DAY 4: Crique Sarco and more...

So I'm back in San Ignacio after spending some time in the Village of Crique Sarco. While we where there we...

• Handed out all the school supplies...100 lbs of supplies, 300 notebooks, soccer balls, and more!
• Handed out bunches of candy (might need a dental team to come next!)
• Bathed in the Temash River
• Swatted about a bazzillian mosquitos and little, little bugs
• Slept outside in a hammock.
• laughed a lot...then laughed some more!
• played with the local kids
• took several naps
• ate amazing meals that included chicken, chicken and some more chicken.
• changed a flat tire on "Suzzi" the Suzuki.
• listened to Christmas songs coming from a LOUD stereo on Halloween Day. It was the only CD that Andres Bo's son had. He runs his stereo off of a battery because the only electricity they have is by a generator they run for a short time at night.

There was one serious event that did happened. A group of villagers from the village of Graham River came to Crique Sarco with a dead 6 month old child. But what made this situation even more amazing is that they actually hiked to the village from Guatemala. That's a 6 hour walk with a dead baby. They were in Guatemla illegally and had to come back into Belize.

According to Belize law a doctor must pronounce the date of a dead person before being burying. This means having to take anyone who dies in one of the remote villages to Punta Gorda - a 2 hour drive by bus.

By the time they got to Crique Sarco, they wanted to bury the baby in the village because of the difficulty in the formal Belizean process. Andres Bo is the speaker of the village and also made the decision to finally allow them to bury the baby in Crique Sarco.

So the men built a small wood box for the child. According to some who still practice ancient Mayan religion, they drilled a small whole in the box to allow the spirit to get out and begin it's way through the spiritual levels. Hmmm?

Long story short, it was very sad to see something like this, but very facinating to see how two villages interacted, and to see how they deal with the their dead.

Here are some pictures...

Andres Bo building the coffin.

Watching as they prepare the baby in the coffin.