From Len - I apologize for not updating this blog in over a month. It is not because nothing has been going on. Rather it is because too much has been going on. Sue and my lives are extremely full and very fulfilling. Our lives are centered around Hillside- both the clinic and the institution. I’ll leave details for another blog entry, but it is fair to say that together, Sue and I feel we are having impacts on many dimensions. Part of the reason for my long absence of blogging is how engaged I’ve become around here (and also when I went back to the USA for 12 days). So I thought I’d just restart by sharing some high lights of the last few days.
Friday, November 5th: I spent the morning and early afternoon at Hillside doing student scheduling work and then helping our network consultant (Chris Lopez – a great guy) connect an external hard drive and our copier to a printer/server that I smuggled back from the US (hidden inside a game box). Then at 3:00 I rushed out of the clinic and drove to the local high school (TCC) where I have been volunteering. Friday afternoons have become my favorite form of school-based volunteer work here in Belize. One teacher has a homeroom of several fourth-formers (our 12th graders) who are in danger of failing Maths (the British system puts an “s” on Math). A few of her students had worked with me in an earlier volunteer extra-help setting and they asked the teacher to contact me. As a result, I have started to come every Friday at 3:15 which is after school ends to teach a class to struggling seniors who have opted to stay after school and try to improve in Maths.
I am amazed that these kids have been willing to do this, and they have been really great. Yesterday was the second week that I have done this and it was the closest to a real classroom experience I’ve had here in Belize (the rest of the time has been tutoring one-on-one or in groups). While I had no idea what I’d be doing until I got there, I found out what they are working on and dove right in. They had just started a unit on functions and they wanted to learn about function format (i.e. f(x) = 3x +3) and about inverse functions. It was a fabulous 60 minute class for the 11 students that were there. We talked about radios, lights, and meat grinders as examples of real world functions with inputs, outputs, and instructions. We then took the real world analogies and used them to bridge over to the abstract concept of mathematical functions. We did problems together and then we did “sticky pad problems” whereby I handed out medium size PostIt notes for them to put their answers on and then they stuck them on the board and we saw how the class did as a whole (20 out of 22 the first time and then 22 out of 22 the second).
In the beginning of the class I asked them to take out paper, because they’d only learn if they did the problems. However most of them did not have paper. Only one of them had the textbook. At least they all had something to write with. My guess is this is not just disorganization, but a real lack of either money or easy access to a store that will sell paper. I just happened to have a set of 12 small composition books (featuring 12 different famous Belizeans on the covers– who knew there were so many?) and ended up giving out 11 of them.
We even got as far as considering inverse functions. In Wooster I would always use Dr. Suess’s story of the Sneetches to describe inverse functions (Sylvester McMonkey McBean’s Star-On and Star-Off machines are my all time favorite example of inverse functions) but I did not have my mural in my classroom to use. Instead we used scissors and needle-and-thread as the Belizean example of inverse functions. It went over extremely well and I’m sure the students really learned the concepts. One unusual occurrence was when a large big-horned cow wandered past our classroom around 4:00. It was one of the school’s cows used by the upper-classmen in the Agriculture major. Of course we used the disruption to our advantage by quickly discussing the cow from a function perspective.
Saturday, November 6th. Today is my 49th birthday. Today I am a perfect square. Sue and I are going out to one of the two vaguely upscale restaurants in the PG area to celebrate. But I might have had my second-most memorable birthday ever already (my seventeenth birthday will always be in first place because that is when Sue and I had our first date). Today I went armadillo hunting for the second time and it was the first time that we succeeded in our objective.
I arrived at the home of my friend and co-worker, Rudy, at 7:00am. Rudy is Hillside’s head driver and community liaison. He is an absolutely beloved member of the staff. He and his neighbor, Amir (who is in his early 20’s), and I set off with Rudy’s three hunting dogs – Bandit, Lucky, and Pinky. The dogs are all terriers which makes them ideal armadillo hunters. Bandit is the senior dog, though he is still not yet at the top of his game. Bandit has been in on half a dozen or so kills, the other two had yet to be in on one. Rudy is an extremely experienced armadillo (and gibnut and peccary and deer) hunter. His father was a subsistence hunter and Rudy continues the tradition when he can find a free weekend. In modern day Belize hunting is a form of recreation for men, but it is also a way to extend your budget. Meat on the table from a hunt means more money for other items. Amir is also an experienced hunter. I was in the Lucky and Pinkie category. The three of us were all in learning mode hoping to experience our first successful hunt.
We walked for a distance through some farmland behind Rudy’s home and into the southern Belize forest. Amir took the lead with Rudy following and me in the rear. All three of us were using our machetes (yes, I own a machete!) to chop and widen an overgrown old path into the bush used by previous hunters. Bandit would go far ahead of us and hunt in wider area, seeking the scent of armadillo. The other dogs stuck close to us as we waited for Bandit to find an armadillo holed up in a burrow. Rudy was optimistic as we kept seeing signs of recent armadillo activity. Armadillos are nocturnal and they spend their days in burrows that they dug the night before. The Belizean way of armadillo hunting is to find them while they sleep and then trap them at the end of their tunnel. You then dig a hole and kill them by a machete to the head. (I’ve since read that American armadillo hunting consists of hunting at night with flashlights and guns to kill them while they are out and about. That’s how Brett Farve does it.)
Sure enough, around two or so hours into the hunt, Bandit barked to alert us he had trapped an armadillo in its hole. The saying around here is that “the jungle gives what you need”. The three of us used our machetes to turn the trees and branches around us into plugs to keep the armadillo in its hole and into spades to help us dig to him from a different direction. Rudy did most of the digging and was eventually able to reach into his new hole and feel the creature’s back and tail. I reached in and could feel that he was balling up and wedging himself as deep into his hole as he could. Amir was able to grab it by the tail, but when he tried to pull him out, the hole we had dug was too narrow. I held on to his tail (thank goodness he was dry or he’d have slipped through my grasp easily) while the other two chopped through roots and widened the hole. Finally Rudy and I both grabbed the tail and pulled really hard and got him out. [Important note for those of you who might try this at home: when pulling an armadillo out of a hole by the tail, always make sure his back is facing you. You do not want to be greeted by his knifelike claws.] Rudy hacked at his neck and head and sortof semi-killed him. We then put him in a plastic bag that I threw in my backpack and we started on our way back.
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| Rudy, Pinky, me, and the misfortunate 12 pound armadillo |
An average armadillo is 6 or 7 pounds. Ours was a very big one (we’d later find out he was 12 lbs). So there I was walking through the rain forest with my age-old deep purple backpack with yellow trim (the same one I’d worn around the Wooster campus for 9 years) carrying a semi-conscience armadillo. My pack was pretty heavy because I also had 1.5 liters of water and there was the unusual sensation of hearing labored breathing from an armored yet dying woodland creature. But I loved it. It was just a great feeling and it was damn cool. And I had not just been a bystander, I had hiked, chopped, pulled, and schlepped (the Belizean word for hauling) my way into being a true contributor.
When we got back to Rudy’s home, I helped him butcher the animal. (We both had to gave it a few more chops to the head before it transitioned to collection of meat). Rudy took a quarter of the meat and the liver. Amir got a quarter and the tail. I got half of the meat, which is sitting in my freezer right now. Sue was proud of her provider husband when I returned and even more pleased that I had not hurt myself or anyone else with my machete (except you-know-who). The plan is for me to bring it with some colantro (like cilantro) and brown rice to Rudy’s sister, Charlotte, later this week when she’ll cook an armadillo stew dinner for everyone at Hillside. I will also bring some chicken for her to cook as well. Believe it or not, I’m told that not everyone wants to eat armadillo.
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| Butchering the armadillo takes more skill than I realized. There are 9 glands and 4 scent sacs to be found and removed |
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