Two popular pastimes in San Pedro Town are Karaoke and Drinking.
Since bars open early and close late, there is always a lot of drinking going on. Likewise, when karaoke starts and participants pick up a microphone, the singing, good, bad, and ugly, picks up like an afternoon squall.
There is an undercurrent here where what you think you hear is not always what you hear, what you see is not always as you see it, what you assume is often erroneous, what you plan goes astray. Poker cards in the hole are held closely and opportunities to leap without looking are always at hand. There are Spanish gold doubloons in a shipwreck out on the reef and all it takes to get them is a hundred thousand of your money.
Wade, owner of Road Kill Bar, is painting this morning and his orange Karaoke sign advertises fun.
Karaoke is a sign of our times where audience participation is the real star of the show.
Make Believe is definitely more fun than not.
The difference between coming to Belize with money, and living here without money, is substantial.
Belize has staggering statistics.
It has the highest incidence of HIV in Central America. It has twenty to thirty percent unemployment. The doctor per patient ratio is among the worst in the world. 30-40% of the population lives in poverty and is dependent on agriculture and fishing for subsistence. Crime is familiar. Infrastructure is minimal. A high birth rate is matched by a high infant mortality rate. Housing and public utilities sputter.
Still, people from worse economies in Guatemala and Nicaragua come to San Pedro Town to look for work.
San Pedro Town has the barrier reef, tourist accommodations, things to do, an influx of money. Ambergris Caye, economically, supports the rest of Belize on its long narrow shoulders.
As a tourist, good overcomes bad. As a resident, bad is what bites at your heels.
Visiting and staying here are different as dogs and cats.
From eleven to twelve, the Walkaholics stroll from Crazy Canuck’s to Wayo’s without wetting a whistle.
From twelve to four, on the way back, there are stops at the Sandbar for drinks and lunch, Licks, the Runway Bar and Crazy Canuck’s for more drinks and toasts.
The sun and surf and sky give us a show.
We are numbers in a mathematical equation, written on a chalkboard, described by Einstein and Newton, buzzing in time and space like sand fleas on a great sand beach. The equation looks like a bird nest.
There are times when the universe’s mystery puts your skull in a nutcracker and cracks your head wide open until the confetti inside is picked up by the afternoon breeze and scattered.
On Tuesday nights, at 6:30 pm, featured entertainment at Crazy Canuck’s is crab races. The races are a fundraiser for local schools and charitable groups and give locals and visitors another reason to drink, dance, socialize, relax.
Number 57 is halfway across the obstacle course on a prison break before Kevin, our master of ceremonies, wearing a red crab hat and holding a microphone, catches him and carefully slips him back under an upside down champagne bucket in the center of the ring.
The first race begins late, after announcements, when Kevin lifts the upside down champagne bucket again and the crabs move, from being under the bucket, towards a rope perimeter that forms a circle around them on a big plywood game board resting on the sand.
The crowd is excited and some gamblers rush the platform to support their pick.
It is illegal to touch or step on the board but you can yell, flash lights, move hands and arms up and down to influence the race outcome. The winning crab is the one who crosses the rope at any point in the rope circle around them.
At the end of this first race, Daryl provides live music while losers come up with a different strategy for the next race and try to handicap the crabs that will be running next.
It is all in good fun and none of the crabs, tonight, end up on anyone’s plate.
Number 57, my pick for the first race, never crosses the rope line, and, as far as I’m concerned, can go into tomorrow’s soup.
If I were really lucky, Stephanie Kennedy, the ” Belizian Temptress ” would come through the door and try her temptation on me.
My defenses have been pretty weak the last few days.
Every Anthony has his Cleopatra.
nnnnnn.
Kids go to school to learn, all over the world.
This Monday morning is a new week at a local primary school. Some kids, I observe, are smiling while others are not overjoyed, but most children all over the world go to school where they grow up and are introduced to what is necessary and proper to become functioning adults.
Cursory research states that 2/3 of the population of Belize are teens or younger, education is compulsory to 14 years, 70% of the teachers have professional training , a sizable minority of children don’t go past primary school. The best schools are run by the Catholic church who, some say, should never be allowed around kids.
Education opens futures for people, but the future here favors well financed foreigners with MBA’s who take calculated risks, have financing, study trends, and use money to make money.
Poverty, limited finances, and lack of education are all legs of the same creaky stool that keeps people depressed for a lifetime.
These kids, from where this ex teacher sits, look content,are sent to school with backpacks, a clean uniform, and, hopefully, homework done last night before bed.
While school tries its best to civilize them, there is little doubt that parents are still the prime reason behind kid’s early success or failure.
Those kids who succeed here, at this school, will stay in school longer and won’t stay on this island long.
In a world economy, good jobs seem to naturally go to the most skilled.
Sunday is FunDay at Crazy Canuck’s.
Three to seven, the Cover Ups hammer out reggae, Santana, Jimmy Buffett and pop songs from last year and yesteryear. As the band powers up, an investment conference concludes with a drum roll and attendees shut notebooks on establishing money havens, protecting capital, and growing nest eggs.
Reggae is a music of choice in the Caribbean.
When the song is over the lead singer reminds me that singing is spiritual and takes him to a different realm and sometimes he goes into a trance. During a band break he chats up a stunning black girl at the end of the bar and he isn’t looking at her with spiritual eyes.
Reggae has its own sound. It takes a while to understand the words, but that will come.
Places move at their own speed, and, San Pedro Town isn’t going to speed up, just for me.
Reggae and waves compliment each other.
You don’t have to understand what they are saying to enjoy their melody.
There are several water taxis in Ambergris Caye. The Belize Express goes to Caye Caulker and Belize City on a two hour schedule, and Chetumal, Mexico and back once a day.
Inside the enclosed boat we are shaded from intense sun.
We follow the reef as we head north back to San Pedro Town from Caye Caulker. Sea colors are blue, green, with white crested breaking waves to our left.
When you see a moving boat coming towards you, you look at it with relief.
Looking at stillness too long changes things between your ears.
“She likes details,” Bruce Cooper says of his wife.
Their gallery, in a rented shop on main street in Caye Caulker, presents her art. She paints and he runs the business end of their collaboration.
“We sell original art, prints, and small stocking stuffers, ” Bruce tells me as we talk about New Orleans, the proliferation of guest houses on this island, the fact that his business is for sale due to aggressive web marketing by competing worldwide tourist destinations.
“We are losing 3% of our visitors a year,” he tells me. “I have been working since I was seven years old. I want to retire and go fishing.”
Bruce walks with a swollen foot brought on by diabetes.
I slip my purchase into my cargo pants as he makes a sale to a lady that has already bought two prints earlier in the day.
Selling art in a wood shack in the Caribbean sea, with a breeze rustling simple curtains hung on shuttered windows, seems better than cooking your brains out on a boat in bumpy water with a plastic bag full of stinking cut bait waiting to go on your hooks.
Art and business can co-exist.
It looks to me like Bruce’s work is as close to fishing as he is going to get in this lifetime.
A few blocks from the water taxi pier, Aunties has a Trip Adviser sticker on the front window.
A little Chinese lady behind the window, in an apron, manages customers, makes change, keeps the kitchen help on track. The menu is simple, cheap, good food any day of the week.
Stewed chicken with rice and beans, potato salad and a drink is $10 Belizean or $ $5.00 U.S. The chicken falls off the bones and rice and beans is tasty. Fruit punch is better in the heat than beer.
I eat lunch at one of the picnic tables out side and watch customers.
Auntie makes me feel at home, even if she is a chicken.
Caye Caulker is pronounced “Key Caulker”.
This small island is to the south of Ambergris Caye on the way back to Belize City. The Belize Water Express brings you to the miniscule port in thirty minutes and a round trip ticket from San Pedro Town is $25.00 U.S.
This is a slice of paradise instead of the entire pie. It is smaller, more Caribbean, less developed than San Pedro Town. On a Sunday there are dive shops open and some bustle and you see a mix of young and old in the streets, rasta men and foreign girls hanging bras and beach towels on the front porches of bungalows.
There is inexpensive local food sold on the beach out of old black pots. A row of vendors where the Belize Water express ties up sell conch shells, jewelry, beaded bracelets for wrists and ankles, ironwood sharks and manta rays, pot pipes, and Belize knick knacks. There is a liberal sprinkling of dread locks, golf caps and the coconut smell of sun tan lotion is everywhere.
Older visitors here are retired or getting ready to retire; younger folks are looking for their edge.
This is what San Pedro Town used to be before the northern invasion.
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