Year’s End

From file written November 26, 1994

I am looking ahead to increasing pressures at work. The cruise ship that spends about three months in Belize annually arrives in about a week. Attending her is fun but time-consuming. I am busy already with the Belize girls who work each year as stewardesses, as a sort of honorary mama. One of them will act as cruise director on the first two cruises. She needs special reassurance and guidance. Being an agent is full of variety.

As for Air France, traffic is growing. It took a long time, but people are beginning to know us. Gabriela Anaya, the delightful young woman in the regional office in Mexico City, has been a whirlwind of help, getting special low fares for Belize. I thought bookings would dry up completely after the summertime rush, but it hasn’t happened.

Meanwhile, my knowledge of geography is improving. I worked hard with a Nigerian last year who wanted to bring his wife and children to Belize. Since then, the Africans have found me. Many of them are missionaries with the Islamic mission. Their accents are becoming familiar.

I have time to take a personal interest in prospective passengers. It gives me lovely glimpses into their lives.

• A young girl trying frantically to get last-minute reservations for her British friend to come for Christmas so they can announce their engagement

• A German man traveling back to Hamburg with his infant son for a family wedding

• A young Irishman returning to Dublin for surgery

• A reformed dope addict working with Le Patriarche, a French drug rehabilitation organization, secretly arranging to leave with a Belize girl whose family did not want her to marry him.

I listen, make reservations, and know I can’t comment.

The years go by, but there are new adventures.

 

From letter dated December 5, 1994

Thanks to my recent trip to France, it has been easy to do Christmas letters this year. I have one version that encapsulates the entire year and a shorter one with just the trip. This business of doing letters on a computer is a godsend. I think back to the days I spent typing individual letters to go in my Christmas cards. As you know, most of my friends-and-relations live at a distance. This is the only time I touch base with them during the year.

Just when I’ll get around to addressing envelopes, I don’t know, but it will be soon.

 

From letter dated December 11, 1994

Somehow, I have lived through the worst of the pre-Christmas trauma. Translation: Christmas letters are written and mailed; packages are (presumably) close to their destinations; Christmas cards are ready for mailing. As for wrapping our own presents, there’s plenty of time.

The key event of this past week was a visit from the regional director of Air France in Mexico City and his deputy. M. Francis Richard and M. Marc Emy are delightful young men, bright, capable, gracious. I have seen them several times and feel completely comfortable with them. Furthermore, as their Belize General Sales Agent, we have a current standing of 108% improvement. They like us.

The point of their trip was to look at Chaa Creek as a possible locale for the 1995 agent’s meeting. Alex and I both were in a decline about the idea of hosting a meeting. It is an inordinate amount a work, even for a large agency. However, all the other Central American agencies have been gigging Air France and me about having a meeting here. I sent them reams of information about both Chaa Creek and the Ramada several months ago and waited in horror.

I met them at the airport, greeted them in French, and we were on our way West. In my wisdom, I decided to go up to Burrell Boom and cut over to the Western Highway at Hattieville, much the shortest route. What I did not know was that the pavement ended three inches beyond Boom, and a passable gravel road soon turned into miles of red mud. It had rained recently. Both ditches were awash. In one place, the water had cut through the road itself. I drove my rental vehicle (a Dodge Ram Charger), mumbling prayers that I would not skid off the road and baptize my guests in mud.

We made it through, everyone laughing about my foray through the boondocks. It took 45 minutes from the airport to Hattieville. If I had gone back to the city, over the Belcan Bridge, and out to the Western Highway, it probably would have taken 20.

So we arrived at Belmopan, where we were to call on Elisa Bejow, a travel agent who is doing a wonderful job pushing Air France. We went all the way around the ring road before a friendly Belize taxi driver I have known for years showed us the way to her agency.

Pleasant visit, then on the Chaa Creek. The Panti Trail has posted signs that threw us off completely in trying to find the resort. Wanting to avoid the Panti Trail, we kept taking the unmarked road at forks. We ended up in someone’s back yard first, then ultimately made it up another wrong track to a blocked road behind the Chaa Creek kitchen. There we stayed.

A young man was posted waiting for us. We were ushered into the bar, where I ordered a Belikin with enormous relief and my Air France friends got huge Margaritas. The owner of the resort joined us. They had laid on a superb luncheon. Mick Flemming, the owner, showed us around afterwards. It was obvious that he did not want, and could not cope with, a conference. Francis Richard, who loved the place, admitted that he did not consider it appropriate for a meeting. Thank goodness that was the end of Belize as a conference site. He says they’ll probably schedule in Guatemala.

Marc Emy drove back to Belize, sparing me the drive I had been dreading. They both were exhausted after having gotten up at 3:00 am Belize time to catch the plane in Panama. They were relieved at my suggestion to cancel my plans for cocktails at the house and dinner out together. I left them at the Fort George and was home in time for the last half of my soap opera.

 

From file written January 22, 1995

Christmas Day was special in an unexpected and utterly Belizean way. María invited her father, brother Elmer, and me for a traditional relleno dinner, using the generous amount of her late mother’s last relleno that was stored in my freezer. It was a pleasant informal gathering. Then the Boom & Chime band from Fenders’ Bar arrived to serenade Alex on his birthday.

Fenders is more like a neighborhood club than a public bar. When the original building burned down a few years ago, patrons got up a fund to help owner Lester Young rebuild. Alex and María are regulars. Lester was one of the friends Alex asked me to invite to their wedding reception. For almost a year, Fenders has had an informal Boom & Chime session every Sunday afternoon. The first I knew about it was a long story in The Reporter a few months ago.

Incredibly, nine men with their instruments—and amplifier—crowded into Alex’s modest living room in their apartment under my house. Lester led the group with his accordion. We had a tall, cylindrical drum, keyboard (electrified, of course), guitar, banjo (the musician fussed with a broken string half the afternoon), maracas, mouth organ (also electrified), bongo drums, and a percussionist with a crippled hand who beat on cow bells or a hollow wooden box-thing. He remembered me from when we used to fly into Big Creek in the 60’s. Unfortunately the jawbone man couldn’t get away to play with them on Christmas day. The ninth man didn’t play anything, but appeared to enjoy himself standing in the doorway. To reassure you, the amplifier, while unnecessary from my point of view, was tuned low enough not to blast us out of the room.

I sat on the couch at the end of the living room next to a smiling black woman of extremely generous proportions. She introduced herself as Lester’s girl friend. I did not catch her name, but she was a vision! Long, loose red silk skirt topped by a creation with black spaghetti straps and tiers of gold fringe and lace that disclosed glimpses of patterned black-and-red satin underneath as they swished in time to the music.

The band played a long set in typical Belize rhythm. Listening hard, one could identify gentle, familiar Christmas carols not quite buried by the exuberant beat. They ended with a rollicking Happy Birthday To You.

Alex served drinks and María brought out bocas. I moved around the room, trying to speak to each of the musicians for a few moments. They were a mixed group, in age and color. What they had in common was sheer delight in their music and beautiful manners.

They played a second set. Another round of drinks and bocas. The afternoon was going on. To my amazement, they played a third set. Finally they packed up their instruments to leave. Even then the guitarist, bongo man, and other percussion man lingered briefly with a plaintive non-Christmas tune of their own.

I kept thinking this was the sort of thing that kept Bucher and me in Belize those forty years ago. It was after five o’clock when I finally went upstairs to my own home in a glow of Christmas happiness.