Truck Driving, Mennonites, Hitchhikers and Vanities

I am trying to remember if I have ever driven in a foreign country before. Only that one time our tour guides in Mexico were drunk so I was driving and we blew out a tire in the middle of a jungle road ...

"I'm driving in Belize!" I told Alice.

When I walked over to Alice's for ice, she decided she would like to install a vanity in the bathroom, so we took our first drive in David's truck. No glitches (because I decided not to pull forward Over the concrete pylon which I could not see, but back up instead).

The town of Spanish Lookout is a settlement of Mennonites from Germany. They vary in how conservative / modern they are. They run most of the stores in Spanish Lookout (and provide most of the agriculture and home-building for the whole country.) Some of the women wear their hair wound into a bun covered by lace and dresses past the knee and covering their shoulders. But they also can be seen riding motorcycles down the street in this attire. They are reserved in general, very kind spirited and gracious. They speak an old style of German (I am told) among themselves and to us speak English with a lovely lilt where many phrases sound like a question when they are not. Many or most also know Spanish and or English Creole which is spoken here. I have learned not to try to make store clerks laugh as they are helping me find a flashlight or other sundry item, and not to be chatty. The women are very pleasant but the men don't interact with women they don't know. I think I have wearied the workers at a few of the stores we go to regularly. They see me coming and know I am going to talk too much. I am trying to dial it back.

Other Mennonite communities - especially those back in the jungle - are very old world. The men grow long beards and the women dress in what we would consider pilgrim attire - long dresses, aprons, and bonnets covering their hair (and shading their faces from the sun). They live without electricity and use a horse and buggy for transportation.

Alice and David and I went to Springfield last week. The most conservative community of Mennonites in the world, David proudly told me. He is not a Mennonite himself but admires their life free of modern conveniences I think. He told me it was a rare opportunity for me to see the community firsthand since I am an outsider, so I went along.

When we arrived at the turnoff, about 20 empty buggies and tethered horses were parked at the highway. They ride the 5 miles down the road from their community by buggy and then wait along the highway for the bus that comes every hour.

We drove back into the community to see Isaac, David's friend, who is a dentist. Yes, a dentist in a community without electricity. I thought tooth-pulling might be his major role, but Alice told me that he can run his power tools with electricity generated by horses. When we drove past their saw mill I spotted the wheel they tie the horses to and make them walk in a circle to drive the mill. I guess Isaac has this for his dental tools too.

The community is very rustic and natural. Nothing is orderly; much seems in mild disrepair. Grass is not mown (of course) but is hacked off by machete where a clearing is needed. The gardens I saw by the houses were only roughly rectangular with a patch of weeds here, a patch of vegetables there. No modern tools making straight edges - or maybe no desire for that kind of order. Some houses or sheds were just sided with corrugated metal roofing. It gave me the sense of subsistence living in the U.S. back in the Depression era. We saw almost no one in the whole community except Isaac and his son. David visited with them; Alice and I sat outside in the shade. She said sometimes she goes in with him. Maybe because a stranger was along it was inappropriate. Isaac was very pleasant to greet us, shook our hands and looked us in the eye. His son (about 16) did not speak to us or even glance at us until we were driving away.

While we were waiting, a little girl with red hair underneath her bonnet came sneaking up to the car to take a look at us. I know how she feels - she is only the second red-haired person I have seen since coming to Belize, so I noticed her too as we drove in. She wanted to see what a grown-up red-head looks like without a bonnet, I think. Then she ran away.

On the way out of the community, David bought cream from one house (which Alice and Rose and I made into butter the next day!) and the man mentioned his wife was on the way to the chiropractor and could we give her a lift into Belmopan. She had ridden out to the highway in a horse and buggy.

We stopped for her and everyone else at the bus stop got in the back of the pickup, too. Three men, two women. Then the dairy man's wife came to the passenger window with an infant and handed him through to me.

"Would you like to hold him? It may be a bit windy for him back here."

Oh my, wind is the biggest concern of carrying a baby loose in the back of an open pickup? So I held him for the ride. He didn't mind, though I could not get him to smile. I thought I should have given the woman and baby my seat in the cab, but then I would have been in the back with the Mennonite men and maybe they would have had to hop out in that case (what with me wearing no bonnet and accompaniments). It's a whole sticky cultural situation. I stayed in the truck with the baby.

We left Springfield and headed for the capitol city of Belmopan, on our way to San Ignacio (where I would finally realize "I am in Central America!") The riders would give a tap to the back window or top of the pickup when they wanted to hop off, and David would pull over. They offered him their bus fare for gas (a dollar). But he would tell them the fare was $40 and just pull away. They all seem to know David.

We had many requests for rides as we continued on our route - people hailing us from the roadside like you'd hail a cab. The acceptable way to decline the pleading look and wave as you pass by is to point to the left. This means you're turning soon, not going on ahead. (Whether you're actually turning or not.) David exercised this frequently.

He recognized a homeless-appearing (to me) Garifuna (Carribean) man on the roadside.

"If I don't pick him up I'll hear about it later," he said.

The man hopped in back. He is a "runner" for a neighborhood store we just passed. We took him down to the larger store, where he picks up the stock for the other place. I guess he does it once a day and that's his whole job. He just counts on a ride from whomever will stop. David has known the store owner for a few decades so he always stops for him.

So now David is in the U.S. and Alice and I have a pickup truck to travel the four highways of Belize. We returned home from the Mennonite store (where I did not over-talk to the store clerk) with a new bathroom vanity. Alice has someone lined up to install it tomorrow. She wastes no time. For all I know she came up with the idea for a vanity as we sat there in her living room and tomorrow her bathroom will be like new. Monday I will be fully back to solid foods and we will drive to Barton Creek for our camping trip.

It's up to us whether we will be the cross country shuttle for all of the roadside hitchhikers or not. I think we will use a lot of the "pointing left" signal....