alligator heads

this picture has nothing to do with the title....(wouldn't it be funny if it did and i posted a pic of us all wearing alligator heads as masks or something? i think that's rather humorous...perhaps you have to be here to think it is as funny as i do!) this is a picture of our st. vincent de paul group at st. martin's church. the white guy in the back left was on an immersion trip with my work and he is a part of st. vincent de paul in the states so he wanted to come to our meeting. his group is our 'twinning partner'---strange name, but it means that quarterly they give us money! yea! he took this pic at our last meeting and sent it to me over email. the white guy in the back right is my roommate chris. my other roommate, kate, was taking the picture, and another roommate, adam, decided not to attend this meeting because mostly they're boring and hot and long (which they truly are but the group does such good work that we all keep going to the meetings and participating in the work anyway!). my other two roommates, monica and danny, are not a part of st. vincent de paul. the gentleman in the back row, second to the left is bernie. he's my supervisor here at hand in hand and he was also my homestay dad when i first got here. he calls me his daughter (my roommate chris was there the year before so chris is his son) and he is one of the greatest people i've ever met. he is an amazing example of love. he gives every single person (and he does know EVERY SINGLE PERSON in belize) the same amount of respect and attention as the next, be it me, our clients, our coworkers, or the guys on the street who are hustling for money. he's really great. the gentleman next to bernie is santos diaz. i love this guy. for some reason, he's taken a liking to me, and we joke all the time. i love it when he thinks something in the meeting is funny and he cracks up. mr. diaz is yet another example of love here in belize. he, too, treats everyone as equal and believes we all deserve the same amount of love and compassion regardless if we have money or status or anything. moving on....i'm not going to describe everyone in the picture; that would take too long!

onto the matter you've all been wondering about....alligator heads! hand in hand just finished building a house for ms. dorla. the first time we went to look at the land where we might build, there was a huge fight between ms. dorla's brothers and neighbors and there was shouting and barking and it was pretty intense. it seemed that there were more dogs than people! the next time we saw her, we asked exactly how many dogs lived there and she casually replied, 17. seventeen dogs!!! what!?!? and don't think they're big healthy dogs...those are few and far between in belize. they're skinny, sickly, mangy dogs. one of them had a huge gash where his ear attaches to his head and came up and brushed past my leg before i could stop it. i was freaking out that i was going to get mange! anyway, a group from kentucky just left and finished her house. it looks great and she loves it, which is the best part. abel went to go take a picture of the finished house yesterday and came back with this story. as they were walking into the yard, beto (one of our builders) stepped on something. when he looked down, he saw that it was an ALLIGATOR HEAD. i'm not kidding. a real alligator head. just the head folks, no body. seriously. ms. dorla's brothers had caught the alligator in the river right next to her house, CHOPPED the head off, sold the rest of the body, and left the head in the yard for the 17 dogs. abel said that by the size of the head, the alligator was probably 6 - 8 ft. long! can you imagine, just chopping the head off an alligator and leaving it for the dogs!?!? what kind of treats are you all feeding your dogs lately--i bet it's not as good as alligator head! (abel took a picture...if i can get him to email it to me, i'll post it!)

well, that's it for now.
happy ash wednesday and beginning of lent.
be well.