What Lies Beneath...

It’s easy to be swept up in all that’s right with Belize—the glassy cerulean water, breezy island winds, endless sunshine and a setting so laid-back and unassuming it’d make Jimmy Buffett jealous (rumor has it he does stop here from time to time). But take a stroll off the beaten path, away from the resorts and pools, and before long you’ll come face to face with the darker underbelly of this country, the part the government doesn’t want you to see: the slums of San Mateo. Today was our first day at Holy Cross Anglican School, and we were given a tour of the area where most of the students live—San Mateo, a forgotten expanse of nearly uninhabitable swampland, pockmarked by toxic bogs festering with raw sewage and errant garbage. The only way to get around is by following a narrow dirt path that winds itself around this destitute shantytown, a community of nearly two hundred makeshift dwellings, some of which house up to nine people. The smell that permeates the air is ungodly—a mixture of melted plastic, sulfur and sewage. There isn’t a whole lot that makes me uncomfortable or that I think I can’t handle, but this is one of the few places I’ve ever been to that I’ve really wanted to run away from and never see again. To think that the children we’d seen earlier at the school live in this deplorable wasteland, you start to see that these conditions are truly an abomination of the human condition.

But what we soon realized as we were led around by the school’s social worker is that Holy Cross Anglican has become much more than a school for this community—it’s a staple institution that the parents of these kids have come to rely upon nearly as much as the children themselves. Holy Cross is the only school in the country which offers a free, comprehensive feeding program where the children are assured two meals every day as well as a snack. Most of these students come from homes in the slums where domestic abuse and violence is rampant and food can often be considered a luxury. The majority of the “houses” in San Mateo lack running water or electricity, not to mention furniture or other accoutrements.

What we saw today brought home the whole reason of why we’re here: to hopefully make some kind of positive impact on the children’s lives. I’ll admit, before this morning I believed our mission was noble but idealistic nonetheless. Yet having seen the forces that we and others like us are working against, I realized the attention and urgency that a problem like this requires. I can only hope that during the rest of our time here we’re able to give these children the help they deserve and so desperately need, because at the end of the day I truly believe that they’re good kids with a lot of potential who really have the deck stacked against them.

As a general update, everyone in the group is doing well and we’re excited that we’ve got four more days here. The internet connection is extremely slow, so the hope of getting pictures on the blog is dwindling by the day. However, I will certainly add them as soon as I get home for everyone to see.