Yesterday we visited the Tortilla Factory again to ask some more questions of Flora Che (though honestly many of them were repeats of questions Connor and I already asked, but with Mac coming down at one time and the Vanderbilt graduates another, a lot of work gets done twice). Mac wasn’t feeling well, so he went back to his hotel after this meeting. Eleodoro took us to talk to another farmer in Patchakan. We had lunch in Corozal, met up with Mac, and went to a meeting with Juan Lopez, the Pentecostal pastor in Cristo Rey who has been in the rice business for many years, and several other farmers, to discuss more details about our project. Again, some questions that were asked, I already had answers to from our previous work, but we did learn more at this meeting.
Today, we stopped by Flora’s house to look at her policy book. While we were in Cristo Rey, Connor and I also met Mary Ann Meiners, an economics professor visiting for the week who will be returning in a couple of months to work on the runner route project. We will be meeting with her later in the week. We also visited Louisville, to see Ishmael Yah, the furniture maker and Eleodoro’s son-in-law. We were thinking his son would be a possible runner for the runner route, but it turns out he may be getting a nice job with the health department soon. That being said, we still want this family to be able to sell their crafts in the tourist shops, and the furniture to nice stores in Belmopan or Belize City. I’m taking some stuff out to San Pedro to show the owner of the shop we found and see how much he would buy it for. We also donated some fabric for upholstery.
We stopped by Cornerstone High School briefly on the way to Corozal. We had a late lunch, and since Mac had meetings unrelated to our work, we were left with little to do, so Connor and I tried to visit Rodney, but he wasn’t home.
Ishmael in his shop pictured below.
chrisbrittain 