging from autism to downs syndrome, cerebral palsy and hearing loss. As for the kids from Wyoming, there are 3 teenagers, 2 sophomore’s and a junior in high school, who have been painting and working in the classrooms, and a 7 year old who has been attending class every day and has made many new friends. Dr. Dozier was able to treat a baby, who was born without the radius bone in both of her arms, by stretching the tendons, ligaments and muscles and casting them in position under traction. He will try and arrange further medical treatment for her in the states. The dentist continued a screening program that began last year, by doing exams and applying fluoride varnish to teeth. There is another team that is coming down to finish setting up the newly plastered, tiled and electrified dental clinic who will be able to provided further dental care to those students Dr. Brian has identified.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and we enjoyed a traditional turkey dinner, with all the trimmings with the volunteer group from Wyoming, a couple from Oklahoma who have been volunteering at the school for the last 3 months, and many of the teachers, staff and their families. The kids made lovely place mats for all of us and a good time was had by all. The staff was able to sample some American style food, and we got a taste of home. If you are wondering how we acquired the ingredients we needed, the Wyoming group brought down cans of cranberry, green beans, mushroom soup, fried onions, corn syrup, pecans, and canned pumpkin for pie. Turkey, potatoes and Belizean yams were available here.

The saga of dealing with customs continues. Francis and Vern were able to get our suitcase, which was a mix of personal items and school supplies, but not without having the supplies removed, released and sent over, but the rest of the bags and all the supplies are still sitting in customs. The assistant to the Bishop thinks Friday will be the day when the supplies will be sprung.

One Down, Six to Go

The past two days have been action packed! Monday was a national holiday (Garifuna Day), so we had one more day to get work done before the school was packed with children. Kathryn put her technical theater carpenter skills making shelves. I still don’t like to admit that my little sister is proficient with power tools. Just ask her about breaking up concrete with Jack hammers and she’ll be sure to fill you in. Also, ask Kat about her massive (4” in diameter) bruise on her forearm…

Mom got the messy job plastering the inside of a closet. Good thing plaster is water soluble, otherwise she would have needed a lot of turpentine/gasoline to clean herself up. That afternoon she tackled the perpetual job of painting the outside of the school. Even when the rain came, she was still slappin’ paint on the underside of the awnings.

Dad and I spent the morning doing electrical work in the kitchen. To install a new outlet, we had to run an electrical cable down through the floor of the building at one location, under the floor and back up at the new location. Just like in the old days, the apprentice gets stuck with all the dirty, uncomfortable and outright bad jobs. There was no way that Dad was going to climb under the building in the mucky swamp land to run that cable from one side of the kitchen to the other. I didn’t even want to think about what was in those puddles considering sump pumps in the area don’t function well. Let’s just say Dad will forever owe me.

The office building and dental clinic needs lots of finishing touches, so that was the next project Dad and I tackled. All the doors and door frames need to be painted, shelves need to be built, and tile to be grouted. Dad and I spent all of Tuesday in the office building. It turned out to be a really good deal because it got us out of the pouring rain and into the only air-conditioned part of the complex.

Mom spent Tuesday in the kitchen learning how to cook hotdogs Belizean style. Some of the cooks speak English, but for the most part Mom had to beef up on her non-existent Spanish. Tuesday was Children’s Day so the kids didn’t have a traditional school day. They came and played games all day and Kat had a fun time playing with them.

Francis and Vern were heading out to the airport for a trip home to visit family for Thanksgiving, so they were going to stop by Customs at the Belize airport to try to get the seven pieces of luggage released. We were in the office when Vern called to get a description of the one bag that had a mix of our personal and school supplies. The good news was they released the one bag and we picked it up at the airport late Tuesday afternoon; the bad news is that they went through the trouble of stripping out all the material for the children. One bag down, six to go. (but still no school supplies).

The Adventure Begins

Sunday November 16, 2007

Our adventure began as soon as we set foot on the Belizean soil. Although it has been 3 years since we were last here, there were more familiar faces that expected. The man at the immigration counter looked at my mom’s passport and said, “Oh… when you crossed the Belize-Guatemala to come back onto Belize, I stamped your passport. That’s my signature right there.” Talk about a small world. Getting through customs wasn’t such a pleasant experience.

We didn’t look like your average tourists going to a Caribbean island for the week. We had 13 bags including a duct-taped cardboard box. The customs officials went through every bag and saw the 300 lbs of donated school supplies that we were bringing into the country. Mistake #1: Not getting a letter from the Ministry of Finance before arrival. Even after trying to explain what we’re doing who our contacts were, they still thought we were frauds looking to make an extra buck. Since we weren’t willing to pay a ridiculously high import duty, our donations are sitting in a hopefully locked and secure customs room.

The issue with customs resulted in us missing out flight. Luckily, the company ran an extra flight that day since there were enough people. Our puddle jumper was a little 12-seater, single prop plane. It was the smallest plane Kathryn or I had ever been in so it was quite exciting. Kathryn had the best seat in the plane sitting right behind the pilot with the ability to see what actually goes on in the cockpit. We missed dinner with Francis, Vern, and the other missionaries from Wyoming, but there was still a yummy meal of local cuisine to be had.

We worked most of Sunday at the school. The school is like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco: there is always something to be painted. From the humid and salty weather conditions, a portion of that school will probably always be in need of a fresh coat of paint. Today we painted the inside of a porch. Painting here is more functional than cosmetic. Considering what type of painting I’m used to doing, it was hard mentally to put a coat of paint on rough wood where every nail is visible.

The school is located on the northern outskirts of San Pedro and is built on top of a garbage dump. The school trucked in loads of sand to have a clean foundation to build on. It doesn’t smell very good, but there are neighbors that live on top of the dump without sand so I can’t complain too much. Their houses are built on stilts because the ground is so soggy and gross. The other side of the school is an inner coastal waterway with mangroves and crocodiles.

That afternoon we attended the first ever baptism performed by the Holy Cross Anglican Church. The bishop flew in to perform about 25 sacraments for both children and adults. The Bishop, the first Belizean-born bishop, spoke English but the ceremony was also translated into Spanish.

After the ceremony, Dad and I went back to the school to finish painting that section. We got a nice visit by some stray dogs and finished just as the rain started. I can now say that I’ve washed my arms with gasoline. When paint thinner and turpentine is too expensive, you wash your brushes in gas and then store them in diesel. My arms still smell like gasoline.

After a quick dip in the pool, it was off to dinner with some of the people from Wyoming. We strolled the newly cobble stoned streets and then it was off to bed.

Final Preparations

Greetings!

On Saturday November, 12 2008, the Korak Family is heading to San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize on a Mission Trip to help the Holy Cross Anglican Primary School. The school is in its second year of operation and educates over 400 children between Kindergarten and 7th grade.

This trip would not be possible without the support of all you! A special thanks goes out to the First Presbyterian Church of Wilmette, IL and the St. Philip Lutheran Church of Glenview, IL. Thank you to everyone who donated their time, skills and resources. With your help, we are maximizing our baggage limit to bring school supplies and hundreds of handmade school bags that members of both congregations created.

Due to limited internet access, we will not be able to post new entries everyday. However, you can expect a new post (pictures included) every couple days!





Thanks for all your support!
Greg, Carol, Julie and Kathryn Korak