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.
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