Never a Dull Moment

A day and a half after Carli and Tom left, Walter Robison, an old friend and former neighbor arrived from Canada for a five-day visit—his first since he and his late wife Terri left Belize years ago. After visiting with me, Walter went to stay with other friends upcountry, leaving his camera and taking my house keys. A somewhat scattered, dear person.

An hour before Walter left, another friend, the former Dean of our Cathedral, called to say that he was coming for ten days—not, thank goodness, to stay with me.

The Dean’s Visit

Dean Gareth Lewis was on holiday from his cathedral in Wales briefly to substitute for the minister in Palm Beach. He decided to see friends in Belize while he was “in the neighborhood.” I promised to meet him at the airport.

I drove out to the airport to meet Gareth through the worst downpour I ever have experienced. A cold front had moved into Belize during the night and the morning was misty with light rains. By early afternoon, the rain had begun to take its mission seriously. The poorly patched city streets and the first few miles of the airport road were alternately muddy washboards and a network of unavoidable potholes.

By the time I was on the highway, sheets of water lashed across the road, driven by heavy winds, making visibility a sometime thing. It was a colorless world with even the foliage turned to a deeper shade of gray. Fortunately, I was on the wide, recently surfaced part of the airport road through the worst of the storm. Even more fortunately, the other hapless souls out in vehicles instead of safely in their homes had their lights on for safety and were driving far more cautiously than is the Belize norm.

I finally reached the airport and parked in the nearly deserted parking lot. I fought my way through horizontal winds and rains to the terminal. TACA reported that the pilot of the Miami plane had been told that it was inadvisable to land, but that he said he wanted to make one attempt. I went up to the gallery to watch.

The runway lights were on. Through the churning deep gray clouds, a phantom shape appeared, reminiscent of a World War II movie. The plane descended to perhaps fifty feet with ample power, then made a quick climbing turn, straightened briefly, and disappeared into the overcast. The Dean was on his way to overnight in El Salvador.

The heavy downpour on my drive home was so much less terrifying than the sheets of rain on my earlier drive that it was almost restful. As I turned from Gabourel Lane onto Hutson Street, I reminded myself that the street probably would be flooded. It was. I eased ahead slowly, parked carefully in the fence-to-fence sea so that my car didn’t drop into the unseen drainage ditch, and got out to open my garage doors. I walked through calf-deep water, swirling with oil and smelling of the sewerage spewing from washed-out manholes in the next block. It was a blissful relief finally to have the car parked under the house and to be heading toward hot water, soap, and ultimately a revivifying Scotch.

 

I dreaded driving the airport road again next day to meet my returning Dean. However, it was so charming to be able to see the road, enjoy the greens of grass and trees, and not fear slippery pavements, that I overlooked the dismal bumping of the first few miles. The plane arrived on time and Gareth emerged quickly from Customs with his single hand-carried bag.

He reported with amusement that the hotel in Salvador, with its unexpected deluge of guests, had run out of rooms and had put him into the Presidential Suite. Soon after he had gotten himself settled, bombs appeared to go off. He was not charmed at apparently landing in the middle of a revolution. Being as worldly as are most men of the cloth, he did the logical thing and went out onto his balcony to watch the bombing. Fortunately for his sacred skin, it turned out to be Salvadoraneans celebrating the signing of a peace treaty with the guerrillas. The streets were crowded with exuberant people and interspersed with watchful police and army troops. The noise of guns and firecrackers continued long into the night.

I saw the Dean regularly during his visit, and enjoyed it thoroughly. We all hope that when he retires from his current position as Dean of Monmouth Cathedral in Newport, Wales, he will return to Belize in some advisory or missionary capacity.

Trevor

Years ago, through the Dean, I began corresponding with a young man in prison here. He had been incarcerated for at least twelve years at the time and had educated himself through high school level. He wrote fascinating, long, surprisingly literate letters. Eventually I got up courage to visit him.

Let me tell you, Her Majesty’s Prison on Gaol Lane is not like anything you are familiar with. I parked across from the high, thick wall, walked across the narrow street, and yanked on the heavy rope hanging down next to the small arched door set into the huge green main door. The resulting brassy clang of a large bell brought a slouching guard in ordinary clothes who looked utterly taken aback at seeing me. He invited me in with old-fashioned courtesy and motioned me to a shabby bench in the small, unpaved anteroom. Eventually the prisoner was brought to one of the cubicles in an adjacent room and sat on a smaller, equally worn bench and I met my correspondent through the wire mesh.

He was a small, husky man of about thirty, probably of both Creole and Spanish heritage, with bushy, wiry black hair, heavy glasses, and an indiscriminate amount of facial hair here and there, which he well could have done without. His name was Rudolph Trevor Smythe and he had asked me to call him Trevor. I learned later that his mother was the only other person who ever called him that; he was Rudy to everyone else.

 

I continued writing and visiting Trevor, supplying him books but nothing else, probably to his disappointment, until he was released. Several people had interested themselves in him, and he had some help in trying to get settled. Unfortunately, he emerged with the usual world-owes-me-everything attitude and he took advantage of most of his friends, including me, financially and in other ways.

Gradually he got himself sorted out, found a job, married, and had a daughter. He lives near the post office and other offices I visit regularly, so I continue to see him on the street.

 

Trevor now is working for a man whose launch we usually use to carry boarding parties out to enter ships in the harbor. Trevor comes to our office with the bills.

One day in late March, he came in; I waved, but was on the telephone, so didn’t pay much attention. When I looked up, I noticed that he was wearing a thick harness of some sort, almost like a brace for his neck and arm. Looking from my desk toward the counter, it is hard to distinguish people against the glare outside the wide front door. They tend to be silhouettes. Trevor grinned, and it suddenly registered that he was wearing the biggest wowlah (boa constrictor) I ever have seen draped around a neck.

Naturally, I went over to play with the snake though, big and heavy as it was, I did not try to take it from him. Trevor said it was about eight feet long and added that he had a nine-foot snake at home. The pattern on its skin was beautiful, though the boa’s shape was a bit lumpy from yesterday’s dinner. The colors were muted except near the end of the tail, where the design was sharp and the reds and blacks, bright.

I don’t suppose Trevor has any problem with would-be muggers when he takes his pet out with him. That’s an idea I might consider, either for myself or Rent-a-Reptile for the evening.

 

There was a time in the Sixties when I talked to Bucher seriously about our getting a boa constrictor as a deterrent to thieves. Carli was ecstatic at the idea. She and I had some lovely sessions making plans for the pet Bucher wasn’t about to let us have. In the end, I was the one who decided it would not be practical. The main consideration probably was that the cook and housekeeper would have walked out instantly. Feeding is not a pretty business. And finally, snakes don’t stay where you put them. They tend to slither off to impossibly small spaces and to reemerge in sudden and startling fashion.

Bucher always was clever about my off-beat ideas. Instead of arguing, he appeared to consider my notions, then sat back and waited for me to talk myself out of them.

Crew Change

Our company has been saved from disaster by my astute son.

In April we received a fax message from a company in France asking if we would be agents for a crew change on a vessel that was loading sugar in Belize. Since the inquiry came from France, I assumed that they had been given our name by our major clients, Compagnie General Maritime (CGM), and that they were legitimate.

Alex was skeptical from the beginning. We have handled crew changes many times, but we always have been agents for the vessel. Although the company that operates the ship frequently is different from the one that provides the crew, they normally use the same agent.

The agency for ships loading sugar in Belize rotates among three shipping companies, and this one was not ours. Nevertheless, Alex checked with the Director of Immigration for information requested by the French company and replied to the inquiring company.

Belize is a tiny neighborhood. Gradually information began filtering back to us. The same company had contacted two other Belize shipping agencies. One agent told the French company that the arriving crew would not have to pay the fee that we had been told was obligatory. Another company, the one that was acting as agents for the ship, was told that the incoming crew were not all East Indians (as we had been told) and that some of the departing crew did not have passports or U.S. In-transit Visas, which would permit them to be repatriated via the United States. By that time, both Alex and I had soured on the whole thing, and sent a fax that did not close the door, but that certainly was cool.

 

We heard nothing more. Within a few days the twenty-odd East Indians, et al., arrived. We monitor the marine radio channel at the office and could hear the flap about getting (or not getting) the men to the ship, problems with Immigration, calls for the agent, and a lot of mess that had Alex and me grinning with congratulations to each other about having avoided being trapped.

As the story has developed, the poor sailors who traveled for two or three days to get to Belize were not allowed on the ship. Last we heard, they were gathered in the bar and lobby of one of our hotels, half of them flaked out asleep on the floor, to the dismay of tourists. The ship’s agent told Alex that he received a telephone call from an unknown individual in Hong Kong at four o’clock on the Friday afternoon demanding that he prevent the crew change. He replied forcefully that he was agent only for the vessel, not for the crew, and had nothing to do with it.

We understand that the unfortunate agent who was successful in winning the crew change finally went out to the vessel in the company of his lawyer. Apparently the crew had not been paid in three months and refused to leave the ship. That has left the poor agent paying for a lawyer and paying hotel accommodations for the twenty or so sailors.

The U.S. Consul, who is something of a friend of mine, called to get information about the situation. He wanted to be sure that the crew change was legitimate and that this was not just a ruse to get a bunch of Asians into Belize on their way to slipping into the U.S. The Visa Section of the U.S. Embassy (his responsibility) also would be involved with issuing—or refusing to issue—In-transit Visas so that the departing crew could catch their planes back to wherever they were going.

The whole thing now is in the courts. The ship continues to load sugar. And what will happen, we do not care—except that we hope to learn every fascinating detail of the story.

(And people tell me I should retire and miss out on all these fascinating stories!)

New Fax Machine

I’ll write separately about my late-April trip to Austin, Texas for a delightful week-long “Cousins’ Reunion.” After the reunion I flew from Austin to Atlanta, where I saw seven doctors and had three major test procedures plus three out-patient minor surgeries. I was diagnosed with one of the hundred or more rheumatic diseases and established on the correct medication. Now I feel marvelous and have no pain or stiffness.

Late in the afternoon the day before I left Atlanta, Alex telephoned to tell me that our office fax machine had died and to ask me to bring a new one back. It was 5:30, the height of the rush hour. It was pouring torrents. Docile Old Kate took off uphill and down on Roswell Road to the Office Depot near K-Mart. The water was flowing downhill so lustily that the right hand lane was unusable (unless one liked driving without brakes and possibly with a drowned distributor). Visibility was close to nil, with bumper-to-bumper traffic both directions, headlights agleam. I prayed all the way to the store.

I showed an embarrassing lack of restraint in demanding a salesman who knew something about faxes, listened to him carefully, and bought the best value with the features we needed. I worried about the weight, since I had to hand-carry it from Atlanta to Belize. My young friend assured me that the box had a carrying handle (true), that it would weigh only a couple of pounds (a damnable lie), and that it didn’t matter anyway because I had saved so much money over the standard price (possibly true).

I hate hand-carrying anything, especially something electronic and fragile. Fortunately, the world is full of nice men who take pleasure in helping little old ladies by stowing their packages in overhead racks and retrieving them, all smiles and comforting little pats on the back.

Would you like to guess my reaction when the Belize Customs Officer told me that I could not bring the fax machine into the country without a permit from the telephone company?

Fortunately, Alex was able to get the permit after lunch the day I returned and retrieved the fax from the airport, where Customs had impounded it. Furthermore, the duty he had to pay was much less than either of us expected.

Cutting Back

I returned home from my trip to Austin and Atlanta ready to tell Alex that two major illnesses in twelve months gave me the idea that Someone was trying to tell me something. I wanted to cut down my office time whenever we were not particularly busy. However, I walked into the wildest ten days I ever remember. Two Danish ships for the British Army, an Esso tanker, the little Williamson-Dickey ship from Texas, and a major project with two huge tugs and barges returning to pick up U.S. Army Engineers’ equipment after a bridge-building exercise.  The last involved the arrival of two old friends from the Miami company that owned the tugs and barges, one with his delightful wife.

Somehow we coped and survived. And Alex told me he wanted me to cut back on my office hours before I had a chance to suggest it to him.

Actually, this was not a good time to think about relaxing. Our fiscal year ended May 31st and I had to wrap the accounts up for the auditors. Alex and I both had to be in Miami the third week in June for a French Line agents’ meeting. From there, he would go to Atlanta for his annual holiday. I had to come back to hold the fort.

Since Alex is the man with command of the office computer, that meant that somehow I had to:

1. Complete our books before we leave.

   – or –

2. Learn how to get into the computer, make corrections, and print everything out correctly for the auditors myself.

Alex said that our young man Dwight could do everything but the final stuff. I worried about sitting Alex down and making him show me move-by-move how I get into his bloody computer files. He thinks a reasonable demonstration is hitting fifteen keys in quick succession and saying, “See!”

 

When Alex returned from holiday I announced to him that I had figured out how I want to begin retiring. I’ve tried cutting down my office hours, but always end up back at the office full time. Instead, I will work full time (unless it is my bridge afternoon), but will take off on a trip whenever the possibility presents itself. Of course, I already am doing that; but from now on, I will not feel guilty.

Alex’s Return

In June Alex, and I went to Miami for a CGM (French Line) conference of shipping agents from Central America, the Caribbean, and the north coast of South America. The conference was held in a charming resort hotel on Key Biscayne. We understand that later it was almost completely destroyed by Hurricane Andrew. The conference was more stimulating than many. The great fun, however, was seeing our principals from the Paris and Puerto Rico offices, and our “neighbors” from area shipping agencies we work with regularly.

After the meeting, Alex flew on to Georgia for his holiday and I returned to hold the fort at the office. He returned after a couple of weeks, happy and enthusiastic about his holiday. I wish you could have seen our exit from the airport, however. I had taken his new (used) Ford Ranger truck up to meet him because my car needed work badly and its air conditioner was not working.

Alex arrived at the curb with a briefcase, large suitcase, and an enormous duffle. After our hugs, he said, “You brought my car keys, didn’t you?”

“No, I have the spare set and my own set.”

“You realize, don’t you, that those keys won’t open the camper?”

No, of course I did not realize it. It never occurred to me that car keys wouldn’t open a car. That a camper is an extra, not related to the vehicle itself never crossed my mind. So there we stood with a two-man front seat, two adults, and three pieces of luggage.

Alex got into the truck, opened the glass between the vehicle and the camper and put the briefcase through onto the bed of the truck. He then cautiously inserted his guayabera-ed person through the square opening and wiggled down inside the camper. He opened the side window and with my (limited) help was able to lift and ease the large suitcase through it into the truck. Flushed with success and exertion, he writhed back through the window, onto the front seat, and out to the pavement.

That left us with the duffle. He hoisted that into the middle of the seat and propped it on end, where it effectively separated us for the ride home and prevented his use of fourth gear.

He remained in remarkably good spirits through the entire project and we had a wonderful catching-up visit from our isolated cubicles at either end of the front seat during our drive home.

Yukon Pilot

One day in August, I walked into the office to find a telephone call waiting for me.

Kate: Hello.

Man’s Voice: Is this the Mrs. Scott who holds the first private pilot’s license issued in Belize?

Kate (greatly taken aback): Yes. May I ask who this is?

Man: Do you remember talking to a crazy pilot who was planning to fly from St. Lucia to the Yukon?

Kate (dawn breaking slightly, very slightly): Yes, I do.

Man: This is Peter Bernard. We were on a plane together a year ago and you insisted that I should not make the flight alone, that I had to take someone with me.

Kate: I remember perfectly. (something of an exaggeration)

Man: Well, that talk I had with you made everything about the trip gel. I decided to take your advice.

We talked for a little while about the trip, which had been a huge success. As he talked, I began remembering our conversation on the plane because I was horrified that he intended to fly from St. Lucia to the Yukon and back alone. He had flown for years and obviously was level-headed, but still he appeared to be in his Fifties. He had some special reason for wanting to fly to the Yukon, but I could not remember what it was and did not want to ask him. I don’t normally start preaching to perfect strangers, but remembered clearly that I found myself making an exception in his case.

After thinking things over, he had decided to take his seventeen-year-old daughter on the trip. He said that she was an enormous help in keeping him fed and in spotting strange airports with her sharp young eyes.

Peter (as I finally remembered) comes to Belize about once a year to calibrate some Port scales. He said that he had written a long account of the flight and wanted me to have a copy. He said that telling me about it rounded out the entire project for him because our brief conversation had been a sort of catalyst.

He came by a little later to drop off his account. I am sure I would not have recognized him, though he looked vaguely familiar.

I was deeply touched at his taking the trouble to track me down so that he could tell me that he had followed my recommendation and give me the full story. It was fascinating, though nothing about it made me wish I had been the one making the flight.

Extending Marine Parade

On a Saturday afternoon in early August, I sat ensconced on my bed, legs elevated, typing in what should have been silent glory, surrounded by the gawdawful din from massive dump trucks.

The Government is extending Marine Parade beyond Hutson Street, northward along the seafront for the equivalent of three or four blocks to Gaol Lane. That is, from our blissful, quiet dead end, past Belize Guest House across Hutson Street from us, beyond the seawall of St. Catherine’s where Cubbo used to bathe, past the prison, down to Public Works Department (PWD). It will stop there, we understand, and not continue in front of the hospital. In due course, the old PWD yard will be razed and a fine new building put up for the Central Bank of Belize (formerly the Monetary Authority).

I am relieved that this may eventually mean a seawall at the foot of Hutson Street. The lack of one has worried me, in case of a hurricane. However, so far, the base of the new part of the street in front of the Guest House goes up a couple of feet from the level of Marine Parade and Hutson Street. If they intend to leave it raised, that means that water from heavy rain storms or hurricanes will flood downward to us.

Meanwhile, we had a steady parade of dump trucks doing their thing over and over, accompanied by a tremendous groaning and gnashing of gears. The light layer of sand blown in through the windows has my housekeeper, Jean, in despair.

Almost immediately Alex noticed that the trucks were using our driveway to turn around so they could back up to the new track. On the apron of our driveway, two slabs in the newly-installed “bridge” over the drain were cracked. By the next day one had broken in completely. No problem with the contractors; they said fix it and send the bill. The trucks stopped invading, but cars cutting too close as they rounded the corner kept enlarging it. Our contractor had a death in the family and couldn’t start repairs immediately. Fortunately, Alex and I could still get into and out of the garage.

I rather regret losing the relative quiet of our dead-end corner, once the street is finished and paved. Furthermore, if they are going to be building at the end of the new section, we may have to look forward to months of heavy construction traffic. At the end of that time, the entire street, new and old, should be a network of potholes, and the paving will have to start all over. So much for progress.

Bridge

After an hiatus of several years, my duplicate bridge group has been reestablished. Until recently, we literally could not find enough good bridge players to have it; now suddenly we have a great crowd of good players available again. We play every other Saturday at the Ramada.

I dropped out of the bridge scene after my recurrence of thrombophlebitis a year ago and, until fairly recently, played only occasionally. Jimmy Murphy asked me to play with him—to my delight. He’s a good, low-key player, steady and easy-going, as well as an old friend, so the evenings are pleasant. There’s no pressure or tension with us.

Jimmy and I did not distinguish ourselves the first couple of sessions. Although we have played together off and on for years, we were not sure enough of our bidding patterns at first. The third night we came in fourth of fourteen couples, which we considered commendable.

Our last September session was a special tournament, Independence Trophy Night. We both thought we did rather badly. Poor Jimmy got into one of those morasses where you make one mistake and can’t do anything right thereafter. When we left, he was gloom itself about our performance.

To our utter amazement, we came in second, losing by only two points. To my even greater amazement, when I called Jimmy to congratulate him, instead of being pleased, he stormed about his mistake, saying that we would have come in first without it. True. Our opponents at that table were the winners. But as far as I am concerned, the fun is in the bridge playing itself; winning is frosting.

Jimmy was on holiday the next session, so I collected both of our trophies—a golden hand holding a fan of cards, on a wooden mount. Not really my style, but fun to have.

New Refrigerator

In early October, Alex showed me an ad on the back of the local week-end paper—slightly dented refrigerators at huge discounts. I did not say anything to Alex, but was at the door before the store opened after lunch.

The box I wanted was a side-by-side refrigerator/freezer to replace the second-hand one that has given me reliable service for more than ten years. Now its doors are tumored with rust and the vegetable bin is virtually useless, lashed in place with twine because the plastic guides have broken. I already had made up my mind to buy a new refrigerator/freezer soon. This sale was too good to let pass.

To my delight, the store had the model I wanted in the pale almond, which matches my new stove. I was delighted to find that it had water and ice dispensers on the outside of the door. No dents were visible. I wrote a check and arranged for the box to be delivered mid-morning the next day (a Saturday). The store owner, an enthusiastic young entrepreneur, blithely promised (and gave orders) that the delivery men 1) would disconnect/reconnect the water line and 2) would carry my old refrigerator/freezer downstairs and put it under the house.

Back in the office after my successful negotiations, I proudly flourished my “paid” invoice at my surprised son. His only suggestion was that I move the present refrigerator/freezer back into the utility room to use as a “drinks” box, and scrap the sad little refrigerator that has been stoutly serving in that capacity for almost twenty-five years.

 

Austin, my aging “yard man,” agreed to come in on Saturday to help me clean out the three refrigerators. By ten the job was done—and the skies were reverberating with thunder. Before I had speculated overlong on what I would do if the new refrigerator could not be delivered, the truck arrived with it.

1. The old utility-room refrigerator was quickly moved downstairs by six strong young men.

2. The prospect of disconnecting the water line from the kitchen refrigerator/freezer daunted the crew. They did not have tools. I produced them. They did not know what to do. I showed them. The only one with any intelligence finally made the disconnection easily.

3. The gang moved the box from its place in the kitchen, through the back hall, and to the door to the utility room. Thirty minutes and countless tries later, it was decided conclusively that the box would not fit through the door. Both side doorway frames and the door will have to be removed to allow passage.

   By this time, the gang had received five calls from the office about further deliveries, and were not about to wait for major carpentry. They moved the old box back into my kitchen and put it neatly against the wall in the breakfast room.

4. Finally, the men brought the new refrigerator/freezer up from the truck, where it had been sitting in light rain, and into my kitchen.

   a.    The three-prong plug would not fit into my two-prong wall socket.

   b.    They announced that I must call a technician from the store to connect the water line.

   c.    They vanished like a herd of migrating wildebeest before I could protest.

Fortunately, Alex returned just then. He dashed out and bought an adapter plug. He hooked up the water line, which immediately began leaking. Alex discovered that the old fittings did not fit the new box, ran out again to get the proper ones, and returned to hook up the water correctly. He also plugged in the old refrigerator/freezer in the breakfast-room end of the kitchen (minus its water line) for extra space. It can sit there quite nicely, doing its thing, until my missing carpenter (who promised to start painting, etc., before I left in early September) arrives to do the work necessary to get it into its proper place in the utility room.

Meanwhile, I have more refrigeration than anyone needs. María is gloating over the extra freezer space for her Christmas meats and party goodies. And I am reorganizing my new box, moving shelves up and down, and rearranging to find the most usable positions for shelves and food.