Thursday, March 19th
Our flight arrived in Belize City at approx 1:20 pm yesterday. After negotiating with customs officers, we agreed upon a "reasonable" duty for the water filters. We stopped in Belmopan, the capitol city of Belize, for provisions, linner(lunch+dinner), and the 60 five-gallon buckets that we had ordered from Javier. Finally at around 8pm we arrived at Tranquility Lodge. After enjoying refreshments with Lodge owners/great friends Lee and Suzy and company we returned to our rooms for a much- needed good night's sleep.
We just arrived back at the lodge after a productive first day. During the dry season, March- May, the roads aren't so bad, but I learned to hang back behind other vehicles stirring up clouds of dirt. We stopped to say hello to Shantell and Juio and "our" students at Corazon Creek school. They have a beautiful new building, courtesy of a Canadian Rotary Club. The school looks better than ever with a fresh coat of paint and thatched roof that we helped to build in January, along with new sidewalks. Next, we drove to Mabil ha to see if that village had bucket water filter systems. Our friends Candelaria, Concepcione, and Ruda were doing laundry in a creek near the road. We told them to hop in the van, drove them home, set up water filter systems in their homes, tested the water at their village water pump, and finally drove them back to the creek. We stopped to visit Santiago and Margartia, who have a bucket filter system that has not been working. Rachael replaced the filter and reminded them to backwash it more often.
We had a little time to visit with the students in San Lucas and their teachers/our friends Phillip and Romana. Then, as promised, families came to the church at noon. A couple of weeks ago, they built beautiful new lavender and blue pews, using paint remaining after we renovated the school n 2013! Today we provided thirty bucket filters for the school and homes in San Lucas!!! Roy drilled holes in the buckets for the hose fittings and Rachael explained how to assemble and maintain the bucket filter systems. We all had a hand in helping with assembly and I collected $5 Belize from each family, which we donated to their Catholic Church at the end of the day.
Students at Corazon Creek and San Lucas were surprised to see only three of us in the van. They asked for other members of our mission team by name. Projects presented by January's awesome education team still decorated classroom walls,reminding me how blessed I am to be one of thee representing so many who give so much for the people of Belize!
On our way home we made a couple of stops to greet friends along the way. The principal of the school in Blue Creek,Mr. Chee, and Mr. chub would like for us to include a visit to their school in our itinerary for January, 2016. We drove to Punta Gorda to drop off San Lucas' health worker, Mr. Bo and returned to the lodge.
Rachael, Roy and I are very happy with today's accomplishments and we can't wait for tomorrow's big adventure, riding horses to deliver 30 purification systems to families in Macahkil ha village.
-Ann


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