News/Updates:

Day 1: 

Right after the New Year's holiday, eleven students from the Society of '91, Hampden-Sydney's Leadership Program, returned to campus in preparation for the 2003 Belize Service Project. The trip is in conjunction with Rivers of the World (ROW), an international exploration and development organization that uses rivers to provide food, medicine, and other services to rural areas in third-world countries. Students in the Society of '91 and Associate Dean of Students David Klein organized a service trip to Belize last spring break after hearing tales from ROW president Ben Mathes, who received an honorary doctorate from Hampden-Sydney in 1999, during a leadership retreat. Six of the students who helped organize the spring break trip are returning with Dean Klein again this year.

At 3 a.m., the band of sleepy students left for Raleigh Durham Airport. They arrived in Belize City around mid-afternoon to a scene that bore little resemblance to the cold, rainy morning they left behind in Virginia, and sweaters and fleeces were immediately shed.

The van ride from crime-ridden Belize City took us through several miles of marshes and sugarcane fields and into the more benign city of Orange Walk, where we would stay for a night before setting up camp on the New River. About every one hundred yards along the road were speed bumps, or "sleeping police," giving evidence to the country's inadequate law enforcement capabilities. Small shanties line the streets and nearly every building, whether a store or home, has a partially unfinished roof with rebar sticking out of the top. The reason for this is that taxes can't be levied on structures unless they are fully complete.

The city is filled mostly with mestizos, Mayans, and Garinagu. Claiming an extremely diverse ancestry, Belizeans are accepting of other cultures, which made it easy for students to walk about the streets and talk with locals on their first night in the city. With the melodic tones of Creole, Spanish, and English filling the air, Senior Cordoba stands on the corner in front of Town Hall and eagerly poses to have his picture taken by Jud Root ‘03. He tells Judd that he waits here every day to give rides to the town's many German Mennonites who come to Belize to farm the land outside the town. He explains that the Mennonites, devoid of the laid back attitude of the Caribbean culture, work extremely hard as farmers and are respected in town.

Three young men—Enrique, Snake, and Louie—sit on the steps of an open-air barbershop and are equally curious about Jud's camera and enthusiastically boast that this barber, Louie's cousin, is the best in town. The youngest of the three is a doorman at the town's club at night. During the days they can be found in front of the barbershop.

hat evening, McKennon Shea '05, who had a filling placed two days before the trip, started having severe pain in his tooth. Mathes made a quick phone call in a matter of minutes, McKennon was on his way to a local dentists' office (which also doubles as a radio station and a hostile for local teachers). A young dentist named Silvia x-rayed the tooth and gave McKennon some antibiotics.

Afterwards, over a belated dinner, Mathes explained that the ROW organization had helped build and equip the dental clinic (and radio station) as well as train the dentist. In addition, Mathes himself had been quite instrumental in Silvia's education. A Peruvian, Silvia wanted to study in America to improve her English for the dental exam but could not acquire a visa because of her nationality. Mathes went with her to the US Embassy, but the official still would not grant a visa. Because of the work he has done for the country, almost every official in Belize knows Mathes and, accurately guessing that this man was new to the area, he explained who he was. With a look of surprise, the official pulled Ben's ROW business card out of his pocket and told the story of how a college student volunteering for ROW had sat next to him on a plane a few days before. He granted the visa right away. "The guy made it perfectly clear that it had nothing to do with me," Mathes said with a chuckle. "Silvia went to America because that official was so impressed by the student on the plane."

Dental tragedy averted, we settled in for our first and last night in the city.

Day 2: 

After their first night in the town of Orange Walk, Hampden-Sydney students participating in the 2003 Belize Service Project loaded their backpacks into the van and prepared for their trip to Honey Camp, where we will be camping and working for the next six days. Before leaving the city they took three large crates of school supplies brought from the US to a small church that provides educational facilities to children too poor to get to school.

Once we arrived at Honey Camp, a remote area on the New River, we set up our tents and gear for the week. On the campsite, which is seized drug property that was given to Rivers of the World president Ben Mathes by the government, are several small cinderblock structures and a larger building in the center for which last year's Hampden-Sydney team built the roof. Built in conjunction with the Presbyterian Church of Belize, the site serves as a church camp and retreat for local children. When there are no camps in session, Mathes also uses the area as a jungle training ground for ROW volunteers preparing for more dangerous missions. One of ROW's more perilous missions is relief work in the war in the Congo, where Mathes' group represents the World Health Organization for the region. In addition to keeping a permanent team in the region, Mathes travels there yearly by Russian cargo plane. Each year in the Congo ROW workers treat 200,000 cases of river blindness and immunize hundreds of children against polio, leprosy, and tuberculoses.

After setting up camp, Hampden-Sydney students went to work. Their first project is to till and plant a garden that will help provide food for the children at camp. After that, the group will begin digging and laying a foundation for an additional structure. The first day gave us an idea of the routine for the next week. Breakfast and lunch is brought to us from town by Ruth, a friend of Mathes' who works with the Presbyterian Church of Belize. Around 5 p.m. we bath in the lagoon and head to Victor's Inn a small rural restaurant relatively close to camp. After our first night at Victor's, all agreed that the food is excellent and, in a gesture much appreciated by the weary students, the staff continues to bring food to the table until everyone is stuffed. There's even entertainment; a ocelot, a nimble and aggressive cat indigenous to the jungle, watches over the room adjoining the dining room, and gibnut—a midsize rodent that was supposedly a delectable meal for least year's group—is caged in the yard.

The group returned to camp and as the fire began to die, everyone filed off to their tents, as there's much work to be done before lunch tomorrow..

Day 3: 

Once again this morning, students participating in the 2003 Belize Service Project woke at sunrise (about 6:15 a.m.) and began making coffee. After some stories and a devotional by ROW president Ben Mathes, several students went to work on the foundation that we are responsible for laying. The foundation is for a caretaker's cabin, which will allow a volunteer to stay at the camp at all times. Until that happens, ROW will be unable to install plumbing or keep a generator for electricity because the sugarcane workers and other locals traveling on the remote road near the camp will steal the equipment. After the ditch was finished and all the rebar was tied, McKennon Shea ‘05, D.J. Peters '04, and Christian Cartner '04 went to town to get a cement mixer. On their way back to camp, the mixer, which was attached to the truck with bent rebar, came loose and flipped over. They reattached the mixer and upon returning to the camp repaired the machine. After lunch students began pouring concrete.

Meanwhile, John Ramsay '05, who is in charge of the development of the new garden, along with other students spread more dirt and dug rows. After lunch they made trellises from the branches of coconut trees and began planting string less beans, Alaskan and sugar snap peas, and pineapples.

Like yesterday, the weather was in the mid eighties and those who remembered to bring sunscreen where in good graces with all the campers.

Day 4: 

Today, students participating in the 2003 Belize Service project continued their work for Rivers of the World (ROW) at Honey Camp, Belize. John Ramsay '05 and Landon Moore '03 finished the garden and built a scarecrow (or ROW-crow). Other students completed the footing for the foundation of the forthcoming caretaker's cottage. In preparation for tomorrow, when we will pour the slab, we leveled the ground in the center and soaked the dirt. After that, Dean Klein, our trip leader, went to town to pick up linseed oil and students went to work treating the wood of the dining hall that last year's group helped build.

Well ahead of or work schedule, Dean Klein took a few moments this afternoon to talk with me about the genesis of the Belize Service Project and his hopes for the future of the program. An avid camper and rock climber, Dean Klein said that he has always seen adventure as a valuable learning experience for students. Klein has been very involved with the Outsiders Club, Hampden-Sydney's outdoor adventure organization, but he has always wanted to do more. For several years he envisioned a project that combines what he considers the critical components of a successful adventure program: travel to an exotic place, service, and a situation that would allow students to become participates, rather than observers, in a foreign culture.

President Emeritus Sam Wilson introduced Klein to ROW president Ben Mathes several years ago when he was speaking to a Sunday school class at College Church. Since then, Mathes, a Presbyterian minister, has been a guest speaker at the Society of ‘91's annual leadership retreat. At the end of each retreat, Mathes would say to students, "Wouldn't it be neat if we could take a group of Hampden-Sydney guys to Belize." Klein saw the opportunity for a valuable experience and, convinced that such a trip had to be student initiated and not forced on students by an administrator, brought up the idea after each retreat. In 2001, Wes Lawson '04 and Landon Moore '03 both came to Klein individual and expressed their interest in organizing a trip. Klein was able to get support from the Wilson Center for Leadership and the Society of '91, which helped make the trip more affordable for students. Last year's Spring Break trip to Belize was such a success that another one was organized for Christmas break this year.

"I'd like to see this trip to Honey Camp become a regular component of the academic year for selected students," Klein says, "and alternative spring break ideas should continue to grow."  Currently, Assistant Dean Aaron Backenheimer is planning an alternative spring break trip to Wyoming that will combine skiing with volunteer work at an area boy's home, and Assistant Dean Meade Whitaker is planning a trip that will allow the pre-med society to do medical screening in the southern West Virginia.

"Hampden-Sydney students typically like outdoor sports and travel, and adventures like this are a resource we need to tap," Klein says. "And with our connection with ROW, we have the opportunity to help people all over the world."

Day 5: 

Working late into the afternoon on Thursday, students participating in the 2003 Belize Service Project smoothed over the final load of concrete, thus completing the foundation of what will be a caretaker's cottage for the Rivers of the World (ROW) base camp in Orange Walk, Belize. (To learn more about ROW, visit www.row.org.) That evening we enjoyed our final round of rice, beans, tortillas, and chicken at Victor's Inn, where we ate with Adriano, a local skilled laborer who helped us with the construction, and his wife and son.

Friday morning we broke camp at sunrise and said goodbye to Milkbone and Rebar, two dogs that adopted us during our stay at Honey Camp. On the way out of town we stopped at Victor's for breakfast. After we ate, Silvia, who prepared our food, led us behind the restaurant, past the gibnut cage and deer pens, to a small clearing. There, on the ground surrounding a large mound of dirt, were hundreds of shards of Mayan pottery, presumably from the Yucatan Maya who thrived in this area between the third and ninth centuries A.D. After exploring the ground and the pottery shards, we squeezed in the van and headed south for a day of relaxation (and running water!) after a week of hard work.

Although Belize covers only 8,866 square miles—it's about the size of Massachusetts—the landscape is as diverse as the people. After passing Belize City, marshes and lagoons disappeared and the land began to rise. As we traveled into the Mayan Mountains, we witnessed vast expanses of rainforest. Scattered along the road at the edge of the dense forests were orange groves and rural villages made up of simple thatched huts and occasionally a small school.

We arrived at the Placencia peninsula and found an atmosphere quite different than the one we left in Orange Walk. People in southern Belize speak less Spanish and their accents had more of a Caribbean sound. Many more of the locals, unlike the mestizos and Mayas of Orange Walk, are of African decent. Also, Placencia Village is markedly less poor than the villages in the north, an obvious byproduct of the tourism industry.

After indulging in warm showers for the first time since we had left the States, we went out to sample the local seafood. Although Placencia presents a much more polished version of Belize, the presence of more business and commerce exposed us to some of the native arts, as a few small stores carried wood and stone carvings, baskets, textiles, and pottery. While several students bought handmade hammocks and small carvings, Landon Moore '03 acquired a sixty-five pound Mayan carving made from Santa Maria, which, as he and the other students who helped build a roof during the 2002 Belize Service Trip will attest, is an extremely heavy local wood. The wooden icon posed a bit of a challenge in the airport, but Landon, leaning on the creativity of a liberally educated man, managed to safely transport the behemoth carving back to the States.

On Saturday morning the group took a boat to a small island (or cay, pronounced "key") and spent the day snorkeling amidst the world's second largest barrier reef. The next morning, after witnessing our final sunrise in Belize, we began the long journey home. Upon arriving in Miami, many students took note of the displays of wealth so prevalent in our country. For the rest of the journey students reflected on what they had learned and accomplished on their adventure, and the underclassmen in the group were already speculating on possibilities for next year's service trip.

Rivers of the World is a non-profit, tax exempt 501(c)3 organization.
ROW's EIN # is 64-0866959 and all gifts/donations to ROW are tax deductible.

ROW.org is maintained by Tarver Program Consultants, Inc.
Send comments and suggestions to our webmaster.

(c) 2005, Rivers of the World