Painting, puppies, yoga, and ACES

Our service hours started on Thursday. We got to SAGA, the local humane society, around 9 am with gallons of white and green paint (their colors). We broke up into two groups. One group of us painted kennels at "Fort Dog", where the dogs are kept, and the other group painted the fence around the office/vet. I was part of the fence-painting group and it didn't take as long as we thought it would. The only good thing about how hot it was while we were painting was that the paint that ended up on our arms and legs ended up getting washed off pretty quickly from our sweat. We finished the first coast of the fence around the same time that the other group finished the first coat on the kennels, which happened to be at the same time that SAGA closed for lunch. Talk about perfect timing. We went and got lunch and took a quick dip in the pool to wash of our sweat and a little remaining paint and then we went back to do a second coat. It was hard to tell what we had already given a second coat so it went a lot faster than the first. Once we finished the fence, we went over to Fort Dog to help the others and to play with the puppies, who were covered in green paint from walking into wet kennels. We helped them finish up and then called it a successful day of painting. We still have a little bit more to do because we're painting their logo on the side of the "pagoda" (it's a shed), but we'll finish that one day after school this week.

On Friday we went back to Fort Dog in the morning to see what we could do to help. We cleaned out a few of the kennels, played with the dogs, and picked up their poop. The guy who works there, Ernie, told us there wasn't anything else to so unless we wanted to give the dogs baths. Challenge accepted. He walked to the vet and came back with shampoo, a brush, ear cleaner, and nail clippers.  The dogs are broken up into three kennels - big dogs, small dogs, and an isolation kennel. We decided to tackle the big dogs first. Some of the dogs liked the water and some of them absolutely did not. I think Ernie had a good time watching us try to keep the dogs still while we washed them and even more so when we tried to clean their ears.  We made him cut their nails because we all knew it wouldn't end well if we tried to do it.  It took us about an hour to wash the dogs and we were sufficiently wet and dirty by the end of the process, but it was another successful day of service. We just hung out for the rest of the day on Friday!

Yesterday a few of us decided to go take yoga. There's a yoga retreat place called Ak'bol that's on the northern part of the island and it takes about 20-30 minutes on bike to get there. We left around 8:15 to head there. The ride took us past the high school, over the bridge (which was a struggle on a bike without gears), and on a windy path on the beach until we got there. The place where you actually do yoga is a platform on the water. It was beautiful and there was a perfect breeze!

We decided to do yoga and then to eat breakfast at the restaurant that's owned by the same family. Little did we know that the yoga class would end up being 2 hours!! At one point the instructor said that we should be focusing on our breathing and not what we would be eating for lunch, but that was easier said than done!! Once yoga was done, we made our way down the dock back to the restaurant to finally get the food we were day dreaming about. I got multigrain banana pancakes and they were delicious! Definitely worth the two hours of yoga to have yummy food at the end!  After we ate, we headed back on our bikes so we could start our next service adventure!

I had asked Miriam, the intern for ACES (American Crocodile Education Sanctuary) who's staying at our hotel if her bosses had anything we could do for service hours. I was out by the pool when Miriam called her boss, Vince, to ask and by her end of the conversation I could tell that whatever we would be doing would be interesting. As soon as we got back from yoga we put on sneakers and headed to Vince's house. We parked our bikes in his yard and them jumped on his boat to get to San Mateo, a part San Pedro where ACES has a little land to house their bigger crocs (the smaller ones just stay at Vince's house). When we got there Vince started telling us a little bit about the history of ACES. The idea behind it was to create a pale where locals and tourists could come see crocodiles and learn about them and learn to respect them. Unfortunately the locals were not interested. There is currently one croc at the sanctuary. His name is Jaws. He was attacked with a machete before they found him and his upper and lower jaws are no longer lined up because of the damage the machete did. This means that Jaws can't catch food on his own and will never be able to be released back into the wild. There are three houses surrounding the croc sanctuary and they all have high balconies that look over the fence of ACES and the people are very aware that there is a croc there. The people throw all of their trash (we're talking food, bottles, dirty diapers, etc.) into Jaws' cage so that they can see him. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. The people throw large poles and huge pieces of wood to try to harm him. Jaws is so terrified of humans that Vince said as soon as Jaws hears someone coming through the gate, he runs into the water and won't come out.  Also, people break into ACES all the time to try to see the croc or to steal the wood that makes up the cages. Because of this, Jaws is getting moved to the mainland someplace that people will not be near him so that hopefully he can live a somewhat normal life in captivity without fearing all humans. Also, Vince and his wife, who run ACES, will be moving to Florida and dealing with the animals there because he can't deal with the lack of respect that the Belizean society has towards the animals. He told us a story about how he had a house and a croc sanctuary on the mainland. He and his wife were in San Pedro getting another croc when 2 boys on the mainland went missing. The local people went to a shaman who told them that the gringos kidnapped the boys to feed them to the crocs. So the locals looted Vince's house, killed the crocs that were there, and burnt everything to the ground. It turns out the 2 boys were in Guatemala with their father. The local police is pretty much nonexistent so nothing ended up happening. Needless to say, Vince has some rightful anger stored up. 

The first thing we noticed when we finally entered the sanctuary was the smell. Jaws gets fed dead chickens and the one that was in his cage was particularly ripe and nasty. It took a little time getting used to it, but none of us wanted to complain. The kennel next to Jaws' was separated into three smaller ones. Our job was to take down the middle dividers. There's an 11 foot croc that needs capturing and they are hopefully doing it this week. The croc is too big to stay at Vince's house so it'll end up going to the sanctuary for the time being until they get move it to the mainland.  Some we went to work with hammers and wire cutters and spent about two hours demolishing the dividers of the croc cage (something I never thought I would spend a Saturday doing). We burnt all the wood and garbage which luckily got rid of the nasty chicken smell!  Once we finished, we headed back to Vince's and got to see all the crocs that he had at his house that are about to released or are waiting until Vince has time to take them to the mainland. It was cool to hold the crocs again and to see the different species that Vince had. As we were getting out bikes ready to leave, he asked us when we were leaving the island and told us that if he goes to capture the 11 footer before we leave, then we were more than welcome to join them in the boat for the adventure! Cross your fingers that happens because that would definitely be an awesome way to end the trip!!!

I'm off to go spend the rest of my Sunday on the beach! We go back to school tomorrow through Friday and then it's back to the U.S. and back to reality on a Saturday.