The
roads went unpaved, we hobble across the potholes, around the cattle.
We pick up hitchhikers and bring them to their homes, or their places
of work. We decide that we would give anybody a ride who looked friendly.
Needless to say, they are all female, or under the age of fifteen. Some
are just kids. Some are grandmas. They all say that God should bless
us. One group's average age is eleven years old. They had taken a boat
from Toledo District to sell jewelry and trinkets.
Toledo
is the Mayan sector of Belize, with an average wage of eight-hundred
dollars a year. We tell them that is where we are headed, and we need
to learn the language. I ask them to teach me Mayan. They laugh when
they say those Mayan words, as if they knew I thought these words were
funny. Chang Xuacil. Pim. Che. Ch'op. Pish. These were jungle words.
Mayan sounds like the sounds of the canopies.
They
are traveling long distances at age eleven, unguided, expected to make
a profit, to hitchhike with people of unknown integrity, to be able
to pay for their boat back home. They are inquisitive, polite, and comfortable
in the company of adults.
We
continue south and then take the road to the coast. Passing orange groves
and banana farms, we drive on until giant trees and strange-looking
birds overtake the agriculture. The road ends at a simple lot, filled
with broken cars and junk, on the coast of the Caribbean, and along
the edge of the Monkey River.
Monkey
River Town was settled as a backwater banana industry community in 1892.
It was at one time a bustling place of two-thousand and five hundred.
But blight killed the bananas, the Belizean Government revoked the rice
subsidies, and local hunters killed off the crocodile skin business
by outright destroying the crocodile population. And then Hurricane
Hattie came along in 1961, wiping out what was almost already gone.
Then,
Hurricane Iris came along just last year, ripping almost every building
off its foundation. The monkeys that had not died from a yellow fever
epidemic were ripped from their trees and into the wind. The bare, broken
mangrove jungle, once alive with human enterprise, is now just a sandy
backwater, with the smell of raw cement.
We
flag a fisherman to take us across the river into town, and settle in
at Alice's. Alice's Restaurant has no sign. Nor working lights or windows.
In fact, there is no electricity in Monkey River Town. We tell Alice
we are hungry for lunch. Alice says "Have a seat, I goween fiss
you up." Without discussion of entrée, price, or menu, she
brings us heaping plates of rice, beans and chicken. I ask for a beer.
Alice calls a friend to run across town to get me one. I asked for another,
and then a third. By this time, the friend was sweating.
The
children of Monkey River Town are involved in some sort of war. The
older kids are perched on the river bank, hurling water-filled plastic
bottles at the younger children, who are mostly girls. The young ones
in turn hurl the bottles back. It is a back-and-forth that goes on like
a fireworks display, with water flying all over. One bottle hits a younger
girl in the head. She stumbles for a bit, her knees go weak, and then
she picks up the bottle and hurls it back.
The
adults adorn the edge of the unbuilt bar, playing dominos. Dominos is
serious business in Monkey River Town, it appears; like intense bottle
tossing.
We
commission Winsley Garbutt, a Garifuna lobster fisherman, to boat us
as far as the river will go; the end of the Bladen and Swasey rivershed
tributaries.
We
board his launch and motor upriver. In the dry season, passage is slow
and laborious; the river is shallow as a hand's breadth.
