Macaw Bank and Belize City

Yahoo, a hurricane free weekend! First Dean, then Felix.

I have 3 computers and all of them fritzed. For days and weeks I haven’t had a computer and I really missed them. Fortunately, I’ve been working for Ron and Al at Macaw Bank Lodge, being their liaison with Mexico Mike who is building their website.

It can get pretty wild over at Macaw Bank. Yesterday I was answering Mike’s emailed questions and sending him photos, maps, text, etc.

They are adding 3 new cabins and we had to name them. We started shouting out really awful names like the Tapir, the Scorpion, the Botfly… when some guests rode up to the gate.
Ron and Al were back and forth into the kitchen, where the computer is, and were telling me all sorts of suspicious sounding descriptions of these two. They were rattily dressed, they looked like hicks, they had missing teeth. Then we heard what sounded like a single shot down the road. Henry, one of the worker bees reported that the police were looking for a blue car.

By then the solar batteries had died and I needed Ron to fire up the generator, so it was a good excuse to see these characters for myself. I took the camera down to the dining room and posed some shots with them in the background. I could hardly look at them they were such knuckle-draggers.

Ron asked, when we went back to the generator, if I really thought those two would be good website material. I said, oh god no, I want that picture to be on the camera if they rob you. He said that one of them said that he’d worked in a nuclear arms factory, and I said My ass, he was sniffing the paint on the nose cone!

So a $100.00 later, they hadn’t robbed them and got on their ATV’s to go visit another place. Ron said that after getting pretty drunck they started talking about having gotten out of the meth business just in time. That, I said, makes sense. They looked like they cooked meth in an Arkansas trailer.

He said it was a good thing I didn’t stand at the gaate in my little Jr. League suit and make everyone pass muster.
Humph, I threatened to name his next cabin The Meth Lab.

I’ve used the extra money from Ron and Al to get my laptop fixed. It has really perked me up to start "working" again. Darryl gave me the card of a small inn owner who wants a web site. Keep pluggin’.

My friends have made my days so enjoyable. Two weeks ago, I rode with my best buds to Belize City. They requested that I use fictitious names when I write about them, so they will be called Ann and Gene.

Gene has spent about a year getting a shotgun permit. Today was the day to finally go to one of the two places in the country that sells shotguns.

You have to imagine getting through the skillet of snakes that are the streets of Belize,.. then I knew of a parking lot behind RoMacs and that was a godsend. Through the lot, through RoMacs, across the street, through Brodies, up the stairs but no, that wasn’t the right department, find each other, through Brodies back door, down the block, across the street. All of this in the broiling sun, on mine filled sidewalks, no sidewalks, and demented traffic.
As a group we are like a herd of cats, going off on our own, getting separated, hobbling, and talking the whole time.

Dozens of people to help us and all of them looking wide eyed when we ask for the shotgun department. We were all thinking, jeez, we’re not going to use it on YOU. The correct department sold gardening supplies, appliances, and shotguns. First we were told the guns were upstairs, but we couldn’t see any stairs. (That was because they assumed Gene didn’t have a permit (who does?!) and he should go back over to the main store to the sporting goods department to get a pellet gun. That was where we had started, 45 minutes ago.
Ann and I were standing together, Gene had wandered off, and the saleswoman asked us what we wanted, expecting us to say a washing machine, and I said in my Texas way - Oh, yes please, we want a shotgun. Lord she jumped a foot.

After several conferences with higher ups, the woman took us to the back of the warehouse and into a walk in vault. There were four shotguns on a rack. Gene had a permit for a 16 gauge and there was one choice. He went through the motions of examining it, sighting it, looking down the barrel, hefting it up to aim. Ann reacted with Don’t point that at me!

Well, what do you think? Ann says, Is there any other store that sells shotguns? The saleswoman says Benny’s. And we say maybe we ought to go see what Benny’s has. Then she says, but they are sold out. Ok, Gene says, I’ll take the gun. He reaches in his fanny pack for the permit, and the woman jumps another foot like he’s going to take out a pistol.

Then he asks for shells. No, we don’ got no shells mon. By then we are getting numb. Does Benny’s have any shells? No, nobody don’ got no shells. Maybe we’re not too numb, because we are still amazed at encountering the unbelizalbe.

The next part of the operation was for us three wobbly old dudes to walk through the streets of Belize City carrying a package that looks just like a shotgun. We would have really preferred to walk back to the car with a LOADED SHOTGUN, but we had to rely on pink light and a cloak of invisibility to clear our passage.

On the way back we stopped at a hydroponics farm that grows lettuce and herbs. They don’t sell the plants or the seed, but we were given whole plants with the roots, and Gene and I kypted a habanereo pepper and some dill seeds. I better plant it and share it to cleanse my karma. I was di teef!

I have been helping six kids earn money for school supplies. One brother and sister come almost every day selling homemade coconut candies, crabboo, or avocados. I don’t dare eat any more of the candy, but I give them a dollar anyway. Today Emily and her aunt Florencia came again. After I gave Emily two dollah, her aunt wanted me to buy a raffle ticket. Damn, I should have given Emily 1 dollah, then had the other for the aunt.

The raffle was for a case of cokes. If I win, she said, she "has to buy me a case of cokes". What the hell?? I run into this all the time, the goofiest things. Well, dear, who is sponsoring the raffle, who get the money you are collecting? I do, she says, and produces an exercise book with the lines numbered 1 to 100. This is almost incomprehensible to me, then I burst out laughing. What a sucker scam!

It is so bold and she is so sincere with her plan. I am taken back to being five years old when Flossie and I peddled bouquets out of the FTD catalog to the neighbors. They were supposed to pick out the bouquet they liked and give me the money and I would deliver the flowers. It’s a long, prophetic story, but back to the girl’s before me.

I picked number 60 and prayed that she collected enough to cover the case of cokes, or more likely no one won and she kept the $5 from the 5 or so she’d signed up. Oh, I forgot to tell you, I asked her who draws the winner? And she smiled, "I do".