FAREWELL!!!

Dear friends, family, faculty, alumni, and everybody else,

We so sad that we have to go – it’s hard to believe it’s that time. Thanks so much for keeping up with us throughout this semester. We’ve had so much fun here and we’re glad that we could share just a tid-bit of the life that goes on here everyday. What an incredible semester it has been! Be sure to check up with us in the future if you like. And for those of you students who haven’t graduated yet, come on down for a semester with CCSP in Belize – it’s certain to be the best semester of your life!

TUBING ON THE CAVES BRANCH RIVER

Today we had a chance to visit one of the most unique rivers in Belize, the Caves Branch River. After a nice (but buggy) 45 minute hike through secondary broad-leaf rainforest, we found the place we would enter the river (see picture). Once at the river, we began the floating part of our adventure and during the next hour or so we drifted slowly down the river entering and exiting several huge caves. The caves had some fascinating geological formations and contain several species of cave dwelling animals like cave spiders and bats. What a fun way to end the semester!

CCSP (TRASH) ART SHOW

Is it possible for us to practice resurrection (as we like to say here at CCSP) with garbage? One person’s trash is another person’s art! We spent this Tuesday morning collecting trash along the Western Highway and Macal River, just down the road from our home here at Nabitunich. Instead of hauling it away to the dump, we opened up the bags and our imaginations to see what we could find. We had so much fun finding new and inventive ways for recycling those things we normally throw away or found on the street. And what a talented group we had this year! In a variety of colorful and just downright odd fashions we all attended the art show Thursday night, circling around each other’s work and listening to the artist’s inspirations. Here is a sampling of some of the work staff and students created.


TITLE: plant sequoias
ARTIST: hillary peterson and melissa lewis
MEDIUM: plastic bags, t-shirt, string, steering wheel cover


TITLE: chips and berry
ARTIST: crista krivoniak
MEDIUM: recycled study guide, cardboard, chips bags


TITLE: avant pop
ARTIST: leah johnson
MEDIUM: bottle caps, a rock, telephone wire, buttons

CHRISTMAS IN SUCCOTZ

Each December in Succotz, the closest village to our farm, the Good Shepherd Clinic (run by Nurse Margaret, part of the Juan family who live on and own Nabitunich) has a special Christmas lunch for the mature members of Succotz (aged 80-100). Nurse Margaret asked if we would come and sing Christmas carols for them while they ate, so we all packed up in the van and cruised down to the church. We sang 17 songs in 80-degree weather – isn’t it usually freezing cold when we sing these songs? Here is the group singing Silent Night.

WHERE DOES OUR FOOD COME FROM?

There is so much pleasure in eating. But how can we take pleasure in an international food system that prioritizes economics and efficient (and consequentially unsustainable) production over quality and healthy relationships between people and land? Wendell Berry has been a favorite of all of ours this semester and he offers a few suggestions on what it might look like to eat responsibly:
1. Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it.
2. Prepare your own food. This means reviving in your own mind and life the arts of kitchen and houshold.
3. Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is grown closest to your home. The local food supply is the most secure, the freshest, and easiest for local consumers to know about and influence.
4. Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist. By such dealing you eliminate the whole pack of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers and advertisers who thrive at the expense of both producers and consumers.
5. Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the technology of industrial food production.
6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening.
7. Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.

We eat a lot of rice and beans here in Belize, both of which are grown locally. It is so nice to be a part of a food system where we can know where your food comes from, and even at times know the farmer that gives us the fruits and vegetables that we eat everyday.

SCD2 IN PATCHAKAN

Sustainable |səˈstānəbəl|
adjective: able to be maintained at a certain rate or level

Community |kə-myoōnitē|
noun: a group of people living together in one place, especially one practicing common ownership

Development |di-veləpmənt|
noun: a specified state of growth or advancement

Though there is no true or right definition for sustainable community development, our purpose this week was to see how healthy development work ought to be done, in socially, economically, and environmentally responsible ways. Particularly this week we talked about food systems and how developing countries are affected by agricultural development projects. We spent part of the week in northern Belize in a Mayan village called Patchakan, a community that has been deeply shaped by the presence of large-scale export industries including papaya and sugar. We were fortunate to hear the story from both sides – from the tour guides of the factories that we visited and from the manual laborers whom we stayed with in our homestays. Next time you visit the grocery store, look in the produce department and you’ll likely find papayas exported from Belize by Brooks Tropicals, the fields and packing plant we got to visit this week. Also, it’s possible that some of the sugar you’re putting in your coffee or baking with is from the sugar cane fields of Patchakan, Belize. In fact, the food we consume each and every day has traveled an average of 1500 miles before it makes it to our tables. We spent a lot of time talking about alternatives and found some really neat information. For instance, if a family were to eat one meal a week of locally produced food (though CCSP hopes all of your meals would be local!), we would save 880 million barrels of oil per year. Sometimes the answers are in the math.

CCSP PARTICIPATES IN WORLD AIDS DAY IN BELIZE

December 1st is World AIDS Day and this year the Creation Care Study Program teamed up with our St. Andrews Youth Group to participate. Students in both groups raised money from local sponsors as well as baking almost 200 cupcakes for the event. In the end over $400 BZ was raised to fight AIDS in Belize. The event was coordinated by Cornerstone Foundation, for more information on donating or getting involved with Cornerstone visit www.peacecorner.org

PETER'S BOTFLY, OH MY!

Peter’s botfly finally made its way out of his lower back after a long and awfully uncomfortable five weeks. What is a botfly you might ask? Here is what happens:
1. Mosquito stings you or you rub up against something with botfly host egg and it makes it’s way into your body
2. Botfly larva lives and grows parasitically off of body for any amount of time – usually comes to full maturation at 6-8 weeks
3. If conditions are right and it fully develops, larva drops from host and finishes life cycle in the soil, soon becoming a fly.

Lucky for us, only one botfly species attacks humans, the Dermatobia hominis. Also, there are only a couple of places in Belize you can get a botfly – it is likely Peter got his in Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary while we were on Forest Ecology. Check out the before and after pictures.

MR. PABLO COLLADO

Our good friend and nationally recognized flautist Pablo Collado spent Thanksgiving with us this year. Pablo, in CCSP's opinion, is the best flute player in the world (you alumni fully understand). What a treat it was to have him walk around our dinner tables and serenade us as we ate our turkey and stuffing. After dinner he preformed for us for about an hour, playing anything from his own music (accompanied by recordings of jaguars and howler monkeys), Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, and a few Christmas songs here and there. It is hard to describe Pablo’s stage presence. He’s got the musical passion of Yanni with the dance moves of Michael Jackson (well, not quite). But look at the guy - he can play two flutes at once! This night is sure to never be forgotten. Check out Pablo’s website for a magical experience.

THANKSGIVING IN THE TROPICS

So here we are in Belize and it’s 80 degrees and it’s time for Thanksgiving? Approaching the end of November, most of us think of cooling (and often freezing) temperatures, falling and colorful leaves, warm drinks and even warmer cloths. For us, Thanksgiving Day was spent either snorkeling the reef at the Turneff Atoll or looking through a microscope at Nabitunich – far from what feels like a usual Thanksgiving. But as we all came back together on Saturday, we put together a pretty incredible afternoon of food, fun, and fellowship. As the Second Annual CCSP Thanksgiving Football Game took place on the lawn, pumpkin pies and a few turkeys sat in the oven being carefully watched by students and Miss Martha and Miss Shelly. Students decorated the veranda and dining room and really made it look great. We invited all of our friends and neighbors to our feast and had over 40 people come and enjoy Thanksgiving with us (check out the picture below). It was so nice to have everyone together again, and we especially enjoyed our musical guest Pablo Collado (see Pablo post). We have so much to be thankful for.

MARINE ECOLOGY AT CALABASH CAYE

Every one must be struck with astonishment, when he first
beholds one of these vast rings of coral-rock, often many
leagues in diameter, here and there surmounted by a low
verdant island with dazzling white shores, bathed on the
outside by the foaming breakers of the ocean, and on the
inside surrounding a calm expanse of water, which, from
reflection, is of a bright put pale green color.

So wrote twenty-six-year old Charles Darwin upon returning from his circumnavigation of the globe aboard the HMS Beagle. Those of us who took marine ecology could understand why Darwin felt the urge to wax poetic on the topic of coral reefs. This semester we returned to Calabash Caye, a small island in Turneffe Atoll largely dominated by mangroves. During the first two days, inclement weather kept us mostly indoors, huddling over cups of coffee and ovaltine, while listening to professor Laurie Furlong classify groups of marine organisms from phylum to species. Thankfully, the sun made an appearance just as we were ready to hit the water for some serious snorkeling. A highlight for many students was the mangrove snorkel. To many tourists, mangroves are smelly and unsightly. But if only they could don a mask and snorkel, they would realize that a miniature coral reef, with all the colours of the rainbow, is growing right on the prop roots of the red mangrove! Indeed, mangroves play a vital role in the marine ecosystem. Not only do they provide a nursery for juvenile fish but they also prevent sediment from reaching, and choking, the corals. Another memorable experience was the night snorkel. It’s always a little unnerving jumping into water at night, not knowing what may be lurking below you, having learned in lecture that sharks can see you and smell you well before you can see them. Taking the plunge at night was well worth it, however, as we saw nocturnal creatures, like lobsters and squid. The week ended with a volleyball game where we were eaten up by sand flies…


Did you know? (From Osha Gray Davidson’s, The Enchanted Braid)

A bumper sticker for reef fish might read, “God Created Adam and Eve, Adam Who Became Eve, Eve Who Becomes Adam, and Adameve.” Most reef fish are hermaphrodites, meaning that they can change sex. The most common form of this behaviour is for females to change into males. Interesting…

Corals are classified as animals, not plants. Very counterintuitive. And they eat other beings! At night, their tentacles emerge to shoot paralyzing darts into their prey, mostly zooplankton, which they then pull into their primitive mouths.

The sand beaches that we all love are actually excrement from parrot fish, who crunch at the hard rock of the reef to get at the algae. Think about that the next time you’re soaking up the rays on your favourite beach…

ST. ANDREWS YOUTH GROUP

CCSP students have teamed up with the St. Andrews Church to form the St. Andrews Youth Group. The youth meets every Saturday night as schedules allow. They have played lots of games and done lots of crafts. Highlights have been sports day, cookie decorating and skit night. The youth group is currently raising money for the AIDS walk taking place on 1 December 2007, World AIDS day.

FUN WITH MICROSCOPES

While some students were off exploring the ecology of streams and marine environments, the others were busy under the microscope. Prokaryotes versus Eukaryotes? Sounds like a blast! Well it really was as the twelve nursing students who spent a very intense two weeks studying bacteria, fungi, viruses and the interesting diseases associated with each one. The microscopes had a good workout as the students learned to gram stain and identify bugs from their throats, armpits and the kitchen sink not to mention some other more private areas. In the end even though the class was very challenging each student appreciated finishing off Microbiology in a quick two weeks.