“As flies to Wanton Boys” King Lear. June 12, 2022

We had a plan. We were  going to Medellin (pronounced Medejean,  like medi with jean ) in Columbia. Ha! Wrong. Not the destination but the “going”. The Gods had other plans. We were the flies to wanton boys. Oh… and American Airlines (which had another whole series of different plans)  had little to do with what we intended. We decided we would go whither they wanted us to go and… we went whither they wanted. Say that quickly.

 

First off, M and I squeezed into the back seat of Tropic Air at San Pedro airport for our return trip to Belize City International Airport.  We were in the back 3 -seater and an attractive young woman wiggled between us. I didn’t dare twitch my eyebrow and barely drew breath for the duration of the flight  for fear I might be accused of sexual assault though with my knees holding up my chin that might have been problematic. I think she was as relieved as I was to emerge unscathed.

 

For our final night in Belize City, Marney had chosen a hotel called Seaside Chateau, sandwiched between the North shore of the Belize River and the coast. Having spent two months training ourselves in and rehearsing measures to ensure our safety, my sensors started flashing when the dilapidated van which picked us up at the airport, with its swarthy looking driver, turned off the highway onto a bumpy, muddy track leading straight into the mangrove swamps. I know a mangrove swamp when I see one. Danger! I thought. What to do? Give up money, credit cards and phones graciously, or get down on our knees and beg for mercy or…  pretend absolute poverty. Workmen were driving piles into the yellow mud where the forest had been cleared and  we passed large areas of flattened soil. “New bridge” the  driver muttered almost unintelligibly. We were going to be robbed and thrown into a muddy hole and like the infamous Jimmy Hoffa have concrete poured over us  never be seen again.

      

More bumping of heads against the roof of the taxi and more dense walls of mangroves looming up but as the track turned, there was a yellow decorated fence with its own guard and there it was, carved out of the swamp “The Seaside Chateau”:

www.seasidechateaubelize.com.

A delightful little collection of individual casitas, cabins and rooms in the main building, set in a large clearing in the mangroves. Lush crotons, red hibiscuses surrounded lawns where the frangipani blossoms hung off the branches of the trees. We signed away our lives with the main concierge, Ashley, an intelligent man, who appeared to view everything suspiciously but had our room on the ground floor ready. We paid the taxi driver… no change of course but he had his own credit card machine so we used that and paid the young man who carried our bags to the room in what cash we had. In fact, that’s what we did mostly in Belize –  pay people who did small favors for us who never had any change. When we finally mastered the system and collected Belizean dollars, all beautifully decorated with a young smiling Queen Elizabeth II, we were leaving. Tipping is “de rigeur” as was nobody having change. Good news was the restaurant was open until 10 pm.

 

The room was like the Arctic, which pleased M no end and had double beds with five-foot shiny carved mahogany bedposts which looked as if they had just come from the chess game in Alice and Wonderland. A board outside advertised trips upriver to see the wildlife and had a fetching photograph of a muddy covered dugong blinking innocently. There was exciting bird life, trips to the reef to snorkel, dive and other adventures. Canoes were free as were the mosquitoes…large ones looking and sounding like Kamikazi Stukkas. The  mangroves looked intriguing and according to George, the cook, still held logs and cuttings of mahogany brought down many, many years ago by river when the British plundered the rain forests for this valuable wood and used imported slave labor to do so.

 

When we first met George in the restaurant he told us he had prepared the favorite Belizean meal for us, fried plantain, jerk chicken, rice and beans. They only served wine – no beer. We sat looking down at the mangroves and wishing we had put on more “Off Spray”. Dogs were allowed to run free but were kept out of the restaurant by a small wooden fence. Two large young Alsatians bounded about. They belonged to the owner who had built himself a modern glass and timber framed house on the opposite side of the complex. The pile driving we had passed was  a Taiwanese financed project to build a new bridge because the old one was slipping into the river. The open spaces were for new housing so I presume the Seaside Chateau, owned by locals, was ideally situated to benefit from the expansion.

Night time  was an aural extravaganza of shrieks, clicks, howls and bird calls. I had no idea which noise belonged to what –  just aware of its timelessness.

We left for the airport the following morning in time for our 12.30 flight and we had our teeth well and truly shaken by the journey. After grappling with suitcases, we discovered the flight had been cancelled. No pilots. Other airlines were booked out. Conversations with the desk clerks were long and complicated. We would fly out the next day and arrive in Dallas where we would stay overnight and catch a 5 A.M. flight to Miami …blah, blah.. blah. We would be provided a free night’s stay at The Radisson, Fort George, and we were given a voucher for transport as well as a B$90 for food which we could only spend at one time. Belize had not finished with us. The city had other plans. Our taxi driver, Howell, pronounced “Howheel”  gave us lessons in how to speak creole which was fun. It’s very fast, changes the pronunciation of all the vowels and gets rid of those annoying subject and object pronouns. He was in the taxi  union and didn’t care much for the freelancers. Interestingly, the inner lining of his car roof was held in place by a series of small thumb tacks. 

 

The Raddison  Hotel, replete with slightly dirty international flags (except the Belizean one) was creaking with age and surrounded by older colonial buildings which had a distinct sort of Raffles Hotel (Singapore) feeling. The floors and stairs were heavy with hardwoods and the beds were like trampolines but… there was an overall aging charm.  This was the old Fort George, where white people stayed, one of the bastions of the Empire as it plundered the wealth of its colonies to secure British power around the world.

 

Hurricane Agatha was out there somewhere in South Mexico and making itself  felt. Nevertheless, we decided to hire a guide and go and see the recently remodeled museum, the cathedral and,of course, the cemetery without which no visit to anywhere would be complete.  The taxi driver we chose as our guide was interesting and bragged jokingly about his concubine. He took us on a whirlwind tour down the cramped little streets of Belize City where shops and houses, derelict and not derelelict, tumbled over each other and the streets were crammed with school kids, vendors and Belizeans hurrying about their business. It reminded me of Chinatown in Singapore back in the 80s before it was remodeled as a tourist destination.

 

While driving, our guide was in a series of rapid fire conversations over the phone leaving the impression that we were something of an interruption to his activities. He decried marriage as an institution and confessed he was divorced. Then we stopped outside a fashionable looking glass entrance from which emerged a fetchingly beautiful young woman in a tight brown dress. She waved at us and he waved her off and she disappeared while he laughed a little nervously and drove off to deliver us to the Anglican Cathedral of St John, the first Protestant church to be founded in Spanish America. We arrived just in time for Graduation practice where a frustrated rather bad -tempered cleric in black garb was trying his best to get the kids to sing more loudly as they processed into the church. Fat chance. He himself led the way but every note he sang was off key and the teacher on the little organ kept her head down and nodded. The kids of course completely ignored the instructions. We were escorted in by a charming lady who was in charge of the church, nodded at the donation box with a raised eyebrow and smiled approvingly when I let drop $20. The students found our presence vaguely amusing but smiled graciously and murmured greetings. It was fun. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t find time to do a lot of investigating. Old colonial churches are always full of untold stories –  usually sad ones. These are just a few of the many; Two brothers,  Leonard 11 and Eugin 15, born in Liverpool (German names, died in Caledonia, an inland town, in 1870) and Margaretta, died only 22, presumably  newly married.

Tombs in the Yarborough cemetery close by were not so lucky. (I grew up at 245 Yarborough Road in Nottingham. Coincidence?)  These tombs’ survival depended on the type of stone used for the memorial. Some epitaphs rang loud and clear though. Dr.Rhys’ departure sounded almost as if he caught the train to the next life.

Our taxi driver seemed totally bemused by my desire to visit the cemetery. He explained that half the cemetery had been dug up in any case to make way for the road. What was this strange American doing tramping through these vestiges of the colonial past?

 

Wherever the British decided a country would be useful, they began their colonization by building forts, administrative headquarters, churches (usually paid for by the local population) and prisons and used the same bricks for everything. Couldn’t do it without bricks. In Belize City the Cathedral and prison use the same bricks.

 

Our final visit was to the newly opened Belize Museum which was once the  main prison. Unfortunately, it had that very “prisony” feeling and we both felt the weight of suffering the walls had seen. I snapped the picture below of what it used to look like. Difficult to disguise. Primarily the museum was dedicated to the history  of slavery and the cruelty, suffering and horror were spelled out in fine detail. The chains, the instruments of torture, the whips, all the tools used to suppress people and extract the wealth out of the country were on display and all inside the walls of a prison. One room was dedicated to men who had been executed, usually for killing unfaithful wives or girlfriends. It included newspaper headlines and articles about the crimes.

There were also jars of medicine extracted from different barks, and some Victorian and Edwardian china donated by a kind lady before she passed. In what was probably the main refectory of the prison, now brightly whitewashed, was an exhibition by a local artist. I was too depressed by that time to appreciate his work. The echoes of the past, the cries and suffering embedded  in the bricks and mortar had won the day. A lecture from our guide about the fact that everyone in Belize was descended from slaves so nobody should feel too bad about it, was the final straw.

 

Back to the Raddison and seventy TV channels. In the morning? Columbia via Dallas and Miami.  Ha! Remember travel broadens the mind and the vocabulary.

 

                 Marney Here…

The Seaside Chateau was not what I envisioned but I was tired and hungry (as you can tell from the photo above where I look so beat up ) so I was happy to get somewhere with a bed and hopefully some food.  After a Belizian dinner and some rest I was re-charged and ready to sight-see.  The Cathedral was interesting and the lady in charge talked to me at some length about her experiences in the US and I spent some time praying to myself that we would finally get to our destination the next day.  After the church, I stayed in the car with the chauvinist driver (with 18 concubines, a quote) while Alan sussed out the cemetery.  The prison was last on the list and it was very depressing – as Alan said.  I even saw a room dedicated to the women who were executed for killing their husbands (despite their cruelty).  Heck, even the museum shop (I usually love those shops) was depressing.   At this stage, just in case prayers didn’t work, I sat and meditated (anything that might work). I also began to wonder if we would ever get to unpack the bags we had been dragging along.   Just think positive Marney!  Medellin here we come…maybe?