Public Notice that there will be an outage tomorrow (March 12, 2010) starting at 5:00 am to 8:30 am from the Boca Del Rio area to Tranquility Resort. BTL will try to run standby to hold from the BTL office to the Boca Del Rio Bridge, so power will only go off temporarily for that area.

IR Satellite Photo

General Situation: Dry Southeasterly airflow prevails.  24hr Forecast: Sunny and warm today, clear skies tonight. No rainfall is expected. Winds: South to Southeast at 5 to 15 knots. Sea State: Choppy. Outlook: Through Saturday: Warm and dry weather becoming cloudy with a few showers over the weekend as a cold front passes the country.  Highs: 32°C/89°F – Lows: 25°C/76°F

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San Mateo Subdivision, Ambergris Caye Belize

In the shadows of paradise lies a group of shacks. They are propped up on stilts and pieced together with odds and ends of tin and wood. They rest on scattered trash, stagnant sewage and sticky swamp and are connected by a haphazard system of narrow bridges built with plywood and nails.

When situated on Belize’s Ambergris Caye, the San Mateo community of shacks and swamp is a far cry from the azure skies and emerald seas tourists find on the rest of the island. And while it is nothing like life at Ole Miss, the tiny Belizean community has been an extended member of the university family.

University of Mississippi students are helping raise money to establish a road system in San Mateo as a part of the San Mateo Empowerment Project. Eleven years ago, social work professor Kim Shackelford began vacationing on the island. Two years ago, she began taking UM students to the island for intersession and summer courses.

The result has been a slow but strengthening bond between the communities of Ole Miss and San Mateo.

Ole Miss students have tutored children and taught music or art at the local school; the Delta Gammas set up a sight project to help buy eyeglasses for children who can’t afford them; students from the department of engineering have drawn plans for a health clinic.

And this year, a group of Ole Miss students adopted the 175-family community longterm and promised to help improve this forgotten corner.

During the January 2010 Wintersession, a group of seven students traveled with Shackelford to Belize for an education, health and child welfare class.

The course was initially designed for the students to get to know the community through volunteering at the Holy Cross Anglican School and by performing surveys.

However, by the time the class had gotten a grasp on the needs of the community, nobody wanted to let go, said Jake McGraw, senior public policy leadership major from Oxford.

It became evident through the class’s first assignment of talking with community members that the main needs of the community were roads, electricity, sewage and water.

The Holy Cross Anglican School provides the community with many valuable resources such as a dental clinic, computer lab, library, as well as education to 517 children, a third of which are from San Mateo. Despite being a beacon of much-needed hope, the school cannot provide infrastructure to the community.

Neither can the community on its own.

The most recent Ole Miss class to visit San Mateo saw a need and desire for change and saw it as their responsibility to help make it happen.

“Not only do we want to do this, we should do this,” McGraw said.

It had to be a community effort, though. So, the class organized a community meeting.

Only a few people attended the first meeting, but the second meeting saw 30 community members in attendance. By the third meeting, 90 people attended plus representatives from both political parties, he said.

Those who attended agreed that the first issue to be addressed should be roads, he said.

The precarious plywood bridges, known as “London bridges,” were at parts barely wide enough to walk across, much less bring in the equipment and materials needed for electric poles, sewage pipes or a water system, McGraw said.

Since San Mateo’s inception, the government has promised to build roads and provide basic utilities, but through a decade of changes in political power and broken promises, the community has seen nothing.

“They are hard-working people, honest people, and they’re getting no help from anyone,” McGraw said.

Thus, what is now called the San Mateo Empowerment Project was born. A project that will give the people of San Mateo the support and resources they need to improve their community.

The needs are great, though.

The first phase of the SMEP is to build a main road of 1.5 miles through the area. The cost, calculated by one of four committees made up of San Mateo community members, will be $285,120.

If fundraising goes according to plan, the project should take at least two years. And then, after the first main road, the community will need to build side roads and fill the lots underneath all the houses.

The project is daunting, but the commitment from the community members and students is up to the challenge.

“I know it’s going to get done. There isn’t a doubt in my mind,” Shackelford said.

On her most recent trip to San Mateo in February, Shackelford met with 92 community members and their enthusiasm was as vibrant as ever.

“They’re totally taking charge of this. They know it’s their project,” she said.

Shackelford helped set up an executive board made of San Mateo community members.

The project now also has its own Belizean bank account, logo, stationery, and is also working on being a registered non-profit in Belize.

The biggest testimony to the community members’ commitment was a suggestion made at the meeting, Shackelford said.

An older community member stood up and said it wasn’t all the University of Mississippi’s responsibility to fix San Mateo, she said. So he suggested that each family pledge $5 per week to the project until its completion. It might not sound like much, but it is a big sacrifice to the families of San Mateo.

“We had over 100 families come to the meetings at different times, and I don’t know if they can pay $5 per week,” Shackelford said.

However, there is a spirit of sacrifice the community members possess that will be crucial in completing this project.

Patrick Welsh, a senior political science major from Oxford who also went on the January session trip, met an 8 year-old boy who really wanted a soccer ball. He had no father, two sisters and lived in a tiny shack. He played drums at a bar to help bring in money for his family.

When Welsh was going to buy him a soccer ball, the boy, Hussan, changed his mind and decided he would rather Welsh bought food and household supplies.

“He was sacrificing the toy he never had.” Welsh said.

Those who attended the winter session course do not plan on leaving behind the people they met in San Mateo.

And with each group Shackelford takes down to the community, the seemingly random bond between Ole Miss and the Belizean island grows stronger.

The next trip for San Mateo is scheduled for Spring Break and still has two spots open.

Shackelford plans to keep involved each class with the small island community. The groundbreaking for the road is scheduled on March 14, just in time for the next group of Ole Miss students. DM Online

Six high schools from across Belize competed today in the Belize Math Olympiad’s National Championship. IT was held at the University of Belize Gymnasium in Belmopan.

From the north, Muffles College and Linda Vista High School competed against San Pedro High School and St. John’s College from the Central Zone while Belize Christian Academy represented the west and Stann Creek Ecumenical was there for the south.

In the end of a hotly contested event, San Pedro High came out on top with five thousand points. Belize Christian Academy was second with 4,400 points and Muffles College was third with 4,000 points. 7 News Belize

American Crocodiles in Belize Need Your Help! ACES / American Crocodile Education Sanctuary is permitted by the Belize Forest Department and rescues problematic, and inhumanely and illegally kept crocodiles country-wide. These rescued crocodiles currently need a larger habitat. These problematic 12 foot crocodiles cannot be re-released, because they have been fed by humans. Just like bears, these apex predators now seek out humans as a food source and their only other alternative is to be killed. ACES houses these large reptiles to help save this threatened species from extinction and in hopes of aiding researchers in finding cures for diseases. In laboratory studies, Crocodilian blood kills HIV and Herpes simplex. So contact ACES today and learn how you can help ‘Take a Bite Out of Extinction!

The Crew out on the Weekend

What a weekend this was. There was a 80’s themed party at Holiday Hotel, that for sure brought out all the fun, vibrant, and unique individuals of San Pedro. There were of course members of the gay and lesbian community on hand, I mean an 80’s party in tropic on the beach is something that just made perfect sense to attend.

When I drove past on my golf cart earlier I saw the red carpet and at the head of the line was Tina Turner, Tom Cruise, and Slash. I got quite excited as it reminded me of drag shows back home. I mean I have not seen a Tina drag queen a over 6 months, I nearly rear ended another cart.

The night was full of dancing, drinking, shooters, and lots of laughs. We did not finish at Holiday Hotel, we continued on to Jaguars, and for the fearless ended at Big Daddies. Another 5:00am night, and another very tired Sunday. Source: Gay Travel Belize

A Belize City man was arrested by San Pedro Police after he tried to cash a forged cheque at one of banks on the island. Just before one o’clock on Friday afternoon, acting on information received, San Pedro Police visited the Atlantic Bank Limited office on Pescador Drive in San Pedro where a man identified as 40-year-old Orion Paul Vernon of a Regent Street West address in Belize City attempted to cash a cheque.

The cheque bearing serial number 2-1-9-3-5-9 was made out in the amount of Belize $53,000 and was from the Belize Food Supplies Company bank account. As a result, police closed in on Vernon and he was apprehended and charged for the crime of Forgery.

Vernon was arraigned today at the San Pedro Magistrate Court before Magistrate Emerson Banner. Magistrate Banner read a single charge of forgery and no plea was taken since the matter is an indictable Vernon was offered bail. Prosecutor Sergeant John Sanchez objected to bail on two grounds. The first grounds for objection were that Vernon was granted bail for similar charges in the Belize City Magistrate Court. Sergeant Sanchez told the court that Vernon failed to appear in the Belize City Magistrate Court on the date of his adjournment and the court issued a bench warrant for his arrest. The second ground for objection was the fact that the investigation is still ongoing and it is likely that Vernon would interfere with the witness.

Magistrate Banner upheld the prosecutor’s objection to bail and Vernon was remanded to the Hattieville Prison until his next court date scheduled for April 6th at the San Pedro Magistrate Court. According to police, they were on the lookout for Vernon and had set up an operation since he is allegedly implicated in similar activities in other parts of the country. Source: LoveFM.com