Belize Archive

Saving paradise in the Maya Mountains of Belize

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: October 24, 2010Posted in: Belize, Featured, Forest protection, Indigenous rights, Watershed protection, WhyTags: , , , , , , ,
Saving paradise in the Maya Mountains of Belize

(Above: A forest ranger patrols the Central River in the Maya Mountains, Toledo District, Southern Belize (Photo by Chris Hamley)

By Lee McLoughlin

Editor’s note: I visited the Maya Mountains, San Miguel and San Pedro Colombia in March of this year and the natural beauty of the area took my breath away. I was distressed to hear of plans to build a hydroelectric dam here and had hoped the community organizing efforts had put a stop to it. Unfortunately, Lee McLoughlin of the Ya’axché Conservation Trust contacted me recently to let me know that the project is a destructive reality, and one that the community and the conservation trust have teamed up to fight. What follows is a guest article by Lee and three excellent videos sponsored by the Ya’axché Conservation Trust. – Tracy L. Barnett

MAYA MOUNTAINS, Belize – The Toledo District of southern Belize is blessed with rich natural and cultural resources. Along its spine runs the rugged Maya Mountains, a largely uninhabited refuge for a wide variety of threatened and endangered species including jaguar, Baird’s tapir, howler monkey and the iconic scarlet macaw. The Maya Mountains are part of the last remaining relatively intact block of forest within the region – The Selva Maya – stretching from Belize to Guatemala and Mexico.


Central River in Bladen Nature Reserve (Photo courtesy of Ya’axché Conservation Trust)

In addition to the Maya Mountains’ value as a conservation area for threatened, endangered and endemic species it also provides services such as clean air and of course fresh, limestone filtered water to rural communities. To help protect these freshwater resources a large portion of the Maya Mountains are under some form of protection. The most strictly protected area in this block is the Bladen Nature Reserve which is co-managed by Ya’axché Conservation Trust and Belize Forest Department. Bladen protects the headwaters of the Monkey River and the Central River (Rio Grande tributary) where the river drops through sinkholes and emerges out of springs as it makes its way through the underground limestone cave systems on its way through indigenous Mayan communities and then coastal Creole communities before reaching Belize’s World Heritage Barrier Reef. The communities of San Pedro Columbia and San Miguel, in the upper Rio Grande watershed, are particularly dependent on these rivers as a source of drinking water, for washing and for irrigation for subsistence agriculture.

In November of last year Ya’axché Conservation Trust discovered that Belize Hydroelectric Development (BHD) had conducted an illegal ‘feasibility study’ for a proposed hydroelectric dam within the pristine, strictly protected Bladen Nature Reserve. This development was taking place without any prior consultation with the communities that would be affected by the dam and in addition Ya’axché, as co-managers of Bladen, were not informed. The communities of San Pedro Columbia and San Miguel mobilized to form a commitee and numerous meetings were held to allow people to voice their opinions. People were overwhelmingly against the development, especially since the same company had previously established a dam on the San Miguel river on community land without any tangible community benefit. Ya’axché decided to take the community opposition a step further and is now involved in litigation against BHD and the Forest Department who granted them the permit.


Community meeting in San Pedro Columbia (Photo by Chris Hamley)

What this illegal development showed was a complete disregard for the human rights of the indigenous communities living downstream and the rich ecology of the Maya Mountains. Ya’axché realized that it was necessary to give a voice to those communities who would be most affected by developments such as this. To ensure this voice is heard Ya’axche requested permission from Ajax films to publicize ‘Saving Paradise’ and later collaborated with Ajax films to create ‘River to Reef’.

Saving Paradise from Ajax Films uploaded by Ya'axché Conservation Trust on Vimeo.

The first film, ‘Saving Paradise’, is the story of the opposition of Toledo communities to the proposed hydro dam and the five-day expedition to the site of the ‘development’ in the remote upper reaches of the Maya Mountains. It enabled the community members and Ya’axché to show those who could not make the long trek, the damage that had been caused by the developers. This included the bulldozing of a road, clearing forested slopes, blocking waterways and creeks and clearing helicopter landing pads. ‘Saving Paradise’ also shows the series of community meetings which followed the ‘feasibility study’ and particularly the passion and organization of the communities in opposition to this dam.

The second film, ‘River to Reef’, is all about the relationship of modern Belizeans to their water resources, it highlights the impacts that we have on our watersheds on individual, community and commercial levels. Importantly it not only demonstrates the negative impacts but also shows those committed individuals who are making small changes in their community to achieve healthy watersheds and coastal reefs for future generations. The film is currently being shown on Belizean Television, on the internet and, most importantly, in schools and communities.

River to Reef from Ajax Films uploaded by Ya'axché Conservation Trust on Vimeo.

For more information on the fight against the dam please check out the blog, Let Our River Flow. For more information about the activities and protected areas of Ya’axche Conservation Trust, including the 100,000-acre Bladen Nature Reserve and the 15,000-acre Golden Stream Corridor Preserve please visit the Ya’axche Conservation Trust website at www.yaaxche.org or write to cmichaelangelo@yahoo.com or nicrequena@gmail.com. And to lend your voice to the cause, write to Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow at cabinet@btl.net, or call him at (501) 822-0399; and write a letter to the newspapers, Amandala (editor_amandala@yahoo.com) and the Belize Times, 3 Queen Street, PO box 506, Belize City, Belize.

And to close the subject with a smile, check out this short video by a group of Toledo High School students, Damn the Dam! It’s priceless.

Damn the Dam! from Ajax Films uploaded by Ya'axché Conservation Trust on Vimeo.

Dining with Gomier, the veggie Rasta man

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: April 1, 2010Posted in: Belize, Featured, WhyTags: , , , , , ,
Dining with Gomier, the veggie Rasta man

PUNTA GORDA TOWN, Belize – The best meal I had here was prepared by a Rastafarian vegetarian by the name of Ignatius “Gomier” Longville. And the conversation was even better than the food.

I asked Gomier to explain to me how he came to be a vegetarian. “I consider myself a Rasta man,” he said. “To be a Rasta man you have to be respectful; what I don’t like for myself, I shouldn’t like for you.

“We’re supposed to have dominion over all the animals – but that doesn’t mean we can kill them and slaughter them.”

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Gomier’s Restaurant, which promotes the idea that “Health is Wealth,” flaunts its rasta colors close to the entrance of town, where Gomier instructs locals and tourists on the many uses of soy. He began by working with Plenty Belize, a nonprofit established by members of The Farm in Tennessee, working to promote a more healthful diet in the community. The restaurant started as a demonstration project of Plenty Belize, and evolved into a full-fledged restaurant. Now he’s got a cookbook and a full line of medician

Gomier’s ideas were initially met with skepticism by many locals, but the food is so good that he’s won over a number of skeptics. Sampling the savory curry tofu, I’m not surprised.

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“There’s so much you can choose to eat in the plant kingdom; you got plenty food,” he goes on in his Marley-like patois. “If an animal can live on only grass, why can’t we humans with all our dominion live how we’re supposed to live?”

If that weren’t enough to convince me, he nailed his case with one more argument:

“Carnivorous animals all have pointy teeth,” he said. “We have teeth more like the coy, the horse, the donkey – we’re supposed to be herbivorous people. The elephant is the biggest animal in all the kingdom, and all it eats is grass and water.”

Vegetarians, he tells me, have so much energy they can’t eat enough to keep up with all the energy they burn. Maybe that’s what accounts for his lanky frame. Meat, on the other hand, sits in your stomach for 24 hours or more. I don’t like the thought of that.

To be sure, if I could find a Gomier in every town, I would be a vegetarian already. I resolve to use my dominion to find more vegetarian options, and to spread the word about Gomier’s. If you ever find yourself in Punta Gorda Town, put his restaurant on your list. You won’t be sorry.

Maya mystery unraveled: Chocolate old and new

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: March 31, 2010Posted in: Belize, Ecotourism, Featured, Toledo Ecotourism Association, WhyTags: , , , , , ,
Maya mystery unraveled: Chocolate old and new

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PUNTA GORDA TOWN, Toledo District, Belize – A sweet, pungent and slightly tangy scent drifts upward to the palm-thatched patio, mixing with the salty sea breeze here at the Chocolate Center of the Universe, otherwise known as Cottontree Chocolate. I contemplate the iced mocha melting on my tongue, and my newly discriminating olfactory can now discern an extra edge: Toledo has taught me why chocolate tastes and smells the way it does.

IMG_2944 Cacao is Toledo’s biggest export, and I’ve seen it now in all stages of production. Last week I went to stay in a Mayan village through the Toledo Ecotourism Association’s guest house program and I got a tour of Reyes Chun’s cacao farm in San Antonio Village. Hiking with Reyes and his boys down a footpath through the jungle, I saw the football-sized pods hanging from the trunks of the trees; Reyes whacked at one with a machete and chopped it in half, handing it over to me to taste the tangy-sweet, almost cottony flesh around the seeds. It tasted nothing like chocolate. It tasted, in fact, like nothing else.

IMG_2916 The boys each grabbed their own pod and sucked away noisily at the seeds as Reyes explained to me the process. These seeds would be taken home and cleaned, then wrapped in banana leaves and placed in a special wooden box for seven days to ferment.

“I didn’t know chocolate was fermented!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been eating it all my life, and I had no idea!”
“Oh, yes – that’s why it tastes the way it does,” laughed Reyes at my astonishment.

Later his wife, Jenny, treated us all to a cup of cocoa – and, even better, a demonstration of the process. It’s a good thing I didn’t know then that it would take a whole hour, and a workout worthy of an athlete; if I’d known what was involved, I’d never have asked.

IMG_2953 First she built a fire in the ground-level wood stove, then placed a flat cooking sheet on top. Here she toasted the fermented brown seeds. She handed me one to taste; it was sharply sour, and I remembered the tang of extra dark chocolate, which I suddenly understood. She and Reyes took turns stirring them every few moments until they reached a point of crisp but not burned, then she handed me another. I peeled off the crust and tasted it. Aha, there it was – it took a bit of concentration, but deep within the bitter, sour bean was the distinctive taste of chocolate.

IMG_2986 Now she scrubbed clean the metate, the four-legged rectangular stone device made smooth by years of grinding and pounding in the way Mesoamerican women have done for centuries. The grinding stone was the thickness of a baseball bat, and heavy. Jenny crushed the seeds into a rough crumble.

Now it was time to separate the cocoa from the chaff. Placing the beans into a large bowl, she began tossing them, letting the impact and the breeze blow the shells into the floor.

Back to the metate, she tossed in some black peppercorns and a few seeds of allspice, which grows wild in the rainforests here. She grinded for good while, sweat shining on her face in the sticky jungle heat. “It has to be very smooth,” she explained.

Earlier, she had placed a few tortillas into a bowl of water, and now she splashed some of the water on the cacao meal, continuing to grind. She worked the meal into a mushy ball; now it was time to do the same for the tortilla.

IMG_2991 Finally, after nearly an hour of toasting and grinding and mashing, she had two sizeable balls of mush: one of cacao, the other of corn masa. Now it was time to pull out the calabashes, the gourds grown and dried just for this purpose, as the ancient Maya did. Modern-day coffee-cups would do for tea, Coca-Cola and orange Fanta, but when it came to chocolate, it must be served with style.

A big daub of cacao paste and a little daub of corn masa went into the calabash, followed by hot water from the teakettle, which had been steeping on the fire. A big spoon of sugar followed.
Undeniably, authentically chocolate.

IMG_3033 Back in Punta Gorda Town, as the locals call Toledo’s diminutive county seat, chocolate was brewing in a more modern, but still distinctly Caribbean way. “Free tours” reads the sign in front of Cottontree Chocolate, a colorful coffeehouse, pizza parlor and mini-Willy Wonka chocolate factory all in one. The shop is the creation of former art teacher, sailor and social worker Chris Crowell, founder of Cottontree Ecolodge. The pungent, tangy scent drew me in.

IMG_3023 Catarina, a young Maya girl showed me the steps of the process. No metate here – instead there’s a homemade grinder powered by an electric drill. An electric hairdryer expedited the separation process. Powdered milk and vanilla replaced the black pepper, allspice and tortilla. And a sophisticated mixing device stirred it all up overnight, creating a consistency that would be placed in molds and left to harden.

My mouth watered as I watched – and smelled – the process. Young Catarina handed me a wooden tasting stick to place into the thick mixture and I indulged. This was chocolate at its finest.

I headed upstairs to the colorfully painted coffeehouse to sample an iced mocha under the thatched roof and savor the sea breeze caressing my face.

Yes, there are certain advantages to modernity, I confessed, savoring every sip. Modern chocolate would be my choice today. But thanks to Jenny’s labors, this ancient Maya miracle will never taste quite the same.


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Road to change for the Maya

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: March 29, 2010Posted in: Belize, Ecotourism, Featured, Forest protection, Indigenous rights, Reforestation, Toledo Ecotourism Association, WhyTags: , , , , , , ,
Road to change for the Maya

(above: Nathan and Japhet Chun demonstrate the squawking sound made by the moving parts of the heliconia plant, leading to the common name “parrot plant” and its use as a Maya plaything.)

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SAN ANTONIO VILLAGE, Belize – The green school bus was already full when I climbed aboard in Punta Gorda. It was market day, and all the Maya ladies with their colorful satin dresses sat amid their purchases and their children, ready to make the journey home. As my eyes sought an opening, one of the men in the back got up and approached me with a broad smile.

It was Reyes Chun, chair of the Toledo Ecotourism Association, who lives in San Antonio Village, which is why I chose to come here. “This is my wife, Jenny,” he said, pointing to a smiling woman in purple satin, her hair combed carefully into a tight knot. “She will take care of you.”

Jenny and I chatted for the 40-minute drive, most of it down rugged and rutted gravel roads through the jungle. I asked her about the coming of the Guatemala Link Road, a feeder road for the Puebla to Panama highway, which will pave the way for the Free Trade Zone of the Americas. The highway is slated to run a few miles from her village, I have been told.

I’ve read a consultant’s report warning of severe environmental and community degradation in the highway’s wake if the government doesn’t provide a plan for their protection, and San Antonio is on the list of affected communities. Jenny doesn’t know about this. She’ll be glad to get to town more quickly, and she hopes that with the highway, electricity will come to the rest of the village. For now, however, this all seems a distant mirage.

The afternoon sun beat down unmercifully on the zinc roof of the one-room cement-block house, but still it was a welcome respite from the wilting rays outside. Another, larger one, wooden with a thatched roof, was behind it – later I learned it was the kitchen. But now it was time for Jenny’s son Noel to take me to the guesthouse, which would be my quarters during my stay.

IMG_2796 He led me out past the rice drying on huge mats in the hot sun, down a footpath and into the jungle. There in a clearing along the path was a thatch-roofed wooden building with everything I needed – a table and chairs, beds with mosquito netting, a comfortable wooden-framed love seat, a large patio looking out onto the jungle – and best of all, a colorful hammock. This is where I was to wait until someone came for me.

Under the guesthouse plan devised by the Toledo Ecotourism Association, different families would come at different times of day to take me to their homes to share meals with them. A variety of tours and activities were available: a village tour, a farm tour, a walk to the waterfall, lessons in embroidery or basketweaving or tortilla making.

IMG_2811 I signed up for all three of the tours and stepped into the guesthouse, a blessed respite from the unrelenting sun. The thatch was much cooler than the zinc-roofed house below, designed to let the breezes flow through while providing a thick mat of protection from the relentless rays. Now I understood why each family had a thatch house as well as the cement and zinc one; the thatch house was cool and comfortable, but it took a lot of work to construct and maintain, Noel explained. The cement one could be relied upon when the other was down for repairs.

As he headed off down the path, I felt a twinge of anxiety. Nothing to do! I should have brought my computer, I scolded myself. I could have been writing.

It was far too hot for a tour, and nobody in the village seemed to be moving. Even the birds in the trees were quiet; only an occasional rooster broke the silence.

I sat on the wooden bench for awhile, contemplating my options. Finally I did what any sensible traveler would do; I clambered into the hammock, which I discovered had been strategically placed to catch the breeze.
I observed the herringbone-like pattern created by the overlapping cohune palm leaves overhead, the local material used to make thatch. I examined the way they were tied together and to the wooden beams with what looked like vines. Later, Reyes showed me the vines they used to do this work – they belonged to the monestera philodendron, commonly known to most North Americans as house plants – only these were growing up skyscraper-tall trees, with leaves the size of a tabletop.

My eyes grew heavy. The hammock swung gently in the breeze.

“How nice that I don’t have a computer,” I thought.

Suddenly I awoke to the sound of a gentle whirring outside, near the eves. I listened intently: zip, whir. Zip, whir. A hummingbird – hovering right above my hammock! The creature had zipped in under the eaves, where it hovered for a few seconds before zipping out the other side, then hovering overhead again, as if to deliver a blessing. Then, in a whir of bright green and red, it was gone.

***
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There was little time for lollygagging, however. Noel and 12-year-old Jeffrey were soon heading up the path to take me to the waterfall.

As we made our way through the thatched-house village and into the jungle beyond, I asked him about his future plans.

Noel is studying accounting and planning to move away from the Toledo district – probably to the nation’s capital, Belmopan – so that he can find a job and raise a family. He’d love to stay closer to home, he says, but there are so few jobs in Toledo. The alternative, he says, would be to stay here and work his father’s cacao farm, but with six sons and a daughter, it’s clear there’s not enough to go around.

IMG_2819 The Chuns are actually fairly well off compared to many. Reyes is working overtime to send his children to high school, which is not free in Belize. More than two-thirds of the people in this district are considered poor, and more than half are considered extremely poor.

IMG_2800 “My father is working hard on a plan to get more jobs here,” says Noel. “I really hope he can be successful.”
Noel is talking about the Toledo People’s Eco Park, a far-reaching plan that the Toledo Ecotourism Association has been hammering out, a plan that builds on the success of the guesthouse program and goes far beyond tourism to promote reforestation, sustainable agriculture and eco-manufacturing while creating jobs in the local economy.

The TEA, a group with representatives from all the region’s major cultural groups, has been working on this plan for a number of years and has come close to garnering governmental and NGO support, but thus far, it has not been able to get significant funding for this plan. The hope is that the highway will provide the catalyst to finally put the plan in place.

IMG_2902Reyes hopes the coming of the highway will bring the resources necessary to finally put the Eco Park plan into motion. On the one hand, he reasons, it could bring opportunities and money to the Forgotten District. But he hopes Toledo can learn a lesson from the Cayo District, where the gains have been reaped largely by international developers.

“In the Toledo district we should learn by example,” he said. “What we want to do in Toledo is a complete vice versa to the example of the Cayo District. The TEA should be the steward to actually motivate people to know what the highway will bring. I know for sure once the highway is open and our land is not secure and our resources are being hampered, then it will be a total loss, and we will not become the owners of our own resources.”

****
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Back at the guesthouse, the sun was dropping behind the trees, and I dug out my flashlight and prepared for the pitch-blackness. A youngster named Lupio fetched me to take me to his grandmother Romalda’s house for rice and beans.

I climbed a rugged footpath up to where the compound sits, surrounded by jungle. This is where Reyes grew up; Romalda is his mother. Chickens and pigs scratch in the dust outside her thatched house. Romalda and her daughter Tomasa are squatting in front of the fire, making fresh corn tortillas, when I arrive.

Romalda rises to show me to the table, and she reaches for a kerosene lamp, which she fills and lights, as it’s growing dim.

Tomasa is deaf, she explains, but very smart. I can communicate with her using sign language, she explains.
The eggs are delicious, prepared with tomatoes and onion and served with beans and rice. Romalda wants to know where I’m from.

She tells me of her nine children, only three of whom still live in the village: Tomasa, Reyes, and another daughter who is also deaf. All the others have gone to distant towns to make a living.

“They say that the highway is coming, that it will bring jobs and electricity,” she says. “They’ve been saying that for so many years – I don’t know now if I will see it before I die.” She gives a resigned laugh.

I stand to help with the dishes, and Tomasa pours cold water and a bit of soap powder into a plastic tub. I wash, she rinses; soon, however, she shakes her head firmly. She hands me the cup I’ve just washed and runs a finger over it, making a face; it’s greasy, I understand. So is this one, and this one. Obviously I need schooling in this art. We laugh together and I begin again.

As I take my leave, Tomasa touches her lips with her hand and extends it toward me, smiling, and I reach for it. But Rowena laughs.

“She’s saying thank you,” said Romalda. Suddenly I understand – this is universal sign language. I touch my lips, extend my hand and smile in thanks and in farewell.

***
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In the morning, there’s breakfast with Jenny, where she shows me some of her handmade creations: fine embroidery, necklaces of bead grass and basketry made from the local jippi jappa palm.
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Then it’s time for a tour of Reyes’ cacao farm, together with a walking workshop on scores of medicinal plants along the way.
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Back at the guesthouse, I wait on the front porch and watch the palm leaves dance in the breeze. Rosita and her friend are walking down the path with baskets full of clothing, headed for the deep spot in the creek I’d never noticed, just below the tree line. There amid the trees they scrub their clothes and bathe, chatting and giggling amiably.

A world lost to time, it seemed – but only for a few moments more. Change is coming to this village, and to dozens more that will be affected by the Southern Highway. I think of the stream that provides the village lifeline; the little boy making a gang sign at me as I passed by; the friendly young man who works in Belize City, home for a visit, who worries about what will become of his village.

But it’s time to catch the bus back to Punta Gorda Town, and I’m late. I say my goodbyes to the Chun family, catch a bumpy ride in a pickup truck and feel the wind on my face.


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Hope for Toledo, Hope for the World

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: March 28, 2010Posted in: Belize, Ecotourism, Featured, Toledo Ecotourism Association, WhyTags: , , ,
Hope for Toledo, Hope for the World

Author’s note: This is the first of a several-part series on Toledo, the so-called “Forgotten District” in the south of Belize. As for myself, I know I will never forget.
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PUNTA GORDA TOWN, Toledo District, Belize – White-capped waves are slapping the shore along Front Street, sparkling in the first light of day. Rhythms with their roots in distant Africa resonate from the Catholic Church, while at the other end of town, Mayan women in their shiny satin dresses, hair pulled up in tight buns, arrange their fresh cabbage, squash and greens to the plaintive ranchero of a Guatemalan radio station from across the border.

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Later, the town square will ring with the melodies of Maya marimba musicians, facing off for their annual competition; in the evening, a Garifuna punta session breaks out on the balcony of The Reef Bar, its infectious drumbeats echoing out over the waves.

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But most tourists won’t stick around to hear that. They’re already shouldering their packs, headed out to the tiny one-horse port for the first boat to somewhere: Livingston or Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, to the south, or catching buses or planes to beach destinations like Placencia, Dangriga or Caye Caulker to the north. Others head north to San Ignacio for a rainforest adventure, and then on to Flores and the Tikal ruins in Guatemala.

A few of them stop long enough to see what I see, and decide to stay on for a while. Here in tiny Punta Gorda, the forgotten center of commerce for the so-called Forgotten District, Garífuna and Creole, Maya and East Indian mix in a savory blend that can only be found in the South of Belize. Elsewhere in the Toledo District, blue-tinged rivers flow through the Maya Mountains; Lubaantun and other Mayan ruins await the seekers of ancient mysteries.

When I began to understand the unique blend of culture and nature that Toledo has to offer, I asked myself, why don’t more of those tourists stick around?

Luxury lodges tucked away in the jungle, like the Cottontree Ecolodge, and others here in town, like the Blue Belize and Seafront Inn along the waterfront, provide upscale accommodations and a range of package tours. On the other end of the spectrum, budget travelers are offered a range of comfortable places with character, like Nature’s Way Guest House.

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The local bus system can take you to the ruins or to a Maya or Garífuna village to stay in a thatch-roof guesthouse and learn their ways. And local tour groups like the nonprofit TIDE Foundation offer outings in the Sarstoon-Temash National Park, the Machaca Forest Reserve and the Columbia River Forest Reserve, home to jaguars and peccaries, tapirs and toucans and a host of other tropical species.

I end my morning walk back at a shady seat on the front porch of Nature’s Way, a fresh cup of coffee in hand as I watch the town awake around me. As a travel writer with an interest in the environment – or an environmental writer with an interest in travel – I find myself drawn to such places. As idyllic as it seems, however, it’s also a place of great hardship and struggle – the poorest district in an already poor country, which at one time was believed to have the highest per-capita concentration of Peace Corps workers in the world. Local residents tell me that a greater investment in sustainable tourism could make an enormous difference.

I dedicated the past couple of weeks to delving into this question, talking to locals and reading up on the history of the place. The people charmed me; the history intrigued me, and the unfulfilled dreams of a hardworking group of visionaries called me to learn their story. I’ll be reporting on them in the days ahead. Meanwhile, here are some highlights from my time in Punta Gorda Town.


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From one jungle to another: A modern-day pioneer

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: March 16, 2010Posted in: Belize, Featured, Maya Mountain Research Farm, Permaculture, Reforestation, WhyTags: , , , , ,
From one jungle to another: A modern-day pioneer

(above: Nesbitt’s daughters, Esperanza and Zephyr, make an appearance during the farm tour as “Princesses of the forest” in their palm-leaf costumes, designed by Esperanza.)

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It may not look like it at first, but Christopher Nesbitt has a big crew working for him here at Maya Mountain Research Farm.

There are the chickens, who recycle kitchen scraps into eggs and meat. There are the soldier flies, who recycle what the chickens don’t want into larvae for chicken food. There are the leaf-cutter ants, who aerate the compacted soil and serve as more chicken feed. And then there are the vast armies of microbes working to bring back the natural balance to what was once a stripped and sterile cattle farm.

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“Every component on this farm gives us one of two things: a good, or a service,” says Nesbitt. “Sometimes they give us both.”

Our tour of Maya Mountain Research Farm was a lesson in natural cycles, from the compost barrel to the chicken coop, from the piggery to the agroforestry plot, from the aquaponics system to the composting toilet. The farm has become a research, demonstration and training center for sustainable agriculture, and Nesbitt has worked with local and international agencies to implement both permaculture and solar technology solutions to regional problems.

Nesbitt, a native New Yorker, came to Belize at the age of 19 and loved it so much he decided to stake a claim.

“I went from one jungle to another,” he jokes.

He bought the farm three years later and set about bringing it back to a natural state. The labor it must have taken to build two houses, two dorms and a number of outbuildings is staggering, especially considering that everything that didn’t grow here had to be poled in on a canoe-sized dory. Nesbitt has gotten so good at it that he can find his way two miles down the river to the next town in the dark of night – and frequently does so.

Nesbitt went a considerably different route than the rest of his family. One brother is a decorated Navy veteran; the other is a dot-com millionaire. For his part, he’s found his happiness up here on Maya Mountain with the simple things in life – like chickens, pigs and solar panels.

“Pigs have a natural inclination to tear things up,” Nesbitt explains. “So we take that behavior, which could be seen as destructive, and turn it into a constructive activity.” The pigs, which he’s preparing to add to the farm in the next year, will be cycled through paddocks that are planted with native root crops like coco yam, or tarot, and yuca, or cassava, to provide them with food as they root around and convert garbage into meat and fertilizer. When they move on to the next paddock, this space is a richly fertilized and plowed field, ready for planting beans, corn, sesame or whatever else he might want.

The barn is designed with concrete channels that are engineered to carry the waste to a central point, where the gases will be channeled into a biogas digesting system to provide fuel, which will be piped to the kitchen.
Nesbitt isn’t a big meat eater, but the animals will provide important services as well as generating revenue for the farm.

He’s also planning to add sheep, for milk and for meat. “Animals are a fantastic element to any system, because they can utilize things that we can’t,” Nesbitt says. “We could chew grass all day long, but I’d rather have them do it, and drink the milk.”

Animals also help with the timing factor. “When we have breadnut, everyone has breadnut, so we can’t sell them,” he says. “So we cycle the breadnut through the pigs and we get the pork and methane gas, then we return the slurry to the soil in fertilizer.”

Tropical soils tend to be very poor, he explained, and nutrient cycling is even more essential here than in some places. Agricultural and forestry practices over the past several centuries have badly degraded and eroded the soil, and traditional farming has produced fewer and fewer yields.

Agroforestry is the logical answer to this problem, Nesbitt believes, and he leads us on to one of his favorite slopes and has us take a seat.

“What you’re looking at is the equivalent of a biological flywheel,” he said, gesturing out toward a lush, multi-layered forest. “It’s an area that has finally ‘snapped’– it’s reached a point where it requires little or no maintenance. We get star apple, bukut (a leguminous pod-producing tree), peach palm, avocado, bananas, hog plum, coffee, cacao, sugar cane, breadnut, pineapple, turmeric, ginger, chi’kai (a vegetable that tastes like the cross between asparagus and artichokes)…. We get a lot of calories out of it, and we don’t put a lot of calories into it.”

One of the special features of Maya Mountain Research Farm is that it’s located amid the Lubaantun Mayan ruins, dating to 750 AD. Nesbitt holds the view that ancient Maya cultures built their civilization on agroforestry, simply because it’s much less work than the trinity of corn, bean and squash. He says corn was an important source of food, particularly for elite classes, but that the amount of energy invested to energy returned wouldn’t be enough to support such a society. He cites one scientific article that postulated that the primary food of the ancient Maya was the ramon nut, also called Maya breadnut.

“My neighbors have trucks and tractors, steel machetes, Roundup, 2-4 D and hybrid seed, yet none of my neighbors manage to make much surplus. They manage to get by, for life. There’s no way the Maya, who had none of these comparative values built a complex society on beans and corn.”


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Life lessons on Maya Mountain

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: March 13, 2010Posted in: Belize, Climate Change, Ecovillages, Featured, Forest protection, Permaculture, Reforestation, WhyTags: , , , , ,
Life lessons on Maya Mountain

Solastalgia – 1. A feeling of loss at demise of Earth; mourning for Gaia; profound ennui.
2. Lost connection to nature; an eco-psychological imbalance.
Antidotes: Ecological restoration
Permaculture

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So begins Albert Bates in his introduction to permaculture – a design system whose name originated from the idea of “permanent agriculture” and evolved into a system promoting permanence in the human culture itself.

“Solastalgia is what happens when we find that we are one of the only animals that soils its own nest, and then lives in it. Then we get sad and depressed,” he says. “We ask ourselves, ‘Can we survive?’”

Bates, a founder of the Global Ecovillage Network and a prolific author and public speaker, has made his way through miles of Mayan villages and tropical forest to Maya Mountain Research Farm in southern Belize, as he does every March. It’s part of a hectic schedule that has him traveling all over the globe, from Estonia to the Holy Lands and beyond, preparing willing participants for what he calls The Great Change: a transition to a world less dependent on petroleum and other carbon-based fuels, and more in harmony with the Earth.

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An integral part of his lesson plan is permaculture. Developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, permaculture has grown into a global movement, an approach to sustainable development that strives to work with nature instead of at cross purposes with it. Today, he and Mexican permaculture leader Maria Ros are giving us an intro to the principles of the system. But first, Bates administers a little shock therapy – a collection of seemingly random facts that all add up to a wakeup call for a hypnotized nation.
In 2008, he tells us, “USAnians” – he refuses to submit to the convention that has expropriated the name of the whole New World for the sole use of one country – purchased 68 million vehicles, 85 million refrigerators and 1.2 billion mobile phones. The average European consumes 43 kilograms of resources per person, while the average American consumes 88.

“If we used as much energy per capita as Europeans, we’d be an oil-exporting nation,” he tells us. At this point, the richest 7% – most of whom live in the US – produce 50% of the carbon.

It might not matter, he says, except that our acquisitive ways are driving the planet to the brink of destruction.
One-third of the world’s largest rivers are losing water 2½ times faster than they gain it; they are drying up. 150 villages in Northern Syria have been abandoned due to drought. The same thing is beginning to happen in Mexico, Africa and southern Spain.

“Whole villages are having to pack up and leave. Where are they going to go?”

Desertification, increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes, disappearing water supplies and rising sea levels are expected to produce an estimated 1 billion environmental refugees by 2050.

“We’re in a cycle we created half a century ago that’s still unfolding,” he said. “The carbon from muscle cars of the ‘50s and the industrial plants of the ‘60s and ‘70s are still making their way into the atmosphere, going through chemical changes.

“We need a shift in human design.”

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Permaculture strives to use “more observation, less perspiration” by studying the lay of the land and the patterns of nature and working with them to create a harmonious design. The objective, he says, is to make oneself obsolete; in a good design, “the designer becomes the recliner.”

That’s why the hammock is an essential part of a good permaculture design, he maintains – although with his busy schedule, I’m having a hard time imagining him doing much hammock reclining.

“We have to ask ourselves: Can nature do it for us? Can we go with the flow? What is the flow?”

The three key principles, he says, are Earth care, people care and surplus share. That last part caught my attention. “If you don’t share the surplus, it becomes pollution,” he said, using as an example the fruit from an apple tree. Shared, it becomes a resource; left to spoil on the ground, it becomes a mess. The same holds true for any surplus production, he says. I imagine how different the world would be if sharing surplus were to become a part of the general ethic.

In fact, before the invention of money some 500 to 1,000 years ago, that was the case, he says. Early tribal people like the Cahokians created great trading centers that stretched from Nova Scotia and Alaska to the tropics, but trade was based on a friendly exchange, and hoarding wasn’t a useful behavior.

Alternative and local currencies have been developed in recent years, giving greater emphasis to the trust-building component of building a local economy. One recent example is the Totnes Pound, created in Devon, England, as a part of the first Transition Town, a movement that is now gaining ground throughout the world.

Bates talked of many things: the process of personal change, the first step in social change; the principles of permaculture, which draws on concepts like biomimicry and stacking functions; and Peace Through Permaculture, a program that has brought together Israelis and Palestinians in innovative initiatives like the Marda Permaculture Project, despite pressure from the Israeli government.

“This is where we became a permaculture army that doesn’t have boundaries,” said Bates. “We’re not fighting for a nation, we’re fighting for a planet.”

The afternoon brought some graphic demonstrations of permaculture principles by Maria Ros, an amazing woman in her own right, who left a successful career as a professional dancer and university instructor to learn and teach permaculture and build an ecovillage in Quintana Roo.

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Maria and Hector Reyes gave a session on designing for catastrophe, a subject they know well, living as they do in the hurricane zone of the Yucatan. Hurricane Wilma destroyed much of the work she had done on her permaculture farm for the past four years.
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She remembers her house shuddering in the howling winds, fearing for her walls and roof as she looked out a window at the thatch-roofed Maya house next door. The palm fronds lifted and fell with the winds, emerging unscathed.

The experience was a traumatic one, but she learned an important lesson: The more we observe nature, and the more we incorporate those observations into our designs, the more sustainable our designs will be.
“The Maya design their homes with thatched roofs, so they are not only strong but they let the wild energy move through instead of blocking it,” she said. “In my house, the walls were crying against the wind.”

Bates chimed in with a dramatic illustration of the concept that I will always take with me.
He drew two circles on the chalkboard – one the size of a quarter, and several feet across.

“This is the earthquake in Haiti,” he said, “and this is the earthquake in Chile.”

Then he drew a corresponding quarter-sized circle inside Chile and a large circle around Haiti, representing the number of people who had died in each quake – slightly over 100 in the case of Chile, and thousands in the case of Haiti.

“That’s the result of design,” he said emphatically.

More on this concept can be found on his blog, The Great Change, which is well worth the read.

The day passed with many more lessons, and this was just the beginning. Tomorrow, we’ll get a look at Maya Mountain Research Farm, with a tour by founder Christopher Nesbitt, who bought it from a cattle rancher in 1988 and converted it from a depleted, eroded and relatively unproductive tract to a richly diverse forest.

Here’s a quick glimpse into my first amazing day at Maya Mountain. Stay tuned for the farm tour tomorrow, what Bates refers to as “one of the best examples I’ve seen of permaculture in action.”


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