Cantdog is back!!!!

[cantdog]

Belize contains a variety of physical types. There are Mennonites. Mayas. Mestizos and creoles, East Indians, Garífunas and even more pronounced Africans-- every sort of face.

Here's some of the boys. I did two boys, one teacher, and nine of the girls.

 

[cantdog]

We went to church the first Sunday in Maskall village. You see the pastor in the center, in the near background, wearing a tie and grey trousers.

I'm afraid the detail here has suffered from the exigencies of literotica's size limits.

 

[Guest]

And you touch my heart often. Please post more photos and thoughts.

Perdita

 

[cantdog]

I constantly jotted down little sketch notes, marginally, in my journal of the events.


I have the journal whipped into fair shape. Here's a brief excerpt:


To begin with, a few months ago, some mission group held a clinic in Belize, somewhere. Someone in the team performed a surgery, and a woman died under the anaesthesia. It happens. Surgery is risky.

Now MMI comes to town with this idea to hold a clinic or two in Belize.

Well, the politician who approved the other team's application must have had his feet held to the fire about it. Humans overreact. America hasn't been acting in a very benign manner, internationally, the last few years, either. And Dr. Lopez is a regional director in the Ministry of Health. The combination of these things with a political crisis of confidence in the current government was deadly to MMI.

Dr. Lopez doesn't like Americans at all; he told Mesa that, more than once. Mesa is the director of the project; he hails from the RD (the Dominican Republic), not America. The medical director is from the RD, too. the assistant director was born in New Jersey, but has lived in Ecuador the last ten years. Six out of ten of the North Americans on the project are Canadian. These facts do not sway Dr. Lopez. The week before we arrived in the country there was a strike of teachers, certain other government workers, and some transportation workers. Much ill feeling persists. The strikes concerned corruption in the government, and the ending of them has not redressed that basic condition. The ending of them did, however, reflect pressure from American interests, and European ones, too, but chiefly American.

Resentment has set Dr. Lopez's attitude, and so has his party's precarious political situation. Physicians, dentists, pharmacist, nurses, cerified techs-- The other woman died, and Dr. Lopez would as soon give some Americans a hard time, anyway. Mesa has brought to his desk proofs of the team's qualifications and lists of its medicines for the third time; but Dr. Lopez is not available, or Mesa must come back tomorrow, come back Wednesday. He knows the team is only in the country two weeks. But they do not have authority to practice medicine in Belize without his signature, and he doesn't even show up in his office, all day Thursday.

Frustration mounts. Thursday is the last straw. His secretary says to come back again the beginning of the next week. But Mesa and the tem are not going to do that. The second team, due in June, and the third MMI team, set to arrive in late July, are cancelled. Arrangements are made.

Off we shall go, Friday, February 18th, leaving not one pill behind for Lopez to sell.

MMI has an ongoing project in northern Honduras. They have full permission to work, and they have translators, transportation, places to stay, everything. Belize and the poor in Maskall lose. Honduras wins. Friday afternoon finds the team on a flight south. It will be a little more expensive than the alternatives, boats chartered to Puerto Cortes or a bus to Punta Gorda and a boat from there to Puerto Cortes, but the other two methods would take all day, and the flight only thirty-five minutes.

My family, constituting half the Americans in the team, was only intending to be there a week anyhow, so we're home. And right now the rest of them are in Honduras. We hated to leave without being able to do what we came to do, but until Lopez is no longer in charge of the region there will be no MMI team in Belize.

We didn't do nothing at all. There is no permission needed to do health education, even if medicine is not allowed. We held classes at the school on AIDS prevention, first aid, water purification. But the entire experience was quite dark and bitter.

---continued---

 

[SensualCealy]

Welcome home sweety!

Hope your trip was all you wanted it to be, we missed you!

C

ps, loved your sketch.

 

[cantdog]

King's College

The school! Mesa scouted for us and for affordable room and board, I don’t see how you can beat staying in a dormitory and eating meals from the kitchen at a boarding school.

The investment setting up King’s College came initially from a Christian group. But now the thing is entirely national. It takes high school students who are hardcases-- outlaw youth, I suppose. But they a were unfailingly polite and interested in all we did and said; a great bunch of kids, really. On the whole, a much gentler and more involved group of high schoolers than the ordinary US standard, as I recall the breed from my own teaching days.

(To clear up confusion, “College” is in the title of it, but it teaches entirely 12-to-18-year-olds; high school kids. The terms freshman, sophomore, and all are not used; rather the kids are 1 form, 2 form, and so on. But that level is referred to as “high school” in Belize, just as it is in the US.)

Kids play baseball and basketball, but there are plenty who also play rugby and there are some serious cricket towns in the country, and vigorously and hotly followed football (soccer, that is) teams with reggae/gangsta kind of names. Pop music in the age group is much more to do with New York City than with Caribe, although there is still some old-school “brukdown” music in the city. The age group of the kids here will also listen to Garífuna pop music, which has a distinctive beat, and the current reggae people, too, but much more radio time goes to the kind of music and even the very artists which black New York City kids find satisfying. Many Belizeans have relatives in the US, especially along the cities of the eastern coast of it. Christian-themed musicians are bigger here than I believe they are in the US, as well.

I'm doing this from work, so the pix will have to wait a bit.

cantdog

 

[cantdog]

An air of earnest poverty pervades Kings' College, yet it is far less harsh than the surrounding places, where folks have no capital, few resources. We arranged for some of the seniors to be taught in the Ecuador hospital. It can take two a year, only, but they were motivated.

We also spent a day teaching. We held a workshop on first aid skills, wound care, splinting. Then a unit on AIDS prevention, although we were asked not to distribute condoms. Included was a survey of STDs generally. The question period went for some time. One of the docs talked about respiratory illnesses, their causes, symptomology, and treatment. They were lively and interested. The dentist was not so popular talking about nu, you should floss, but he was clearly knowledgeable and accessible. Kids could be seen all day and all the next, having him peer into their mouths and make recommendations. Of course, he could do nothing but discuss it, as I explained. He is doubtless being very busy in Honduras now, though.

 

[NoJo]

That's a really nice avatar, Cdog.

 

[cantdog]

That picture of the front of the classroom building shows you a roof gutter which heads off at a strange shallow angle high on the building. It collects rainwater in a large tank with a petcock at the bottom. Rainwater is recognized to be safer to consume than the groundwater. Clean water with no amoebas for dysentery and no giardia or parasitic worms would be a big help.

In a survey of health needs we did, the people in Maskall felt that good water was their single biggest health concern. We had a card which detailed the basics of making water safe (a few drops of cloro, boiling for fifteen minutes) and many people got one. They are Christmas cards, mostly, with a sticker about water preparation on the back. The image can brighten the wall, and the lore will become current in the community.

There were such cards with other such medical lore, too: one on breast self-exams, one on breastfeeding, another about gastritis and how to cope with it, one about rehydration for sick people, with instructions on making a gatorade like drink for sick kids which replaces salts and electrolytes-- a sort of homemade Pediacare recipe. The cards are a good way to spread accurate and simple health maintenance knowledge. We did quite a bit of teaching.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

cdog!!! Fuck, I've missed you man.

Sounds like it was a worthwhile trip.

 

[cantdog]

Thanks, Joe. I've had a delight in toucans for many years. They are comical, colorful, and children like to watch me draw them. Rhinos and hippos are favorites, too. The toucan is a national symbol for Belize and also for Costa Rica. The teacher who had driven there to King's College from Manitoba said he'd been there three years, though, and never had seen one.

We saw them every morning in a particular tree next to the dorm building, which had little fruits. There was a date palm they poached in, also. Watching the fat little birds plop from branch to branch after the fruits or fly off with that preposterous bill leading the way was just cool. The birds there in Belize could fill your day. We saw a flight of green parrots arrow off into the jungle behind the ruins of the Maya temple at Altun Há. We saw frigatebirds like black kukri knives in the sky. Magpies and the boat-tailed grackles made impossible piping and whistling noises. Little tiny warblers worked the grass and bushes and swallows worked the air. Passerines from home were there, too: redwing blackbirds, cardinals, indigo buntings, redstarts, orioles-- they may have been the same fellows from the Maine woods.

To see toucans, you have to look up, you have to allow movement in the trees to catch the eye. You have to look, which people don't do. No day passed when the toucans did not come onto the school grounds from the bush surrounding it, yet Bob went three years with no sighting.

 

[cantdog]

Dr. Lopez in the Ministry of Health, all by himself, prevented our team from making it a really worthwhile trip.

The ass refused to take the forty seconds to sign and stamp the permission letter. He didn't like Americans, he said, at all. So the gynecologist, the internal medicine specialist, the pharmacist, the family practice resident, the dentist, the nurses and techs were all made into teachers and tourists. No one was treated. All that resource pissed away.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Dr. Lopez in the Ministry of Health, all by himself, prevented our team from making it a really worthwhile trip.

The ass refused to take the forty seconds to sign and stamp the permission letter. He didn't like Americans, he said, at all. So the gynecologist, the internal medicine specialist, the pharmacist, the family practice resident, the dentist, the nurses and techs were all made into teachers and tourists. No one was treated. All that resource pissed away.

Fuck, what an asshole. I get that there are many for whom letting others be harmed for a power trip is a no-brainer, but I'm always still baffled at it.

 

[cantdog]

Attached here is a piece of a sketchpad page of the girls'dorm where most of us stayed, and another random scene on campus.

 

[cantdog]

Being loose we did tourist things. Altun Há was maybe four miles from the school.

 

[cantdog]

The roadmap I think requires some narration. The country is as huge as Massachusetts and has maybe three hundred thousand people in the whole thing. The Maya Mountains in the south are empty of people, for the most part.

Belize City is the big town, and 45,000 people would be a reasonable estimate. Some areas, small areas, necessarily, are as rough as Kingston in Jamaica, but it was largely benign, bustling and involving, poor and crowded. Our school is up the Old Northern Highway. Ladyville is where the Belize City airport really is, and then at Sand Hill you choose the older road. We're in Chicago, just short of Maskall village.

You see the side road to Altun Há coming off from Lucky Strike, to our south.

People build houses on stilts. This is swamp jungle.

 

[cantdog]

The first Sunday we sorted the meds in the afternoon and hit the church in the morning at Maskall, as I told you. The road in Maskall was headed for this fruit tree, so they ran each lane on each side of it.

 

[cantdog]

I have to shave up and get going for work. Coffee is made. Later.

Thanks for the love, you guys. I missed you, too.

 

[impressive]

The first Sunday we sorted the meds in the afternoon and hit the church in the morning at Maskall, as I told you. The road in Maskall was headed for this fruit tree, so they ran each lane on each side of it.

Now here, if we did something like that & some idiot plowed into that tree while driving drunk, there'd be a massive lawsuit against the city/state.

 

[SensualCealy]

So what will it take to get Dr Lopez to allow you professionals the abilty to do what you went down there to do?
Im surprised they didnt take the offering of free health care with an open mind, heart and hand!
At least you guys know you went down there to do some good, your minds should rest easy.
(we need a pat on the back Icon!)

All the best to you Cantdog!
C

 

[cantdog]

Well, the group had six good full days in northern Honduras, after all. And we know more, thanks to the surveys and the feedback during the teaching, about the needs in rural northern Belize, which will be good when the time comes.

My suddenly discovered ability to do quick face studies meant that, for me, the trip was a watershed. I'm taking a sketch pad wherever I go, now! I mean, I am the man!

But aside from that personal thing, although very frustrating, it was certainly more good than harm to Belize and to us, too.

cantdog

---more later---

 

[Guest]

Cant, thanks for all the info and pics. I love the tree in the road, the stilt house, and the lovely girls. Hope to see a toucan someday too.

Perdita

 

[cantdog]

Toucans were just the start of it! There's a Mr. Chan at the school, a teacher. He's Maya, teaching classes in English and also speaking some Spanish. His wife, he says, speaks only Maya. You can get by perfectly well doing that in this part of the world. One day, he volunteered to take us into the bush.

"I love the bush," he told us. He had a big machete strapped to the hip and a lively grin. "It is too bad we can't go in at night. You shine a light over the lagoon and see all the eyes of the crocodiles. Other kinds of animals are out too, at night."

"Like jaguars?"

"Yes, jaguars; and the lizards and frogs. you see the bunch of eyes of the bigger spiders, too, in the light. Bugs, too. Big mantis, mantises. And the beetles. Bats. and the gibnut."

"Gibnut?"

"Paca," I supplied. "Big spotted rodent."

"Paca," he agreed. "They thump and you hear them chewing. And they grumble."

He showed us a tree with feathery fernlike leaves. This one supports a biting ant, so you are ill-advised to brush against it a lot. He fielded everyone's snake questions and told the story of the eight and a half foot boa which wandered into the schoolyard earlier that year. He said to just look what was on the other side before you cross a log, that's all.

"This one, I used to cure my stones. The root of this, and the root of another tree that we might see further in, maybe. It dissolved the stones so they went away and didn't hurt me any more. I got the roots of some of these, and you mash them all up with the other tree's root and some other things, and make a few gallon of the medicine, which you drink a lot of, for a few weeks."

Kidney stones, it was. And I recognized the saw palmetto as his first root. But my wife and daughter looked at each other. My daughter is a pharmacist, and my wife a nurse.

"There's nothing..." began my wife, and my daughter shook her head.

"No, we have nothing that can do that." It was a flat statement. My daughter makes a specialty of the herbal medications, too, so she can warn about interactions.

But there was less room for scepticism later. When we came back out, he pointed out a little low weed, like a miniature yellow daisy or black-eyed susan as to the flower, but the oversized center gumdrop "eye" is yellow, too. Like camomile crossed with black-eyed susan, very low, flowers maybe a centimeter or a centimeter and a half across. It was all over campus at the edges of the lawns, the way camomiles are. Everywhere.

"This is a strong painkiller, you can do mouth surgery with this." He plucked one low to the ground where the stem was thick, and squeezed sap out. "This is it, the juice." He licked it.

Thirty seconds later, talking about how to use it, which was as a topical, he remarked, "It's making my tongue numb, already. One whole side, all numb."

Well, this we could test. And it caused surface numbness in thirty or forty seconds! So maybe the root tonic dissolves stones, after all.

 

[rgraham666]

You should have brought some back for Colleen.

 

[cantdog]

He showed us the poisonwood, which is an unassuming tree which looked like a young elm as to its bark, and grew in the shape of a chokecherry. Pretty nondescript, ordinary-looking tree, really. It causes powerful allergic reactions.

"Some people can't even walk underneath the branches," he said. "But right there, you see that red looking one with the claw marks on it?" We did. "That is the antidote for it! When you see the poisonwood, look around, because nearby it grows the red one. You get the bark off and rub it on there, where you got the other one on you."

He knew the names of all sorts of things, but in Maya. "You have to be very careful to pronounce the Maya words. Ak means tongue, this part, in your mouth. But this one"-- a vine as thick as a woman's wrist, with its roots somewhere off stage, it had sent itself so far-- "is aq. And the cat, you know, the cat? The cat is meece. And the broom, that is meece; and to sweep is meece."

They all seemed to rhyme with piece. I couldn't hear any difference.

He showed us a hollow turtle shell with two holes in it, made, he said by a jaguar, with his teeth. And he showed us the pug marks, jaguar tracks in the mud by the creek. The photo was taken by the jaguar prints.