It was 43 years ago that they changed the school holidays from April and May to July and August. I remembered the change this week, because, as a grandfather, I heard discussions in the house about what they were going to do with the grandchildren for the summer. On the local television news, in addition, I’d been seeing stories about various summer programs in the city.
There was no such uncertainty in the old days. In the summer, you went to the cayes or you went to the countryside. There were places, like Northern Lagoon, Gales Point Manatee, Mullins River, and Monkey River, which were part caye, part countryside – in other words, part salt water (sea), part fresh water (river). Other places, like Crooked Tree and Gracie Rock, were pure country. Where I went as a child – Spanish Caye, was pure caye.
I say that “they” changed the holidays, because all it amounted to was a news story one day on the 12:30 news on the government radio station, to the effect that the Education Department was making this change in the long holidays. Dammit, Belize, this was a paradigm shift in our way of life in British Honduras, and all “they” did was issue what we would call now a “press release.” Out of the blue.
Understand the circumstances in 1963, 1964. We were mostly timid colonial subjects then. What the monopoly government radio station announced on the news, was like Holy Scripture. More than that, the Education Department, featuring Diaz, Fonseca and guys like those, decided our lives and futures as school children. If you didn’t make it in school, there were no drugs to sell back then. If you didn’t make it in school, you would do hard labour. Straight like that.
So, the Education Department, which ruled our lives, instructed us about the holiday change on BHBS/Radio Belize (I’m not sure what name they carried then), and so it was. The significance of the change from April/May to July/August was staggering.
Today, let’s consider one small side effect of the change – a change ordered from above, to repeat. The change, in a sense, killed the fire hearth. You can’t cook on open fire hearth when it’s raining. And the difference between April/May and July/August is rain, Jack.
On Tuesday morning of this week I visited one of my uncles, who is 85 years old. There are aches and pains when you are 85. It’s not like being 20. When I can say something to my uncle and see him smile as if he is remembering the glory of life, I enjoy that. On Tuesday morning I began talking to him about the extraordinary sweetness of the burning of the firewood on the fire hearth way back when, before April and May became July and August. It was as if the extraordinary sweetness of the firewood actually transferred itself, by means of the smoke, into the johnny cake, the powder bun, the Creole bread, the rice and beans, and the potato pound. Damn, food cooked on the open fire hearth in the southeasterlies of April and May was better than anything I have ever tasted any part of anywhere.
Oh yeah, the educated and professional career women don’t want to hear jack about red mangrove (the firewood). I understand. Those days were different. A man didn’t want his woman in the work place. The best woman was one who cooked good food, kept a clean house, washed bright clothes and made sure the children followed the straight and narrow. So, things change. Respect to the working women. But nothing you cook on your expensive gas ranges can talk to me like the old days – the fire hearth days, the red mangrove days, the April and May days. Nothing. Who bex, bex.
There were more fundamental differences in our Belizean lifestyle caused by the holiday change. Probably the most important one, to my mind, was the fact that our children no longer acquired life skills during the holidays. Nowadays, our children go to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to learn how to become good Americans. In my time, during the holidays we learned to swim, to dive, to fish, to sail, to ride, to hunt. We learned to become men. (Needless to say, the girls learned to become women.)
I became a boat captain at the age of 14, when I was still in high school, when the priests thought I was still a child. A boat captain has to be a man, because he has people’s lives in his care. Nowadays, the 14-year-olds are learning to shoot and kill and rape. This is what manhood has become.
Don’t get slick and say that what I’m saying here is that the holiday change made us become gang bangers instead of seamen and farmers. It’s much more complicated than that. What I’m saying is that they announced, with absolutely no public consultation, a major change in 1963, 1964, that maybe looked simple to some people at the time, and it messed up a whole lot of things. Personally, I think the change was major bulls—t. And I will die thinking that way.
Straight.