somewhere over the non-existent rainbow

greetings fellow earthlings. i haven’t written for some time, because i don’t have too many notable updates of note, as life out here is still characterized by a sense of waiting - waiting for the work permit to arrive, and the rain too. as well as still being the dry season, as of june 1^st it is now also hurricane season. what’s wrong with having moderate drizzle season, or gentle breeze season – the belizean seasons are way too confrontational and extreme – dry, wet, or hurricane –not much to choose from. i crave the ever-changing unpredictable cold and bonkers english weather. the relentlessness of the heat and dryness here zaps your energy and sanity, so that doing something straightforward like going to the bank in town becomes a herculean effort, and all the days roll into one long hot dry day – and i can’t believe it is june already. there is about one hour in the middle of the night when it is cool enough to actually have a sheet on you and when the sweat stops rolling off you. as for the hurricanes, the last one that blew this far inland in belize was in 1978, which is the year of my birth, so i have an ominous feeling that this year another will come, strong enough to blow me back to the country of my birth. given last week’s first ever belizean earthquake, there is obviously something meteorologically strange afoot so nothing would surprise me. that was my first earthquake, and if i could have been sure there was no real danger at the time, i would have enjoyed it, as it was very very surreal and made a kind of nice rolling wavy motion, like being on a boat but you are in your house. our little wooden house creaked and groaned as the nails and wood got bent around. it made me have some bizarre 24-hour belief in god too, which was interesting. i suppose i mean it makes you feel extremely insignificant, and aware of those greater forces at work which people talk about. luckily this quake only damaged a few towns and only killed a very few people. the epicenter was in the sea off honduras, and it was 7.1 on the earthquake scale, which is big. there was an aftershock around 30mins later, and someone said there was one 24 hours later, and then 48 hours later too, but i don’t know if this is true. however, every night since then i have hallucinated quakes happening again, and woken in the night feeling the house moving in that boat like way and hearing that weird house groaning noise. perhaps this is typical of earthquake survivors, like post earthquake stress disorder or something. it was a lateral earthquake which are more dangerous than the uppy downy quakes. we read of people fleeing their houses to the streets of honduras, one of whom promptly got mugged, which i know shouldn’t but did make me giggle. and reminded me of a much sadder story i read years ago when there was a quake in el salvador: a lady had gone to the doctor’s and was just finding out she was pregnant, when an earthquake struck and killed her husband who was at work in a different town. if i was gabriel garcia marquez i would have done a much better and more poignant job of describing that.

i figured the best place to be when an earthquake strikes is in the air. but bert pointed out cleverly that by the time you’d have run to the hangar and got the ultralight out and ready to fly, either you would have fallen down a big crack in the earth, or the quake would have finished, so it wasn’t very practical. you would have to basically sleep in the plane on the runway and have it switched on and ready to fly at any moment in order for that plan to work, which even with the big headphones on would be noisy, and would definitely be uncomfortable, and would be inefficient in terms of fuel usage. so i continue to risk my life every night by sleeping in my own bed.

a few weekends ago we flew over to chan chich, which is a resort deep in the jungle to the north (we had been before in feb/march, see earlier blog). we will hopefully take their guests flying one day a week, so wanted to talk to them about it, and bert took the owner and managers for flights. the manager there wants to learn to fly now which is good so perhaps we will go back for a while while bert teaches him. me and bert went for a bike ride on the saturday which turned into a disaster as it was in the midday sun, my bike was way too big and uncomfy, and the roads were way bumpier and longer than we expected, and when we sat down to rest ants bit us, then my contact lens fell out, and i got a headache, and bert got a weird reaction to the ant bites, and we both started rapidly declining. luckily a car going past stopped and picked us up, it was the owner’s wife and she said they often have to rescue people who haven’t realized how hardcore the heat can be at that time. i vowed to never go mountain biking again ever. one interesting thing was we saw a big white bird, a kind of hawk or eagle i think. the other day on the farm here we had seen a little hawk called a ferruginous owl or something, i don’t know what ferruginous means but it had a head that span right round in both directions like a dalek.

we flew the following weekend to the pine ridge forest and stayed in a cabin belonging to a friend of bert’s, right on the river, in the middle of the forest with nobody else around. we tied our luggage to the ultralight on the post that goes up the middle to the wing – you can also tie it on down near the wheels but you have to make sure in both cases it’s really tied on securely so it doesn’t fly out into the propeller at the back. we landed at the runway for blancaneaux lodge (the francis ford coppola place with the apocalypse now fan) and then trekked for an hour from there with our bags, at first on a track but then straight through the brush as it was quicker to the river which we had to cross. my legs got all carved up by spiky grass and branches so i looked like i’d been attacked by a bear by the end of it. our reward for that bit was a swim in the river there, and some cold pizza we’d brought for lunch, and cake (a bit squashed from the walking/flying). it’s nice and cool at night time in the pine ridge as it’s higher up up there. i got spooked by the fact that if lightning struck the ground we might burn, there had been a fire there recently started by that very thing. i always have to find a way to spook myself out wherever i go. bert went down a slide into the river and bumped his foot on a rock, as he failed to notice the river was way lower than the last time he’d gone down the slide. oops. he is ok though. so we basically sat around and swam in the river and read our books. we also played the boardgame dogopoly which is monopoly but with property replaced with dogs. my favourite was siberian husky, he was around where leicester square would normally be. the parklane and mayfair equivalents were saint bernard and great dane, i had great dane for a bit but had to sell him off when i landed on dalmation with 4 dog houses and got bankrupted. free parking was free barking and instead of going to jail you go to the kennels. we cooked rice and beans for dinner both nights, on a little camping stove that’s there, and talked about how cool it would be to live in a campervan for a bit and just travel around and camp the whole time. we’ve seen some nice campervans on ebay and did bid on one but got outbid, which is maybe a good thing as logicstically it would be a hassle selling the van and flying up to the states to pick it up – a really fun hassle, but still. the monday morning we got up at 5, which was fine with me as i’d spent the night spooking myself out about fires and bears (there aren’t any there), and trekked an hour back to blancaneaux, and had a well-deserved breakfast before flying home.

i have finished reading the baymen of belize. this book was written by one of the original settlers that came to belize from scotland in the 18^th century, and fought in the battle of st. george’s caye (which previously had a spanish name, cosina caye). it is a fascinating and captivating book, and is now recognized as an official historical document, not many of which exist concerning belize. basically the reason belize was english at all is because these settlers that came here to make money from the logwood and mahogany, fought the spaniards off when they kept trying to oust them and expand their empire here. this was all with no help at all or acknowledgement from the british sovereign – they sent some governor over to see what was going on, who did in fact stay and fight, but didn’t bring any troops or resources. the jamaicans sent aid in the form of a ship with canons and some men to fight. the battle itself was won mainly due to the spaniards total lack of knowledge of how to fight a sea battle properly which meant they randomly fired their canons and mainly missed hitting anything useful, plus they were typically spanishly lazy which gave the english time to gather information about their intentions to invade and thus be very prepared. the author lived near belize city in a place called douglas bank, which i don’t know if it still exists or not, but will investigate. his writing, though he insists he isn’t a writer at all, is poetic in places and very descriptive. he writes of how loyal the negroes were to the settlers, and how they were invaluable in helping them defend belize (at that time known as british honduras), and how he rewarded some of them by giving them their freedom. this being the 18^th century, he refers to them as niggers and says of peter (who is his right hand man and basically was so strong he could have beaten off the spaniards single-handedly): ‘a notable character was peter in those parts, and a splendid specimen of his race. though a pure-bred negro and as black as your hat, he was a goodly man to look upon’. all in all it’s a great book and there is even a kidnapping at some mayan ruins, and lots of descriptions of the animals they went hunting and fishing the whole time. imagine living in those days of no political correctness and no laws on hunting or animals going extinct and no having to wait for months to get your work permit, you just rock up and start chopping trees down and sailing them back to england to make your fortune, and chopping spaniards’ head off with the help of your machetes and your trusty negroes. jolly spiffing fun. i am now reading graham greene’s the power and the glory, which is set in chiapas, mexico. so far so good, quite dark and very observant of mexican politics and mannerisms. is all about catholicism or the lack of it in mexican priests.

film update: we have watched x-men origins: wolverine – was ok, but the pirating of the dvd was quite weird in that in places it wasn’t even properly finished, you could see the computer graphics instead of the finished version, and the strings they use when the actors have to be leaping around the place flying and things. somewhat ruined it. coffee and cigarettes: really funny and bizarre, featuring a really good double act by cate blanchett, who is fast turning into our favourite actress of all time. seabiscuit: totally absorbing true story about a racehorse who is sold off cheap as he is no good to anyone, but a horse whisperer spots that he could be amazing and has had an unfair life so far, and they train him and he and his jockey red (also a damaged and angry character) win tons of races, one in particular against war admiral who was a big rich super pedigree horse owned by some poncy posh man. hooray for underdogs and giving people/animals a second chance.

i have been ‘teaching’ twice a week the 4 little kids in town. there were 3 more for a time, 3 boys of 3, 8, and 13, who with their mother were being housed by the mary open doors charity. their dad was in jail for abusing the mum, who although she is only 25 looks about 40 she is so skinny and beaten up. they returned to belmopan to go back to him after he was let out of jail this week, which is such a shame, but you can’t force them to stay here and let themselves be cared for, it has to be voluntary. i suppose if that is all you know and are used to, then it becomes normality. i hope they do return though. anyway it’s good fun helping out with the 4 others, they are really cute, and it’s easier now there’s only the 4 of them again as it got a bit hectic with 7 of them all wanting your attention all the time, and only 3 of us tutors (and only 2 on the days i don’t help out which must have been even more hectic). i taught monique some stuff about the 9 times tables (like every factor of 9 the digits add up to 9, ie 18 is 1 plus 8 which is 9, as is 27, 36, 45 etc), which she thought was amazing, as did i actually. i got a bit carried away looking for sequences in all the other times tables, of which they are many but i won’t bore you with them here. the 2 boys are learning to read properly now which they are doing really well at. michael seems to have slightly strange tendencies and whenever they do colouring/art things he likes to colour in the disney princess colouring book all in pink. he wrote ‘dreams come true’ the other day in a card they were making, which we thought oh how sweet and well spelled he’s done it, and then saw that he’d just traced it from the back of the disney princess colouring book and fell about laughing. this is all in english by the way, they aren’t spanish speaking – i would say their first language is creole and second is english. i can’t understand anything of what alexis the 4 year old says but she doesn’t care and just sits there colouring in circles and triangles quite happily. creole is weird because you recognize most of the words as it is english based, but the way they use them is kind of confusing and the accent is really strong and caribbean. this week i’m going to do a geography lesson for them with the aid of my world map and there is a trip to the zoo that i might accompany them on.