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Belize Trip #4: How I Got Involved with Belize They say that when you help others, you often receive much more than you give. That's been true regarding my volunteer service trips to Belize and is the main reason I keep going back there.
Sometimes when I tell people about my service work in Belize, they ask me how I got involved with it. Believe it or not, it all started with two hitchhikers who I met in a grocery store parking lot.
Late one afternoon in the summer of 2007, I drove to the Fred Meyer grocery store in Tualatin, Oregon, near Portland, like I do every week to buy groceries. As I was driving into the parking lot, I noticed a woman in her late 20's wearing an old t-shirt and torn jeans talking to a motorist who was leaving the parking lot. It just looked odd but I let it pass. I parked my van and started walking into the store when she approached me and said, "Excuse me, sir. Are you heading south on Interstate 5?" I replied, "No, I'm going into the store." She was polite and said, "Oh, I'm sorry to bother you," and moved on.
I came out of the store 45 minutes later and she approached me again and asked me the same question, then recognized me and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I already asked you that," and started walking away. But then she turned around and came back. "I'm sorry, but it's getting dark and we really need a ride down to the Interstate Rest Area in Wilsonville so we can catch a ride to California." She explained that she and her boyfriend had been in the parking lot all day trying to hitch a ride but with no luck. It was starting to get dark and I was concerned about them, so I said, "Sure, I'll give you a ride." It was 10 miles in the opposite direction from where I was going, but I drove them down I-5 and dropped them off at the Rest Area, and they were appreciative. I don't know what happened to them after that, but I hope they made it to California and are doing all right.
After getting home that evening, I picked up my mail and saw a course catalog from Portland Community College (PCC). I flipped through it and noticed a travel class called, "Build a School in Belize" sponsored by a service organization called ProWorld. The class sounded interesting but I turned the page, finished browsing through the catalog, and threw it into my recycle pile.
But then a few minutes later, I picked up the catalog again and re-read the description of the Belize class. I had felt good about giving that down-on-their-luck couple a ride down the Interstate, so I pondered the Belize class, thinking about how good I might feel if I volunteered for service work for an entire week. Then I thought about the work my father had done helping to build schools in Central America in the 1970s and all the uplifting stories he had told me about his work there, and that sealed the deal.
I signed up for the PCC class and went to Belize in February 2008, one of 20 participants. Then ten months later, in December 2008, I led an 18-person PCC group to Belize, and I went again to Belize in the spring of 2009 by myself to work on several projects. In December 2009, I went down to Belize for the fourth time in two years, this time leading a group of three participants from Portland Community College: a jovial guy named Gregg and his girlfriend Kate, and a fellow named Charlie. We were joined in Belize that week by a group of 18 American college students who had each signed up independently for a ProWorld program called "Winter Break in Belize." None of the kids knew us PCC folks or each other, and none had been to Belize before.
We were met at the Belize City airport on Sunday afternoon by a fellow from ProWorld and we all hopped on a school bus, which we rode for two hours to San Ignacio in western Belize, our home for the next week. As we drove along the jungle highway with all the windows down, I played tour guide and pointed out the scenic highlights, like the Hattieville prison, one of the most notorious prisons in Central America. As I told the group with a wink, "You don't want to spend your vacation in Hattieville."
The next morning at orientation, Adrian Bartley, the ProBelize country director, told us about our project that week. A Belizean couple, Jaime and Nancy Marin, wanted to build an orphanage on land they owned outside of San Ignacio. They were going to call their new orphanage Barzakh Falah and our goal was to build the first structure, the caretaker's house. We were going to employ a new construction technique using bags of compressed dirt instead of timber, building something like an igloo. The building would be much sturdier than the wood-frame construction that's so common in Belize and would be able to endure hurricanes, an important factor in this area.
Jaime and Nancy supervised and directed our work effort that week. Jaime (pronounced "Hi-mee") was an architect and engineer with the Belize government in Belmopan and had recently learned about this technique. His wife, Nancy, a former Miss Belize Tourism, had always dreamed of running an orphanage. They were a charming couple who I got to know well during the next week and they warmed my heart. They were both dedicated to their cause and had already adopted several children, so I was going to do everything I could to help them realize their dream.
Above left: Arriving in Belize on Sunday afternoon after a three-hour flight from Houston. Above center: Our group walking through San Ignacio on Monday. Above right: Adrian Bartley, the country director for ProBelize.
Above left: The orientation session in San Ignacio on Monday morning for 18 American college kids and four of us "older kids" from Portland Community College. That's Adrian Bartley leading the talk. Above right: After orientation on Monday, we took a dip in the Mopan River near Succotz.
Above left: Here's the library in the village of Succotz, which I'd worked on during my previous visits to Belize in February and December of 2008. It's looking good and is starting to take shape. Above right: And here's another old friend, the Pentecostal School in San Antonio, where I had also worked in February and December of 2008.
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