Pixie in Paradise

Last week was tough. By Thursday I wanted to leave. It was a 49-51 split decision either way, and you could have convinced me to easily pack up. In fact I had my suitcases out – and open. Most of the reasons for my sudden breakdown will be explained in another chapter – possibly a book. I have lofty goals. My approach to writing over the years seems to be very similar to the way I eat. I have a sudden urge or craving or more likely, I’m “starving,” as I dramatically express, so I cook or order way more food than I have space or time for. Similarly, my creative writer brain finds a story in so many things and wants to write it all down but time constraints and distractions combined with sheer discomfort of sitting at a computer for hours at a time prevents me from following through. It’s the “eyes are bigger than the stomach syndrome,” sort of.

Anyway, an unexpected but apparently much needed trip to the island north of mine on Saturday, occurred. I sort of dreaded the trip, having just been there four days prior and it isn’t cheap to island hop. The water taxi fee alone is absolutely insane and then once you get there if a ground taxi is needed – which it usually is in 25-mile long San Pedro – their fee is also exorbitant, especially if you don’t look native to Belize. I got off the boat where taxi drivers stand waiting to offer rides and I told one where I needed to go and asked how much it would cost. He said $20 USD and I shook my head no, starting to walk away. Then he asked me how much I wanted to pay and I said $20 BZD ($10 USD). That’s just a one way trip! We agreed on $25 BZD and climbed into the most rickety soccer mom van I’ve ever seen out on a road. Ripped seats, not really clean, and no seatbelts. Luckily, the traffic is such a clusterfuck in San Pedro, you never really get going fast enough to hit anything hard in case of an accident.

We’re driving very gingerly and slowly, with my little driver having to adjust the gear shift, steering wheel, and probably the pedal action in that tin can. He is a small Hispanic/mestizo looking older gentleman – “ageable” is the word Boyfriend uses to describe an older person. (Now as I write this and research that term, I realize “ageable” is an actual word, not some creole mix of letters that he made up)! 

I try to ask the driver where I can find grilled octopus for lunch. I’ve had a serious craving for octopus since I got here and I haven’t enjoyed much fresh seafood or put my legs in the water nearly enough in this first month after my arrival. Once again my Mexican/high school Spanish is not going over well with the Belizean Spanish. It is not the same and you’ll never convince me otherwise. While I am not Rosetta Stone™, my beginner/intermediate Spanish has never been this much of a problem before. However, I’m from the Sonoran desert and I’m sure the Mexican dialect that I’m used to hearing there is much different than here. Belizean Spanish sounds like it’s a mix of Spanish, Spanglish, Creole and maybe some of their indigenous words. Either way, I am completely lost and so is my taxi driver. I try to ask him for “pulpo por almuerzo o la cena en San Pedro” and he shakes his head “no.” This 1) makes me very unsure of my language skills and 2) you’re trying to tell me that on the entire island of Ambergris Caye no one has an octopus on their menu?!

I won’t give up my search for octopus so that I can make this trip worth it, but let him return to just focusing on the road which has massive, oddly shaped speed bumps. Every time we slowly attempt one it feels like the van is going to fall apart around us. I’m really hoping this van makes it to our destination. The taxi driver is taking me to urgent care for a medical consultation, far north of downtown. 

As mentioned before, this tropical environment is vastly different from life in the desert and my body is still struggling to adjust – some parts more than others. My skin looks glorious, reversing the aging process with the humidity in the air, making my face look dewy and a few years younger from the excess hydration. But the rest of me is too damp, crying on the inside and sweating profusely in this hottest season of the year. My lungs feel heavy as if I’m always breathing underwater. Sweat collects on our skin making it slick; back in Tucson that never happens. Lack of humidity there means I rarely sweat unless outside in 100-degree heat in the sun for a while and rarely have to pee. I swear it’s just absorbed internally. Our bodies seem to start acting like those of camels after living in the desert for a few years.

Besides my skin that is very happy and the majority that’s damp, I’ve got some itchy parts too, specifically inner ears and girl parts. Yikes! I’ve been doing the best I can with the medicines and potions I brought and believe me, I came prepared for a lot! Luckily I have a primary care provider back in the US that was willing to prescribe one of almost everything we thought I might need on this extended trip. What we didn’t plan for or necessarily know was that the adjustment from one extreme climate to the next would be a battle. San Pedro has the closest urgent care to my island. All we have here is a public clinic that’s only open certain hours during the week and I was already skeptical about the care I’d receive based on some word of mouth reviews. So this was my main reason for returning to San Pedro even though I’d been there just a few days prior, to get my passport stamped. 

Dr. R, the physician I spoke with, has to be the most understanding, non judgemental, caring, positive soul I’ve met in health care – or elsewhere – in a while. Our time together was like having a mom, sister, therapist, doctor and tour guide all in one smiley blonde package. She wears a face mask but you can feel warmth and kindness in her energy and can see it in her eyes. 

She was a phenomenal listener as I explained what was going on, for how long, what I’d been doing to self medicate and what I suspected I had based on the fact that I had done some online research. Bless this woman for not throwing me out. She was patient when I explained that my crotch itches, I was in culture shock and in a new relationship with a local man, completely opposite of me to the point it seemed we didn’t speak the same language – except we do. We talked about what brought her to Belize, why I ended up there and that I need to find an online job in order to stay. As if that wasn’t enough topics I even went so far as to ask her if it wasn’t too much trouble if she could think of a place where I could find grilled octopus.

Her responses were all educated, intuitive, spiritual and so spot on. She said if the universe wants me to find such a job, it will be provided. She said someone with a more primitive culture and view of the world than ourselves, tends to make them hard to love because they don’t think they deserve it. She gave me two medicines to take that should set me on the right path or at least reset my system and give me a fighting chance, and then she pulled up the internet on her big computer screen to show me the options she thought were the best for my octopus quest. And also a recommendation to stop at the Belize Chocolate Company after lunch.

Honestly, I’ve never had a doctor look at my undercarriage then give me lunch recommendations but somehow it seemed completely normal in this context. I wanted to hug her as I left but since we actually aren’t besties and she had other patients to see, I touched her arm and thanked her profusely for the generous gift of her patience and time.

After checking out of urgent care and picking up prescriptions I had to have some help finding a taxi back to town. My thought before arriving was trying to tell my first taxi driver to either wait for me or come and pick me back up. However, I had one stop I needed to make on the way and had absolutely no idea how to express to him that I wanted to stop, get out for a few minutes at one store, then jump back in and head to the final stop. Yes, this seems like a long thought process for one singularly simple concept but I wanted to anticipate what I would need. Mitigate the situation as it were. Over-preparation, aka “mitigating” risk, situations, conditions etc., was my grand plan for this adventure to Central America, but shit, there’s only so much you can mitigate! And let’s refer back to Caye Caulker’s official motto, “Go slow.” I swear if one more person walks by me and tells me to “go slow,” I will punch them in the throat. While out for walks or bike rides whether exercising or on a mission (groceries or yoga class), men will call this out to me. The women aren’t as vocal typically and I don’t think they give a shit about what I do. Are we all yoga instructors now, not just telling each other to “breathe” but we’ve branched out to “go slow” too?

Anyway, still on the northside of San Pedro and needing this special trip back to town and not able to find any taxi service online, two women waiting at urgent care asked in very broken English if I needed help finding one. Incredibly grateful for the help I told them I did, and 20-30 minutes later the three of us hopped into a taxi van. With me in the front seat next to the driver, a woman in the middle who was the driver’s sweet daughter and my taxi heroes in the back, we headed south. Again curious as to whether I could convey the stops I needed to make, I told the driver my end destination and realized his daughter could speak English. As he spoke with his daughter I realized I understood their Spanish – mostly. Finalmente! So how was it possible that for maybe only the second time in four weeks someone was using a Spanish dialect that made sense to me? I said something to the driver in Spanish and he understood and responded. I still understood! In my rickety guera Spanish I explained to him that my Mexican Spanish was never understood here and that I in turn don’t seem to understand Belizean Spanish. He responded that he is from “la frontera,” meaning the northern border of Belize directly below Mexico and that was probably why his words were familiar.

The taxi driver told me that he grew up only speaking Spanish and a Mayan language (or dialect?) and had only learned English upon moving to San Pedro. It is such a tourist-heavy island and most of them speak English. His English was remarkably good. Telling me he grew up one of 15 brothers, his dad was only able to buy them shoes and a machete, and told them to go survive. What?!

And the final character on my day trip was a feisty, heavyset Garifuna-appearing woman. Upon my arrival at the water taxi dock departing for San Pedro that morning, I remember the woman arguing loudly with a couple of the staff regarding her bags. She was speaking in fast loud Creole (Kriol) and it was apparent that she was very mad about something. Given my limited (gross understatement) understanding of spoken – written is much easier – Belizean Kriol, she seemed to be upset about a price they might have been trying to charge her for the extra luggage she was bringing with her. I definitely caught the swear words – the F word is the F word in most any language. Apparently they got to an arrangement before we departed.

This lady, somewhere between 55 and 75 years of age, sat next to me at the tail end of the boat on the way back home from San Pedro to Caye Caulker. She was spilling out – a lot – of her black strapless swim top and bottoms covered by a sheer dress. We smiled at each other and realized we were both keeping one eye on all of the small children that were bouncing around inside the water taxi with limited parental supervision. She and I both seemed to be doing an internal eye roll and then she finally spoke up when she felt a mother at the very back of the boat wasn’t keeping an eye on her toddler closely enough. She did it very loudly, her voice carries no matter what emotion is behind it. She did have a point: this wobbly toddler could have easily been one boat bounce away from falling off the back and worse, being sucked under by the propeller. The boy’s mom got the hint and whether she came to her senses or didn’t want anymore parenting advice from this lady, she returned to the middle of the boat with the boy to join her husband and four other children.

I looked down at this feisty woman’s hands and noticed she had on a big silver ring with a scarab on it and asked if she knew what that animal symbolized. She said no, so I got out my Belizean cell phone to open a WiFi hotspot to connect my US cell phone to the internet in the middle of the ocean. (That won’t make any more sense to you the slower I go or using different words, so just let it go). I searched for a site to show her regarding the significance of the scarab beetle, it is one of my favorite animals and means a lot to me. I showed her that in ancient Egypt they were symbols of life, death and resurrection. She smiled and nodded, whether she understood my voice or words even over the loud water taxi engine, we at least had a moment. And everyone made it back to our island safely, and inside the boat.