Since 2001 the United States government has provided half a million dollars in funding for a cultural preservation project.

Today was no exception as once again the country received over two hundred thousand dollars to aid in the restoration of the house of culture and the Lamanai mask temple.

Following a short handing over ceremony at the house of culture seven news found out how it will be used.

Jacqueline Godwin
"Why is there a need to restore the House of Culture?"

Dianne Haylock, President, NICH
Well a simple answer, the house is old. Jackie, you know old wooden houses in terms of termites and all sorts of things take over and if you look at it over the years, we all know that the wood in belize is perhaps not as good as it was many years ago and so even as you have repaired things over the years - like this house was fully restored in, it may have been the 2003 – 2004 period - but five years later, termites have taken over different parts of the building.

Unfortunately, the blinds, I do not know many of the blinds fell down and so part of the grant that we have gotten will be used to actually make sure hat we put up back all the shutters right, repair those that have broken down over the years, put those that have completely fallen apart and as I said do whatever we can within the context of the amount of money that was allocated for this particular project .

We are really concerned about the preservation of building so the we are really grateful for the grant because it will allow us to do some things but we do need a lot more money to do what needs to be done to the house."

Jacqueline Godwin
“Now that you guys have received he grant, when does work commence?”

Dianne Haylock, President, NICH
“Well work commences immediately because the cheque is in hand. What we are doing, it will be supervise by our Institute of Archaeology which as you know is responsible for old buildings because the house despite the renovations that have taken place is over a hundred years old so it really falls in the responsibility of the institute of archaeology and they know best so it will be supervised by the department of archaeology."

Dr Jaime Awe – Director, Institute of Archaeology

”You know for quite sometime years we have been challenged to preserve the mask temple at Lamanai. In fact, the mask was exposed in the late seventies, early eighties by David Pendergast who worked at Lamanai and at that time we realized that if we left it exposed to the elements, the rain was going to dissolve the limestone that it is made from because it is mostly plaster and limestone. And so what we did back then was we built this big thatch roof over the mask but after a while the thatch roof we had to change them but then we did not account that other forces were going to be at play so we changed the thatch roofing and then we put on a modern metal zinc like what we call in Belize roofing but then eventually that caused some problems because zinc tends to bring heat and heating was causing the mask to dry out during the dry season. And so we changed that and then we put on a plastic roof with some light and we did that because we felt that no sun at all was not really good for it at all. Well we did that and started to find that despite all these efforts soon we discovered algae and fungus and every other kinds of things.”

“And then we learnt when we worked at Caracol and Xunantunich that if we produce fiberglass replicas of these glass and then put them about a foot in front of the original."

" And then fill in with dirt behind it we do two things, we preserve the original and you can’t tell the difference that it is not the original because the fiberglass copies that we put in front makes it look like the original one and so in that way the fiberglass can be beaten by the sun it won’t expand, it won’t contract, the bugs won’t bore through it and walla we get to preserve this ancient monument and then at the same time it will enhance the beauty of the site."

Jack. A Diffily – Charge d’ affairs, US Embassy of Belize
“We did it to recognize the desire for people around the world to preserve various aspects of their cultural heritage and in the United States we are interested in preserving our own and it just translates into helping our friends and neighbors as well so that is why the the fund was established."

“At the Embassy we monitor the proposals and we have a long term relationships with the department of archaeology and NICH so we have confidence when we award the grant and then we just stay in touch with our partners.”

The Institute of Archaeology received a grant of $121,600.00 which NICH got $106,800.00 .

It is the third time in as many years that the Institute of Archaeology has been awarded grants under the U.S. Cultural Preservation Fund.