Pixie in Paradise

First of all, I did a lot of things right before stepping on that airplane from Dallas, Texas to Belize City, 18 days ago. I really did and am proud of that because how would I even know how to prepare and what to pack for a life adventure like this? After all, I did a 180, kind of like the seemingly bubble-headed blonde, Elle Woods (“Legally Blonde”), in her perpetual pink sorority sister lifestyle who woke up one day and said, “I think I’ll go to law school.” Almost six months ago I came back from a six-day trip to a country I’d never been to before and said, “Yeah, I’m going back…for five months, or fifty years.” If one of my girlfriends told me that I’d have concerns, but I’d also say, “Fuck yeah, girl.”

I was prepared on a lot of fronts, knowing there would be some surprises which can’t ever be avoided. For example I ordered and packed three to six months of all my usual supplements and made sure that included a strong probiotic to keep my gut as healthy as it could be. I had my neurologist write three-month prescriptions of my seizure medicine so that I could bring six months with me. In May I even established with a primary care physician – which hasn’t happened in decades – so that I could have her order me a smattering of prophylactic medications to take with me for first line medical care. There’s no urgent care on this island: we have one doctor, two pharmacies/apothecaries and “no hospital but two cemeteries,” as the sign says down the road from here. I brought what I thought was a smart amount of sunscreen and bug spray for a white girl’s needs.

Two things though I would do differently off the top of my head. Since I had the room in the checked luggage, I would have brought my small yet comprehensive essential oil collection. While I am trying to recover from my tropical illness and want to stay healthy in the future, I see this would have been a valuable tool. Secondly, before leaving home I really thought I scrutinized thoroughly enough at just what was considered “essential” clothing and other items for this approximately five-month trip. Considering that I would arrive in the hottest and rainiest season and then would supposedly depart (am I departing though) in the coldest month, I thought the items I brought with me would serve a purpose. I’m not convinced they won’t in the months ahead but at this moment I am willing to go back in time and leave one of the two larger suitcases behind along with its contents. I could have gotten by with less; after all isn’t that the key to getting closer to happiness? I say this now but when I’m the slightest bit cold when it reaches a mere 75 degrees you know I’ll be begging for the warm clothes I did bring. But as of today I’ve changed my entire outfit twice – including undergarments – and it’s only 2pm.

I packed all – and I do mean all – of the waterproof/dry bags that I’ve collected over the last ten years from previous tropical trips, boat and SCUBA excursions and the like. I have so many in fact that that is one category I didn’t have to purchase additional items for. It saved my laptop one random day the first week, where I normally take a small red backpack but for some reason that day I wanted to throw a yoga mat and towel in and wanted the bigger waterproof backpack with cushy shoulder straps. That was the day we had a torrential mid-afternoon downpour. I got caught in it, riding two miles to get home while barely being able to see through the raindrops with sunscreen running from my face into my eyeballs, stinging them every moment. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened to my Macbook had that laptop not been tucked inside the best waterproof backpack I’ve ever found. (Product recommendations for your tropical visit to see me coming soon, and includes that backpack!).

What I maybe was NOT prepared for was getting as sick as I actually did one week into my new life. Being sick is no fun anywhere, but when you move from a large city in the United States to a somewhat isolated island in Central America, holy fuck. Holy. Fuck.

No matter how many drugs and supplements I brought with me, that island virus caught me. I saw on the social media forums that people were closing their food businesses and even the human society for a couple days at a time here, because too many people were out to run things. That could have been part of what is going on but after speaking with my healer friends back home who have traveled extensively, and often to Central America, have said that my desert body is just trying to adjust to the wet tropical climate. Basically, there’s too much dampness internally in my body as evidenced with a loose cough, sinus pressure, sexy low pitched voice but also mild water retention in my feet – which I’ve never had before! I didn’t know but on further research getting all these sandfly and mosquito bites increase the dampness in our bodies as well. It must have something to do with immune or inflammatory response.

Either way I was out living my best life for about the first ten days here, then started to feel funny. Then “funny” turned into, oh shit, I’m sick now. I was fine for three days, rested more, stayed out of the sun, then tanked for a day. Got a bit better the next day, last Friday, and thought I could go back to cruising and schmoozing and got worse. Stayed in bed a little more, told Boyfriend he was going to have to cook his own meals. Then, I got even worse last Friday after getting what I can only describe as a calm before a storm, like right after you give a sick patient a hefty dose of steroids and they feel like Superman for 12 hours before their body remembers it’s actually very ill. The image that pops up is the ‘roid rage Trump had in 2021 after he caught covid and he wanted to prove it was a fake disease and he was fine, and his people didn’t want to have to tie him to a pole to not to look lifeless (like “Weekend At Bernie’s”), so they gave him a huge dose of dexamethasone to buy him some time to give us a short and pandering speech. I wasn’t given any steroids last Friday but I did feel a little better and so I tried to run a couple errands in the early afternoon. By the time I got home around 2pm, I didn’t feel great. At 4pm I felt overheated but wasn’t that normal in a house with no A/C, 88-degree weather and 80% humidity outside? By 6pm I was crying in Rasta’s lap because I felt bad, hungry with no idea what to eat – but all the Belizean breads, tortillas, and rice and beans wasn’t going to cut it. Let’s just pause here and add to this image that this Belizean bachelor just moved in with an American woman he met twice for five minutes, two days in a row, and she arrives happy and smiling, now sick and crying. It’s literally a handful. He handled it well. Whew.

I had to try and find something I could eat that would be healing and only thought of soup. Thankfully he knew where to get some and one of the two Chinese restaurants on our island has unknowingly been keeping me alive for over five days now. Not only is their soup better and filled with more chicken and veggies than any Asian restaurant I’ve ever been to in the US, but it also doesn’t have any chemicals or excess fats in them. It’s also the cheapest food on the island. For $4.50 USD you get one of those huge takeout soup containers full! I’m getting another one today in fact – maybe two and save myself the trouble tomorrow. If I can hide the extra soup from Rasta – he eats like a teenage boy on the football team but he’s as skinny as the kids who aren’t playing any sports. No idea where he puts all this food!

Anyway, as I started to feel better, I wanted to try and resume household chores, writing and maybe beach excursions. I started slowly with walks to the beach and back. I needed to try and cook meals again too, as all of the restaurants charge American prices, but, so do the grocery stores. It’s kind of a no-win situation. If you want to eat, you may go broke, simple as that. I pulled two pounds of beef liver out of the freezer I’d gotten a week ago and put it into the fridge to thaw overnight to make today.

Rasta is still on night shift so I’m starting to quietly prepare my dinner in the kitchen which is near where he’s napping. I boil fresh corn and take the beef liver out of the bag. Oh my god. It smells weird and that ain’t good. I inspect it further and it’s kind of brown but it’s also partially in its organ pouch – something thicker and way tougher than membrane – the skin or pouch or whatever you want to call it that it came in, from the bovine’s body. All the while I’m fighting with this tough stuff to remove it from the liver, I’m still noticing this liver is brown, the blood is brown and to me it smells rancid. But dude, I’m hungry and I’m thinking maybe it’s just this way because it was frozen. I’m in another country and their cattle smell differently? Sweet Jesus, everyone knows where I’m going with this so let’s land this plane.

I get all the tough membrane stuff off this liver and Rasta wakes up briefly to grab a glass of water. I tell him I am not sure about this liver and explain why. He says he wants to smell it. The poor guy barely gets a whiff and audibly gags over the kitchen counter and quietly says, “That’s bad, babe,” and walks away. I can’t stop laughing! He’s super grateful that someone is actually cooking for him and doing some of his laundry once in a while, but I have to wonder what goes through his head sometimes as I pull him into all kinds of new and usually wacky situations. It seems very similar to sitcoms from the 60’s like “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie,” where a man and woman fall in love from two very different cultures – or magical realms. In these old shows (I’m not that old, BOTH are from before my time – I watched reruns), a mortal man falls in love with a witch, and the other one, a genie. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure that’s not EXACTLY what has just gone on and my girlfriends are all basically nodding their heads in agreement as they read this. Am I right, magical soul sisters?