A section of our pathway was put back last week, and let us all pray that a good start leads to a good ending. The plan should be for the pathway to connect from Roaring Creek to Santa Elena, and beyond. Wouldn’t it be glorious if there was a pathway across the breadth of our country, from Benque Viejo to Belize City? Then children and youth, and older people too, could walk, or ride (if they ride slowly, carefully) to wherever they want to go in this section of the country.
I am getting ahead of myself, you think? True, they’ve only done a small part of the pathway. I must say we are very, very happy. It’s not, can’t be entirely straight because our village didn’t develop the way Henry Fairweather and Philip Goldson developed Corozal Town, and George Price and Pauling developed Belmopan, and the way I believe the much maligned Mahogany Heights developed.
I want my cousin, Junior Popper, to know that I noh forget his invitation to visit Mahogany Heights. No, I haven’t been to Mahogany Heights. But I’ve been to the vicinity to steal, no, tek wahn lee Krismos tree. I had to change the term there, because if the government minister and cronies steal the big money, you can’t steal a lee Krismos tree. We really have to respect degrees. Only the rich and the callous want to lump misdemeanors with highway robbery. Get away with that fraud!
About the little curves they will have to make in the path, that’s because BEL, maybe to cut down on the cost of electric wire, put some of their posts smack in the middle of where the path should go. There is also BWSL, who put in their lines without considering that we would need a pathway in the village.
Also, there are a few people who, maybe because the space between their lots and the highway was vacant, built their houses and fences in areas that had been left as a reserve. We all thought that when the MoW went back to the House for more money, $14 million, that it was for compensation for those folk who would have to take down their fences or shave off their verandahs.
It’s not too ambitious for our MoW to put in a path from Benque to Belize City. The pathway in Camalote is being made out of marl, and that is the most common substance under the ground in Belize. For certain there are experts in the MoW who know how to select the right marl for a project like this. Some types of marl, when they firm up, they are almost as tough as cement. Minimal work is needed to maintain a pathway for people to walk (or ride slowly) on, if it is made out of the right marl.
The ancient Maya actually burnt the marl they used to make their temples, but that might be too costly for us to use on a pathway. We are satisfied with the raw stuff. Just make it happen.
Cuba looks like a cool place to live
I read a short piece about life in Cuba by a gentleman named Jorge Amado Soria Ramírez, and I am taking him as near gospel. No surprise, that island doesn’t look like a bad place for a person like me to live. Mr. Ramírez’s brief comments, in response to the question, “Is Cuba a good place to live in”, published in 2018 on quora.com, touch briefly on subjects I’ve read or discussed with Belizeans who have studied in Cuba, and some I have not.
I’ve been only mildly interested in a visa to the USA or Cuba, and that’s because I’ve got enough here to fascinate me, and I get plenty from reading about people and places. Okay, I don’t have the money for a vacation, but if I had it’s still unlikely that I’d want to take a trip. Some people all they dream of is going to some country they haven’t physically been before. Some people are fascinated just being on the planet.
Look, this thing is so short I’ll just copy and paste. Mr. Ramírez says it “depends”, and “for most people, it´s not.” Here goes:
“Pro: Very low violence, slow life, lots of books and diversity, lots of beaches and good weather for the most part, free healthcare, nice organic food, low cost of life when compared with other Latin American countries.
“Con: Little to no civil rights, free speech or freedom of assembly, no presumption of innocence, piss poor infrastructure and internet access, low quality of service overall and few options for pretty much any activity or product you can think of. Also, a lot of common things are completely absent outside the larger cities.
“So, if you are a young, ambitious person, Cuba is not the place for you. If you are a little kid, or an old person living on memories and family visits, excellent place to be. If you are looking for a holiday to remember and put a postcard in your cubicle, this is the place for it. If you are looking to start a company or make a living in high tech or something similarly demanding of developed infrastructure, not the place.
“Are you LGBT+? The LGB could get along fairly well in the cities, not necessarily in the countryside. The T+ will have a hard time anywhere.”
I like the pro, I understand the con (the US embargo da major pressure), and the T will have a hard time anywhere caused me to raise my eyebrows because someone I know supports gay marriage and gays adopting children and all that absolutely new world, but put a brake on the T too. Hmm.
Breaking down the letters
A lot of guys who are S will give a pass to the L’s, but there are those who don’t care for late night movies with L’s in the bare activity.
I haven’t got a satisfactory explanation for the existence of this group called B. In this world you like what you like, but nowhere in the Bible does it say you can have both. We have to make up our minds about lots of things. You can’t have a lot of food and don’t get fat. You can’t have a lot of couch and not get soft. You can’t have a lot of rum and not suffer a little let down when the spirit dissipates.
It’s a dream world where a man has ten wives and they are all happy with which one he selects to spend the evening. I guess there are women who can be cultured that way. Hmm, I’ll get into trouble, deep blank if I continue in this vein, so I’ll just put the stopper on and say — there’s a reason why the king had to capon, make eunuchs of the male servants in the harem.
We can’t have everything we want in this world. If your thoughts are B, understand that you can’t live both. Pick one.
Apparently there is something that is not going down with this T, something that makes wonderful people push their pause button, go whoa, you’re moving in a world I’m not so sure I can handle. Pushing my own pause button, I must be a not so wonderful person because my support of the G doesn’t go much past closet rights.
In a pinch I could be a care person
One of my mentors told me that he knows which of his family will take care of him if he grows to be old and feeble. He said he has observed that one of his family members isn’t scornful.
I believe we all could take direct upfront care of our elders if we had to, but for some of us there’s a big hurdle to cross. A couple years ago I actually cleaned the little buttocks of my young grandson after he used the bathroom when his mother and grandmother were out. I really was between a rock and hard place, but the lesser danger wasn’t hard to figure out. If I let him clean himself, stuff would have been all over. If I just helped him pull up his pants, I’d have to clean up after him wherever he sat down. I took a deep breath, grit my teeth, grabbed that t-paper, and did what had to be done.