Adjusting

British Honduras in mid twentiety century was not paradise. In the early part of that century, author Aldous Huxley wrote, “If the world had any ends, British Honduras would certainly be one of them.” We had, as Bucher said, stepped back into the past in some ways. We missed certain amenities. Learning to love the country was an adjustment that involved balancing human values against physical ones.

In Belize City the streets were muddy in The Wet (season) and dusty in The Dry. Roads were potholed despite the best efforts of Government. Canals, which had been cut through the city decades earlier to alleviate flooding, had become stagnant by silting where they debouched into the sea at either end, and polluted by the public latrines perched over them. The contents of “night buckets” were emptied daily into the canals or into the sea itself.

We had only rare access to theater, concerts, art exhibits, and none to first-class sports events. The head librarian asked me one time what we did with the 300 books we took out each year and could not believe it when I replied with surprise, “Read them.”

Staying in Belize meant selling our lovely home in Sarasota and living in a series of rented houses of varying styles.

However, what British Honduras lacked in modern conveniences, it possessed in the friendliness of its people and the restful tenor of its life. The physical drawbacks of the City were abundantly compensated by the blues of the surrounding sea, the warmth of the trade winds, the luxuriance of tropical foliage, the darting or soaring color of its birds.

Bucher and I both traded things we would have enjoyed for a strange, old-fashioned life, which we loved. The pattern of life suited us. The main meal was served in the middle of the day; children came home from school to eat and Bucher came home from work. Businesses closed at 4:00 pm Our time together was broken only briefly by morning and afternoon school/office hours. In the early days there were almost more evening parties than we enjoyed.

In letter after letter, our family and friends protested about our failure to return to the States and about our “primitive” surroundings. We enjoyed the problems as much as the solutions as we settled into our remarkably comfortable and stimulating life.

 

We really are having a good time down here. Some things about the place are frustrating in the extreme…the fact that stores don’t have things you want, the poor food, the filth of the city, and the happy-go-lucky, do-it-tomorrow attitude. However, we love it and find it most interesting. I expect that when we get home, we’ll occasionally look back longingly to the lazy life of Belize!

Alex is back in school…they have vacation from the middle of April till the end of June. He still loves it and I feel that he is getting a much better start here than he would in our crowded Sarasota first grade. Not that I wouldn’t trade! But I might as well recognize the fact that this schooling is one thing about Belize that is better than home.

Don’t know when we’ll be home. First we thought late spring, then June or July, then September, and now it looks like Christmas.