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Thursday, March 28, 2024

World Down Syndrome Day

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FFB and Ashcroft

FeaturesFFB and Ashcroft
Those young footballers squandered the love of a nation to follow an FFB they KNEW had murdered “fair play,” had flagrantly robbed the ’07 elections. A couple selfish traitors share the blame.
 
I applaud the leaders of COLA and all those who stepped out to walk the walk Wednesday. Lord Ashcroft is bad for Belize. How could our leaders sell a proud people, ask us to bow to mammon? Belizeans bow only to God!  
 
I love to go a-wandering…
 
…upon a mountain top
And when I do I laugh and sing
My knapsack on my back
Valdaree, Valdaraa,
Valdaree, Valdarahahahahaha
Valdaree, Valdaraa,
My knapsack on my back.
 
It was nostalgia time for me when I heard Mayoress Zenaida of Belize City and some other ladies calling out on the WUB the other morning to young girls to come on, join up and go a-wandering with the Girl Guides of Belize. The ladies did a great job discussing all the wonderful activities of the Girl Guides, and Mayor Zenaida pointed out to young girls the confidence that one gains in oneself through the Guiding experience. Go, Guides!
 
The kids in my family never joined Girl Guides or Boy Scouts because we were never in the City (I spent my first years in Belize City) on weekends or during long holidays. If we weren’t at sea, we were at Granville (a small farm near Maskall) with our Aunt Gracie, her husband, Uncle Harry Grant, and his brother, Mr. Bert Grant, who owned the farm. Aunt Gracie is an original Girl Guide, Class of 1937. She stayed with them for 17 years, rising to the rank of Team Captain, and we were her studies.
 
Boy, I was waiting for them ladies on the WUB…to sing. Rare moments I can carry a note, but I was perfectly made…for sing-along. Say, I know my place! My, the good folk living near to the old Belize/Corozal Road must have thought me, my brother Ron, my cousin Davy Dude, and my two sisters, Christine and Francine, were plick kids when, after finishing our chores on the farm, and we had taken our lunch of sandwiches and lime juice, and eaten a few mangoes or cashews, we went a-wandering on the narrow winding hilly highway toward Maskall, singing at the tops of our voices the carefree tunes our aunt had taught us.
 
My Aunt Gracie says she heard the Guides on the WUB Show the other morning too, and while she enjoyed listening to them she was also a little disappointed…because they didn’t talk about what she liked best. Aunt Gracie says she loved the singing very much, but it was the pretty “badges” that attracted her to the Girl Guides.
 
Heh, my aunt earned loads of pretty badges to pin all over her sparkling uniform – sewing, tent pitching, making knots, cooking – but she thinks “they” pushed her through for her fire maker’s badge. Aunt Gracie says not for her heck could she light a fire with the two matches allotted her, and her Team Leaders probably got tired of watching her break down and set up back her bits of dry twigs and rogzi (coconut cloth) which she had to light so she could boil water in a condensed milk tin… So they pushed her through.
 
My Aunt is up in years now, 82, and not so hale. She says she can’t be sure if I love to go a-wandering was taught to her by her father, our Grampa Jim, a man who could carry a note, or if it was taught to her by the Guides. For sure there were lots of songs (here’s the lead/popular lines of a few) – Oh Mr. and Mrs. Johnny Rebeck, how could you be so mean, I told you you’d be sorry for inventing that machineFrom this Valley they say you are goingMy Bonny lies over the ocean, my bonny lies over the seaShe’ll be coming round the mountainsThere was butter, butter, butter, butter, melting in the gutterBlow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly, Blow the wind south o’er the bonny blue sea – yap, there were lots of songs we learned from Aunt Gracie, and some of them (most jubilant, but some love/somber too) for sure came from the Girl Guides. Go, Guides.
 
Hey, I don’t know if I got the words to that Valdaree and those other songs to the letter. Okay.
 
A four cents
 
On my Big Lie last week – according to the Belize Times’ Voices of the People, about the 2003 raise-a-pay, and why they (BNTU, PSU) refused that fat carrot in 2008 – I hope that Ms. Willoughby and Brother Frazer tee off on Voices…From a bogus offer to a RIOT to a COMMISSION of INQUIRY to a BLOWOUT AT THE POLLS. Check it.
 
To Brother Frankie, thanks for the OJ 101 last week. My serious point was that certain people are quicker on the draw than others, that we need to give “slow to talk” a chance to formulate their thoughts. On the matter of weather (a stone that couldn’t have been thrown my way), last week Brother Frankie wrote: Those people who blame the forecasters need to back off until they are qualified to open their mouths! I must remind him that roaches and crabs and sheep and cows call the weather too.
 
A few days before the formation of Alma in the Pacific I set my thermometer on a wood table outdoors and it topped out at 118 degrees F. in five minutes. When I saw the path Alma was taking on Friday, like every other sea salt in Belize, I was on p’s and q’s. Our weather people are very good, but we need to ask questions. I think we also need to consider “who” we are advising. In an outbreak of malaria, is it the Minister of Health or the Chief Medical Officer who makes the call? Should the Meteorology Department have made the call? Maybe we would not have saved “one drop of water,” but NEMO would have been in a state of readiness.
 
My purpose for the discussion with Brother Clinton Uh Luna was to try and make him understand that there are “two” Maya worlds in this country (the Mayas in the south are not from Mexico); to try and help him to understand the Kriol; and to make him understand that no serious historian considers the British and Spaniards synonymous, in a discussion about Belize in 1798.
 
Brother Clinton’s ship is sound in most waters, except for a little confusion when it enters Haulover Creek. It is not the Maya in him that doesn’t understand the Kriol; it is the Spaniard. We refused freedom the Spaniards offered in Yucatan to fight alongside the slave masters, remember!
 
In respect to the Caste War, my formal knowledge is limited to the few notes I studied at “Compre”, a good effort (about 15 or so pages) by Assad Shoman in his 13 Chapters of a History of Belize, and a number of editorials and columns (from the publisher) in the Amandala.
 
Lastly, there is a charge of my being disingenuous, levied by Brother Flowers a while back. I had “fingered” Mr. Flowers as one who was not happy with the GoB decision to pay old men pensions from the SSB funds. I had prepared a response but my flow was all satire, so I put that on pause.
 
In my world, you take a person at the “sum total” of their ideas; farmers do not judge a mango tree by one crop. Mr. Flowers should check what he said and put it in the context of his “sum total” (what he has expressed on the Kremandala Show over the years) and remember that people in his trade never pay out of the kitty what the kitty doesn’t have…even for a good cause.

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