Category Archives: International Development

Moving, Here and There

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In real time—September 1, 2017—I just woke up in my own home for the first time in three months after living, traveling, and working abroad.  It’s disorienting.  My place feels the same, yet different.  Maybe that’s because I sold it right before I left, and as soon as I unpack my suitcase I will need to start packing everything to move in one month.

This will be my third move in two years.  This one will be hard.  I love this place—its location on The Hill near all the mansions and shops and restaurants, and the character of the condo itself—with beveled glass, graceful curved woodwork, exposed brick walls, fireplace, high ceilings, and warm wood floors.

When I woke up at midnight last night to the creaking and thumping of my upstairs neighbor walking around on his wood floors, I smiled and knew I had made the right decision.

I’ll be moving into a duplex on St. Paul’s east side.  You know what they say about rents and real estate: “Location, location, location.”  And it’s true.  The duplex is very nice but there’s nothing much nearby except other duplexes.  Therefore it’s cheap.  I’ve signed a 10-month lease and I can lay low there until I decide what to do next.

I am lucky to have the choices I do.  I knew that intellectually, but spending time in refugee camps made it visceral.

—

I arrived at Heathrow from Addis Ababa at 7am.  I had barely slept due to my cold and, well, having to sit upright in a cramped airplane seat.

There was Lynn waiting for me in the arrivals hall—the one where they filmed the opening scene in Love Actually. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a sweet montage of people meeting people at the airport.  Friends, families, business associates … smiling, waving, hugging, laughing, and then walking off to start whatever lay ahead for them in London or beyond.

I transferred myself from Maki’s good guidance to Lynn’s.  I am a “take charge” person but Lynn is even more so, and we were on her stomping grounds now.

First stop, Boots, the chemist, which is like a prettier version of Walgreens. I loaded up on sore throat spray, cough drops, and tissues.  We got a cup of coffee at Costa and found the car rental kiosk.  Lynn bought all the insurance they offered, which would turn out to be a good thing.

—

This was supposed to be the vacation part of my sojourn—two weeks of driving around the southwest of Britain, starting in Cornwall.

Until recently, I’ve never had a problem logging off of work email and not checking it while I’m on leave.  I crossed a line somewhere and started doing that, and when I did, at Heathrow while Lynn was making the car arrangements, there was an email about an opportunity for us to submit a concept note to DFID, the UK’s Department for International Development.  It was due in less than 10 days.

A concept note is like a preliminary sales pitch to a potential funder.  You send them 3-5 pages summarizing your big idea and hope they ask for more, in the form of a full grant proposal.  Thing is, you have to put almost as much work into a concept note as a full proposal because you have to give them a top line budget number, and to get that requires, basically, developing the full project and budget.

I was really glad we were going for this, and I wanted to work on it.  I had met with a DFID representative two years before when I was in Amman, Jordan.  We had tried to stay loosely in touch with him, and if we are funded, it would be almost a textbook example of how development/fund raising works.

But the timing that was inconvenient.  Lynn doesn’t need anyone to entertain her, but I thought it would be rude to be constantly checking my email and on Skype while she was having a G&T by herself on the patio at the resort in Cornwall.  Being online too much would turn out to not be a problem.

Scenes from a Refugee Camp

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I spent two days in the refugee camps.  On the first day I got a walking tour of the camp from the young colleague who had shown such great interest in tiramisu.  He walked at a brisk pace and I managed to keep up despite the ground being muddy and strewn with large rocks and pocked with water-filled potholes.

We stopped in at the Women’s Centre which was run by International Rescue Committee.  We visited a primary school, where little faces looked up at me briefly and then back to their books.  They were probably used to strangers touring the camps. We walked past the playground:

It may look sad, but when you turned around there was this spectacular view of the mountains:

My colleague asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee and I responded enthusiastically.  People had set up small businesses along the main road; some sold beer, some packets of crisps and nuts or single application shampoo packets.  There was a cigarette vendor who sold one cigarette at a time, since no one could afford a whole pack.  We stepped into a thatched hut that served coffee.  I was the only woman and I got a few looks—not hostile or lewd—they just seemed to be noting, “Huh, a woman in the coffee hut.”  Knowing how hard women here worked, I wondered if there was a separate women’s coffee hut somewhere or if they managed without coffee.  Just the thought makes me tired.

We sat on the ubiquitous white plastic chairs, drank bittersweet coffee, and chewed on some kind of beans or nuts.  My colleague’s English was difficult to understand, so as I chewed I wondered if I would soon be seeing flying unicorns.  He talked about being an artist and a project he was working on.  I could croak out a few syllables now, but I didn’t want to be mute while traveling back to Europe in a few days so I mostly just nodded and smiled.

We returned to the CVT area.  There, we have built tukuls that serve as cool, calm oases in which people attend counseling groups.  We’ve got an art therapist from Chicago who is leading the painting of tukuls for children and creating mandalas on others.

We arrived at break time, so there was more coffee and popcorn with the whole staff of about 10 people.  They insisted I sit on the one (white plastic) chair while they stood or squatted on the ground.  I had been warned about this by others from headquarters who visited—that our staff will insist on visitors taking the chair and that it would be embarrassing.  I had just had an hour-long hike around the camp under a blazing sun.  I was twice as old as all of them.  Age is revered in some cultures and if my age or perceived status as a visitor got me the chair, I wasn’t going to say no.

After the break I was taken to a tukul where a group of 12-14 year old boys was assembled for a counseling session.  CVT’s standard counseling groups run for 10-weeks.  However, if you’ve ever had a teenaged boy in your life you know how restless they can be.  These Eritrean teenagers had picked up and walked out of their country.  They did not enjoy hanging around a refugee camp with no prospects.  As I’ve written briefly about before, many of them walk off again, toward the Sinai Desert in hopes of reaching Israel, or farther on toward Libya and the Mediterranean Sea with hopes of reaching Europe.  Some do make it, but most are kidnapped in the Sinai by Bedouin or other traffickers, or drown in the Med.

Ten-week groups are just too long—many of the boys won’t be around by the third week.  So CVT developed a three-meeting group model, and I was sitting in on the third one.  Everyone had a chair.  But first, they made me stand up and give a speech, since I was such an important person from headquarters.  Now this was a little uncomfortable.  Little did they know that I am nobody special, but I rasped out a few words anyway.

Auf Wiedersehen

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Greetings from Salzurg, Austria.  I am sitting in the breakfast lounge at Pension Elizabeth, where Abba is playing on a loop, the Internet is super slow, and the hotel staff are having some kind of meeting with a salesperson at the next table.

I’ll leave for the airport in a few hours to fly to Ethiopia, where I’m told I’ll have no Internet.  I would love to say I’m going to write enough posts to take you along with me, but that’s a fairy dream.  Complications are following me, and I can’t say I’ve really had one day off since I left 11 days ago.

I’ve got 200 emails in my work inbox.  The June 1 payment from my renters back home hasn’t shown up in my checking account.  I am getting texts and phone calls from someone who needs to know something about the sale of my condo and I have no idea who they’re from or what they’re about.

The most “exciting” complication happened when I flew from Copenhagen to Amsterdam.  I received a reminder from Expedia the night before to check in.  Norwegian Air’s website didn’t recognize the routing number but I got a message that said, “Don’t Worry! We’re still working on our website.”  Really?  Did Norway just get the Internet?

The train to the airport the next day left late and stopped twice to let other trains go by in the other direction.  In general, I think this is good, but not when it keeps you standing still for 20 minutes at a time. Finally, we were told to get off and take another train.  I had, as they always advise you, allowed plenty of time to get to the airport early but got there about an hour before my flight was to leave.

And Norwegian Air had no record of the flight.

It’s a long story, but I ran from one terminal to another, then back again, then back in the other direction, and was quoted up to $800 for a new ticket.  I did all this with my big bag full of books, since I hadn’t been able to check it.

In the end, I was lucky to get the last seat on a Scandinavian Airlines flight for $406.  Expedia says their records show I took the Norwegian flight.  They are telling me to call Norwegian Air id I still think there is a problem.  Call?—as in make an international call that will cost me $1 a minute to sit on hold?  I protested, but Expedia hasn’t responded.  If anyone has advice to doing battle with Expedia, please let me know.

Four hundred bucks is a lot of money to lose, but also in the mad rushing around in the airport, I must have dropped my bag on my foot.  Once I arrived in the Netherlands and took my socks off at my friend’s house, I saw an alarming gold-ball sized green swelling on the top of my left foot.  I immediately thought of the American journalist Miles O’Brien, who had a freak accident where something fell on his arm.  The incident seemed mild, but it caused something called Acute Compartment Syndrome.  He had to have his arm amputated.  Boy, is he good looking—you really should check out that article.

My foot swelling went down that night, but my whole foot has been black and blue for a week.  I showed it to my friend and we went down a check list: it’s not numb.  I can bend my toes.  It’s tender to the touch but not painful to walk.  The swelling is gone.

Good to go to Ethiopia, right!?

—

Other than the potentially fatal foot injury, $406 loss, and the nonstop rain that follows me everywhere, I’ve had a great time so far.

Okay, I’m off to bring the rain to Ethiopia.

I’ll write more when I get to Cornwall, England in a week or so.

Welcome, Now Go Away

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This is a series of posts about spending the summer abroad that starts here.

—

Greetings from Copenhagen!  Obviously I got here, and the journey was pretty smooth.

My flight to London from Minneapolis was sold out.  There were only two open seats, in the last row.  I was in the second-to-last row with a guy who introduced himself to me as Chuck.  “Chatty Chuck,” I immediately dubbed him in my head.  I flagged down a flight attendant and asked if Chuck or I could move to the empty row but she explained they were reserved for the flight crew.  I felt rude as I donned my earplugs and sleep mask while Chuck chatted away, but within minutes I was sound asleep.  When I woke after the plane leveled off, Chuck was in the back row.  “They said they wouldn’t need these after all,” he reported excitedly. I flopped down across two seats of heavenly sleeping comfort.

Now, two seats on an airplane are still not much room.  I’m 5’ 3” and still had to assume a fetal position.  But I was horizontal.  And I had my full-sized feather pillow, which gave me something soft to rest my head on instead of the arm rest.

It was the best sleep over I’ve ever had.  I woke the next morning at 11:30 London time, a half hour before arrival, and slugged down two cups of coffee.

My vertigo was gone.  My mother, a neurobiologist in her mind, had predicted, “that thing—you know, that airplane pressure thing,” might make it go and I had snickered but maybe she was on to something.  Now doctors could just prescribe a trans-Atlantic flight for vertigo.

One of my fears was that, because my trip is so long, border control at Heathrow might think I was entering the UK to stay.  I had an envelope with financial documents to prove I had assets in the US—a property, savings, a job to return to.  But the agent asked to see proof of my onward flight to Copenhagen.  When I checked in, the SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) website had promised to send my boarding pass via text “right away,” but it never materialized.

I was explaining this to the agent.  She looked annoyed and bored.  Imagine all the lame stories they must hear.  Typical of an immigration hall, there were signs saying, “The use of Mobile Phones is Expressly Forbidden in this Area.”  I asked permission to use mine so I could show an email with the flight confirmation.  She sighed and said yes, as though that was the most obvious thing in the world and why hadn’t I done it already?  The email wouldn’t load.  She rolled her eyes and said as though speaking to a very naughty five year old, “Madam, I will make a special allowance this time.  But in future, I strongly suggest you do not rely so heavily on technology.”

“But I don’t have a printer at home….”  She stamped my passport by way of saying, “Don’t Care!  Next!” and away I went.  In my passport was stamped this friendly message, “No work or recourse to public funds.”

I wonder what we stamp in visitors’ passports when they enter the US?  If anyone knows, please share.  Since I couldn’t go on the dole in England, I would just have to move on to Copenhagen.  But first I had to get my luggage, check back in, go through security, and hang out at Heathrow for five hours.

To my dismay, there was a five-inch-long gash in my suitcase.  I had been lucky enough to find an “It” bag, the lightest bag in the world, on sale at TJ Maxx. The Delta agent was very solicitous, giving me a claim number, telling me to register it online asap, and fruitlessly trying to tape up the gash with tape that immediately fell off.  As long as the gash doesn’t lengthen, I should be okay.  I’ve got some duct tape in my bag I packed to mend mosquito netting in Ethiopia.  I am keeping my expectations for the claim—for instance if Delta even responds to it within six months—very low.

How to Give Yourself a Migraine

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This is a series of posts about spending the summer abroad that starts here.

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After my last post, I feel I should write about the stressors of planning a summer abroad.

I would never claim it’s easy.  It takes a lot of planning and discipline—especially when you work part-time for a nonprofit—to spread out the expenses.

For instance, my renters wanted my place but with two caveats.  They wanted: 1) a queen sized bed; and 2) an air conditioner.

The AC was easy—buy the smallest possible unit because my bedroom is minuscule—pop it into the window.  Ha ha.  There were many tears, shrieks, and F bombs.  But it’s done, and I may use the AC myself.

The bed?  Another matter.  I love(d) my soft full-sized mattress but gave it up to my son.  Then I bought a bed in a box from Walmart.  These things are amazing.  They come in a box the size of a medium sized TV.  You open the box and phooosh!  In a couple minutes you’ve got a queen sized mattress.  Be sure not to open the box in a hallway!

I hate spending money at Walmart but there’s a reason people shop there—it’s the cheapest—and this mattress and frame are actually really good quality.  The mattress is hard as a rock which I hate, but apparently most people prefer.

—

I was all set with the renters.  Then, one month prior to departure, I made the decision to sell my condo. There are various reasons for this, but the timing was due to it being a red hot market for lower-priced properties like mine.

The day I called my realtor, I began to feel a dull vibrating roar in my head.  Did I mention that, in addition to getting ready to spend three months abroad it was also Proposal Hell Month at work?  I have never felt so overwhelmed, and so productive, in my life.

If you’ve ever sold a house, you know there are a ton of decisions and paperwork to deal with.  You have to get your house pristinely clean and keep it that way at all times.  You have to drop everything and leave to make way for showings.

I woke up the morning after my decision, rolled over in bed, and felt like I was on the deck of a heaving ship.  Damn—vertigo!  I’ve had it 2-3 times before and I know it’s the result of me being pushed beyond my limit of stress.

—

The house went on the market.  There were 20 showings in three days, and four offers by the end of the fourth day.  I will make a nice profit, although it will just make up for the last time I sold a condo, at the bottom of the Great Recession in 2009.  It’s my turn.

The renters are protected—I made sure of that.  My realtor will sign all the closing paperwork for me in June and I’ll rent my own condo from the buyer for a month when I get home.

Home.  Where is home? Where will I go next?  I have no idea.

—

I went to see my doctor, then to a dizzy clinic.  I’ve seen two physical therapists and don’t feel any better.  They think it may be a Vestibular Migraine.  This is a migraine without the headache.  It still sucks plenty, because one symptom is episodes where so much pressure builds up in my head that I feel like I’m having a stroke.

The worst part of this whole summer adventure has been trying to buy a new phone from ATT.  I’ve been using the same iPhone 4 for five years and it was time for a change.  I tried over and over to buy an iPhone SE from ATT, but apparently they don’t like people spending money with their company because they screwed up the order half a dozen ways.

I know, first world problems.

I think I’m ready.  I can’t wait to have some down time. I don’t know when I’ll post again, but I’ll write from across the ocean eventually.

See you on the other side!

How to Spend the Summer Abroad

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This is a series of posts about spending the summer abroad.  The idea germinated from an offer to housesit for a friend in Windsor, England, for the month of July.

When I tell people I’ll be gone for the whole summer their first question is usually, “What are you going to do with your place?”

I’ve fought and struggled for everything in life, but the answer to this question unfolded easily, so I figure it was meant to be.

When I got the offer to housesit, I searched Craig’s List to see if there was anyone out there who might be interested in renting my place for July. The first posting that popped up was from a couple looking to rent a place for the summer.  They are originally from Minneapolis, are retired in Florida, and they want to be in Minnesota to spend time with their kids and grandkids during the glory days of summer.

They seemed like ideal renters.  He is a retired insurance agent.  It was highly unlikely they would be having any wild parties.  So I expanded my thinking to being gone for the whole summer. This couple also agreed to rent my car, which will cover my car payment.  I live in a condo, and the management company agreed to manage the rental for a 7% cut.  That seemed reasonable—what could I do anyway if the toilet in my condo overflowed while I’m was in Ethiopia?  The management company will deal with it.

I can’t afford to not work.  Being away for three months requires working remotely; something my employer is okay with because I’ve proven myself.

—

I currently work 90% time and love it. On my two unpaid days per month, I go to the bank, the farmer’s market, the grocery, post office, liquor store, library, pharmacy—during the week, and then I actually have a weekend.  I have paid a price for it, which is that people view you as not being a “high powered” career ladder climber.  In the U.S. in particular, we highly value people who come in at 7am, work til 7pm, check work email 24/7, and forfeit their vacation time.  I like my job, but I enjoy so many other things too, like blogging, being outdoors, spending time with people I love, and travel.

Back to the summer plan: there are so many moving pieces.  Rental income must be reported to the IRS.  Several people have said, “Just don’t report it; they’ll never find out.”  I’m one of those suckers who believes in paying my share.  Plus I don’t want to go to prison.  So I’ll report it, but to offset it, I will go down to working 80% time.  That means a four-day work week.  The paid time off I’ve stockpiled, plus the summer holidays, will mean I’m basically working an average of three days a week.

I realize many people cannot afford to work part time, so I feel really fortunate.  After slogging away at my career for 30 years, I make a certain level of income that, if I am frugal, allows me to do this.

—

I’ve been paying for flights and Air B&Bs and trains as I can afford them over the last four months, so my June travels are paid for except for food and miscellaneous.  In July I’ll be house sitting and in August I’ll be a house guest, so I won’t have accommodation expense.

This is where I need to point out, if it isn’t obvious, that I have very good and generous friends.  I met Lynn and Sam when I was working in England 10 years ago.  Facebook and email and What’s App make it easier to maintain friendships across the ocean.  But I’ve also physically visited Lynn and Rob and vice versa, over the years—which takes time and money and effort.  I met my Dutch friend, Ingrid, before the Internet existed.  We wrote letters a couple times a year; she came to the US twice and I visited her twice.

I didn’t make these efforts to maintain friendships because I wanted a free place to stay, but it’s a bonus!

A Summer Abroad

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This is the last in a series of posts about Belize that starts here, and the first in a series of posts about spending the summer abroad.

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When I returned from Belize, my legs were so itchy from bug bites and I had to run to the bathroom so often that I didn’t get a good night’s sleep for a week.  Going to a developing country with an experienced tour provider is no guarantee of protection; you still have to look out for yourself.  I should have clocked on to the water situation sooner—that Jungle Jeanie’s was filling our “drinking water” jug with tap water.  I’m not saying that Jungle Jeanie’s was trying to hoodwink us.  Maybe they were dropping chlorine tablets into the water and thinking that was sufficient, but it wasn’t.

I don’t think there was anything I could have done to prevent the bug bites.  We all had different kinds of repellant and none of them worked.

Post-trip, we went around and around about how to share photos. We tried Dropbox but quickly ran into the storage limit and no one volunteered to pay for a higher one.  I created albums on Facebook and shared the links to them.  Others sent photos the old fashioned way, via email.

I think some tour companies create websites on which customers can share photos, but Wilderness Inquiry doesn’t offer that.  There could be a great business opportunity for someone who contracted with tour companies to manage their groups’ photos—editing, curating, and making them available to technology-averse oldsters.

I have thought of friending Emily on Facebook but can’t find her.  I searched for her exact name in my email just now and found this photo she took in a gas station bathroom which demonstrates our shared interest in foreign signage.

—

Would I go on another Wilderness Inquiry trip?  Absolutely.  Would I recommend it to others?  Yes.  This is the 4th time I’ve traveled with a group.  I went to England with Volunteers for Peace, to Israel with 175 Jews from Minnesota, to Portugal with a British company called Newmarket Tours, and now to Belize and Guatemala with Wilderness Inquiry.

In general, tours are less stress because they do all the planning and take care of almost everything for you on the ground.  They vet your accommodations.  They get your bag from the airport to the hotel, pay the bill at the restaurant, and communicate with the local guides. I haven’t done the math, but I’m sure this trip cost a lot less than if I had arranged everything on my own—especially taking my time into consideration.

You have to be open to being with other people 24/7.  You have to be willing to skip a day of activities if you need alone time. If you are traveling solo, you have to fork over the single supplement—which is substantial—unless you go with an outfit like Wilderness Inquiry that will match you with a roommate.  Overseas Adventure Travel is the only other company I am aware of that doesn’t charge the single supplement (on most trips).  However, I recently tried to be taken off their mailing list and their website makes it almost impossible.  In fact, a week after submitting my request, I got this catalogue.

It’s like porn for travelers, but it makes me wonder about their customer service.

—

As I write this, it’s 12 hours til I get on a plane to London.  From there, I’ll fly to Copenhagen, Denmark and spend a few days there.  When you read this, I will be in Utrecht (the Netherlands) with my friend Ingrid who I met on that Volunteers for Peace trip.  After spending time doing fun summer Dutch things, we’ll take a train to Salzburg, Austria.  Salzburg is famous as the “Sound of Music” city and I’ve heard it’s cheesy but I don’t care.

From Salzburg, I’ll go to Ethiopia for work.  After that, I’ll spend the rest of the summer in England and Scotland.

Rising Above (or Not)

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This is a series of posts about Belize that starts here.

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This post will have a lot of photos from our hike up Victoria Peak, the second highest point in Belize.  First, we stood and looked at the map for about 20 minutes.

Our intermediate objective was a waterfall where we could swim, but it was listed under “strenuous” and Joan, with her arm in a sling, wasn’t up for that.

“It’s the only way to get to Victoria Peak,” said Mark.  “Maybe you can rest by the falls while the rest of us continue on.”  And that’s what we did.

I’ve done a lot of hiking and I was pretty confident that “strenuous” wouldn’t really be strenuous—that they just called it that for out-of-shape hiking newbies. And I was right; the trail was pretty flat, if uneven.

I stopped every few feet to take photos of the plant life.  These are the tiny ones.

Then there were the majestic trees, giant ferns, and braided vines.

Liz and Mike were talking loudly.  Every time I snapped a photo Liz would exclaim, “Good eye! Ah wouldna never seen that.  That’s something I never woulda seen.”

“Go on ahead, I’ll catch up,” I said.

“Oh no you don’t; we’ve got our eyes on you, baby!” Mike replied, with a guffaw that indicated he thought he was being funny.

There is a rule in hiking where the group should never let any member out of sight.  I was falling behind because I was taking so many pictures and because I wanted to hear the birds.  Mike and Liz were justified in keeping me in sight, but I wished they would stop blabbing.

“I wonder why we don’t hear any birds,” Mike boomed.

“I think if we’re quiet, we will,” I suggested.

That didn’t’ work.  They discussed how far it was to the peak and Liz used her pet phrase, “Close enough for government work,” twice.

In the van on the way to the park, Stan had told me about his last two years as a postal worker, learning new software that helped mail arrive from Point A to Point B anywhere in the continental US in two days. It’s amazing when you think about it.

I thought about all the government proposals I’ve worked on that funded rehabilitation for survivors of torture and war trauma. We work hard to be precise, even down to the GPS coordinates of the refugee camps.  But hey, maybe next time I would write, “Just give us the money and we’ll do a pretty good job—close enough for government work!”

We reached the waterfall and half of us stripped down to our swim suits and waded in.  The water was ice cold and refreshing. We frolicked until our sweat and sunscreen and bug spray washed downstream, then put our clothes back on over our wet suits and left Joan on a bench while we ascended to the peak.

—

The hike to Victoria Peak is not for sissies. It’s steep and long.  When we started, it was hot and humid and our swim suits under our clothes created a personal sauna effect.  Squads of biting insects attacked our ankles and legs.  We re-applied bug spray but that didn’t deter them.

The landscape changed from steamy, close-packed jungle to open, ferny woodland with pine trees.

As I staggered up the switchbacks, I caught sight of these tiny, iridescent cobalt berries.

Emily was breathing heavily.  She gave up and sat on a log to enjoy the view while we went on to the peak.

There was discussion of the 13 extra feet we would have had to hike to reach the highest peak in Belize.  Once more, Liz said, “Close enough for government work.”

I turned to Stan and asked, “As a government worker, weren’t you glad you could be sloppy?  I sure am!”  Stan gave a low laugh and edged away from us.  I knew Liz’s digs about government workers had bugged him too but he didn’t want to be drawn in.  Liz squirmed and pretended she hadn’t heard me.

I walked off; Stan took this photo of me with a telephoto lens, contemplating the view.

Bible Bangers and Tummy Troubles

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This is a series of posts about Belize that starts here.

—

One of the missionaries had followed me into the store.

“Are you from here?” he asked.

Do I look like I’m from here? I thought, but responded no.

“Do you have a few minutes to hear God’s holy word?”

“No,” I said firmly. “I’m busy buying mouse glue.  Besides, I’m Jewish.”

He pulled back as though I had said, “I drink the blood of Christian children,” which in his mind was likely synonymous with “Jewish.”

“Well, Christ bless you and have a blessed day,” he said as he handed me this card and hurried off to save other souls.

The back has more judgmental drivel, and their contact info, but I’m not going to share that.  This kind of thing really pisses me off.  Aren’t there any sinners to save in Iowa?  Sure there are, but Iowa is cold, so here they were, probably with all their expenses paid by their congregation, proselytizing in the sunshine.

I walked around the neighborhoods of Havana and Harlem.  This is a typical street scene.

There were churches on every corner, so again, why the need for missionaries from the US?  Here is Epworth Methodist.

The housing stock varied from run-down shacks that seemed inhabitable, to perfectly-maintained villas.

I loved the name of this restaurant, “Always Hungry.” I wasn’t sure if I would want to eat there, but it was good to know they had a pay phone outside in case I needed one.

There were a number of “fast food” restaurants; this is Wen Quan Chen Fast Foods:

And another Chinese restaurant, Fu We Kitchen:

I liked this combination of services—Frank’s banisters and tombstones:

I wonder how much longer this place will stay in business now that we are making it so difficult for anyone to enter the US:

Our group rendezvoused at the van and drove back to the spot where we had watched birds, but after much searching we couldn’t find Trudy’s shoe.

We stopped to get gas and a man was sitting between the pumps ladling something out of a 10-gallon plastic drum into empty glass bottles.  Other customers were snapping up the bottles so I called out the window, “Whatcha got there?”

“It’s Irish mess!” he answered enthusiastically.  “It’s a mess o’ seaweed and spices.  Very refreshing, and only 50 cents.”

Mark pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket and I said in a low voice, “Think about the water.”  He slipped the coins back in his pocket.  We had all started having tummy troubles.

“I don’t understand it,” said Mark.  Jeanie supplied drinking water in a five-gallon jug in the lodge for $1 per liter. We had all assumed it was purified.

I thought about it and asked Mark, “Have you ever seen a truck delivering new bottles of water?”

He paused thoughtfully. “No, now that you mention it.”

“So they just refill the same five-gallon jug from the tap in the kitchen, I’m guessing.  We might as well fill our bottles directly from the tap.  That’d be free.”

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After lunch, we were off to Cockscomb Basin.  As we drove down the long entry driveway, something big and black slithered quickly across the road.  When we arrived at the preserve, which had a well-funded interpretive center, we immediately identified the critter as a Jaguarundi. This was promising; we were all excited about what else we might see here.

In the office, Mark was having a hard time convincing the guy at the desk to let us in because we didn’t have a reservation or a local guide.  I think the contents of the jar were meant as a warning of what could go wrong if we wandered through on our own.

I’m not sure how Mark got us in and I don’t need to know, but we were soon hiking through the jungle on our way to Victoria Peak—at 3,675 feet the second-highest mountain in Belize.  Doyle’s Peak is the highest, but it only beats Victoria by 13 feet.  I had no sense of how high 3,675 feet was and I’m glad I didn’t or I might have skipped it.

Shoeless in Dandriga

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This is a series of posts about Belize that starts here.

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Our last full day in Belize.  The plan was, as the itinerary stated, to “Visit the famed Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Preserve for a guided tour of the jungle. Run by the Belize Audubon Society, the Cockscomb Basin is one of the last refuges for the Jaguar, as well as many other species of birds and animals.”

But first, Mark wanted to go to the nearest large town to get cash, since Jeanie had informed us there was no ATM in Hopkins.  Trudy, Stan, Mark and I went along for the ride to Dandriga, which was half an hour north on very smooth, new roads.

We passed Mennonites in horse-drawn buggies.  They had established farms along the route, and I feel bad saying this but their houses were perfectly tidy, without a board out of place nor a rusty awning in sight.  By contrast, the other houses all appeared to be in advanced states of decay.  Siding was missing, windows were boarded up, anything metal was rusty.  Was this due to the Mennonites having more money? The Mennonites came voluntarily, whereas other Belizeans were brought as slaves or at the very best, subjugated.  Did the Mennonites have some sort of uber pioneer protestant work ethic?

I was about to write “natives” vs. Mennonites, then realized the current Mennonites are just as “native” as anyone else, since their forebears emigrated from Holland in the 17th Century.

We pulled over on the side of the road to watch flocks of birds in the wetlands.  Trudy kicked off her shoes and squashed through the mud.

In Dandriga, Mark reminded us to get $40.00 cash for the airport exit fee.  Mike had some trouble using his card and went inside.

“The teller said we could have gone to their Hopkins branch,” he said when he emerged.  “It’s in a place called Trinnie’s that rents kayaks.”

We decided to wander around Dandriga for an hour. Trudy went back to the van to get her shoes and returned, frantically pointing at her feet.  Without Emily, we had no way of knowing what was wrong.  Mark dug a notepad and pen out of the glovebox.

“One of my shoes is gone!”  Trudy wrote.

“It must have fallen out of the van when we stopped,” Stan suggested.

So Trudy sat in the van.

The first thing you would notice about Dandriga, unless you were Trudy, were the missionaries on the main corner with megaphones, shouting that we are all going to hell if we drank alcohol or fornicated.

Once I heard them pronounce “out” and “about,” I knew they were American, not Canadian.  They were blond and plump and extremely sun burned. If someone did this on my street, I would be seriously annoyed and demand that the police shut them down.  But no one in Dandriga seemed to mind, they just smiled and nodded and kept walking.

All the shops were Chinese owned, with the exception of one Indian place called Jai.

I went into a store called The Price is Right, bought a bag of pecans labeled “For Sale at Costco Only,” and munched on them while I looked around.

There was a large section of glucose products.  Was it cheaper and easier to consume glucose than real food?  The thought made me queasy.

Belizeans apparently inherited a love of beans from their days as a British colony.  These were one-gallon cans.

And in case you spilled beans on yourself, there was a large selection of bleaches.

The prices were marked by hand. Couldn’t they afford one of those price label makers?  I wondered where Koleston Hair Color came from.  The name sounded too close to colon for me.

My favorite item was the Mouse Glue. So many questions….can you also use it to catch elephants?  How does it “kill rat & mouse without poison”?  Do you have to dispatch the poor rodent yourself once it’s helplessly mired in the glue?  What is mocosity and just how strong is it?  How would I avoid stepping in this goo myself in the middle of the night?  And where do dragon hunters fit into the picture?