I’ve finally uploaded the video to go with the blog, below, on the three-day ranger patrol I went on in the Sarstoon Temash National Park…

I slept like a rock (thank God for the deluxe mosquito net I had brought) and awoke at around 5:30 to the sound of machetes on grass. Rangers and soldiers were clearing around the cabin. The senior ranger, Anasario Cal, said he had been awoken shortly after 4 o’clock by howler monkeys. Now people were gathered at the end of the dock and listening to them in the distance, up and across the river. This was my first howler monkey experience – something that I had been waiting for since my arrival in Belize. The howl is so spooky and hard to describe – it’s like a whisper roar that carries across vast distances. It sounds like the soundtrack to a horror movie.

Breakfast was rice and beans and eggs, and chicken someone had brought frozen and marinated in spices all night. I had expected nothing more than cold canned peas and pb&js. Now a cooking rivalry was brewing between rangers and soldiers.

SATIIM ranger and chef Egbert Valencio

The plan for Day 2 was the Sarstoon River, the southernmost end of the Sarstoon Temash National Park, and the border with Guatemala… Well, Belize says the border runs through the deep center of the river. Guatemala says the river is all Guatemala. I thought this could get interesting.

In fact, there were no border skirmishes on this trip. We saw more Belizean soldiers, but no Guatemalan. Most of the river is wilderness, like the Temash, but the Guatemalan side has some people (the Mayan village of Sarstoon is near the mouth), some farmland, and the occasional plastic bottle or piece of styrofoam floating downstream. To me, these suggested a subtle distinction between the two rivers of the park. To the rangers, the Sarstoon is filthy.

Rangers pulled up gillnets and investigated more of the seismic lines, a spot where the rare Comfra Palms had been harvested, and other signs of human activity. All land excursions were separated by long, dull, stretches of slow trolling, with yawns spreading throughout the crew. But little things on shore became interesting – a new bright flower, or a shift in palm trees from dainty palmettos to regal cohune nuts, and finally a tree full of quiet howler monkeys – something everyone else spotted before I did, of course.

I was surprised when we reached Black Creek to find that it’s actually a beautiful inky black, which collides dramatically with the under-roasted coffee color of the river. I don’t know why.

Black Creek

Black Creek

We returned to the cabin and swam again in the brown river water, then motored back upstream to bathe and fill bottles at a spring, where a baby green and brown boa slept on a tree, curled up in a knot.

Tonight the entertainment was Dominoes – a fun time for those used to staying up past 8 o’clock, but with all the banging chips and trash-talking in a small cabin with a tin roof, it was surely torture for the tired rangers who live the farming life in villages with no electricity, where the sun dictates when you rise and fall.

Andrew Flores and Thomas Ishim playing dominoes at the ranger station

Andrew Flores and Thomas Ishim playing dominoes at the ranger station

I was awoken in the morning by howler monkeys and thunder, and a cabin full of people up and about by 6. We picked up plastic and styrofoam that had come ashore (‘from Guatemala,’ they noted), and motored back to Punta Gorda in the rain.

It was a totally unceremonious but, for me, sad goodbye.

Video to come…

I spent half of last week on a patrol of the Sarstoon Temash National Park with four SATIIM rangers and two soldiers from the Belize Defence Force (BDF). The objective was to monitor activities like fishing, hunting, logging, and seismic testing.

Admittedly, I had some hopes of high-speed boat chases. No such luck. Nor did I spot the exciting and elusive jaguar (rangers had seen one swimming across the river on a recent patrol). However, I did get a good sense of the care and perspicacity required of a four-person ranger team managing almost 42,000 acres of pristine but threatened river, wetlands, and forest.

We began at high speed through wind and rain in SATIIM’s 28-foot twin engine skiff, down the coast, past Barranco, and into the mouth of the Temash River. There, at the SATIIM ranger station, we dropped our backpacks, snacked on the canned meats and whatnot we had brought to eat the first day, and I took the 50-yard wade from the cabin through a stinky marsh to the outhouse, which had become home to a colony of biting ants and a family of bats. Let’s just say that SATIIM funding is not going into cushy accommodations for the rangers.

Anasario Cal and Egbert Valencio

Nevertheless refreshed, we set out to monitor the Temash River. This involved trolling along one shore or the other, while Egbert Valencio, the boat captain, and the rest of the rangers surveyed the land for human activity. To the untrained eye, this stretch of silty brown water and green, mangrove- and palm-filled wetland looks like pure wilderness. But the trained eye will see, even from a distance, a cut tree, trodden undergrowth, or an unnatural clearing. A ranger would make a signal, and we’d circle back, jump ashore and investigate. Sometimes it was nothing, sometimes remnants of a fire likely set by hunters (of species like peccaries, agouti, and curassow).

The rangers also knew between which trees and around which curves lay the park’s boundaries and the seismic lines cut by US Capital Energy (USCE). The former they cut back with machetes or made a note of the need to clear. For the latter, it was ongoing assessments of how well the forest was growing back. Very well, they concluded, thanks largely to the rainy season filling up troughs with water along the would-be trail.

USCE has cut two seismic lines across the park. They have been permitted by the government to cut five more in the park, and two just outside. In theory, SATIIM and the government of Belize ‘co-manage’ the park. In fact, the government provides two BDF soldiers to accompany the rangers on these patrols (which happens semi-weekly only when funding for fuel permits), but all rangers and all funding for the park management and monitoring come from SATIIM. Nevertheless, neither USCE nor the government has informed SATIIM of the results of the first seismic tests or if and when the next ones will take place. The company has also failed to comply with its own Environmental Impact Assessment’s stipulation that it only enter the park with SATIIM representatives. And it looks unlikely that USCE will be held accountable in the future. In a permit for seismic testing granted last year, the Forestry Department designated itself as the body responsible for the monitoring of that testing. This is like the fox appointing himself guardian of the henhouse since the government never would have even required an environmental impact assessment from USCE had SATIIM not taken it to court.

SATIIM rangers Marcos Makin and Anasario Cal monitoring growth along a seismic line

SATIIM rangers Marcos Makin and Anasario Cal monitoring growth along a seismic line

Anyway, the rangers do what they can to monitor the lines, other human activity, and wildlife, though sightings today were generally too standard to note – the ubiquitous cormorants, tiger herons, kingfishers, and butterflies that followed the boat.

After some five hours of motoring up and down the river and stopping to climb over mangrove roots and splash around the soggy shore, we returned to the cabin. Some of us swam in the cool, sweet water of the river. Egbert took the boat a few yards out into the ocean where he got cell phone reception, and saw a manatee surface and dive under. Later, a small boat docked at the cabin with a bucket of fresh shrimp. Mercifully, we had something real (and delicious) to mix with our ramen noodles that night. And that was about it. The only light was a gas lantern, the stars peaking through the tree branches, and, visible from the end of the dock, the glow of Livingston, Guatemala, down the coast. Half the crew was asleep by 8, and I amused myself by hanging out on the steps and shining my headlamp on the tiny crabs living in the water under the cabin.

I walked to the dock and found something too cute and large to be a rat running along the edge of the boat. It stared into my light, eyes glowing red, then ran away, then ran back, as if it had already forgotten about me. I ran back to the cabin to get my camera, and mentioned the sighting to Egbert. ‘Oh, that’s the opossum,’ he said. He had seen it already. When he came back out with me, it was gone, but he immediately located it on the tree and followed it with his flashlight to point it out. It still took me a while to see it. ‘It will come back if we turn out our lights,’ he said. We did. Blackness. After a few seconds, Egbert said, ‘He’s probably back, right in front of you now.’ I turned on my light, and there he was. He ran away again, and Egbert said that’s the last time. I went away and came back, but Egbert was right, the critter had had enough. This is why people like Egbert, who have lived on the edge of the forest all of their lives (as have their families for generations) should be the ones to monitor human activities there – oil-related and otherwise.

sunset from the SATIIM ranger station dock

sunset from the SATIIM ranger station dock

Nuguchi… that’s Garifuna for ‘my father.’ I wasn’t going to blog about this because it’s personal and hard to write about, but it feels strange not to. The snake (which we’ve concluded was a boa after all) wasn’t the only thing I found when I got back from the park patrol. I also learned that my father had had a stroke Wednesday morning. He spent two days in the emergency room of Mass. General Hospital before finally being transferred to the neurology department. He’s in stable condition, lucid as ever, in very good hands and surrounded by friends and family, but it feels strange (bad) for me to not be there, and whether I should be or not is an unresolved issue.

When we spoke on the phone the night of the stroke, he asked about my visit to the park and about any other planned adventures. In fact, he’s part of the reason I’m here, in Belize, on an Advocacy Project fellowship. He’s an environmental lawyer who works in, among other things, wetlands conservation and preservation of historically significant neighborhoods. He taught my brothers and me by example to value the environment, and he taught us outdoor sports and took us on wilderness adventures for vacation. He also gave us the sense that it’s worth fighting big corporations on issues that matter.

I spent my last evening in the States with my dad and brothers, playing tennis and going out to dinner – a tradition we work through our busy schedules to ensure happens at least once or twice a year. Since then, he’s been reading my blog (I know he’s reading this), and sending responses through his amazing assistant, Doug. We’ve talked some, including about spending the last days of the summer on Martha’s Vineyard together.

Of course, I’m hoping for more tennis games and swimming, but I know that first it will be a long struggle through rehab for my dad to return to that place. And at times like this you see that you can’t take anything for granted. What’s reassuring is to know that my dad is someone who works hard for what matters. The hard work starts today. I got word that he’s been transferred to Spaulding Rehab Hospital. Here’s sending you all my love and support, Dad.

Dad and brother Mark in Valdez, Alaska

Before getting to my patrol with the SATIIM rangers, let me tell you about my first morning back…

I’ve had respect and appreciation for Gomier, the Rasta from St. Lucia who runs a restaurant downstairs from my apartment, but this morning he achieved hero status.

At around 6:30, I went to the bathroom and was shocked to find a fat, three-foot snake lounging along the edge of the sink, its small head slightly raised and turned toward me. My first instinct was to grab my camera, of course, but I realized I had left it at work. Probably for the better. My second instinct was to find Gomier. Fortunately, he was downstairs and heard my knocking.

After assessing the situation (“yeah, that’s a snake”), he got a machete. This wasn’t a glistening, new machete. It looked a bit worn and rusty. But Gomier stood on the bathtub, a chest-high shower wall separating him from the sink and snake, and he stabbed downward at the little head with the knife’s dull tip. Sparks flew as it hit porcelain, and the snake hissed and recoiled. I felt really bad for the thing for a minute. It looked shockingly defenseless. But then when it seemed to try to strike, it occurred to me that the snake could win, and I would be responsible.

I suggested maybe we should just close the bathroom doors and hope the snake would eventually slither out a window. Gomier would have none of that. “The snake will die.”

The blade was hitting tile now, more sparks. And then the thing was dead. Decapitated. Fresh blood pooled on the floor. I don’t like to see things die (and I think as a Rasta Gomier’s not so into it either). But it was a big relief.

Now we tried to figure out what it was. Not a boa. I had seen a baby boa, green and brown, in the national park earlier in the week. This one had reddish brown splotches, lined with black and yellow. I’ll have to look it up. Let’s hope it’s not known as ‘the friendly snake – a cuddly creature that won’t harm a thing but will scare off the pests in your house,’ or ‘the mafia snake – the only wild animal whose entire family will seek revenge if you kill it.’

Anyway, thanks, Gomier. If anyone’s in the neighborhood, come and eat at Gomier’s Restaurant, ‘Where Health is Wealth!’ He’s a really good cook, and I’m not just saying that because he might have saved my life.

Gomier, the snake slayer

It’s been brought to my attention that I haven’t given readers much of a sense of Belize, nor of the broader context of oil exploration here. Well, here is a start.

Belize is anomalous in Central America: It’s the only English-speaking country in the region, it’s much less densely populated than any of the others, it’s only 30 years old, and it has a relatively peaceful history. With the stronger presence of people and music of the African Diaspora, Belize can feel more like the Caribbean than Central America. Because it’s cheaper than Caribbean islands, Anglophone, relatively safe, and in possession of the world’s second largest barrier reef, it’s full of American tourists.

Now Toledo, the southernmost of the country’s six districts, is anomalous in Belize. There are lots of Americans here, but they’re more likely volunteers, missionaries or academics than tourists. The district’s population is 70% Maya, compared with 11% for the country overall. Mayans as a whole are much poorer than other groups in Belize, so it’s no surprise that Toledo is by far the poorest district in the country. Almost half of the district’s population lives in poverty, and more than a third lives in severe poverty (households that spend less than the minimum cost of a food basket), according to the 2009 Country Poverty Assessment.

It might seem odd that, while still the worst off, Toledo was the only district that did not see an increase in poverty between 2002 and 2009. That can be explained by the fact that agriculture makes up almost 50 percent of the economy – much more than any other district, and many Toledo residents are subsistence fishermen and farmers, so they are far less vulnerable to economic slowdown elsewhere. By contrast, the ailing global economy dragged down districts heavily dependent on textiles (where 74 percent of jobs were lost), oil extraction (where 48 percent of jobs were lost), tourism, and large-scale fishing and citrus.

Toledo is instead dependent on the environment, which means it’s more vulnerable to hurricanes, global warming, and… you got it: oil spills.

As I mentioned in previous blogs, US Capital Energy, a private US-based oil company, has been conducting seismic tests in the Sarstoon Temash National Park, Belize’s second largest national park, which lies in the deep south and is bordered by five indigenous ‘buffer’ communities – four Mayan and one Garifuna. The poverty of these communities, combined with their close dependence on the park, makes them particularly vulnerable to actions of the oil company there.

First, there’s the education problem: The buffer communities are remote, largely Q’eqchi speaking, and seldom reached by news and information about, say, issues relating to environmental protection, indigenous rights, and the demonstrated consequences of drilling.

Second, we all know that poverty reduces choice. When you’re hungry, you open your arms to promises, however shady, of jobs and development. While many residents oppose drilling in the Park, others either welcome it or would rather keep quiet.

Finally, any environmental impact of drilling will be that much more deeply felt by subsistence communities with a close and traditional relationship with the land, water, flora and fauna.

The buffer communities should be the ones to protect these resources because they know their value. And they do. SATIIM is the only entity to provide rangers (one from each community) to conduct regular patrols by land and water of the 42,000-acre park. Unfortunately, the organization is too often short on funds to pay the rangers or keep them supplied with the necessary fuel and equipment. But they’ve pulled together the funds for a three-day expedition next week. And I get to tag along!

I’m to head out by boat this morning (Monday) from Punta Gorda with four SATIIM park rangers, as well as personnel from the Belize Defence Forces, to patrol the Park, looking out for illegal activity (logging or thieving orchids, iguanas, etc.) and survey the seismic lines US Capital Energy cut across the Sarstoon and Temash rivers. I look forward to telling you about it on my return, Dear Readers, as well as my ongoing adventures in Mayan quilting…

Children from the Mayan village of San Pedro Columbia and the Garifuna village of Barranco came together for a week of activities relating to art and the environment. The camp is a collaboration between SATIIM (Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management), PACT (Protected Areas Conservation Trust), and CRC (Columbia River Cooperative).

The campers drew and painted, learned West African drum beats, toured an organic farm and botanical garden, visited ancient Mayan ruins, played soccer, and learned from SATIIM about the Sarstoon Temash National Park and the animals living there that could be affected by activities like oil drilling.

Oil Spills: Learning from Disaster

With all the catastrophic oil spills that have happened around the world, one might assume that energy companies and regulators have learned their lessons, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

After every disaster, there’s talk of strict laws, enforcement, and oversight. Talk. Indeed, some good measures are put in place, but they’re undermined by cut corners. BP surely had an assortment of impressive measures in place when, as a White House report concluded, it took cost-cutting measures that increased the risk of a blowout.

But now let’s look at Exxon, since that’s who recently spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude into the Yellowstone River in Montana.

I used to live in Valdez, Alaska – a small town made famous by the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, in which tens of millions of gallons leaked into the Prince William Sound, killing more than 100,000 birds, otters, seals and whales. Working for a local radio station 20 years after the disaster, I interviewed subsistence and commercial fishermen, hunters and tour boat operators about the tragedy. Some still teared up talking about the sight of the flailing oil drenched wildlife.

Litigation took so long that many affected by the spill died before seeing any of the compensatory and punitive damages they were owed. Even for those who did receive thousands of dollars, what the spill had taken from them would be lost forever. After the accident, nearby Native American villages emptied out. Residents were forced to abandon subsistence lifestyles, join the cleanup effort, and then seek jobs elsewhere, precipitating the loss of already endangered languages and cultures. Families were also casualties of the spill, as instability, unemployment and depression broke up marriages.

Today, Prince William Sound looks pristine again, but tar balls continue to cling to the sand of some beaches, and the herring population has never rebounded.

Meanwhile, locals are terrified of another spill – not so much from another tanker in the Sound as from the pipeline that runs through Alaska and across precious wetlands upon which moose, bear, salmon, swans, and millions of shorebirds depend. And there’s good reason to be terrified. Spills along other parts of this pipeline are, in fact, a common (and often unpublicized) occurrence, with thousands of barrels leaking due to corrosion and accidents.

And then there’s the latest large spill, on the Yellowstone River in Montana. The cause of the crack in the pipe under the river is still unknown, and it took the company an hour to stop the leak. By that time, some 42,000 gallons had spilled into the rushing water. With the river flooded, oil coated lawns, farmland and ponds. Among the affected are fishermen (the river is known for its fishing), farmers (who use the river for irrigation) and neighbors (who worry about health effects of inhaling fumes from the spill). But the scope and severity of the impact is not yet known. Oil has been found more than 270 miles downstream.

Now let’s return to Belize. If such a disaster can happen in the United States at the hands of one of the world’s richest and largest oil companies, what does it indicate about the risks of oil exploration by a small private company in a country like Belize, where laws and enforcement are far more lax?

Temash River

Texas-based US Capital Energy (USCE) has been exploring for oil within the Sarstoon Temash National Park, cutting seismic lines that cross both Sarstoon and Temash rivers, and many creeks. If a spill were to happen in this area, the impact on the nearby wildlife and villages could be catastrophic. The park itself is home to threatened and vulnerable species, like the West Indian Manatee, the Hickatee Turtle, and the Morelett’s Crocodile – all of which could be directly hurt by a spill. This is one reason that the convention on wetlands in Ramsar, Iran, designated the park ‘a wetland of international importance.’ And oil in the Temash would surely spill into the ocean and reach the barrier reef, which lies just some 50 miles offshore – a small fraction of the distance oil has traveled in the Yellowstone River. Finally, as in Alaska, small, nearby indigenous villages would be most affected by any harm to this natural environment.

And yet, protection of this precious area is anything but guaranteed. The Belizean government is so blithe to health, safety and environmental risks that it didn’t even demand an Environmental Impact Assessment for USCE to explore there until it was required to by a Supreme Court ruling (SATIIM vs. Forest Department). It is this very administration, along with the determined but cash-strapped Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM), that is charged with protecting the park.

The prospect of oil in one’s backyard can spark the imagination, eliciting hopes of quick development and wealth, an escape from the hardship of daily life. USCE might indeed build a swing set or a building to house a clinic and bring some computers to a village. It might also provide some temporary jobs and pave a road, but the real long-term and irreversible impacts just might be environmental, economic, and cultural devastation.

Corporations and governments might not learn from past mistakes, but the people who will suffer from them have a responsibility to study, learn, and join together to demand their own protection.

For more information on oil drilling and the Sarstoon Temash National Park, contact SATIIM: www.satiim.org.bz, satiim@btl.net, 501-722-0103, 81 Main Street, Punta Gorda Town, PO Box 127, Toledo District, Belize, C.A.

great white egret on the Temash

The weekend was something of a sampler platter of the amazingly distinct and rich cultures of Southern Belize, providing a taste of what should be celebrated and what could be lost.

Lisa's farm in San Pedro Columbia

Friday, I drove with SATIIM staffers to the Q’eqchi Maya village of San Pedro Columbia.

The plan was to visit one of the sites of a cultural exchange summer camp that SATIIM is coordinating with others.

It’s an exchange between kids from Columbia and Barranco (the Garifuna village on the edge of the national park), to learn Maya, Creole and Garifuna music and other arts, combined with environmental education.

The Columbia host is Lisa White Kile, an American teacher who runs an organic cooperative farm. Irked by the fact that proponents of oil drilling had presented their case to Columbia schoolchildren, Lisa looks forward to offsetting this propaganda with presentations from SATIIM on the consequences of drilling. One idea is to have the campers creatively portray animals that would be affected by a spill in the national park – manatees, fish, birds, etc.

It’s all very exciting, but there’s some question about funding. It would be heartbreaking to see it fall through. The camp idea is intriguing for a number of reasons. One is the idea of Mayan kids learning African drums, as some already are from Emmeth Young, the coop’s resident Creole drummer. Second, it brings to mind something that Alvin Loredo, Barranco’s tour guide and community organizer, said to me on my last visit: Barranco has no leverage against US Capital Energy if it’s acting alone (the company can easily enter the park by another route). All the communities in the region – Maya and Garifuna – need to come together.

Finally, you would never guess by driving through Columbia, past overgrown fields, traditional palm leaf homes, and signs for the Lubaantun Mayan ruins, but kids here are at risk. There are actual local Bloods and Crips, and reports of terrible crimes. The village is being linked by paved road to the Pan-American Highway and Guatemala. Locals foresee the acceleration of a loss of peace, natural beauty, security, and traditional culture.

Emmeth Young founded Drums not Guns and now lives and teaches at the Columbia River Coop

Saturday gave Jill Benson (my Australian roommate, an oil and gas specialist volunteering with SATIIM) and me a taste of Garifuna culture in Punta Gorda. We visited an art gallery run by local veterinarian and artist Ludwig Palacio. Ludwig was outside, carving an old mango tree into an undulating coffee table of reproductive organs. He told us a story I hadn’t heard before about his famous musician cousin Andy Palacio, and why he had decided to dedicate his (short) life to preserving the music and language of his ancestors. The Garifuna trace their origins back to Africans who survived a slave shipwreck on St. Vincent, and intermixed with local Caribs and Arawaks, and apparently Andy had his own near shipwreck when, at age 18, he hit a storm on the way from Belize to Nicaragua, where Garifuna culture was dying out. His captain detoured to a village where Andy met an old Garifuna man, who was astonished to find that the young Palacio spoke his language. The emotional response from the man impressed on Andy the danger that his language and culture could be lost not just to Nicaragua, but to the world.

As we left the gallery, we heard what sounded like the deep, hypnotic drums of a Native American pow wow. We biked down the street and found a gathering in front of a house – men beating enormous drums and women in check skirts and big collar blouses swaying and shuffling feet to the rhythms.

A spectator with gold teeth and penciled brows explained to us, ‘They believe… I don’t believe, but the Garifuna people believe when ancestors die they’re still around. So they’re dancing for their ancestors.’

The women were paired up now, swaying to the drums with hands on each others wastes. One woman in each pair seemed boneless, hanging her arms and head loosely as she swayed like a willow. The spectator told us those women were possessed by spirits. “It’s not a good feeling,” she added.

She also said sometimes they don’t like people gawking. Once, ceremony participants saw her watching through a window and poured rum on her. We decided to move on.

Maheia whittles cane by the Confederate sugar boiler

The wee hours of Sunday saw the usual storm. It always sounds like a bowling alley opening for the night above your head, followed by a full-on military bombardment. You might find yourself wondering, ‘Should I be concerned?’ Apparently. The rain has become more Niagara Falls-like, heavier and longer lasting. And on Sunday morning there was talk that the Moho River was likely to flood, cutting off access routes to the Maya communities SATIIM staffers and I were planning to visit.

The staffers decided it would be unwise to travel, so it was another lazy day around PG. In the morning I visited Wil Maheia’s 600-plus acre rainforest farm, tucked off the road out of town. It was extraordinary to see how the teak, mahogany, citrus, vanilla, coffee and cacao (for Vosges chocolate bars) were grown along the edge of the forest. It was also amazing to see remnants of the farm’s past… After the American Civil War, a group of Confederates moved to Belize to continue their plantation livelihoods. Because slavery had long been abolished here, they imported East Indians to work as indentured laborers on sugar cane fields. Wil’s great, great grandparents had been brought from India to work at this very site.

The rest of the day involved chores and reading, and watching the world go by from our porch. We live at the main entrance to town, above the ‘welcome’/’return soon’ sign, and across from the bus stop. We see the Mayan villagers come in with their goods on market days (and sometimes they see us, knock on our door, and turn our living room into a showroom of arts, crafts and homemade coffee and chocolate).

Sunday evening, Spanish-speaking laborers were entering town, lugging duffels apparently packed for the week. Two looked delighted to encountered an old bicycling ice cream vendor. They stopped to buy some, then continued on, gripping cones of princess pink strawberry in one hand, dusty bags in the other.

Vosges cacao trees in a palapa greenhouse

Monday was July 4, and young Americans (largely Peace Corps volunteers) seemed to be pouring into PG from the countryside.

SATIIM’s five park rangers also came in, taking buses up the same roads we had avoided in spite of ongoing heavy rains. They came in for a meeting that coincided with the expiration of their contracts. Upon arrival, four out of five found that their contracts are not being renewed, as SATIIM searches for the funds to pay them.

Karyn Stein, the development coordinator, said she was pretty sure funding would come through in the next couple of months, and they would all be re-hired. Egbert Valencio, the ranger from Barranco, said he didn’t mind continuing to work even without immediate pay.

Staffers had hoped Egbert would give presentations at the summer camp, but they now wondered just how much volunteering a (temporarily) laid off person would be willing to do.

Before the men headed back to their various villages, I asked Egbert what they would do if the roads were flooded. He said with a shrug and a smile that they would get off the bus, wade through the water, and walk or hitchhike the rest of the way… however many miles that might turn out to be.

the view from Gomier's Restaurant

Temash River

Last week I was getting pretty antsy. I had been in Belize, working at SATIIM’s headquarters in Punta Gorda, for more than a week and still hadn’t made it out to any of the five ‘buffer zone’ villages near the National Park that SATIIM represents, nor had I made it to the park itself. How could I talk about the work of the organization when I hadn’t experienced its elements and, well, its reason for being?

So when I was offered a ride to Barranco, the one Garifuna buffer community, and home of the late world-famous musician Andy Palacio, I said, ‘Yes!’

I would spend a couple of days there, run around with my cameras and audio recorder and do a ton of interviews. I would have all the material for a Barranco multimedia profile. That was the plan.

‘Not so fast,’ said Barranco.

Barrancans are quite friendly and polite, but this is a small village (160 people or less). What’s more, they don’t know me from an oil company rep who wants to despoil their park or an environmentalist who wants to tell them what to do with their park. Do I have an agenda? Yes, to learn what people there think about the prospect of drilling in the park, and, more broadly, what they want for their village and their people. Pretty innocent, right? But I have the power to manipulate people’s words and images when a touchy debate is quietly going on in a village with an uncertain future.

So desperate measures like house calls didn’t work. One young mother of five smiled sweetly as I stood on her porch and told me she doesn’t talk to strangers.

Deflated, I walked around the village, through the grassy paths that wove between houses, making friends with chickens, dogs, and sheep, until I finally turned back and headed for the village bus stop/store/bar. With the Friday afternoon sun still blazing, men sat in the shade of the small blue porch drinking ‘bitters’ (locally-made greenish-yellow ‘rum’ flavored with a vine so bitter it can make you mouth numb). They were speaking in puns and watching giant grasshoppers mate on a power line.

When I announced what I was doing there, the conversation turned to oil and the national park. It was a fluid mix of English Kriol and what I call plain English, so I picked up on some.

“They have so much money,” I heard. “And they’re making more off of you,” one bitters drinker said to another. “Couldn’t they give you a dime of it?”

The group was teasing one of the men for having been caught on camera signing an anti-drilling proposal backed by a US-based environmental organization. Their beef was that his image was being used by the ‘wealthy’ NGO for its own benefit.

The teased man was unperturbed. But the primary teaser, who now lives outside of Barranco, went on: Who do they think they are, coming in and telling us we can’t develop?

SATIIM, which occasionally works with international environmental groups, is often painted with a similar brush. SATIIM was once strictly a conservation organization, but more and more its focus is on sustainable development, along with indigenous rights. It is not anti-development or even anti-drilling. It’s for giving indigenous people the right to control their own land – and that includes the right to make an informed choice about drilling.

The oversimplification of the oil debate as ‘for or against’ has some shrugging off their own rights under international laws and norms, like informed prior consent, community consultation, and the environmental impact assessment process. The woman who served me fried snapper that night at her ‘restaurant’ (a single chair at a single table on her porch), said she knows drilling will hurt the environment, but it’s worth it because ‘we need jobs.’

Another woman told me later that most people in the village say they’re against drilling, but when company reps come around, they all want to be first in line for a job.

I spent the night at a small soap factory (Barranco Botanicals), run by an American woman who’s lived in the area for 20 years. And the next morning Alvin Loredo, a tour guide and head of a local development organization, took me by motor boat into the Sarstoon Temash National Park.

We zipped down the coast and into the mouth of the Temash River.

It was breathtakingly beautiful, and, for me, exotic, with black and red mangroves lining the river, their bleached stilts thrusting down and leaves grazing the surface of the water. And orchids dangled from branches above. Alvin pointed out Comfra Palms, which exist nowhere else in Belize, and which Barrancans use as a building material. He also pointed out about a dozen varieties of bird he saw and heard.

And then we were there, at the seismic testing site. It was so close to a creek that runs into the river, where Barrancans fish, and which runs into the oceans, where Barrancans fish and swim. It was also close to a sign that read, ‘Slow no wake manatee area.’ I couldn’t help but think, ‘Are you kidding??’