User:Shirazuddin Siddiqi/sandbox

A nation in mourning, another in paradise: a journey begins; now to new reality, skills and lives; children learning and linking across the Atlantic; developing new primary curriculum among people of many cultures, festivals, relics and histories on a Caribbean shore; a biological corridor teeming with life; rainforest, bush, sinkholes, caves and Cayes. ‘Someone had had a brilliant idea (George thought). Instead of taking the animals to the zoo, they brought the zoo to the animals. This was where they lived. This was Belize; a tiny country on the Western shore of the Caribbean Sea, protected from flooding by a great Barrier Reef and still having a wonderfully preserved habitat for its rich variety of wild animals.’

UNESCO Four Pillars of Learning: live together, to be, know and do couldn’t be better. Learning should be fun and it was FUN! Better Belize it! Primaries in two of six districts to work with, great children and staff but politics at all levels: staff appointments, management bureaucracy and duplication, election fever, fervour and favour, arranging almost anything had become quite novel compared with the old world; mañana! A tarantula companion in the bathroom, scorpion in the groin, raving rooster resolved and all cards at the bank… ‘He waited until the sun rose in a blaze of glory.’

Long and cramped, frequent journeys by Bluebird, always interesting, often funny and sometimes downright dangerous… ‘Tension now erupted into panic. Passengers were screaming. The driver clearly didn’t know what to do and sat hunched over the wheel – aiming’; Bluebird commandeered as personal transport – vista of bush and rainforest; (“Mr Max! Come back here! Dis is where de action is!”) and exploring on foot and bicycle.

A school’s link with Buddy Ambassadors slowly grows, embracing technology for the first time in the early days of email… ‘George the Snail drew himself up to his full, if rather diminutive, height (This is difficult from inside a shell but his neck was extended and his antennae stood up vertically, like tiny knitting needles.) and announced, dramatically “I’m a Travel Buddy!” He sniffed and added, “I may be valuable (Extremely valuable), I may not come cheap but I am not, repeat not, expensive.”

A boy’s death on Children’s Day; another’s lot in family support and a child’s misadventure become very personal (‘Listen to the boy; he’s hungry’); funding for computers a massive challenge; and a huge display by schools celebrating children beside the sea.

‘Who Can Tell’ when to Know with others who See is an awfully big adventure?

Max Grantham (Mr Max) Born, 1939 in Sheffield Vickers apprentice at Brooklands leading to design, patents and Chief Designer of a medium size engineering company before turning to primary education ‘working with live material’. Married 27 years without family, worked with children from assistant Cub Scout Leader to ‘Akela Max’ for 4,000 Devon Cub Scouts and Leaders, retiring in 1997 to volunteer and follow a dream among peoples of, eventually, five developing countries for which Belize was as perfect a start as could be.