Susanna Goes to the Big City.
I went to Belize City today - 67 miles and three hours from Cayo, where I live. (Unless my British landlord is driving and then it's a mere hour and 40 minutes. That was a breakneck experience.) The city hit me with all of its pressing throng, city noise and exhaust. I remembered I was in Central America, overwhelmed to step into this energy of city life and masses of people after my so-quiet life in my jungle town.
Traffic was stalled all through town. The narrow streets were narrowed more by pedestrians and vendors stationed on the fringes of where the cars wanted to go. One traffic warden walked up to my landlord's car with a big smile and waved him into the stream of traffic.
"You're in Belize now, you have to learn to drive like a Belizean!" he said. "You just go." He motioned us in with friendly grand gestures. The Brits laughed and joined the flow of traffic.
The stores are packed to overflowing, merchandise bursting out the doors. Each of the hundred stores sells almost the same thing. How they all carry on enough business, right next to each other, is not clear to me. But, this week, with Christmas days away, every store, no matter how tiny, had shoppers in it.
Outside the stores on the sidewalks and the edge of the road street vendors hawk everything from fruits to plastics to shoes, they have it all. I almost bought a bucket. If you see enough buckets and are asked enough times to buy a bucket, you start to reason that you could use a bucket. And kitchen towels are the hot Christmas item this year. ?! On every corner vendors sold stacks of dishtowels. Toward the end of my mile trek on foot (having left my landlords at the ferry), I bought two linen towels with fruit designs made in Guatemala. Who (besides me) doesn't need dish towels?!
My Real find was kalamata olives that a Mediterranean woman fished out of a big bucket for me. I haven't seen them anywhere in Belize - even bottled. We are going to have a few happy meals with those.
I was tired of shopping almost as soon as I started. The mystery of Belizean Pedestrian Traffic Patterns was a large part of it. I was constantly run into and over by people - even when there were only 20 of us at hand. It doesn't work to just keep right; it doesn't work to watch oncoming pedestrians and dodge out of the way - they seem to travel in sixes and tens. You avoid one and run into his companions. And children among them are like carems on a board, back and forth, around you and through you (if they could). If you wait at the end of one store aisle to find a break to enter into a cross aisle, no break comes. One person passes but you still can’t get in because the other nine follow - all moving as one, all wanting to look at what you are unintentionally standing right in front of.
Check out lines were not as confusing in the city as they are in town where I live. In the city there are queues, so you wait in turn, but should you pause to choose between a Dark Chocolate bar (70% cocoa) from organic chocolate made in Belize or a Dark *Milk* Chocolate bar (50% cocoa), then the four women and a girl will squeeze right by you to check out in front of you. But I didn't mind because the queue still lends a sense of order. In Cayo, you just don't know where to stand at the counter, and wherever you stand, people come next to you and make their purchase before you and you can't figure out what about your stance or demeanor suggests that you are not standing there solely to pay for your groceries and go home. It's very confusing. I find myself verging on rudeness. Someone hands money to the cashier to cut in line, and I hand the cashier one of my goods to ring up. In this case, he will give a short nod to the cutter-in-line and say "Right now," which means "Just a minute," and he will finish my purchase. Then, before I have paid, he will take money from the next person who is invariably in an urgent rush to leave the store and whose order he has added in his head. Sometimes three other people are helped in the course of adding up my order - even if it's small - before my change is given. It's a multitasking job for the cashier.
In Cayo, the foot traffic through stores is light, so you don't ever have to just cling to the shelf to get out of everyone's way. But in Belize City, checking out was orderly, it was the shopping that was hectic.
I noticed more household supplies in the city - kitchen gadgets and such - that I thought I could not find in Belize. I didn't need them, but I noticed them. What I did need, and found, was a big half-gallon mason jar for brining fresh mozzarella for Christmas. I will serve it on slices of tomato from my garden and basil from the organic farm in Teakettle. Fabio will love me for this feat. He loves anything that harks of authentic Italian cooking from home. I probably can't achieve that, but at least a semblance of it.
My first attempt at mozzarella is a jar of little white rock-like cheese balls in the fridge right now. The flavor is nice, but it's not the soft beautiful texture it should be. My one source of good milk (according to my friend Christina, whose discernment I trust because she used to have dairy cows herself) was all out when I stopped by for another gallon after making these cheese-like rocks.
I panicked a little. We are very close to Christmas and mozzarella is a two-day affair. I asked when there would be more.
"It depends on how much milk we get. She's not giving as much lately," the young Mennonite girl in the shop told me.
"She?" I asked, a little dumbfounded. "You have only one cow?"
"Yes," she smiled.
Everyone seems to know about this "dairy" called Bowen and Bowen, where you can get fresh milk, it’s even unhomogenized. (Mmm the cream goes to the top and you can make Butter from it.), but they have only one cow.?!
"We can save some for you - how much do you need?" she wondered.
"Well, two gallons," I said, thinking if I failed batch number 2, I would have enough for one last attempt before Christmas dawned. But I wondered if I was depriving all of Cayo from milk by hoarding two gallons. Still, she agreed.
"I can't believe you have only one cow." I was still stuck on this news. “How much milk does she give a day?”
I guess it's not surprising for a family to have one cow, but to (bother to) sell the milk from only one cow and to be known as the place to buy milk....you’d just think they’d need more than one cow. It does explain why, now and on three previous visits, they were out of milk.
"About two and a half gallons right now." she answered.
So I was hoarding after all, one cow's whole day supply all saved for me. Well, nothing could be done. If you need two gallons of milk for your cheese, you need two gallons of milk for your cheese. I gave her my name and promised to come on Monday, first thing.
As the girl sent her brother to fetch me an 8-1/2 pound turkey from the freezer, I continued to ponder the one cow scenario. If you have one cow, you probably don't have a whole milking set up. Was this young girl or the turkey runner brother sitting on a three-legged stool every early morning, milking Bessie by hand? The Mennonites here are definitely old world. That's just older-world than I imagined.
When I return on Monday for the milk, I'm going to ask the cow's name, and I will name my cheese after her. I think I love that cow.
But this all took place in Cayo, in a little village called Esperanza (which means "hope," or "wait" - but hope is better.) Back to my tale of the big city. I looked for milk there but found none. A lot of the milk sold in Belize is in boxes on the grocery shelf, not fresh refrigerated milk. Butter too is found on the shelf next to oil. It is sold in a blue decorative can. About US$8 per pound. The butter I buy (when I'm not making it with the cream from Bessie) is "fresh" - meaning sold in the refrigerated section, but it's imported from New Zealand (so how fresh can that be?). I am sure Wisconsin is closer than New Zealand in terms of transporting perishables. I have no idea why the butter is shipped around the world to Belize. That butter is US$6 per pound but sold in only half pound blocks. I think this is an export opportunity for a dairy farm in Wisconsin...
It's just as well that I did not find milk in the city. I had a three hour (scheduled as two, but allow for three) bus ride back to my jungle home and no cooler with me. Still, I purchased a pound of butter that was only US$3.75 and came from Florida. It's the only time I've seen non-New Zealand butter, and such a price. Ok, I confess, I got two pounds. Butter freezes well.
I was in the vicinity of the bus station for my ride back to Cayo, I thought, but the streets and their little shops mixed with houses, mixed with fences, and all crossing the canal, look alike to me. I thought I was a block away when I asked a man who had a tent pavilion and clothing rack in his yard selling clothes.
Belizeans give directions that only Belizeans can understand.
"You go so (pause) and so," the police officer 7 blocks back had advised me with hand motions indicating straight on the first "so" and right on the next "so." How far straight and how far right? If I would have asked he would have given me a confident nod as though to say, "You'll know how far." and would simply repeat his hand motions with "so (pause) and so."
This Belizean, in the yard with his rack of clothing to sell, gave me the hand motions but was clearly uncomfortable with the "so (pause) and so" type description, recognizing that I would not understand.
"Wait," he said, finger to the air, and came around the fence from the other side of the yard.
"Do I go straight down this street?" I began.
"Follow, I will show you," he said.
Oh my, he was going to escort me to the bus. It seemed unnecessary and - unfortunately - it caused me to wonder if he was going to ask me for money. But, no. It's just that it was a tricky three blocks and he was a neighborly man. There was a "double road" (boulevard, as we would say) and both lanes ran along the canal, but I was to turn before crossing the canal because on the other side were fences or other obstacles that would have made passing complicated. As I walked behind him on a narrow just-built sidewalk with a 12-inch drop into the gutter, which I kept thinking I was going to dip into by accident as other pedestrians squeezed past, I learned that he has been to Milwaukee, in my own state. And now his relatives have relocated from there to St. Paul. I tried to express with interest that *I* was from the Twin Cities (I lived there long enough to say it that way, I think). This either did not register or was irrelevant as he pointed out the bus station and the line up of recycled school buses waiting to lurch and jostle me all of the way back to the jungle side of things.
What kindness of this man. He took a left to head back to his yard full of clothing racks and I dodged a biker turning left into me as I was turning right, to skittle across the canal and then the double road to a yellow bus waiting for me.
The buses in Belize are primary transportation for everyone. They are cheap - I think I paid US$2.50 to go 70 miles - and they will stop anywhere. God forbid you should get on a bus just after work hours or when school lets out. There are people squeezed three to a seat and others standing belly to back from the back door to the money collector hanging out the door on the first step into the bus. In those cases, the bus may stop every mile along the way from Belize to Cayo. 70 miles, 70 stops. Maybe I exaggerate (but I don't think so).
I was pleased instead to find a "non-stop" bus to Belmopan, the capital city (about 2/3 of the way home). This doesn't mean it doesn't stop, it still stops every 5 or 10 blocks within the city, but once you're out of the city, it only stops for...friends of the bus driver, probably. There were a few times we stopped. Still it was an hour quicker than a regular bus. I was fortunate again in Belmopan to find a "non-stop" bus to San Ignacio. This one was pulling away from the curb as I exited the bus station.
"Is that going to Cayo?" I asked a man sitting on a bucket by the burglar bar gates of the bus depot. I think he has a role to play in the bus arrivals and departures. He waved his hand toward the bus and gave me a nod suggesting I should run for it.
I saw two other people crossing in front of the moving bus and hopping on. It was dusk already and I didn't want to take the Longer ride that would come next. I also didn’t really want to run in front of a moving bus at dusk. But he stopped at the sight of me and my shopping bags crossing into his headlights. Then 45 minutes of 1970s love / heartbreak songs on the radio later (I'm sure I heard some voices singing along...I've noticed this before on the bus to Cayo, people singing along in public), I debarked in San Ignacio across from the newly cobblestoned welcome center with a 10-foot Christmas tree lit against a backdrop of water fountains, shooting into the air from newly placed fountains in the plaza floor. I walked through the plaza, into the mall, up the winding stairs, out onto Burnes Avenue. Fabio was serving gelato across the street to tourists and I was home.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
Breaking Radio (Well, Blog) Silence
One Monday Night in Belize...
Lacking the Rabbits of home, the dogs LOVE to chase toads. (Maybe young hounds have the zeal to chase the lightening fast Rabbit and old hounds like the slower pace of a good toad.) I try to keep them away from toads because they are poisonous here (so I hear). So, when I saw a Large Fat Toad was sitting surreptitiously Inside the patio door, in my home, a few feet from my computer, the dogs yet unaware, I needed to act fast. Like a rabbit. Or the whole debacle would go down on my tile floor. I catch spiders in a jar, slide cardboard underneath, and fling them through the wrought iron grate back into their ecosystem. The toad was too large for a jar, even the wide-mouth mason variety. I knew I could not abide him leaping around my house. Who knows how high a jungle toad can jump? Maybe to the ceiling where he can cling with suction-cup feet (or, that's jungle frogs.), teetering above me, dogs running amok below, no grip whatsoever with their paws on tile.
The toad saw me eying him. With considerably quick reasoning, I grabbed a small waste basket and just in time. He leapt for the sky and the green plastic basket-now-cage leapt too. I slid him across the tile to the open door and decided to simply flip him out the door grate with the bottom edge of the waste basket. He flew 8 inches out the door grate and simply sat. Really, toad? No leaping away? No mortal fear of the Americana in the jungle house. Nothing? Indeed, he is still there, 8 inches from the door, watching. Considering.
Tuesday Morning...
Meanwhile, ants in Belize are of cartoons proportions. Not large, but multitudinous. There are little ones (though not the smallest red Biting ones) that move only in the millions, and always in a procession like a river flowing over land or person, whatever is in their way. Local wisdom says that if they march into your house, your best response is to step aside and let them pass. If you try to redirect them, they may redirect all over your floors and walls and you will never ever know the end of the Small Ant for having broken their singular, collective, concentration.
I took the trash out this morning, walking the dogs down to the gate with me, maybe 200 yards from the house, down the steep hill, to the road. A dramatic River of Ant, TENS of millions of them, the most I've seen so far, poured across the driveway in a 6-inch swath, forking at one place, rejoining at another, splitting into other streams before they met the jungle grass only to meet back up somewhere off in the field.
I stepped over their flow to get to the trash barrel, but the Gute would not. He locked his knees and looked at me with eyes flung open. It's not the first time he's looked at me as though I were crazy. I took him by another route where the river was merely 3 inches wide. Still six feet from the teeming ants, Guthrie rooted his feet and hunkered his head toward the ground for maximum leverage against the leash. Under no circumstances was he, Guthrie, going to Cross the Ants.
I deferred to his judgement. It's no use convincing a lock-kneed pup to step forward. I tied him to a tree, stepped over the ants, put the trash in the barrel, opened the gate for the day, and headed back up the hill with him. He happily headed away from the Ants. Elias, who was not leashed, since he does not run away unless the Gute is party to it, was sniffing outside the gate. I called to him, thinking to say "Jump over the ants!" as though he might grasp some meaning from it. I thought it just as he trotted his little paws right through the swirl of them, no awareness whatsoever of the greatest peril of Guthrie's day. And apparently, also, no ill effects.
I don't fault Guthrie for leeriness of ants. Maybe he's been asleep on the grass when a platoon came through and poured over him. Maybe he leapt up and ran for a mile trying to shake them off. Maybe he knows something about the Ants that Elias and I do not. It is noted in my mental list of curious things that two creatures with the same genes and set of basic instincts can respond so differently to the same circumstance. Hmm. The Gute is his own person, in a canine sense of the word.
A Wednesday Hence
It's been a long time since I updated you on the adventure that is my life in Belize. I found this beautiful place to live in the jungle and the pups had the life of their dreams - running amok in the jungle 31% of the day and napping 69% of the day. (The statistics change with each retelling in case you're keeping track.) But then they went missing, and I thought they were gone from me forever. Elias returned home abused and wounded, but he has healed. The Gute was safely in someone's care, and also returned. They don't run at large anymore - the jungle life that they loved - it's too dangerous. Not the jungle, but the people.
I was falling in love at this time, with a friend I had met last summer when I first came to Belize. He was a balm to me, a peaceful place to escape when life overwhelmed me. He was compassionate and respectful to my dad, who was here with me at the time, and seemed to have endless patience and willingness to take us on adventures. I was glad for him because tragedy was about to swirl around us in Belize.
I lived in fear for a few days: were the dogs missing because my house was being targeted for a robbery? Right at that time that another expat, a restaurant owner's wife, was beaten by men with machetes in her garden because they wanted her laptop. Really. A laptop.
These were disturbing events and I was hearing stories all around me too, about fear, about robberies, about people who would leave if they could but their money had run out. They felt trapped in Belize with nothing to make a new start back home. My idyllic tropical escape was being rocked a little.
I went downtown to see Fabio, the aforementioned focus of my affections, where he has his gelato business.
"I am afraid I have bad news for you," he told me. He was the part of my life that was still paradisaical. What bad news could he have for me? I thought he must be teasing, but no.
"I think your friend is missing, Susanna. I don't know if it is her," he told me soberly.
I ran across the street to the Missing poster on a restaurant storefront. In her white dress, it was Jasmine.
My dear young friend, the beautiful jungle princess who you know from this blog, our companion in many adventures.
Jasmine had been abducted and murdered before we even knew she was missing.
Even while we buried her body in the jungle, on the site where I first met her and first became susceptible to her infectious sense of adventure and joyful laugh, it was too horrible and impossible to believe. In a human respect, it still is. In a spiritual respect, I think of Jasmine's glee added to the glory of heaven and it's such a fit. She is (still) such a beautiful creature and her joy is all the more for being face to face with her Creator and Savior. We are the ones who mourn our loss, still; and our time is short before we are back in her company.
Isn't that such a theme of God's last year for me. That life is short; don't delay what good you would do. Live now. Quickly, even, and much...
Today
So, it's been a circumspect time between February's post and today. I was back in the US for two months taking care of complex life matters, hearing good news from the doctor, missing Fabio, and then, as soon as I left, missing the friends and family I left behind.
Life has been hard, and extremely beautiful. I have been overwhelmed, but also carried. God has been present in it all.
Sometime in the coming days and posts, I will tell you more about these things. For now, I am just writing to break the silence that has been my blog!
God's reconstruction of me in this season, through these circumstances and the events of my heart, is...unprecedented for me. And all this when I thought I had been molded and shaped already. I thought I was in "refining" mode, you know, sandpaper and maybe a file to smooth me over. But no. (And what kind of arrogance it is to have thought so.)
This last year has undone me (in the best way) and surprised (and surprised) me. God is always the same, yet never quite who I was thinking, even after my thinking had already been revised. He is mysterious and complex and I am seeing that He is beautiful. Not harsh and unyielding or critical and demanding; not exasperated with me, not wondering when I'm going to get a clue. Not distant. Not oblivious of me. These are ways I may have thought of God at times through the years. Now, His beauty overtakes me; I can't catch my breath. Who am I to be given a glimpse of this? His love and compassion for me - His infinite patience with me. His tenderness, as though I am precious, is what has undone me.
For about the last 10 years, my life verse has been Psalm 27:4. (Now I'm going to have to change all of my passwords....) When a friend of mine shared this verse with me 10 years ago, he'd been given a grim medical diagnosis. I didn't understand this verse at the time, it was a foreign sentiment to me. And I remember feeling bad about that. Why, so many years as a Christian, would I not immediately connect to this and understand? Maybe you won't understand it either. Don't feel bad. God may spend the next 10 years making it clear to you, too.
One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
(Thank you Tom Eickhoff for this blessing way back then.)
Sincerely and Gratefully, with Love and Adoration,
(and a promise for posts to come!)
Susanna in Belize
One Monday Night in Belize...
Lacking the Rabbits of home, the dogs LOVE to chase toads. (Maybe young hounds have the zeal to chase the lightening fast Rabbit and old hounds like the slower pace of a good toad.) I try to keep them away from toads because they are poisonous here (so I hear). So, when I saw a Large Fat Toad was sitting surreptitiously Inside the patio door, in my home, a few feet from my computer, the dogs yet unaware, I needed to act fast. Like a rabbit. Or the whole debacle would go down on my tile floor. I catch spiders in a jar, slide cardboard underneath, and fling them through the wrought iron grate back into their ecosystem. The toad was too large for a jar, even the wide-mouth mason variety. I knew I could not abide him leaping around my house. Who knows how high a jungle toad can jump? Maybe to the ceiling where he can cling with suction-cup feet (or, that's jungle frogs.), teetering above me, dogs running amok below, no grip whatsoever with their paws on tile.
The toad saw me eying him. With considerably quick reasoning, I grabbed a small waste basket and just in time. He leapt for the sky and the green plastic basket-now-cage leapt too. I slid him across the tile to the open door and decided to simply flip him out the door grate with the bottom edge of the waste basket. He flew 8 inches out the door grate and simply sat. Really, toad? No leaping away? No mortal fear of the Americana in the jungle house. Nothing? Indeed, he is still there, 8 inches from the door, watching. Considering.
Tuesday Morning...
Meanwhile, ants in Belize are of cartoons proportions. Not large, but multitudinous. There are little ones (though not the smallest red Biting ones) that move only in the millions, and always in a procession like a river flowing over land or person, whatever is in their way. Local wisdom says that if they march into your house, your best response is to step aside and let them pass. If you try to redirect them, they may redirect all over your floors and walls and you will never ever know the end of the Small Ant for having broken their singular, collective, concentration.
I took the trash out this morning, walking the dogs down to the gate with me, maybe 200 yards from the house, down the steep hill, to the road. A dramatic River of Ant, TENS of millions of them, the most I've seen so far, poured across the driveway in a 6-inch swath, forking at one place, rejoining at another, splitting into other streams before they met the jungle grass only to meet back up somewhere off in the field.
I stepped over their flow to get to the trash barrel, but the Gute would not. He locked his knees and looked at me with eyes flung open. It's not the first time he's looked at me as though I were crazy. I took him by another route where the river was merely 3 inches wide. Still six feet from the teeming ants, Guthrie rooted his feet and hunkered his head toward the ground for maximum leverage against the leash. Under no circumstances was he, Guthrie, going to Cross the Ants.
I deferred to his judgement. It's no use convincing a lock-kneed pup to step forward. I tied him to a tree, stepped over the ants, put the trash in the barrel, opened the gate for the day, and headed back up the hill with him. He happily headed away from the Ants. Elias, who was not leashed, since he does not run away unless the Gute is party to it, was sniffing outside the gate. I called to him, thinking to say "Jump over the ants!" as though he might grasp some meaning from it. I thought it just as he trotted his little paws right through the swirl of them, no awareness whatsoever of the greatest peril of Guthrie's day. And apparently, also, no ill effects.
I don't fault Guthrie for leeriness of ants. Maybe he's been asleep on the grass when a platoon came through and poured over him. Maybe he leapt up and ran for a mile trying to shake them off. Maybe he knows something about the Ants that Elias and I do not. It is noted in my mental list of curious things that two creatures with the same genes and set of basic instincts can respond so differently to the same circumstance. Hmm. The Gute is his own person, in a canine sense of the word.
A Wednesday Hence
It's been a long time since I updated you on the adventure that is my life in Belize. I found this beautiful place to live in the jungle and the pups had the life of their dreams - running amok in the jungle 31% of the day and napping 69% of the day. (The statistics change with each retelling in case you're keeping track.) But then they went missing, and I thought they were gone from me forever. Elias returned home abused and wounded, but he has healed. The Gute was safely in someone's care, and also returned. They don't run at large anymore - the jungle life that they loved - it's too dangerous. Not the jungle, but the people.
I was falling in love at this time, with a friend I had met last summer when I first came to Belize. He was a balm to me, a peaceful place to escape when life overwhelmed me. He was compassionate and respectful to my dad, who was here with me at the time, and seemed to have endless patience and willingness to take us on adventures. I was glad for him because tragedy was about to swirl around us in Belize.
* * * * *
I lived in fear for a few days: were the dogs missing because my house was being targeted for a robbery? Right at that time that another expat, a restaurant owner's wife, was beaten by men with machetes in her garden because they wanted her laptop. Really. A laptop.
These were disturbing events and I was hearing stories all around me too, about fear, about robberies, about people who would leave if they could but their money had run out. They felt trapped in Belize with nothing to make a new start back home. My idyllic tropical escape was being rocked a little.
I went downtown to see Fabio, the aforementioned focus of my affections, where he has his gelato business.
"I am afraid I have bad news for you," he told me. He was the part of my life that was still paradisaical. What bad news could he have for me? I thought he must be teasing, but no.
"I think your friend is missing, Susanna. I don't know if it is her," he told me soberly.
I ran across the street to the Missing poster on a restaurant storefront. In her white dress, it was Jasmine.
My dear young friend, the beautiful jungle princess who you know from this blog, our companion in many adventures.
Jasmine had been abducted and murdered before we even knew she was missing.
Even while we buried her body in the jungle, on the site where I first met her and first became susceptible to her infectious sense of adventure and joyful laugh, it was too horrible and impossible to believe. In a human respect, it still is. In a spiritual respect, I think of Jasmine's glee added to the glory of heaven and it's such a fit. She is (still) such a beautiful creature and her joy is all the more for being face to face with her Creator and Savior. We are the ones who mourn our loss, still; and our time is short before we are back in her company.
Isn't that such a theme of God's last year for me. That life is short; don't delay what good you would do. Live now. Quickly, even, and much...
Today
So, it's been a circumspect time between February's post and today. I was back in the US for two months taking care of complex life matters, hearing good news from the doctor, missing Fabio, and then, as soon as I left, missing the friends and family I left behind.
Life has been hard, and extremely beautiful. I have been overwhelmed, but also carried. God has been present in it all.
Sometime in the coming days and posts, I will tell you more about these things. For now, I am just writing to break the silence that has been my blog!
God's reconstruction of me in this season, through these circumstances and the events of my heart, is...unprecedented for me. And all this when I thought I had been molded and shaped already. I thought I was in "refining" mode, you know, sandpaper and maybe a file to smooth me over. But no. (And what kind of arrogance it is to have thought so.)
This last year has undone me (in the best way) and surprised (and surprised) me. God is always the same, yet never quite who I was thinking, even after my thinking had already been revised. He is mysterious and complex and I am seeing that He is beautiful. Not harsh and unyielding or critical and demanding; not exasperated with me, not wondering when I'm going to get a clue. Not distant. Not oblivious of me. These are ways I may have thought of God at times through the years. Now, His beauty overtakes me; I can't catch my breath. Who am I to be given a glimpse of this? His love and compassion for me - His infinite patience with me. His tenderness, as though I am precious, is what has undone me.
For about the last 10 years, my life verse has been Psalm 27:4. (Now I'm going to have to change all of my passwords....) When a friend of mine shared this verse with me 10 years ago, he'd been given a grim medical diagnosis. I didn't understand this verse at the time, it was a foreign sentiment to me. And I remember feeling bad about that. Why, so many years as a Christian, would I not immediately connect to this and understand? Maybe you won't understand it either. Don't feel bad. God may spend the next 10 years making it clear to you, too.
One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
(Thank you Tom Eickhoff for this blessing way back then.)
Sincerely and Gratefully, with Love and Adoration,
(and a promise for posts to come!)
Susanna in Belize
Monday, February 20, 2012
Guthrie's Cabin on The Hill
Feb 15, 2012
I live in the jungle now, just outside of town. It's a two-story cottage built by a Brit whose pension sank and he thinks he and he wife can live more comfortably in Belize, on a fraction of what they expected to have, than he can in England. Lucky for me, that will be next year. This year, he needs someone to live here to keep malefactors away.
The house is in the southwest corner of an area called Kontiki, with a Maya mound just a few hundred feet from the house through the jungle, which is the highest point in Kontiki. The western highway brings you here from San Ignacio. From the vastly paved Kontiki Gas Station, you take the 10 mph, nearly impassable (which goes without saying) rutted rocky road 8/10 of a mile back and back and back, averting mud holes that even the Subaru can't traverse to a corner where the community appears to end at a wide black iron gate.
I climb from the car with a great sense of mystery every time, because to open a great iron gate at the back of a mile of haphazard half streets and hobbled together wooden houses and stately two story colorful concrete houses decked with palms and pillars and Gates, you feel like you're living in a story. And I am. No one who lives in Kontiki does not know that the tall American with two fat (compared to the locals) dogs and a Subaru has taken the Englishman's house on the hill and she's going to ruin her tires if she doesn't come and go more slowly. Maybe she is always late for something, they think. (And they are right.)
I lift up the rod on the gate that sinks into a hole in a round slab of concrete in the ground and push on the great gate and it swings easily and wide, opening the path to my very steep and rocky and slippery-when-wet mown driveway. You cannnot see the house from here. Not until the crest of the hill, 50 feet from the house, and still before you see it, you see Guthrie. Seated with perfect posture head pulled back in military stance, watching from a spot that overlooks all of Kontiki. He is The Sentry.
Friend or Foe? He assesses.
He hears me call out "It's the Gute!," his term of endearment, and he transforms into round-backed bounding puppy, rocking between his front and back legs, then racing to me with his ears back in glee and a great desire to muddy my clothes or the side of the car, whichever comes first.
Then, at last the house. There on your left. Kind of cabiny looking with cedar (or some hairy wood) siding. I drive all the way to the back, under the low clothesline strung on a pully and made tight with a 10-foot pronged branch to prop up the line when the weight of clothes would drag it to the ground. It's how everyone strings clotheslines here. Never tight. Always strung very high and hanging loose and low so you can reach the line. Then brought up and tight with a tall stick wedged at an angle between the line and the ground. Curious, I thought when I first arrived in Belize and saw so many clotheslines with these askew props. Now it just makes sense. With every batch of laundry you can set the line at the height you please. Sheets? Raise it up. Kitchen towels? Leave it low. A bedspread and jeans? Put it up and up and up. That's a heavy load.
I drive under the line because Juan the caretaker suggested that I park on my patio - under the second floor deck. Like a carport. So I do, leaving the rest of the length of the concrete patio under the paper japanese lanterns I have hung (lime green, orange, and formerly red) open for a table and chairs for romantic dining by night or a fluffy dog blanket for resting one's paws after a long jungle trek by day.
The entrance is a patio door fit to the space that once hung a garage door, protected with 8-foot "burglar bars" as they call them. Another iron gate, 10 feet wide and 8 feet high, painted white not black. One door has a rod that sinks into a small hole in the patio, just like the gate at the street. I keep it in place and use the other side of the door mostly. In fact, so often that it confuses the dogs if I open both sides, and they have to pause before they exit, considering the unfamiliar space.
Inside the grate are two sliding patio door screens. They do not fit tight to the glass or to the door frame, so when one eager pup put a paw through as he was waiting for me to unlock the door and come in, it didn't change the insect balance in the house (or outside). Finally, beyond the burglar bar grate and beyond the flimsy screen doors, are are two sliding patio doors fitted curiously with auto glass. This was described to me as an extra protective measure and immediately to mind came television shows of bullets shattering a windshield and leaving someone dead. I did not question the extra protection. Maybe they meant against criminals armed with Rocks.
The grate has a sliding bar at arm level that secures both sides together and locks with a padlock. The glass doors have a keyhole that is a mere 1/4 inch opening in the metal of the door with a strange, long key that reminds me of a drill bit - twisted metal - but with notches and a flange end to hold.
It is a cumbersome house to get in and out of. First to fumble with the padlock (which is on the inside of the grate, so you must reach through the bars from the outside) then to fit that funny long twisted key and get it just right to trip the jaw of the hook that grips the other door. It's a two-minute process.
The house is mostly concrete and tile so I have decided there's little danger of needing the hope of being able to escape for, say, a fire. (Though I did already soot up the kitchen ceiling with floating specs of melted plastic sieve handle the day that I was frying ginger donuts. And I already found a plastic version of a feather duster to pluck the sooty plastic dust off the painted wall and ceiling without Pressing it to the paint for a more permanent affect.)
Not just the entry is burglar barred, every window is burglar barred. Not necessarily screened, but burglar barred. One morning I lazily went back to Bed after I let the dogs out to explore the early morning yard and jungle. (They like to get up at 6 a.m.. This is their concession from the 5 a.m. wake up time they had as pups. Now that they are nine, 6 a.m. is sufficient.) No sooner did I drift off than a snout poked through the burglar bars on an unscreened window to give one good bark to make me jump. Guthrie reminding me about Breakfast.
The room has lots of windows, some that open, covered with borrowed fabric and curtains at night, which are flipped up and over the rod in the day to let all of the tropical light and air in.
The house is all tile. I love this so much about the tropics that I will probably, unseasonably, install tile throughout my house in Wisconsin. It is so Clean! I believe I will never be able to abide carpeting again.
The kitchen is big - the size of a one-car garage, which I think it used to be - with a new refrigerator and stove that the owner agreed to buy so I would take the place. (When they say unfurnished here they mean it comes with walls and maybe stick-on sheet flooring - no appliances, no nothing.) At the back of the kitchen is the door to a short T hallway for the bedroom, the stairs to the second floor, and, on the T, a laundry closet and a bathroom with a shower looking out on the yard and the jungle. The bedroom has a big clothes closet and under-stair closet for storage and seems vast because all I have is a bed. Borrowed from Michelle. I cover it with a bright floral sheet my mom sent because it is easier to wash pup prints off a sheet than a bedspread. The bedspread stays hidden (until one of the pups starts turning and turning and turning to create a little nest of his bedding...).
The second floor of the house is locked up, for the owner and his guests when they come. I don' t use that floor. But I use the deck. My patio is under the overhang of a beautiful covered wooden porch on the second floor. There, on the side of the house toward the mountains, I have hung my hammock and an extra clothesline (for when it's raining on the cleverly hung pulley line on the ground) and it's a whole additional living space to my house. With a beautiful view of stars at night and distant mountains by day.
The yard is manicured, about an acre or so, landscaped with a row of tropical bushes here, a lemon tree there, A little extra yard area mowed behind a line of hedges so the pups have another area to investigate. Then, beyond the landscaping, on all sides: Jungle. Jungle so thick I can let the pups run free and not worry. They can't get too far. The only exit is the driveway to the rocky Kontiki road. They are hounds in their element with a new sense of pride because they Roam Free. I can't tell you how Elias pranced and flaunted his freedom the first day I let him, and not Guthrie, loose. Eli had proven at the last house that he would stay in range. Guthrie did not prove this. Guthrie ran down the valley to chase chickens and ran across the highway where children were playing in a field. My poor roommate then, Michelle, tore out her hair more than once over the Gute. He is a canine wildcard. So Eli darted back and forth in the yard, keeping ever in view of Guthrie standing caged with me in the kitchen, behind the burglar bars.
Now, however, Guthrie too runs free. For nine years I have wanted to live somewhere that the pups could be trusted to run. I can't imagine any more idyllic place than this. They can run entirely on this property and never be bored! They also can run down into Kontiki and terrorize the local skinny-ribbed dogs, but it's more the other way. The local dogs see fat ones coming and they all pack together in a welcoming committee. Guthrie sees it and is not sure he wants to be welcomed and heads for the jungle.
I like keeping the dogs out while I'm gone. They are here to form their own welcoming committee to anyone who doesn't take the dramatic iron gate at the street seriously. And then I get the grand prancing welcome which does indeed make you feel like a queen. The Brit has dubbed the house Monarch Lodge, so it's only right to have a little fanfare on my arrival home each day. And, this way, I don't need to worry about the plate of homemade whole-wheat ginger donuts that would get polished off even if set at the very back corner of the countertop to cool when I went out...
Also in the kitchen is the smallest office I have ever had. My friend Fabio loaned me a wooden desk just big enough for my computer screen and keyboard. Flanking the little desk I have two green plastic tubs that brought unusual and organic foods and kitchen items from the US on the top of the Subaru. They are covered with linens and host the computer speakers and a stack of books and Monk DVDs. Before I leave Belize I will have turned everyone I know into fans of the old TV show Monk, which I have only just learned is coming Back to TV with a new season. And me in central america with no TV. I hope it is as good as seasons 1-8, which I have memorized by watching them so many years in a row.
In my small little office set in a big kitchen space, I have no internet. Yet. Internet is a terrible racket in Belize. If it thunders, it goes down. It is usually slow and it costs more than three times what I pay for internet in the U.S. I chided the girl at the cable company when she explained the prices to me and how I would have to pay for cable TV too - even though I don't have a TV - and deposits and set up fees. And pay installation even though the physical cable was already installed.
"How can any Belizeans afford Internet?!" I questioned her.
We don't charge them what we charge Americans, I thought she might be thinking. And five neighbors share one account.
Instead, she said, "Most people already have the cable."
That's the least of the expense! I thought. I walked away without Internet. I had a similar conversation when I called ATT about my cell phone in the US yesterday. There are people bilking people unfairly out of their money everywhere you go.
Don't get me started on the Duty I must pay on the wonderful Subaru. I thought I could avoid it. I thought I could be in Belize for 6 months before I would have to pay 67% of the value of the car. But no. Everything depends on who you know and what official you run into in Belize. And maybe how much you pay him to help you. I have talked to three officials and one insurance guy. The three officials were all the "head" of customs according to themselves or someone else. They all had a slightly different description of what I needed to do. And they all said, "Let's give the government what the government is due." They must spend a whole day of training on this one phrase because it is the only consistent information I was given. I hoped to have a "temporary permit" by which I would guarantee that I would not sell the car in Belize but would Drive it Out when I left. This would be a 67% deposit that I would recover upon leaving Belize with my car. The next time I talked to someone, it was a 150% deposit and still is today. My other option is to simply Pay 67% of the value of the car as duty, license the car in Belize and feel like I own a very expensive Subaru. This would be handy if I plan to come back and back and want to leave the car here when I am in the U.S. Also handy would be if I instead sold it to a friend for, say, $1000 US and then he would have to pay 67% of that for duty, and keep it for me for my various returns to Belize. This assumes that I have money to travel to and fro across the Americas. If I had money to do that, I might not be quibbling about duty on a Subaru. (67%? Yes, I think I still would.)
So, bilking. Let's not end an extremely long blog post on a bad note.
I live in the most wonderful place on earth. For the winter. I have an idyllic life of a little work that pays, a lot of work that doesn't (a book that maybe will one day...) and a tropical life with friends I love. Stay tuned. I will try to write more about the wonders of Belize and God and Susanna in Belize.
Blessings and lots of love from Guthrie's hilltop cabin,
Susanna
I live in the jungle now, just outside of town. It's a two-story cottage built by a Brit whose pension sank and he thinks he and he wife can live more comfortably in Belize, on a fraction of what they expected to have, than he can in England. Lucky for me, that will be next year. This year, he needs someone to live here to keep malefactors away.
The house is in the southwest corner of an area called Kontiki, with a Maya mound just a few hundred feet from the house through the jungle, which is the highest point in Kontiki. The western highway brings you here from San Ignacio. From the vastly paved Kontiki Gas Station, you take the 10 mph, nearly impassable (which goes without saying) rutted rocky road 8/10 of a mile back and back and back, averting mud holes that even the Subaru can't traverse to a corner where the community appears to end at a wide black iron gate.
I climb from the car with a great sense of mystery every time, because to open a great iron gate at the back of a mile of haphazard half streets and hobbled together wooden houses and stately two story colorful concrete houses decked with palms and pillars and Gates, you feel like you're living in a story. And I am. No one who lives in Kontiki does not know that the tall American with two fat (compared to the locals) dogs and a Subaru has taken the Englishman's house on the hill and she's going to ruin her tires if she doesn't come and go more slowly. Maybe she is always late for something, they think. (And they are right.)
I lift up the rod on the gate that sinks into a hole in a round slab of concrete in the ground and push on the great gate and it swings easily and wide, opening the path to my very steep and rocky and slippery-when-wet mown driveway. You cannnot see the house from here. Not until the crest of the hill, 50 feet from the house, and still before you see it, you see Guthrie. Seated with perfect posture head pulled back in military stance, watching from a spot that overlooks all of Kontiki. He is The Sentry.
Friend or Foe? He assesses.
He hears me call out "It's the Gute!," his term of endearment, and he transforms into round-backed bounding puppy, rocking between his front and back legs, then racing to me with his ears back in glee and a great desire to muddy my clothes or the side of the car, whichever comes first.
Then, at last the house. There on your left. Kind of cabiny looking with cedar (or some hairy wood) siding. I drive all the way to the back, under the low clothesline strung on a pully and made tight with a 10-foot pronged branch to prop up the line when the weight of clothes would drag it to the ground. It's how everyone strings clotheslines here. Never tight. Always strung very high and hanging loose and low so you can reach the line. Then brought up and tight with a tall stick wedged at an angle between the line and the ground. Curious, I thought when I first arrived in Belize and saw so many clotheslines with these askew props. Now it just makes sense. With every batch of laundry you can set the line at the height you please. Sheets? Raise it up. Kitchen towels? Leave it low. A bedspread and jeans? Put it up and up and up. That's a heavy load.
I drive under the line because Juan the caretaker suggested that I park on my patio - under the second floor deck. Like a carport. So I do, leaving the rest of the length of the concrete patio under the paper japanese lanterns I have hung (lime green, orange, and formerly red) open for a table and chairs for romantic dining by night or a fluffy dog blanket for resting one's paws after a long jungle trek by day.
The entrance is a patio door fit to the space that once hung a garage door, protected with 8-foot "burglar bars" as they call them. Another iron gate, 10 feet wide and 8 feet high, painted white not black. One door has a rod that sinks into a small hole in the patio, just like the gate at the street. I keep it in place and use the other side of the door mostly. In fact, so often that it confuses the dogs if I open both sides, and they have to pause before they exit, considering the unfamiliar space.
Inside the grate are two sliding patio door screens. They do not fit tight to the glass or to the door frame, so when one eager pup put a paw through as he was waiting for me to unlock the door and come in, it didn't change the insect balance in the house (or outside). Finally, beyond the burglar bar grate and beyond the flimsy screen doors, are are two sliding patio doors fitted curiously with auto glass. This was described to me as an extra protective measure and immediately to mind came television shows of bullets shattering a windshield and leaving someone dead. I did not question the extra protection. Maybe they meant against criminals armed with Rocks.
The grate has a sliding bar at arm level that secures both sides together and locks with a padlock. The glass doors have a keyhole that is a mere 1/4 inch opening in the metal of the door with a strange, long key that reminds me of a drill bit - twisted metal - but with notches and a flange end to hold.
It is a cumbersome house to get in and out of. First to fumble with the padlock (which is on the inside of the grate, so you must reach through the bars from the outside) then to fit that funny long twisted key and get it just right to trip the jaw of the hook that grips the other door. It's a two-minute process.
The house is mostly concrete and tile so I have decided there's little danger of needing the hope of being able to escape for, say, a fire. (Though I did already soot up the kitchen ceiling with floating specs of melted plastic sieve handle the day that I was frying ginger donuts. And I already found a plastic version of a feather duster to pluck the sooty plastic dust off the painted wall and ceiling without Pressing it to the paint for a more permanent affect.)
Not just the entry is burglar barred, every window is burglar barred. Not necessarily screened, but burglar barred. One morning I lazily went back to Bed after I let the dogs out to explore the early morning yard and jungle. (They like to get up at 6 a.m.. This is their concession from the 5 a.m. wake up time they had as pups. Now that they are nine, 6 a.m. is sufficient.) No sooner did I drift off than a snout poked through the burglar bars on an unscreened window to give one good bark to make me jump. Guthrie reminding me about Breakfast.
The room has lots of windows, some that open, covered with borrowed fabric and curtains at night, which are flipped up and over the rod in the day to let all of the tropical light and air in.
The house is all tile. I love this so much about the tropics that I will probably, unseasonably, install tile throughout my house in Wisconsin. It is so Clean! I believe I will never be able to abide carpeting again.
The kitchen is big - the size of a one-car garage, which I think it used to be - with a new refrigerator and stove that the owner agreed to buy so I would take the place. (When they say unfurnished here they mean it comes with walls and maybe stick-on sheet flooring - no appliances, no nothing.) At the back of the kitchen is the door to a short T hallway for the bedroom, the stairs to the second floor, and, on the T, a laundry closet and a bathroom with a shower looking out on the yard and the jungle. The bedroom has a big clothes closet and under-stair closet for storage and seems vast because all I have is a bed. Borrowed from Michelle. I cover it with a bright floral sheet my mom sent because it is easier to wash pup prints off a sheet than a bedspread. The bedspread stays hidden (until one of the pups starts turning and turning and turning to create a little nest of his bedding...).
The second floor of the house is locked up, for the owner and his guests when they come. I don' t use that floor. But I use the deck. My patio is under the overhang of a beautiful covered wooden porch on the second floor. There, on the side of the house toward the mountains, I have hung my hammock and an extra clothesline (for when it's raining on the cleverly hung pulley line on the ground) and it's a whole additional living space to my house. With a beautiful view of stars at night and distant mountains by day.
The yard is manicured, about an acre or so, landscaped with a row of tropical bushes here, a lemon tree there, A little extra yard area mowed behind a line of hedges so the pups have another area to investigate. Then, beyond the landscaping, on all sides: Jungle. Jungle so thick I can let the pups run free and not worry. They can't get too far. The only exit is the driveway to the rocky Kontiki road. They are hounds in their element with a new sense of pride because they Roam Free. I can't tell you how Elias pranced and flaunted his freedom the first day I let him, and not Guthrie, loose. Eli had proven at the last house that he would stay in range. Guthrie did not prove this. Guthrie ran down the valley to chase chickens and ran across the highway where children were playing in a field. My poor roommate then, Michelle, tore out her hair more than once over the Gute. He is a canine wildcard. So Eli darted back and forth in the yard, keeping ever in view of Guthrie standing caged with me in the kitchen, behind the burglar bars.
Now, however, Guthrie too runs free. For nine years I have wanted to live somewhere that the pups could be trusted to run. I can't imagine any more idyllic place than this. They can run entirely on this property and never be bored! They also can run down into Kontiki and terrorize the local skinny-ribbed dogs, but it's more the other way. The local dogs see fat ones coming and they all pack together in a welcoming committee. Guthrie sees it and is not sure he wants to be welcomed and heads for the jungle.
I like keeping the dogs out while I'm gone. They are here to form their own welcoming committee to anyone who doesn't take the dramatic iron gate at the street seriously. And then I get the grand prancing welcome which does indeed make you feel like a queen. The Brit has dubbed the house Monarch Lodge, so it's only right to have a little fanfare on my arrival home each day. And, this way, I don't need to worry about the plate of homemade whole-wheat ginger donuts that would get polished off even if set at the very back corner of the countertop to cool when I went out...
Also in the kitchen is the smallest office I have ever had. My friend Fabio loaned me a wooden desk just big enough for my computer screen and keyboard. Flanking the little desk I have two green plastic tubs that brought unusual and organic foods and kitchen items from the US on the top of the Subaru. They are covered with linens and host the computer speakers and a stack of books and Monk DVDs. Before I leave Belize I will have turned everyone I know into fans of the old TV show Monk, which I have only just learned is coming Back to TV with a new season. And me in central america with no TV. I hope it is as good as seasons 1-8, which I have memorized by watching them so many years in a row.
In my small little office set in a big kitchen space, I have no internet. Yet. Internet is a terrible racket in Belize. If it thunders, it goes down. It is usually slow and it costs more than three times what I pay for internet in the U.S. I chided the girl at the cable company when she explained the prices to me and how I would have to pay for cable TV too - even though I don't have a TV - and deposits and set up fees. And pay installation even though the physical cable was already installed.
"How can any Belizeans afford Internet?!" I questioned her.
We don't charge them what we charge Americans, I thought she might be thinking. And five neighbors share one account.
Instead, she said, "Most people already have the cable."
That's the least of the expense! I thought. I walked away without Internet. I had a similar conversation when I called ATT about my cell phone in the US yesterday. There are people bilking people unfairly out of their money everywhere you go.
Don't get me started on the Duty I must pay on the wonderful Subaru. I thought I could avoid it. I thought I could be in Belize for 6 months before I would have to pay 67% of the value of the car. But no. Everything depends on who you know and what official you run into in Belize. And maybe how much you pay him to help you. I have talked to three officials and one insurance guy. The three officials were all the "head" of customs according to themselves or someone else. They all had a slightly different description of what I needed to do. And they all said, "Let's give the government what the government is due." They must spend a whole day of training on this one phrase because it is the only consistent information I was given. I hoped to have a "temporary permit" by which I would guarantee that I would not sell the car in Belize but would Drive it Out when I left. This would be a 67% deposit that I would recover upon leaving Belize with my car. The next time I talked to someone, it was a 150% deposit and still is today. My other option is to simply Pay 67% of the value of the car as duty, license the car in Belize and feel like I own a very expensive Subaru. This would be handy if I plan to come back and back and want to leave the car here when I am in the U.S. Also handy would be if I instead sold it to a friend for, say, $1000 US and then he would have to pay 67% of that for duty, and keep it for me for my various returns to Belize. This assumes that I have money to travel to and fro across the Americas. If I had money to do that, I might not be quibbling about duty on a Subaru. (67%? Yes, I think I still would.)
So, bilking. Let's not end an extremely long blog post on a bad note.
I live in the most wonderful place on earth. For the winter. I have an idyllic life of a little work that pays, a lot of work that doesn't (a book that maybe will one day...) and a tropical life with friends I love. Stay tuned. I will try to write more about the wonders of Belize and God and Susanna in Belize.
Blessings and lots of love from Guthrie's hilltop cabin,
Susanna
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
A Band of Fastidious Thieves
18 January 2012
So we were robbed.
Indeed. They came through the open kitchen window and were very selective. So selective that they spent time out on the patio organizing what to take and what to leave. They lined up my wallet, Michelle’s purse, my iPad keyboard, her waist pack, and even made a small stack of receipts from my wallet on the concrete edging of the raised garden bed outside. Possibly obsessive compulsive thieves.
They took all of our cash - about $700 Belize ($350 US), a phone, and a credit card. They left our passports, my keyboard, my dad’s prescription, and our purses behind.
Maybe the bag they brought with them to carry their spoils was very small.
Fitting for a strange robbery is the stranger twist that they called me later. The thieves. I was with my friend Fabio bemoaning my situation and borrowing his phone to cancel my credit card when my name appeared as an incoming call. Susana.
What can you do but answer when the thief himself calls? Maybe it was about a ransom. Leave 12 corn tortillas in a brown paper bag on the corner if you ever want to see your phone again.
It was not a ransom call after all, but a pocket-dial. The thief had somehow not only pocket-dialed, but pocket-dialed Fabio’s phone, which was (of all of the 25 numbers in my phone that could be pocket-dialed) the phone I, the thieved, was using to cancel the card the same thief had in his pocket, probably next to the pocket-dialed phone, getting demagnetized as we listened. What could possibly be stranger than this? (Besides the line up of non-stolen goods on the garden wall, of course.)
We heard them walking briskly, breathing heavily. Maybe they were going uphill or maybe they were portly. We don’t know. A lot of dogs were barking at first and they spoke in Spanish.
“Vamos,” I heard (Let’s go.) So there were several of them. We did not gain any further evidence from our eavesdropping or new insight into their thieving ways.
How could this fiasco happen?
It’s not that we weren’t home when we were burgled. It’s that we couldn’t be bothered. It was 8:30 p.m. I was in the shower. My dad was sleeping in his room. Michelle was upstairs. The dogs alerted us but it was such a short alert. Something *quieted* them. Maybe they knew the Thieves. (Just at lunch, my friend Sarah had said that Belizean criminals conduct all of their business in their backyards...meaning if someone robs you, look first to your neighbors. Nice.) Or maybe the thieves brought morsels for the dogs. Bribes. Eli would give up my purse in a minute for a shred of something chickeny. Even a cat food kibble would have swayed him to give up the phone.
We have five to six dogs here at all times. We have become accustomed to ignoring their ruckus. Since it was a short ruckus. I did not leap from the shower to see what was the matter. (Which was probably best for me in the end in any case.) I just rolled my eyes at the Barking. Then I came out of the shower and Michelle was on a hunt for her purse. Where had she put it? Oh, here it is, outside. On the garden wall.
“Susan, here’s your keyboard,” she said.
What? This was the Sign of Foul Play. It’s one thing to absentmindedly lay your purse aside as you open the door, but my keyboard has no place laid out in the elements by the garden. And thus we discerned that we had been robbed by a band of fastidious thieves. All of the rejected items that they did not steal lined up, rather evenly, in a row on the garden wall. (Recall the stack of receipts from inside my wallet set neatly beside.)
Michelle called the police. I left the scene of the crime.
This was last night. Today was a different story. The crime had sunk in. We felt Uneasy about the house and the brazenness of the act with all of us home - canines and people. My friend Tom, in the U.S., went to the bank for me and made sure my credit card was canceled and tried to get a new one issued. It had been my only access to Cash in Belize. And my phone numbers for friends in Belize are gone, until I run into them one by one on the street again… I was supposed to move this morning to a lovely house in the village of Kontiki, down the road, which has an acre of manicured lawn surrounded on all sides by Jungle. Should I move to so remote a house alone with two dogs when this is what happens with three people and five dogs afoot? I asked for another day to consider the house.
It is gated and the house is barred. The dogs can run free there. It’s another “little cabin in the south” for me (after my log cabin at the foot of the mountains in Asheville, N.C.). I likely still will take it, but it took awhile to come around from alarm and fear and loss (and anger) about the robbery to Gratitude. We did not get hurt. We did not walk unaware into a room with several banditos assessing the contents of our purses only to be shot or macheted or just scared face to face. The pups were not beaten or poisoned or harmed. We did not lose our passports. The thieves didn’t really inconvenience us that much. They just Took Our Money. And, as I think of that, if God should allow banditos run off with money He has provided for me, He will still make sure I have everything I need.
Gratitude changed my perspective, which freed me up to have the presence of mind to recognize Fear. I haven’t felt a speck of fear in Belize. I am not naive about Danger and the world-wide prevalence of ne’er-do-wells. I have 15 or so years of living in the inner city of Minneapolis informing me. But when someone puts your computer keyboard out in the garden, you start to wonder what other mad capers could happen. It would be easy to let fear take hold about a myriad of things. And fear begets fear, it is a spiral down. Wisdom is one thing, being smart about how you conduct yourself; but fear is what keeps you from living because something might Go Wrong. You have to be willing for some things to go wrong to have any contentment in life.
The only counter I know to fear is trusting God. With your circumstances and possessions and Belizean cash and pup dogs and sanity and your heart. It doesn’t mean someone won’t take it (or break it). It means it doesn’t matter if they do because God holds all of the cards, not me. And He promises that whatever happens - robberies or border crossings or flat tires on the ferry (you haven’t heard that story yet) or melanoma - good (very good) will come from it. For me. I rest in ways I could not otherwise rest if I did not believe that.
Now I’ve taken all of this time to tell you about the burgling and so many other stories lay in wait about our adventures and friends in Belize. But I’m weary tonight. My dad and Guthrie are snoring on the bed, the screaming kids on the playground toys next door have just gone in to their guest house, and I am thinking sweet thoughts of what lies ahead for me in Belize.
May the foolish thieves get help for their obsessive ordering of non-stolen goods during their escapades. And, actually...may all of their needs be met. May their families have enough to eat. And may the money they stole somehow be a greater blessing to others than it ever would have been, being spent from my wallet. As long as it’s gone, it may as well go for good...
Love and adoration and blessings to you from the tiny and culturally curious country of Belize,
Your Susanna
So we were robbed.
Indeed. They came through the open kitchen window and were very selective. So selective that they spent time out on the patio organizing what to take and what to leave. They lined up my wallet, Michelle’s purse, my iPad keyboard, her waist pack, and even made a small stack of receipts from my wallet on the concrete edging of the raised garden bed outside. Possibly obsessive compulsive thieves.
They took all of our cash - about $700 Belize ($350 US), a phone, and a credit card. They left our passports, my keyboard, my dad’s prescription, and our purses behind.
Maybe the bag they brought with them to carry their spoils was very small.
Fitting for a strange robbery is the stranger twist that they called me later. The thieves. I was with my friend Fabio bemoaning my situation and borrowing his phone to cancel my credit card when my name appeared as an incoming call. Susana.
What can you do but answer when the thief himself calls? Maybe it was about a ransom. Leave 12 corn tortillas in a brown paper bag on the corner if you ever want to see your phone again.
It was not a ransom call after all, but a pocket-dial. The thief had somehow not only pocket-dialed, but pocket-dialed Fabio’s phone, which was (of all of the 25 numbers in my phone that could be pocket-dialed) the phone I, the thieved, was using to cancel the card the same thief had in his pocket, probably next to the pocket-dialed phone, getting demagnetized as we listened. What could possibly be stranger than this? (Besides the line up of non-stolen goods on the garden wall, of course.)
We heard them walking briskly, breathing heavily. Maybe they were going uphill or maybe they were portly. We don’t know. A lot of dogs were barking at first and they spoke in Spanish.
“Vamos,” I heard (Let’s go.) So there were several of them. We did not gain any further evidence from our eavesdropping or new insight into their thieving ways.
How could this fiasco happen?
It’s not that we weren’t home when we were burgled. It’s that we couldn’t be bothered. It was 8:30 p.m. I was in the shower. My dad was sleeping in his room. Michelle was upstairs. The dogs alerted us but it was such a short alert. Something *quieted* them. Maybe they knew the Thieves. (Just at lunch, my friend Sarah had said that Belizean criminals conduct all of their business in their backyards...meaning if someone robs you, look first to your neighbors. Nice.) Or maybe the thieves brought morsels for the dogs. Bribes. Eli would give up my purse in a minute for a shred of something chickeny. Even a cat food kibble would have swayed him to give up the phone.
We have five to six dogs here at all times. We have become accustomed to ignoring their ruckus. Since it was a short ruckus. I did not leap from the shower to see what was the matter. (Which was probably best for me in the end in any case.) I just rolled my eyes at the Barking. Then I came out of the shower and Michelle was on a hunt for her purse. Where had she put it? Oh, here it is, outside. On the garden wall.
“Susan, here’s your keyboard,” she said.
What? This was the Sign of Foul Play. It’s one thing to absentmindedly lay your purse aside as you open the door, but my keyboard has no place laid out in the elements by the garden. And thus we discerned that we had been robbed by a band of fastidious thieves. All of the rejected items that they did not steal lined up, rather evenly, in a row on the garden wall. (Recall the stack of receipts from inside my wallet set neatly beside.)
Michelle called the police. I left the scene of the crime.
This was last night. Today was a different story. The crime had sunk in. We felt Uneasy about the house and the brazenness of the act with all of us home - canines and people. My friend Tom, in the U.S., went to the bank for me and made sure my credit card was canceled and tried to get a new one issued. It had been my only access to Cash in Belize. And my phone numbers for friends in Belize are gone, until I run into them one by one on the street again… I was supposed to move this morning to a lovely house in the village of Kontiki, down the road, which has an acre of manicured lawn surrounded on all sides by Jungle. Should I move to so remote a house alone with two dogs when this is what happens with three people and five dogs afoot? I asked for another day to consider the house.
It is gated and the house is barred. The dogs can run free there. It’s another “little cabin in the south” for me (after my log cabin at the foot of the mountains in Asheville, N.C.). I likely still will take it, but it took awhile to come around from alarm and fear and loss (and anger) about the robbery to Gratitude. We did not get hurt. We did not walk unaware into a room with several banditos assessing the contents of our purses only to be shot or macheted or just scared face to face. The pups were not beaten or poisoned or harmed. We did not lose our passports. The thieves didn’t really inconvenience us that much. They just Took Our Money. And, as I think of that, if God should allow banditos run off with money He has provided for me, He will still make sure I have everything I need.
Gratitude changed my perspective, which freed me up to have the presence of mind to recognize Fear. I haven’t felt a speck of fear in Belize. I am not naive about Danger and the world-wide prevalence of ne’er-do-wells. I have 15 or so years of living in the inner city of Minneapolis informing me. But when someone puts your computer keyboard out in the garden, you start to wonder what other mad capers could happen. It would be easy to let fear take hold about a myriad of things. And fear begets fear, it is a spiral down. Wisdom is one thing, being smart about how you conduct yourself; but fear is what keeps you from living because something might Go Wrong. You have to be willing for some things to go wrong to have any contentment in life.
The only counter I know to fear is trusting God. With your circumstances and possessions and Belizean cash and pup dogs and sanity and your heart. It doesn’t mean someone won’t take it (or break it). It means it doesn’t matter if they do because God holds all of the cards, not me. And He promises that whatever happens - robberies or border crossings or flat tires on the ferry (you haven’t heard that story yet) or melanoma - good (very good) will come from it. For me. I rest in ways I could not otherwise rest if I did not believe that.
Now I’ve taken all of this time to tell you about the burgling and so many other stories lay in wait about our adventures and friends in Belize. But I’m weary tonight. My dad and Guthrie are snoring on the bed, the screaming kids on the playground toys next door have just gone in to their guest house, and I am thinking sweet thoughts of what lies ahead for me in Belize.
May the foolish thieves get help for their obsessive ordering of non-stolen goods during their escapades. And, actually...may all of their needs be met. May their families have enough to eat. And may the money they stole somehow be a greater blessing to others than it ever would have been, being spent from my wallet. As long as it’s gone, it may as well go for good...
Love and adoration and blessings to you from the tiny and culturally curious country of Belize,
Your Susanna
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Jaguar Kisses and Other Ponderings
My dad is sleeping in the hammock at the house replaying in his mind the fat rough tongue of the jaguar licking and licking his forehead through the cage yesterday at the zoo, before opening his big teeth and drooling jaguar saliva down onto our jeans, waiting for his chicken leg reward. How I love the glory of wild cats. I wonder what they would charge me to sit in the human cage inside his pen all day and just watch him move around me in all of his Majesty.
Michelle, our hostess, and Fabio, our friend from Italy, came with us. Fabio drove us all in the Subaru. (What an excellent car for Belize.) I have been driving and driving for weeks. Months. I never thought about what a relief it would be to simply ride. To gaze out the window, to turn around and talk to my dad or Michelle, to have the freedom to observe more than just other cars. To not be Responsible for the speed bumps. The ever present yet somehow unseeable Speed Bumps.
After the zoo, we visited Michelle's site where they are building a green, natural living community on 30 acres of jungle and Mayan mounds. This was my dad's first visit to the jungle. Michelle's caretaker Juan had marked off a walking path and planted all sorts of flowers and transplanted wild orchids everywhere. It was a great day with friends and I think my dad's first Wonderful experiences in Belize. We needed a wonderful experience. He and I, both.
I have been missing something. Like my vision for this great escapade. Why did I come back to Belize, again? Not wanting to have left in the first place? Why did I think it was such a great idea to bring my 89 year old dad to a developing country? What, again, is the point? I have been in a blur. The stress of the trip was too much. Not what I am supposed to be having in my life in this season of Fighting Cancer. And it did not subside once we arrived in Cayo. How I have needed a Great Recalibration and haven't had the breath to find it.
Trust. In the Lord. With all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways Acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.
What a crazy promise. He will direct my path. Put me back on track. Give me the vision. I notice that the only Negative thing, the only what-not-to-do item is about me: Don't rely on how I see things.
But my own understanding is so astute. It seems like He would need my help to assess things. Maybe I could address things as I See Fit and He could just bless it all. Bless whatever I want. Yeah. (That is possibly where I went off the road before...)
I seem to love to fantasize about life being all about me. And, ironically, as good as that sounds, this is the source of most of my pain. Unreasonable Expectations. What brings me joy and makes life exuberant and full of awe is when I am focused on Him. Because He focuses on me. And I don't have to. It's the difference between the one you love saying "Do it yourself" and saying "I have already taken care of it for you." One way, life is hard and up to me. The other way, I am blessed, cared for, moving in the flow of beauty and what is good that has been laid before me. Not worried about myself because someone else is. My eyes are free to see it and my hands are free to touch it because, like a trip to the zoo, I am Not Driving.
It took about 11 days for me to stop lamenting in my own head that nothing was going right and I was not right and we came all this way and my dad Didn't Seem to Like Belize and I was living with Five dogs not Two, and with People not alone. People who talk out loud when I am busy thinking in my own mind. Can you imagine the audacity? Oh my. So every little thing has been an adjustment.
And what I needed was a little trust, according to that verse. I didn't feel untrusting, but I didn't Act trusting. The kind of trust that says, I defer to You because Your judgement is better than mine.
The original vision for coming back to Belize was to continue my health regimen to Fight Cancer. To bring my parents away from the ice and snow of winter. To Write a Book. To let God continue to Expose and Uproot cancers of the spirit, more perilous than any melanoma, which is perilous enough. I wrote about this in August...
Part of the problem of keeping (even remembering) the Original Vision is that I don't actually want to think about cancer anymore. I don't want to follow my health regimen. It is inconvenient to me and everyone I spend time with. I don't even know if I want to write squat. I certainly don't want (on the surface) for God to be exposing more frailties in me that He wants to fix. I would rather (on the surface) live with an Idealistic View of Myself and never address anything; live in willful ignorance.
Except that it is so beautiful when He transforms a little aspect of me; and it is so ugly when I Pretend Not to See and carry on in my dysfunctional ways as long as I can get away with it. I sometimes put up resistance, but in the end, the draw toward beauty eventually and always wins.
Well, at least now I realize that I have been Avoiding the Original Vision. Eleven days of tripping on the jump rope of life that is Belize and finally I say, Ah, my heart hasn't been in it. I need to want this.
So, we saw the zoo. Spider monkeys and jaguars and giant tapirs and brilliant squawking birds. We saw Michelle's jungle property. Tomorrow we will visit a Maya ruin. Maybe Friday we will go to Cave's Branch and see more orchids and have Tea and go to the old world Mennonite community of Springfield to buy cream from Isaac's son at his dairy. I told you about Isaac in August - the dentist in a community without electricity. (I had to say it again because it has such great shock value.) Ok, horse-powered electricity. Then, I will make Butter. Next week, I will try to arrange for us to go to the sea and snorkel.
But tonight, I am thanking God for everything good in Belize. For wonderful friends I have made here. For a beautiful place to stay with Michelle. For good health for both my dad and me. For dogs who come back even after they've leapt through window screens like superheroes on an important mission. For the amazing patience and faithfulness of God...
Rebounding from Weary, Just Shy of Rejuvenated,
Susanna en Belize
Michelle, our hostess, and Fabio, our friend from Italy, came with us. Fabio drove us all in the Subaru. (What an excellent car for Belize.) I have been driving and driving for weeks. Months. I never thought about what a relief it would be to simply ride. To gaze out the window, to turn around and talk to my dad or Michelle, to have the freedom to observe more than just other cars. To not be Responsible for the speed bumps. The ever present yet somehow unseeable Speed Bumps.
After the zoo, we visited Michelle's site where they are building a green, natural living community on 30 acres of jungle and Mayan mounds. This was my dad's first visit to the jungle. Michelle's caretaker Juan had marked off a walking path and planted all sorts of flowers and transplanted wild orchids everywhere. It was a great day with friends and I think my dad's first Wonderful experiences in Belize. We needed a wonderful experience. He and I, both.
I have been missing something. Like my vision for this great escapade. Why did I come back to Belize, again? Not wanting to have left in the first place? Why did I think it was such a great idea to bring my 89 year old dad to a developing country? What, again, is the point? I have been in a blur. The stress of the trip was too much. Not what I am supposed to be having in my life in this season of Fighting Cancer. And it did not subside once we arrived in Cayo. How I have needed a Great Recalibration and haven't had the breath to find it.
Trust. In the Lord. With all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways Acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.
What a crazy promise. He will direct my path. Put me back on track. Give me the vision. I notice that the only Negative thing, the only what-not-to-do item is about me: Don't rely on how I see things.
But my own understanding is so astute. It seems like He would need my help to assess things. Maybe I could address things as I See Fit and He could just bless it all. Bless whatever I want. Yeah. (That is possibly where I went off the road before...)
I seem to love to fantasize about life being all about me. And, ironically, as good as that sounds, this is the source of most of my pain. Unreasonable Expectations. What brings me joy and makes life exuberant and full of awe is when I am focused on Him. Because He focuses on me. And I don't have to. It's the difference between the one you love saying "Do it yourself" and saying "I have already taken care of it for you." One way, life is hard and up to me. The other way, I am blessed, cared for, moving in the flow of beauty and what is good that has been laid before me. Not worried about myself because someone else is. My eyes are free to see it and my hands are free to touch it because, like a trip to the zoo, I am Not Driving.
It took about 11 days for me to stop lamenting in my own head that nothing was going right and I was not right and we came all this way and my dad Didn't Seem to Like Belize and I was living with Five dogs not Two, and with People not alone. People who talk out loud when I am busy thinking in my own mind. Can you imagine the audacity? Oh my. So every little thing has been an adjustment.
And what I needed was a little trust, according to that verse. I didn't feel untrusting, but I didn't Act trusting. The kind of trust that says, I defer to You because Your judgement is better than mine.
The original vision for coming back to Belize was to continue my health regimen to Fight Cancer. To bring my parents away from the ice and snow of winter. To Write a Book. To let God continue to Expose and Uproot cancers of the spirit, more perilous than any melanoma, which is perilous enough. I wrote about this in August...
Part of the problem of keeping (even remembering) the Original Vision is that I don't actually want to think about cancer anymore. I don't want to follow my health regimen. It is inconvenient to me and everyone I spend time with. I don't even know if I want to write squat. I certainly don't want (on the surface) for God to be exposing more frailties in me that He wants to fix. I would rather (on the surface) live with an Idealistic View of Myself and never address anything; live in willful ignorance.
Except that it is so beautiful when He transforms a little aspect of me; and it is so ugly when I Pretend Not to See and carry on in my dysfunctional ways as long as I can get away with it. I sometimes put up resistance, but in the end, the draw toward beauty eventually and always wins.
Well, at least now I realize that I have been Avoiding the Original Vision. Eleven days of tripping on the jump rope of life that is Belize and finally I say, Ah, my heart hasn't been in it. I need to want this.
So, we saw the zoo. Spider monkeys and jaguars and giant tapirs and brilliant squawking birds. We saw Michelle's jungle property. Tomorrow we will visit a Maya ruin. Maybe Friday we will go to Cave's Branch and see more orchids and have Tea and go to the old world Mennonite community of Springfield to buy cream from Isaac's son at his dairy. I told you about Isaac in August - the dentist in a community without electricity. (I had to say it again because it has such great shock value.) Ok, horse-powered electricity. Then, I will make Butter. Next week, I will try to arrange for us to go to the sea and snorkel.
But tonight, I am thanking God for everything good in Belize. For wonderful friends I have made here. For a beautiful place to stay with Michelle. For good health for both my dad and me. For dogs who come back even after they've leapt through window screens like superheroes on an important mission. For the amazing patience and faithfulness of God...
Rebounding from Weary, Just Shy of Rejuvenated,
Susanna en Belize
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