Motorcycles, Mountaintops, and Drumming

Yesterday my mom informed me that my dad Will come to Belize with me! Now I am looking for a place to rent that will accommodate dads and dogs and Christmas Guests. I also will need a vehicle. There's a jeep Cherokee Laredo 1998 that I looked at last night. I like it because the doors squeak and one doesn't close properly and that brings the cost of a car right down. Who needs the fourth door? Pups don't use the doors and elders sit up front.

I went to see Alice yesterday, we had not Adventured in awhile. We chatted and I told her and David about my life in town - Thursday night open-air movies, my second-story balcony wi-fi location where I can people watch, and the Rastafarian drummaker who found me in the back at Greedy's Pizza one night asking if I would like to buy a drum .

"Chris told me I could find you here," he said.

Hmph. That Chris. I sensed a sales pitch coming on.

He turned out to be *Mahkey" (Mark), as they call him, Chris had pointed him out to me before. One of the local kids who had painted a door for Chris when he was 12. Now he is 30-some.

"I can sell you this drum for $50US" he said, offering me a drum he had made which would be too big to take back on the plane. But it sounded nice.

He was very persuasive. The price started coming down, started being quoted in Belize dollars instead of U.S. And, what I was not understanding, he said, was that the drum came with Lessons.

By now Chris himself had joined us, having come from the post office to rescue me from torrential rain on the street, which I and my iPad have been thankful for more than once. (Someday maybe there will be a post of the list of Chris' rescues. They are quite frequent. Remember the rescue on our jaguar hunt when the wheel fell off the car in the middle of nowhere? There have been more. Chris is the friend to have when you are a few wayfaring women set loose in a small country. Below I will write about my adventures with Alice in The Bajo yesterday when her motorcycle fell apart piece by piece. Guess who we called?)

So Chris was there to hear the negotiations. Mark was offering now to create a whole party of it at Chris' house. Invite a few people. Do a little drumming. How I miss my days in Minneapolis when there was a constant flow of guests and parties and uncommon assortments of people at my house regularly. My life in Asheville or Eau Claire never accommodated that in the same way. But Belize.... Life in Belize is still a blank slate. I could still become the Gringa with the most eclectic assortment of people at her parties. Mark started me thinking.

Friday is my birthday. Originally I was to spend my birthday in the Caribbean Sea (remember my Swimming with the Sharks idea?) But when you have an unusual appreciation for having a birthday - do you spend it alone with your Maker and the wildlife of the sea? Or do you spend it with the friends around you who have made your stay in Belize Most Extraordinary and bless them by throwing a party to celebrate...?

I was still deliberating. (What if no one comes?)

So I told these stories to Alice and David, including the drumming party idea.

Then Alice and I took to the back roads on her two motorcycles. We were looking for a place for me to rent in the country. Then it Rained. We stopped to put Alice's cell phone under my bike seat beneath the vinyl packet of bike wrenches so they wouldn't get wet. I put mine in the small leather purse I had slung over my neck that was a gift from Italy. I hoped the leather would keep the phone dry and I hoped the rain wouldn't ruin the leather. There were not other options. As for the pad of paper tucked into the side pocket below the knee in my pants, I could see the words blurring already through the tan cotton fabric. Ah well, it was recipes and places to rent that had come up empty. There are sacrifices to be made for a good bike ride in the tropics.

We filled up the bikes with gas and I checked on the cost of tires for the Jeep I am interested to buy..

We headed back into Spanish Lookout to look for postings about rentals and put up Wanted to Rent signs ourselves.

The post office led us to our next adventure. A man named Jacob had an index card tacked up about selling his 40 acre farm with a 4-bedroom house ready to move into. The price was $125,000 Belize. This is $63,000 US. Seriously. A 40 acre farm. "Nice view." he wrote on the card. Jacob has no idea.

"Maybe he wants to rent a house he can't sell..." I suggested to Alice.

Old world mennonites don't have cell phones, so there was no number to call.

"I know where it is Susan," Alice said. "I know Jacob's place."

I looked interested.

"Right now." she said.

"Right now" in creole means "let's go," it means "yes," it means "in a little while". Very versatile. This time Alice meant "let's go."

We stopped to put up my ads at every store bulletin board along Center Street, the main road through town. "Two bedroom house wanted to rent with yard for gardens and dogs."

"You better say you want electricity," Alice advised. These things are not assumed. I added water too, just in case.

We headed to "The Bajo" where Jacob's house awaited us. I had been on the ride once before with Alice. The Bajo has the most beautiful vistas in Belize that I've seen. Acres of jungle forest and farmland ending with ridge after ridge of mountains on the horizon. Maybe Guatemala, maybe Belize, depending on where you're standing.

We came to the road that leads up to David-The-Mennonite's house. We call him this to differentiate between Alice's David and this one. He is single, looking for a blue-eyed wife. He went all the way to Bolivia to find one but it was not the hotbed of blue eyes that he expected. (I can't explain why he expected this. Alice only laughed when I asked.) He came home empty-armed. Alice wants me to meet him. By the grace of God, he was not home when we stopped on our first visit to The Bajo.

Alice pulled her bike over, off the road. We were at the bottom of a great hill that hosts several Mennonite farms, including David's, and at a corner leading to more farms in each direction.

"Something smells hot," Alice said. Luckily she has a good sense of smell. I do not. Her back wheel was smoking. She put the bike on it's center stand.

"I need to throw water on it," she announced, and went to the ditch to find some. I took the plastic bag from the pepitos I had purchased earlier for the ride. Now they found a convenient home in my low front pocket.

Alice filled the bag with water from the ditch and headed toward the bike. I am not familiar with this approach of dousing the rear wheel, but Alice is extremely knowledgeable. Chris has said more than once Alice can do anything a woman can do and anything a man can do. She is a Resourceful woman. I trusted her about the bag of water. Then she brought two more.

I looked at the chain on her bike. It had a lot of play.

"That chain is dangerous," I observed. "it needs to be tightened." I do know that much.

"I will do it," Alice said. "I need my wrenches from that bike." She pointed to the one I was riding.

To open the seat meant I had to turn off the bike, which I dreaded because it has trouble kick starting. Or I have a wimpy kick. And it doesn't have a clutch so you can't "bump" start it by rolling down a hill and kicking it into gear, as I learned to do when I had my own bike in my hallowed Minneapolis years.

I complied and cut the engine and used the key to open the seat and found the vinyl case of wrenches with Alice's cell phones.

They were the wrong size.

"I don't know how to tighten this one," she said examining the chain.

I can't even remember how I used to tighten a bike chain so I offered valuable advice instead.

"If there's a mechanic nearby, they would know how to adjust a chain." I said this becauauto lot of auto repair places here are just in someone's yard. Almost all of them are. But I forgot where I was. The Bajo, old world mennonite country where they use horse and buggy, not machines. Ay, Susan, I said to myself like Alice would if she'd thought of it.

"David can help us!" Alice announced, referring to the Mennonite up the hill. I smiled. I was going to meet that bearded young Mennonite no matter what, it seemed. Yet, no. We made our way up and around the hill (really, it must be a mountain, I'll have to ask) to David's place. On our last visit, his black dog tried to stave us off. Alice does not like big dogs so it is my job to befriend any big dogs and keep them focused on me and away from Alice. Dogs know who is afraid, so it's no good letting anyone's fear escalate in your party...

This time, no black dog and no David. He has a white wooden stick house on stilts that is tidy and bare. His shed houses a second wagon and a pile of wagon accessories and such. Down the road, his greenhouses grow every kind of produce for market. Next to the house is a small outhouse painted white to match.

Alice needed to use it. She stepped toward the gate and erupted in a gale of laughter and showed me her foot - covered in mud from the ditch. I kept my bike running. I will have to pay Alice for the gas, I thought, I just don't have the umph to kickstart it, it seems. (In my defense, it takes anyone else 3-5 kicks to start it as well...)

Then I heard shrieking. Was she still laughing about the mud? I couldn't hear over the rumble of the bike.

What?! I called to her.

She is calling my name, shrieking. I can't imagine what in an outhouse would make Alice shriek. Me, that's another story. Anything unexpected in an outhouse would make me scream. I tried to hurry and fumbled off my bike to go to see what was wrong. By the time I got to the muddy gate, Alice had already emerged, her pants not quite intact and jumping and squealing "Ants!!"

Oh, ants. Ants are quite an event here. They are tiny, they move about in families of thousands, and they bite. So running into a mass of them could ruin anyone's outhouse experience for some time. She danced and jumped and wrenched off her shoes and wiped her feet free of ants. Alice did not go back into the outhouse or even go back to close the door.

We made it to the next farm and met Nathan, another single Mennonite looking for a wife, Alice informed me. (For the record, I am (specifically) not looking for a Mennonite husband, this is all Alice's concoction and, frankly, her joy to tell me about these opportunities.)

He pointed up to Jacob's farm, which we could see on the very top of the hill, and to another one below it that was also empty, waiting to be sold. Jacob's house looked big. I was intrigued, but we had already come about 10 miles on gravel roads. It would be remote to live out here.

The last mile or two of the road was overgrown since Jacob abandoned the house when he and his family moved to Springfield (the community you read about in " Truck Driving, Mennonites, Hitchhikers and Vanities") and it's steep, and (as you are used to hearing) impassable with rock.

So 40 acres of farmland with a house on a hilltop. You can't imagine it. Not the house, that is nothing, just a wooden structure, sturdily made with only one layer of boards for the outside walls and the same separating the rooms inside. It's two stories with an open attic. Imagine a framed in, unfinished house. That is what you have, but 1x4s hung horizontally for siding. The boards have space between them here and there - airtight is not a tropical advantage.

It's the hilltop that matters. A hilltop in beautiful Bajo. To say the view from the house is breathtaking just sounds trite. The only thing more beautiful would be if you could see the ocean too. The panorama is about 200 degrees of a 25-mile (50?) horizon of tropical farmland, pastures, horses, cattle and then mountains.

So I stood near the edge of the flat top of the hill, mindful of the grass and the beautiful black snake with neon yellow zig zags that we saw slither off the road when we first left Alice's house. (His Mennonite cousin could be living in Jacob's grass, we don't know.) So I didn't venture too far.

The thing about a tropical snake is that everything here is big. Frogs are the size of my hand. Even moths are the size of my hand. I could step into a "safe" spot on the grass that happens to be amid a few of the coils of one lounging snake before I ever have the chance to see whether he is round headed or triangle headed. And that makes all of difference of whether I have to cry out for Alice to grab the rusty saw from beneath Jacob's rain barrel, which I saw on my walk around the house, to slice open the bite and suck out the venom. This I have seen in movies, not in Belize. Here they go for an "anti venom", something you take that neutralizes the poison. I have never heard of that it sounds like a Star Trek cure to me.

"Spock I have the Belizean Viper anti-venom that will save Jim's life!" cries Dr. McCoy. (This references the Old version of Star Trek that people over 40 remember...)

So I stayed away from the thick camouflaging grasses in Jacob's yard. Meanwhile, Alice opened a door to the house and went right in. It was the same layout inside as a house we'd been in in Springfield when the rain pelted down and only the women were home and they invited our non-Mennonite-clad bodies in out of the rain. Their house had been as bare as any I've ever seen. Benches along the walls to sit on. Not even a table to eat at or chairs besides the wall benches. Bare empty rooms, swept clean. No apparent worldly possessions.

Don't let me mislead you, it's not that Mennonites here don't Own stuff. David's shed is chock full of wagon parts and bits. Isaac, the dentist in Springfield could rightfully be called a hoarder of things metal. He has a disorganized acre of every type of scrap. But the houses seem to be Spare.

So the floor plan of Jacobs house.. You walk into a long shallow room that stretches left and right. In front of you, across this entryway, is a wide steep stairway that goes up to the bedrooms. Left of the stair is a first floor bedroom that stretches to the back of the house. Further left in the entryway is a window. To the right in the entryway opens into what at my house would be a dining room. And the dining room wraps around into what could be a kitchen area, but is not because all of their cookery goes on outside. That room reaches around to the wall of the first floor bedroom. Up the stairs we find four bedrooms, one hidden inside the other, looking like a closet door but leading into a full room. Another steeper deeper staircase leads up to an open attic where it appears that boards are laid over rafters as needed for storage and the like. It is clear that this is where the mice live so I turn around without any need to explore empty rafters.

"OK, Susan, right now," Alice says. She is ready to go.

We close up the house and mount our bikes. I speed off ahead of her down the rocky grassy road because I am in Belize and exhilarated by the view and I want to go fast. Fast being relative - 15 mph (a treacherous road). Alice roars behind me on her bike which moves fastest when pointed downhill, but seems to go uphill at about 5 mph wherever we are. These are what we call mopeds, by the way. Engines of 150cc or 200cc. We were not, in case you are wondering, riding Harleys.

I decided if we were doing self appointed open houses that I would explore the next vacant Mennonite house too. I turned in and looked in the windows. They left stuff - an antique treadle sewing machine and two apparently antique bedroom dressers. I didn't try to go in. I strode once around the yard and Alice caught up with me.

We were about to go when I saw The Bird.

A beautiful, small, slender-beaked yellow tropical bird, bigger than a hummingbird but smaller than a robin was trapped in an upstairs window between the screen and the partially opened slats of glass.

"That bird is stuck," I pointed out.

"Let's open the window and let him out," Alice said. She wrenched open the back door below the window with the bird. It led up a stairway to only an attic. This intrigued me coming from the practical Mennonites. A separate outside door leading only to an attic.

I climbed up.

"There is no floor, Alice," I reported back, "Only rafters. I can't get to the window."

She came up and assessed the floorless situation. The rafters seemed to be 1x4 boards doubled into 2x4s. Giving you at most a 2-inch balance beam to walk along to the window.

Alice thought we could do it.

I climbed onto the top edge of the stairway wall and reached to the roof for handholds. The skinny slats could possibly drop me into the living room below but it seemed unlikely. I reached the slatted glass and opened it wide so it was at a right angle with the screen, the bird flopped around but could not get out. And he was tired. His claws and his beak alternately became stuck in the screen. He was lodged in the bottom corner of the window. I thought he was injured.

"He's not coming out." I told Alice.

"Can't you pick him up?" she spurred me on. "He will die."

Alice loves animals. She keeps chickens and cows just for fun. She doesn't eat them. (she does eat other chickens and animals, but not her own...)

I thought of childhood lessons of not touching wild birds because you put your human scent on them, and then they are rejected by their own. I also thought of avian flu and a long pointed beak good for pecking at people who try to Touch Feathers.

"Is there a cloth?" I asked. Alice handed me a white bedspread conveniently near a bed stored in the rafters. I covered my hand with a corner of it and picked up the little bird. I had experience in this because I had just raised 8 guinea hens for my dad before I left. This full grown yellow bird was the size of one of the chicks. You have to wrap your fingers around the wings, not the body. It can squeeze out of your hand if you don't have its wings. His head was poking out of the circle made by my thumb and forefinger as I held him. He didnt protest a lot. I worked my way back to the stairway on the rafters and climbed back down the stairs and out the door. Alice followed.

I was going to loft the bird into the air to help him have a head start, in case he was injured or stunned and couldn't flap. I had no chance. As soon as my thumb loosened he was out of my hand like a shot out of a cannon. A beautiful flight, faster than we would have thought, straight as an arrow until he disappeared from view. A powerful little creature.

I think he knew in the window that his time was up. He didn't struggle or flap like a crazy bird when I went to pick him up. Just a little bit. He was tired from trying to escape. Who knows how long he'd been there? Maybe all day.

Funny how our energy soars with a new lease on life. He thought he had met his end between the screen and the glass. For him, moment now is bonus time. All of the glorious soaring, all of the sun shining off his green and yellow feathers, all of the glory to God that a beautiful creature brings. He has more than he expected. Live little bird, live! Even if there's just a day left, it's a day you didn't know you had. Soar like your freedom is everything!

It was exhilarating to save the bird. Alice and I were happy. I threw the bedspread back up over the rafters, leaving the mystery of how it was moved for the homeowners to figure out.

Alice and I headed down the great hill and we rode along the most stunning panoramic view of the whole ride. Somewhere near the bottom of the hill/mountain,the chain fell off Alice's bike.

"We should leave it here," I said. "Let's go home and ask David to come back for it. "

"Someone will take it," she thought.

So we worked the chain back on and Alice planned to drive even more slowly. I drove fast (20 mph) and slow (5 mph) alternately, keeping an eye on Alice behind me.

We rounded a corner and one cow was out of the fence. I looked at Alice as she approached. She pointed with her chin and her bottom lip for me to continue on. I pointed - with my chin and my bottom lip - to the cow out of the pen. She lip-pointed me on. I lip-pointed the cow. The lip pointing is very Belizean and comes with a slight up-nod.

"They probably let him out, Susan," Alice laughed at me as she came in ear shot. "He is fine."

So we continued on. I going slow and fast, keeping an eye back for Alice. Alice going slow. At one long stretch I raced ahead at 20 mph. Then I stopped to secure my sunglasses in my pocket and wait for Alice. It was too late in the day for sunglasses. I was going to have to bear the dust of the gravel road in my eyes unguarded.

My phone rang.

What are the chances, I thought, just as I've stopped the bike?

It was Alice.

I went a mile back down the road and there was Alice with a spark plug hanging out of the front of the engine. It was too hot to touch. Hmm.

We couldn't get through to David. The network was busy even for the Jaguar Phone. (You will have to read the post "Jaguar Week" to know about the Jaguar Phone.)

We did reach Chris.

"We are riding motorcycles in the Bajo and we have one bike down, one to go," I told him. He didn't understand my silly description. "Can you come to get us by the airstrip?" I asked him, following Alice's instructions. They sorted out which airstrip with me as the go between. The airstrip by Country Garden, a place festivals and fairs are held. He was on his way.

Alice was able to manhandle the bike and run it down the road to the Country Garden gatehouse to leave it in a safe place. We ended up going back on the second bike and meeting Chris at the house. He gave me a ride back to Cayo - Santa Elena, where I am staying. We crossed on the ferry that holds three cars and is moved by a hand crank along a cable, and Jasmine and I went through the 903 photos on my iPad for possibly the fourth time, just for entertainment.

Tonight I have decided there will indeed be a drumming party on Friday. We've picked The Snooty Fox for the venue. It is right on the River (where evidently many foxes run) and the big open porch on the river side has hammock chairs. TV Tom, as he introduced himself, is the owner. He wondered if I wanted a cake. Ah, cake. I remember the days of cake. They are no more. Mahky will bring his friends and drum and play flute and sing. The little white stand across the street with an American-Belizean couple runniing it will make finger foods for us - garnaches and panadas and tostadas plus cut up burritos and lots of salsa.

Now...I hope people will come!

I hear drums now and a flute down the street. I'm sitting on steps along the street across the alley from my morning internet place. I have learned they leave the signal on all night. Nice. I will head toward the music. Good Wednesday night from Belize

Love, Susan