Parting Thoughts on Belize

There are many things I enjoyed about my time in Belize.  Jogging down Ex-Servicemen's Road and seeing flocks of parrots, the blue morpho butterfly, and hearing the sounds of the jungle; occasionally leaving the road and following one of many jungle trails, that invariably lead to a site where a tree has been felled; and not caring that I was getting drenched by tropical rainfall, neither cold nor hot, only refreshing.  Jogging through remote parts of town like Indianville (named for the Mayans that live there, not the East Indians) and Carib Reserve.  Swimming in the warm waters of the Caribbean against gentle waves. I enjoyed the market with its parade of the different ethnic groups of Southern Belize, and the anticipation of seeing something new each time, like the Mennonite girl with dirty feet in rubber sandals who barely spoke English selling cream in bags, and buying freshly caught shrimp and fish and rushing back to the apartment to cook it for breakfast, and seeing the buses come in from the outlying villages. 

And taking the bus to those areas and hearing the driver and his assistant converse esily in English with the Chinese merchant as they loaded deliveries of groceries for the village stores, and then switch to Mopan to talk between themselves and then respond in Spanish to one of the passengers.  And sharing the excitement of the World Cup with people I'd never seen before in bars and restaurants and the guesthouse.  And eating gibnut and fried fish drinking watermelon juice and lime juice mixed with dragon fruit juice, and discovering Allison's Corner Bakery where she makes subs and donuts and is easy to talk to.  And being invited into homes and front yards to get to know people like my Garifuna neighbor Thomas who carves rings from palm nut shells and polishes them with the oily fruit inside.

And the challenge of cooking most of my meals without a refrigerator or an oven, only a few gas burners.  And the challenge of being approached by beggars several times a day and not being ashamed that I'm enjoying an ice cream, and refusing to give them half a dollar.  And my farewell party at Satiim, where we started drinking at 2 in the afternoon and finished many beers and many karaoke songs later; they showed me, on my last day, where the good bars are -- they're all several miles outside of town.

Most of the bars in town are okay early in the evening.  You can have good conversations early in the evening, but soon people are pretty drunk and the atmosphere changes.  Then you see the Punta Gorda of drug users, of teenage mothers, of violence and poverty.  Not so much the poverty of people who live in grimy shacks, but cultural poverty, where education is not valued, where the pristine surroundings of jungle and ocean are not valued, where the future of the area and its people is not valued.  Trash is strewn everywhere, people spend their meager earnings on international brands of soft drinks, chips and cookies, on "packed" bread and canned meats, on cheap rum and beer.  The heat in the morning is hard to tolerate, and people tend to be unproductive until the afternoon breezes cool things down a bit.  Mosquitoes are everywhere and transmit malaria and other diseases.  The power goes out routinely, and when it's on, it's dirty and ruins appliances.  I lost 2 fans in my first two weeks there, and no one was able to get my refrigerator working.  Shortly after the power goes out, the water stops flowing.  The water is considered potable because it is treated with plenty of chemicals, but when it sits still for a short time sediment sinks and some oily compound gathers on top.  These are the downfalls of being in Punta Gorda, not counting the fresh lizard feces in my apartment every morning or the crash of thunder that woke me many nights, urging me to close the windows quickly, sometimes being soaked by rain streaming horizontally through the slats -- those are charming features.  But the oppressiveness of the climate and the poverty are difficult.

I find the poverty of the western highlands of Guatemala to be much less oppressive, and will write more about that next time.