Wharton Journal

Issue date: 9/18/06 Section: Perspectives

"Do you want to get the rabies shot?"
"Umm. I'm not sure. Do I need it?"
"Will you be near any dogs or wild animals?"
"Probably not."
"Will you be spending any time in caves with bats? "
Laughing, "Uh, no - that I'm sure of."

Thus ran my conversation with health services shortly before I left for Belize to work with a group from a rural village of about 300 people, La Democracia, as part of this summer's Wharton International Volunteer Program.

Officially, our project was to help a local non-profit organization, Guardians of the Jewel, develop an ecotourism business plan so that they could start to generate revenue to support an effort to co-manage a near-by national park.

Little did we know that it would also include learning that the best way to deal with trained attack dogs was to pretend you were about to throw a rock at them, watching out for snakes and scorpions as we made our way by flashlight to the outhouse, which generated methane gas that in turn was used to run the stove, assassin bugs, or watching two Fer-de-Lance, one of the most deadly snakes in Belize, contract as they took their last breaths after having been killed in the cave from which we had just emerged.

Even less did we imagine that this would involve hiking though the jungle following a guy from the village, Mish, who was wielding a machete, wading through waist-high water to enter a bat-filled cave fittingly named Dark Night, eating a food called stinky toe, seeing wild howler monkeys, or jumping off platforms 80 feet in the air as we zip-lined through the jungle. In short, our two and a half weeks in Belize felt more like an excerpt from an Indiana Jones movie than from my life.

We worked with the husband and wife team at the center of Guardians of the Jewel to assess the skills of the people in the village interested in being involved with the new business, identify good short, mid, and long-term business opportunities for the community, develop an action plan and timeline, and identify source of financing to cover start-up activities.

Talking with people from the village, other near-by organizations, and members of the Belize Forestry Department, we learned a huge amount about the country, local plants and wildlife, and current environmental and economic issues.
Trekking through wet and dry caves with fragments of Mayan pottery and jaguar prints, swimming in the river with kids from the village, and trying stewed cashew fruit, we saw the very real opportunity for the community to come together to create a business which would create new jobs in an area with high unemployment while preserving the environment.

Continued...

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