CENTRAL FARM BUDGET GONE, - LAYS OFF WORKERS.

Central Farm owes discarded worker 4.5 months back pay.

 Listening to the sad tale of a couple of hardworking Belizeans, now down on their luck.  The man worked for the Chinese Agriculture Research Mission at Central Farm for 10 or 11 years and the family are hardworking campesino types.  The wife does house cleaning around the twin towns, but the man had  a full time job at Central Farm. They and their kids have PERMANENT RESIDENCY  and he has paid all his social security up.  But now he is out of a job and the family are in dire straits.

  Don't know the full story from the viewpoint of Central Farm, but the Taiwanese phased out of agriculture vegetable research and handed everything over to the Central Farm staff.  Since then the man has not been paid his salary for over 4 months.  They keep putting him off , UNTIL NEXT MONTH.  I presume the Central Farm are trying to deal with a budget that was fully committed and do not have the funds to pay up?  Or somebody in administration is getting set to steal the guy's job for a relative, as these sort of deals go with government workers? Anyway his job is gone for him.  He was lied to and told he didn't qualify as he was not a Belizean.  Lacks the knowledge to argue the point.  Certainly as PERMANENT RESIDENTS, they are full Belizeans.
  I've known them for most of the ten years and respect them greatly.  They came up from a small wooden one room shack in which they lived with their kids and rented.  We used to trade flowers we were potting together.  Eventually they got an empty lot in Hillview and have built their own house. Even bought a car.  The wife works one day a week for us, doing house cleaning. Has done so for at least 8 years.

  The thing is being illiterate, they are at a disadvantage in trying to deal with the Central Farm bureaucracy.  I was impressed by the man, he started as just a cheap vegetable farm worker and became FOREMAN.  What he knows about growing vegetables now is equal to all the Taiwanese mission expert workers that have been here doing experimental research.  Seems a waste of valuable talent?  The kids are going to need school fees, and books and all that, but now they are destitute living off charity, here in Hillview.

  Anybody around twin towns need a farm worker, will vouch for the guy.   Too bad I have cancer, or I would set up an ACQUAPONICS OPERATION and train him for that.

Around Belize in the northern winter times.

The effect of sunshine and cloud cover on tropical Belize vegetable growing.

GROWING VEGETABLES FOR PROFIT IN BELIZE

   I had an interesting query the other day.  About what vegetables you could grow in 1 acre backyard, to make a living in Belize.  The questions had to do with water, cloud cover and sunshine.

  My three year research in hydroponic vegetable growing, showed that irregardless of whether you tried to stagger your vegetable crops, to take advantage of temporary market shortages and thus get a better price.

  It didn't work out that way.  While hydroponics allows you to space crops, so you do not in theory have a glut.  What happened was that the dictating factors for ripening and picking, are the amount of cloud cover and sunshine.  All the vegetables more or less hit the local markets at the same time, irregardless if you were planting in soil, or via hydroponics.  There may be a few days difference, but essentially, when the sun shines, everything ripens at the same time.

DANGRIGA COMMERCIAL INVESTMENT IS UP ! - WHY?

DANGRIGA AROUSES DEVELOPMENT OPPTIMISM.

( I have no idea why?)

  My first overnight visit to Dangriga on the coast for decades, since my daughter and her kids were raised there.  My impression over 40 years, is that Dangriga is now DOUBLE the size it used to be in forty years.  That said, there is a tremendous amount of speculative investment going on.  The town is spreading Westward about a half a mile.  Lot of new merchandizing emporiums going up.  There is big investment by Chinese in super stores, restaurants and hotels. Two or three hostels, the prices seemed high to me, at $25 bz a night per person.  Hardware stores about three.  Caribbean Tire also.  A Cancer Clinic offering chemo therapy here and radiation in Guatemala City.  The population is still Carib dominated, but a growing variety of ethnic populations. Guatemalan, Chinese, Caucasian,   Smaller than the twin towns area where I live.  But a beautiful atmosphere with rural scents, activities and smells.
  I can only conclude they are investing for future expansion, but am at a loss to see where any industry is going to come from?  Fishing and citrus are the major contributors to the economy.  Minor tourism.  Nice place to settle on a retirement income.  I don't see any growth in any of those established industries.  More hotel choices; though I stayed in the, center at Riverside Hotel, where I last stayed maybe 50 years ago.  I finally found a Chinese restaurant open on a Sunday, everybody else was closed.  We had a delicious Vegetable Chow Mein.  For breakfast, nobody opened up early enough, seems like to serve breakfasts, but we passed a dingy hole in the wall Guatemala restaurant we first passed by and rejected. that was open, and desperate at 7 a.m. for an early breakfast.  Took a chance later and it worked out perfect. Across from First
Caribbean Bank.  Highly recommend it. Jueves Rancheros, with sour cream and cheese and beans, lots of thick flour tortillas, eggs, etc.  The lady said she was from the Peten, San Bernito.  We chatted and when she found out I was going for cancer treatment, she took 10 % off the bill and gave me change.  I was touched and we left her money and OUR tip when we left, on the table.  People were generally friendly.  You know the street drunks, and hustler types.  But most people were polite and anywhere we walked, we had to nod and smile, and say good morning to each person.  It was that kind of rural setting.
  The wife got interested in prices of houses.  For the sea breeze.  I'm not in the mood for that sort of thing right now.  Though my feelings after the first chemo treatment have raised my estimate of being alive in three months at 40% a month ago, to 50 % in five months now.  There was one point in the chemo, where the stuff they were giving me, hit the back of the mouth where a lot of pain has come from.  That went off like a bomb.  Have no idea what happened, it was inside the neck, but I sure felt it happen. Not having trouble swallowing today.  Got through the night with no pain pills, though the tumor seems as large as ever.

FISH SWIRLS AND BOILS

DEVELOPMENT OF CANCER DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT TIME ELEMENTS IN THE BELIZE PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM NEEDED

  From: Rendezvous
To: Ray Auxillou
Sent: Saturday, December 8, 2012 9:09 PM
Subject: Re:

I have been told not to say this Ray but I will anyway.

 I believe Peter Singfield has some notions that do work at almost no cost.

I understand your relationship is tenious to say the the least.

However.!?

Never say never.

Best regards,Glenn Schwendinger
Rendezvous Restaurant & Winery
heaven@btl.net
Tel. 011-501-226-3426

Friend Glenn, I learned from TRADING financials, that HOPE is not a workable strategy. Peter is my friend, so is Francis Gegg, but talk and salesmanship is not scientific evidence.  When they post FACTS on their websites, or whatever; so we can look at them, and judge.  Until then, they are like the SELF PROMOTED CONTRACTORS, with no bicycle, or tools.
              __________________________________________________ 

Quack cancer cures!  There may be something out there for cancer cures someplace? The trouble in Belize, it is ALL ancedotal.  There are no facts.  No scientific method.  No statistics on treatment, number of patients, length of treatment, progress reports, success or failure rates, versus the type of cancer.  There are dozens if not hundreds of types of cancers.  Some cancers from diagnosis beginning, to death only take six months.  In Belize, they badly need diagnostic medical seminars.  Even the suspicion something MIGHT be cancer should to be told to the patient in my opinion.  I've wasted 2 years with mine, enriching the local and Guatemalan medical community by running tests through their newly bought diagnostic machines and taking a lard pail full of antibiotics.  All a WASTE OF VALUABLE TIME.  I might have caught mine correctly if I had been definitely told, when it was the size of a pea.  As a back o' bush country bumpkin, what the heck do I know about cancer? I am posting my progess on my blog as I go along, with hopes DEVELOPMENT WISE, that the KMH public health system, will take note and budgets and priorities be re-set, to be more responsive in the TIME ELEMENT.  In my opinion, they need a local medical seminar for doctors, on cancers and diagnosis and how to deal with these suspicions promptly.  My damn thing got the size of a GUAVA before I was even told in a whisper by a doctor in a hospital in Miami, that I EVEN had cancer.  ( two years later after my search for a medical problem. )  I figure I'm a gone goose!  Doesn't matter, I'll run it out as long as I can and see if my publicizing the problems locally in Belize, will somehow enhance the medical methodology in Belize, by EMBARRASSMENT type development methods.  For sure, a biopsy and pathology procedure lab system at KMH need a major boost and overall.  At a very minimum.  Two months for a pathology report is totally ridiculous. Two weeks for a biopsy appointment is also ridiculous.  50 % of older people over 65 will die in Belize, from cancer related complications.  As primitive as our medical system is, I firmly believe we can do better than that. It is just mostly re-prioritizing.

  Who can tell about Peter or any other jungle cancer expert and their abilities and cures?  They keep no records or statistics.  Without the scientific method, there is absolutely no way to separate the real thing from a QUACK medical promotion.  At least the Belize Cancer Clinic is posting statistics, for failure and success rates on website. These are apparently I'm learning, more related to accidental types of cancers.  Some cure easy and some don't.  There is NOBODY else in the country doing that. Not even KMH. Or even required to do so, by law.  Listening to boasters selling their cures, is like hiring a CONTRACTOR to build your house, who assures you he is the best, and then find out he has to come to work on a bicycle and needs money for some tools to do the job.

---

Ray with Belize breadfruit ! From his back yard. 2012

After a month long sojurn in Miami, Courtesy of my daughter Sharon and husband David, fighting to get Medicare B to do chemo therapy ( will get it, but in 7 months they say ) and Florida State supplementary ( under review for a month ) I returned home, to find my breadfruit tree was dropping fruit.  This is a breadfruit that fell from the tree.  It will sit on the kitchen table until it gets a bit soft, as it is hard right now.  With some brown spots on the green skin.  Then you slice it cross ways, into half inch thick  circular discs.  Cut those in half, to form two crescents and cut off the green hard skin.  The core is soft and cut that out and you are left with two half moon pieces of fruit.  This you fry in a small pan with coconut oil, until brown and crispy, flip it over and do the other side and you end up with excellent breadfruit for eating.  The hard part is like well done French Fries and the inner white soft part is like mashed potatoes.  A little salt, some avocado and voila you have a dish fit for a king.
  My breadfruit tree bears twice a year for about 3 months each time. Sits in the front corner of the yard by the street side.

  My cancer tumor you can see on the side of my face.  It has filled the right side of the neck and now protrudes the skin out, trying to find place to put dead cells, killed by the cancer. The tumor itself is entangled with the jugular vein, the pulmonary artery, the vein carrying blood and oxygen to the brain.  Mostly I get pain from the back side of the throat, where I guess a lymph node, one of a string in the neck must be encapsulated?  The most difficult pain is on the side of the face, and head, from the fan of nerves called the trigeminal nerve system.  Hurts like hell! Impossible to do surgery in the neck area, as it is a tiny space, jam packed with all kinds of essential nerves and veins.  I start Chemo therapy at the Belize Cancer Clinic here on the coast of Belize, run by a Belizean/USA  Dr. Grant from L.A. in the USA.  Come Monday in two days, I get my first session of four sessions over a two month period.  The plan after that, is to go to Guatemala City to an associate clinic for Dr. Grant to do radiation treatment for another six weeks to a month.  Very affordable by Belizean standards as Dr. Grant's clinic is a CHARITY CLINIC, one of many he apparently supports, here and in California. I've had some cash donations from my daughters, so that helps.
  I have hopes the chemo therapy will reduce the tumor, so the pressure will ease off the nerves and give me some peace and relief from pain.  But at this point this is all new and have no idea what to expect.  CANCER caught me by surprise.  I more thought I would get shot by a jealous husband, climbing out of a bedroom window, than this sneaky cancer invasion.  I kind of wonder if I will lose a lot of weight?  They say so.  I could stand it I suppose.  30 lbs would be good.