I Ain't leavin unless they throw me out! Traveling through Belize
From time to time we pick up articles written by tourists or expats on Belize. Some of them positive , some of them can be degrading and some of them..well you just have to read between the lines.
Belize is a small country but has a large footprint. I thougth this article brings to light the essence of how most friends and visitors from abroad think about Belize. Belize will leave you with a lasting impression, whether that impression is good or bad, it will leave you with an impression.
With the permission of David B. Sky who is currently on a tour of Belize, we re-print an article he wrote in a Blog just recently. David
just seems to be your average "turista" passing through each corner of this jewel and making a report card of his short lived experiences. Let us learn from his experiences, good or bad.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to David Sky for allowing us to share his article and hopes he continues his safe travel throughout Belize and again thanks for sharing your experiences!
"My first month rent, a little one bedroom apartment in the back of the Maya Hotel owned by a proud Belizean woman who is also a savvy business owner. I got what to me was a super low price talking her down from $500 to only $425USD. Slapped myself on the back for that one, you know. A day later we're working out details and she mentions that there will be a $75 dollar fee for cleaning at the end of the stay. I don't protest but smile. Touché'. At $75 dollar lesson in living in Belize the first of many such lessons – the learning curve here can be hell. Somehow I possess the right attitude feeling that I'm in this for the long run so not counting every loss as a defeat rather more as an educational fee. $500 is still good considering I get an air conditioner in the room and a kitchen I can cook in both saving money and easing my anxiety from being recently dismissed from my marriage since I like to cook as well as being newly expatriated in a third world country in central America. I would be lying if I said it wasn't a little intimidating even if also exhilarating and probably just the thing I need to help take my mind off of my marriage problems.
I don't like so much cooking for myself but do it anyway for I know now that as well as learning to live as an expat in Belize is only
1/2 of my new lesson book with the other being learning to live whole in myself, alone. The Belize half is a piece of cake compared to the second half of that deal. I don't like being alone. My mom once not long before she died confided that all she had ever wanted was a man to love her and a family of her own, crying hard as she said it, bitter and forsaken.
“Is that so much to ask, David”.
I am crying shaking my head, “no Mom it is not so much to ask” and then I hold her as she sobs deep, wracking sobs against my body, “I didn't want power, wealth, fame or fortune … only to be loved!” She who had abandoned me many times and who had abandoned my half siblings years earlier. I feel very sorry for her and I understand because married myself at that time for over a decade, I feel exactly the same thing. I realize then that although Mom had never said it, her father, my grandfather, had sexually molested her, ruining her forever and dooming her to a life of seeking that love from abusive alcoholics while unconsciously and unerringly rejecting any decent, loving man that came her way in life. I keep this knowledge to myself and never mention it and then dies leaving me, I think, the only human left alive who knows this terrible secret.
I think sometimes, “well, thank God that bastard had a penchant for little girls or I'd be really f....ed up”.
So when people here explain sometimes in detail and I file that information away gratefully how difficult it can be for expats in Belize, I take it with a grain of salt and keep my thoughts to myself which run along the lines of, “Belize ain't even close to 'difficult'.
Difficult is that shit in between your own ears that won't let you go back to sleep when you wake up at 3AM.”
What so far is the hardest thing to deal with is the abject poverty. The dogs wobbling along literally skin and bones and I think that
if I bought dog food and gave it to those folks, they would probably eat it themselves. Then I walk on and hate myself because I don't.
The guys laying passed out in the grass at 9AM and the way I have learned so quickly now not to be alarmed because I understand they are not sick, just passed out drunk. The bum who comes up to me every single day whose name I know who knows my name and says, “David, can you help me out” and I say, “No” and walk on because I cannot for I am afraid for my own welfare here on so little funds it is irresponsible by any rational measure. How could I possible explain to this person that I would go broke if I gave money to every person who asked, fed every enfeebled dog I came across? And already there is a kind of guilt but nothing I had not felt in my America now full of hopeless indigents Herself. This is without question the worst aspect of Belize so far.
But yet after years of looking over that internet fence that I know many others have looked over and are still looking over, I find in
general that Belize is much as I expected Her to be which is a good thing. I walk at night down the road along the seawall along Corozal Bay in Corozal Town looking at the stars overhead feeling that breeze and respite from the hundred degree heat of the day and I breath in deeply thanking God for the opportunity to be here in this place.
“I ain't leavin unless they throw me out,” I smile.
By David B Sky
Photograph courtesy Corozal Daily
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