Your long awaited post

Finally I have a chance to write the next part of the blog. I think it’s been about a month since I last posted, or 3 weeks at least, I don’t have internet access at the project right now so I have no way of checking, this also means I don’t know what I have already told you so I’ll try starting from when I stepped off the boat onto the dock at the project.
The sun had just gone down about 20 minutes earlier so it was dark, the boat had just pulled up to a dock in the middle of no where on the bank of the Rio Dulce and the lanchero ushered me off as quickly as possible, then left.
So I’m stood on this dock, there’s no light so I can’t see a thing and there’s no one around to ask what the hell I should be doing. As my eyes adjust to the light I can see all these faces sat in boats down along side the dock staring at me, it looked like something out of silent hill or something. I walked down to the end of the dock and all the eyes followed me, the problem was I had no idea where I was going, there was no light anywhere so all I could see was the outline of a building so I headed towards that. After standing around looking clueless for long enough someone a voice came from no where and asked something in Spanish, I don’t know what because I wasn’t expecting it so didn’t listen properly. Anyway I just said I was a volunteer then he ran off, so I followed him, he went up some steps which lead into a corridor, I followed him down it . Luckily he was wearing a white hat so I could make out where he was because there was just enough light to make out the hat bobbing off down the corridor. At the other end were a load of people wearing head torches, so when they looked at me I was completely blind. So I had no idea what was going on and there were these people blinding talking at me in Spanish. I couldn’t understand a word because the loudest one was speaking Spanish at a million miles an hour with a French accent, so it wasn’t the most comprehendible thing I ever heard.
Anyway it turned out that electricity wasn’t turned on till 7pm and was then switched off again at 9pm. Also the volunteers were not expecting me because the volunteer organiser hadn’t told them and wasn’t there at the time. I managed to find her number and rang her up and it turns out she was expecting me to turn up a week later because I had asked her for an extra week in Antigua to learn Spanish. All I could think was if you got that email, why the hell did you not reply to it so that I could have taken an extra week so I wouldn’t have had to go through all that palaver. I mean if there’s no reply, why would I take that as a yes?
Anyway due to the fact that they weren’t expecting me, there was no bed for me or job waiting etc. The volunteer organiser said she would call a few people to arrange them to start my job and have them make (when I say make, I don’t mean tuck the sheets in, I mean get the wood, saw it up and build a bed out of it) my bed etc.
So I went for a meeting the next day with the community development department, luckily for me the woman heading the meeting was completely incomprehensible also, all the indigenous people round here speak so softly that most of their words just disappear into wind, and it’s not even breezy round here usually. One of the volunteers could understand her, and she just happened to be at the meeting with me.
It turns out the job she wanted me to do was write a manual for the students, who attend the school here, on how to start up and run a business. It’s not really my background at all but as you can imagine, people who do have a background in it don’t usually volunteer. So I’m having to make the best of it, I have my GCSE business studies to fall back on, and I’ve been having to teach myself some stuff at the weekends when I get internet access but the manual is going ok. The English version is pretty much complete, it just needs a little reworking and I’m slowly translating it. I’ll have it complete before Christmas I imagine. Recently I have been given a few more jobs, I now have to write a manual which instructs on how to teach the people what’s in the other manual. This is because very few of the Maya which the project works with actually speak Spanish, most speak only speak one of the Maya languages, also most cannot read, let alone read Spanish, therefore a manual would be somewhat redundant for them. So the new manual is intended for translators to read and teach in workshops.
Another job I have been given is to find company’s willing to donate enough money for us to fund a new micro enterprise project. Up till now it seems that the project hasn’t been teaching about budgeting, financial forecasting, business plans or anything, therefore the people always end up spending all their money and not being able to continue reinvesting in new stock for the business etc. So there no funds available for any new businesses to start right now. Also after Christmas they want me to be good enough at Spanish to run the workshops myself so I’m definitely heading back to Spanish school at some point. My other job is advising some of the charity run businesses, such as Buga Mama the restraint we use for raising money, how to write their own business plans, as none of them seem to have one yet. At the moment I’m waiting for an email from Buga mama with their progress so far so I can check it and tell them what it’s missing.
You’ll also be pleased to know that we now have 24 hour electricity in the Galera, that’s like the shack over the river that we live in, because we now have solar power which was only put up 3 weeks late. I also have a bed which only took 2 hours for them to make… unfortunately they didn’t make it until I’d already been here for a week and a half but that seems to be the way things work here. There favourite word is “mañana” which literally means “tomorrow” but actually seems to mean something more along the lines of “not today”.

Ok, there’s more to say about the charity but I’ll do it some other time or I’ll be home before you’ve finished reading.
So I’ll tell you some stuff about Livingstone. Basically it’s about 30 minutes down river, when we have a normally packed boat. Unfortunately the lancheros like to overfill the boat, the “lanchas” hold about 16 people, maybe 18 at a squeeze. However on the last trip back from Livingston we had 42 people on board, and that’s no exaggeration, on top of that we had a huge amount of luggage which took up about a quarter of the boat, and weighed about the same as 10 people. This means the top of the boat sits about 20cms out of the water, in turn this means the boat has to go at a speed comparable to a snail covered in pritt stick on its way home from a party with Lemmy Killminster. If you do the lancha basically sinks.
So after a one and a half hour boat ride we arrive in Livingston. It’s a small town, of about 17,000 people, however you only ever see the same 100 people give or take. The population consists mainly Garifuna with the rest being made up of Ladinos, there is also a separate Indigenous community about 1km up the river, but they don’t have much of a presence in town really.
There are a few local characters who I see without exception every time I go in. One of these is “Alexander” or “Alexander the Great” as he calls himself, his nickname is “Chiledrin” to the locals or just “Chile”, I know him pretty well so that’s what I call him now. He’s also a bit of a crack head but you have to forgive him that because if you hang round Livingston and decide you are going to not befriend anyone who has anything to do with drugs, you’ll have a bit of a lonely life unfortunately. He’s also quite a useful guy to know because he knows where everything is and if there’s anything you cant find in a shop (Lighter fluid is the main example I can think of right now) that you want he usually manages to find it somewhere. How I don’t know but he does, he has a nasty habit of always whinging about how hungry he is and if he doesn’t get any money that way he comes up with something else like how he cant walk so he needs to rent a bicycle, which he will tell you as he is walking with you down the road. Another favourite is when he starts talking like he has just eaten a kilo of sand and starts moaning about being thirsty and needing water, as he sips out of one of the coconuts from the tree in his back garden. You may be thinking that he sounds like a beggar, which is kind of true, but everyone here tries it on with the tourists and at least you can tell that Chile will try it on a mile off, he never pushes to hard as well like most of the others who don’t even try to get to know you first.
Another one of the locals is “Owens” I didn’t know his real name until yesterday when Berti, the German mechanic who has lived in Livingston for a few years, told me about (actually Berti is pretty interesting I’ll have to inform you about him in the next post). It turns out his name is Dario and I don’t really have a problem with him because he’s one of the few guys who has never tried to scam money out of me, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t on crack, meth or coke which is unusual. He is however a dealer and I think he has a tendency to smoke his own product quite heavily, what exactly he deals I don’t know because I’ve never asked, I’m sure if you did ask he would claim he sells every kind of narcotic you could think of. I suspect he’s just a dope dealer though. He tends to walk round in some kind of American sport clothing all the time, all from different teams and different players. We call him Owens because that’s the name on the back of his favourite football jersey, I have no idea who this player is and I guess he doesn’t either but he wears that jersey the most. He tends to walk like he has a razor blade under each arm and his ¾ length shorts worn round the top of his thighs so they look like regular trousers. This makes him walk a little bit like John Wayne on drugs. He has a habit of putting his arms in the air and shouting “RASTA” for no apparent reason on random occasions. He also has a wide range of ways of asking you to buy drugs, on favourite is “Hey bredren, come-on, let’s go to the candy shop to buy some sweets”. When I asked Berti about him he said in his “Ah, you muzt e speaking off Dario, you now talk of ze secont biggest asshole in town” so as you can tell Berti doesn’t like him. I don’t know though, after the first 2 days when he tries desperately to have you buy something off him, he chills out and you only get the occasional proposition maybe once or twice a week, he’s quite useful when your getting hassled by one of the hustlers as well because if you see him you can just give him a nod and he’ll think it’s another dealer so he’ll run over and get rid of them, of course you have to put up with him trying to sell you something again, but I can put up with it from him now since he doesn’t throw in any requests for spare change.
Polo is another guy you see all the time, he cycles round on his bike and just chats to the tourists. I quite liked him when I first met him, he looks like he’s about 65 and he’s always pretty chilled out, he went to university in the US and he can talk for quite along time about social sciences and so on. He is also a drummer in the band Punta rebels which is apparently the best Punta bands in the world, this sounds ridiculous but it’s not too far from the truth. Apparently they are definitely one of the most popular Punta bands in the world and that’s according to Berti, who, upon me asking about Polo said “Ahh yes, well now you are speaking of ze biggest asshole in town”. According to Berti he is renowned for stealing from tourists so if I ever get into a conversation with him again (which isn’t unlikely) I’ll just be wary of that fact. But that said he is definitely interesting to talk to.
Ok that will do for now, maybe I’ll give you a few more next week or something. This is 4 pages long on word right now so I’ll leave it before it’s too long.

Later

PS. I did’nt manage to post this on the weekend because I went to Tikal and all the internet cafes had broken USB ports, so next time I get Internet I’ll try again.

PPS. I calculate that I have eaten Beans Rice and Tortillas approximately 77 times since the last post, however this is not 100% accurate as there were plenty of times when the rice wasn’t on the menu.