Back to Belize

By Belize standards, Bucher did extremely well at renting accommodations on short notice. But it was a shock to my U.S.-softened system! When Carli and I arrived, I took one look at our new abode and wondered whether to take the next plane back to Sarasota or, to save time, jump off the veranda into the adjacent sea and simply swim back.

We had the top two floors of a huge old Colonial house on the Southern Foreshore. The street ran alongside the seawall for a few blocks, from the river’s mouth at the harbor almost to Government House, home to the succession of British Governors. The list of our new house’s good points was completed with note of its location and basic style.

The house was a large, three-story wooden structure on 12-foot “stilts.” Its exterior, sadly in need of paint, was a weathered gray. Open verandas ran the full length of the front on first and second floors. Dormer windows broke the third floor facade. Wooden stairs at the northern end of the house led in “Z” formation to our veranda. French louvered doors, rattling with ancient slats faded to a soft, grayed version of their original forest green, gave onto glassed French doors that opened into a large living room. Bucher had rented the house “furnished,” but the things in it were rudimentary in quantity and questionable in style.

Living and Dining Rooms

The living room walls were varnished mahogany louvers, fixed shut for visual privacy. Auditory privacy was not a feature of the house. Full ventilation was provided by walls that stopped two or three feet short of the 12-foot ceiling so that breezes could circulate, along with the faintest of whispers, from one room to another.

Four uncomfortable armchairs of undistinguished design made of the finest mahogany constituted living room seating facilities.

At the back of the living area, the dining room was separated in the old Belize style by mahogany dividers with ceiling-high posts at either side of the entrance between the rooms. The dining room held a large, dark table and chairs.

Kitchen

A wide hall ran along the back wall of the house, beyond the dining room. Stairs with mahogany railings led to a downstairs kitchen. Bucher had turned a back bedroom opening off the end of the dining room into a make-shift kitchen. That there was no running water in the new kitchen hardly mattered; there was none in the old downstairs kitchen either.

Together Concie and Bucher had equipped the kitchen with our old stove and refrigerator, a screened “safe” on slim legs to hold food, and a washing center on an old marble-topped table: two galvanized dish pans and two buckets, one for fresh water and one for slops. The idea of a sink-less kitchen paralyzed me at first. It was many days before I was comfortable with it. But Concie managed with no trouble.

The idea of throwing the dregs of my morning coffee into a bucket half-full of dirty dish water offended me until I realized that I had no option other than tossing my undrunk last sips off the veranda. Given the alternative, it was an adequate system. I never grew comfortable with that kitchen, but I learned not to panic when I stepped through the door.

Bedrooms

Our bedroom opened to the right off the living room and ran almost the full north side of the house. Carli’s bedroom opened to the left, taking up the front half of the south side of the house while the ex-bedroom/present kitchen filled the back half.

Carli’s bed was a monstrous old four poster with a straw mattress laid on slats. We padded the center area as best we could for our tiny daughter. She cried herself to sleep the first night but rapidly came to cherish it instead of to complain.

Stairs led upward from the far end of the back hall to a third floor, Alex’s province. He was installed in a great iron double bed of Early Cottage design with slightly sagging springs but a tolerable mattress. The room took up about three-quarters of the entire floor. Dormer windows on three sides gave him views of the sea and of nearby rooftops, and captured the tropical winds. It was a magnificent bed-and play-room. Alex loved his private aerie.

Bathroom

The bathroom opened off our bedroom and had a door to the back hall, making it easily accessible to the children. It had the usual fixtures. Water was supplied from a 55-gallon steel drum bracketed near the ceiling. The drum was filled by a hand-cranked pump that brought rain water up from the large wooden vat in the back yard. Unfortunately, the pump showed its age as much as did the house itself, and it took an hour’s pumping per person per day to supply our barest needs. Bucher and I quickly convinced Alex and Carli that pumping was an adult job, and only with a great show of reluctance agreed to let them participate. The children’s energetic earning of the privilege of pumping made life much easier for their parents.

Bucher repaired the pump three times during our first ten days in the flat, always to the accompaniment of frantic complaints from our neighbors (and soon-to-be friends) in the first-floor flat. Whenever he dismantled the pump, water dripped through our bare wood bathroom floor into their bathroom below. Ultimately Bucher was able to borrow this and that, invest a couple of dollars in hose and fittings, and rig up a tiny pump and electric motor that kept the tank filled with approximately ten-minutes’ operation daily. It probably was the most glorious piece of equipment that ever had entered my domestic life.

At Home

Despite the house’s shortcomings, I felt at home from the moment when I walked through the door into our bedroom. There, already installed, was my great grandmother’s bedroom furniture. I had left it behind in trepidation when we returned to Sarasota. Here, to my delight were the heavily carved mahogany double bed and matching bureau and dressing table with their large oval mirrors.

Many nights when the wind died down, mosquitoes swarmed through our unscreened windows, and I thought about my sinkless kitchen and hand-pumped plumbing, only the soothing comfort of my own familiar mattress kept me from packing up and taking the next plane home.

View

The view from our porch made up for the many discomforts. The street and seawall were directly below us; small sailboats moored all along the seawall; larger sailboats anchored a little farther out, particularly off to the left in the mouth of the harbor. Some government launches, including the Governor’s yacht, were out nearly off the lighthouse across the harbor. The small freighters that came to the port sat even farther out with two or three almost always in view.

Sitting back in the living room (in one of our typical Belize chairs intricately and inartistically fashioned from mahogany and designed so that you can assume a sitting position without ever enjoying it) looking out through the spokes of the veranda railing you could see only water and feel very much as if you were at sea yourself.