Travel Photography > Isthmus > Monkey River, Belize

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.

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