Belize Journal, May 2, 2016

April has been the month of meetings and the Maya. I seem to be getting more communication lines into different communities.

Earlier in the month, I met with a publisher in Benque Viejo del Carmen, on the border with Guatemala, about the possibility of creating some dual language readers of traditional stories.

Week before last, I spent a restful lunch with a Mopan Mayan basket maker and her family in Armenia, in the mountains just south of the capital of Belmopan. I plan to create a website for her and her mom so that they can increase their sales. Also, we discussed getting her son into high school. In Belize, all the high schools cost money. I had a lunch of black beans and hand made corn tortillas and some hot sauce while sitting inside the shade and coolness of her Mayan house with wooden walls and a thatch roof.

The next day, I spent the morning with the administration, teachers, and students at Tumul K’in Maya Learning Center just west of Punta Gorda in the south. We had a lunch of rice with a vegetable/chicken soup (mine without the chicken) and juice from some native plant. I volunteered to help them with writing grants. There are photos up at <nmdreamin.blogspot.com>.

On the way back to Punta Gorda, I stopped to visit with Simon, who lives by the sea. She and I reminisced about what we missed most down here—the smell of green chile roasting and Daiya vegan cheese.

On the following Monday, I met with Maria Garcia, a Yucatec Maya healer. I am helping her with a grant proposal. She eventually wants to build a school for the village of San Antonio. Her sister has a school for training in natural healing further south in Maya Center. The Yucatec Maya were pushed into Belize because of war in the Yucatan peninsula in the 1800’s. I think for Maria I have become hers. She did tell me when I first went out to talk to her that she had been looking for a new “volunteer.”  After consulting on the grant, she showed me her medicinal plants and we talked about putting in some vegetable gardens. I have become a kind of vegetable consultant here. She wants me to show her how to make kambucha tea. For lunch, we had scrambled palm hearts with a little egg and freshly made corn tortillas with some chopped onions and habanero peppers. Chile has medicinal value, and Maria recommends eating it daily. Her 83-year-old grandmother talked to me in Spanish. I understood about 2/3 of it and was kind of able to make myself understood.

My mango tree has produced hundreds of mangoes, so I have been giving lots of them away. One morning, I handed out mangoes to some of the neighborhood children. They are vanilla mangoes and are highly prized for their sweetness.

I have added more plants to my yard—cardamom tree, allspice tree, black pepper vine, red ginger, yellow ginger (just budding), and bamboo. Before I leave, I want to set out some lemon and lime trees—just in time for the rainy season. I am seeing more lizards, including a green iguana. They love the mangoes and have eaten my spinach. I guess I will have to plant my spinach in pots if I want any.

I finished up April by hiking across the Macai River to Santa Elena and out the highway to Eden High School to drop off a payment for lunches for a Maya student--$30 US/month. I was able to meet her, and her name is Maria Consuelo Pop. She told me that without that money, she would have had to drop out of high school. High school is not free in Belize. Then, she asked if she could give me a hug.

I am thinking that it would be great to get my daughter-in-law down here to talk to high school and college students about turning art into careers or jobs. Young people here need their imaginations nudged a bit.

I ended the month with a shopping trip with my landlady to Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The Belize town across the border is Corozal, on the Caribbean. I really like that area and want to explore it more. It took us about 1-1/2 hrs to cross both borders. There is an hour difference in the time between the two countries as Belize, being closer to the equator, does not go on to daylight savings time as there is very little change in the number of hours of sunshine between winter and summer months. Our hotel was on the main highway—186. We drove straight there, checked in, parked the truck in the secure parking structure, and took taxis everywhere—about $3 US for each ride. We went first to the mall—Plaza de los Americas, where we ate in the food court. It was a zoo, and a noisy zoo to boot. My landlady didn’t like the selection of shoes there, so we headed to Walmart, which was a little disappointing although I did find two reasonably price wooden bar stools along with some other smaller items like the dental floss that I use.

Then, we went back to the mall. It was dark by then. There was a great variety store at the mall—it was a better Walmart than Walmart. I found a pie pan there. People in this area don’t eat many pies. We checked out some clothing for my landlady, but they were made of synthetic materials and pretty shabbily made with high prices. From there we asked a taxi driver for a taqueria, and he took us to a nice open-air one. We tried to order me some bean tacos, but the waiter was having a difficult time grasping the concept. Now I know to just order tortillas with frijoles charros. They were tasty though. By that time, we just wanted to head back to our hotel room and lie down—our feet hurt. The hotel—Fiesta Inn—is very modern, environmentally friendly, and secure hotel. We enjoyed the air conditioning as we put up our feet.

The next morning, we headed out to the zapaterias just down the street from the hotel. My landlady was able to find all the shoes she needed and at much cheaper prices than what we saw at the mall. I checked out sewing and material shops, where I found some good sewing aids. We headed out before 1 PM CDT. As it turns out, you can’t bring wood into Belize without a permit, so I got a lecture, which I just went along with. I was given a permit for a reduced price after one of the men wanted to know where I had gotten stools and for how much. I have a feeling he will be heading to Walmart himself. I told him just to be sure to get his permit first. We found a great place to eat—Cocina Sabor—in Orange Walk (Belize) and made it home before dark. Today, May 2, is the celebration of International Worker’s Day, a bank holiday here in Belize. I had a bumpy, dusty ride out to the Garcia Sisters to meet with Maria about the grant proposal. We were bumped up to a deadline and one of the signers lives down south.