by Colin Hyde

It should be from end to end of Belize by now that our Jaguars have gotten relegated to the lowest rung in all football. Just in case you don’t get it, the big deal about football, it is that civilized nations don’t go to war; they show their mettle on the field. We can feel no worse about things football. Well, that’s how it was until my first take of the international news after I finished my devotions on Sunday.

It isn’t fair that on Sunday morning the first story I met when I turned to world news on Google, is this, from The Gleaner: “Jamaica secures historic World Cup entry with thrilling draw.” The only reason I didn’t fall off my stool and crash to the floor is that in the back of my head, from through the early morning cobwebs, came a little voice that said it couldn’t be, couldn’t be because it was just last year that Argentina lucked out against France at the World Cup.

There are two countries in this world that we can’t just sit back and allow to be better than us. One of the two is Guatemala. How extremely faysi of them to be holding on to skyscraper-high tales that they inherited us from Spain! The other country we cannot accept being better than us in football is Jamaica. We are not ungrateful to them for their rushing to the settlement to help us fight off bully Spain in 1798, but as we couldn’t accept being subservient to the British, and got our independence, we had to ditch them as the capital for here. Jamaica got a right to speak shi mind, but we shouldn’t accept them beating us in football. Hn, when we were still fully British, under colonial rule, we were mano mano with them.

The Wikipedia says Guatemala has never reached the World Cup. It should be our ambition to get there before they do! Jamaica has reached the World Cup once, according to Wikipedia, and that’s where the story that sank my spirits originated. I shouldn’t have missed these two words in caps, “THE CLASSICS”, just above the title of the story. Oh, how happy those Jamaicans must have been when the Reggae Boyz, with a nil-nil draw with Mexico in their National Stadium in November 1997, qualified for the big show in France in 1998. The Gleaner said that with that draw Jamaica became “the first English-speaking Caribbean country to qualify for the World Cup and only the third from the region”, and that “Prime Minister P.J. Patterson declared a public holiday in honour of the team, hailing the result as ‘undoubtedly the greatest day in Jamaica’s sporting history’”.

I find that, in respect to the reception of sound advice, the PUP is too much like the UDP. I understand that you have to be an egotistical so and so to be in electoral politics, but don’t they ever have a humble moment? Don’t they know that the reason that the rest of us aren’t in the political race is simply because we don’t think as highly of ourselves? But we too have thoughts, and surely, they should give us a little respect.

The glory days, when Jamaica had to respect us on the football field, when Guatemala would a mi get the sense if they had played us, but didn’t because of their ugly and unfair claim—we might not ever climb that high again. But we must give our best. There is no place for lukewarm in football!

Calls are raining down for the leadership at FFB to step out. I am calling for the GoB to step up. Immediately, like this evening, GoB should insist that the FFB select our best 40 players, and the GoB should put the players selected on salary, between 15 and 20 thousand per year, and bring them to Belmopan. The GoB should pay for the construction of cabins with walls of pimento plastered with cement, and roofs with thatch. Youth who are not committed to any girl yet, they can bunk together, and guys who are cohabiting can get an entire suite. Get serious. The test of civilized countries in our region is on the football field. We must give our best.

Wa, Jamaica qualified for the World Cup already, more than two years early? Guatemala came to FFB Stadium this year and tek us for taffi. Damn, we are; that’s where Belize football stands in November 2023!

For the Minister and ComPol, a wknd in the P house

For weeks accusations were about that a pastor had molested some young girls to whom he had ministered. It took a while for the investigators to gather information on the case, and their next step, the arrest of the pastor, indicates that they believe there is something bigger than a small fire under the smoke. During the period of the investigation, the pastor didn’t go anywhere. They arrested him on a Friday. Why? I bet just so he could wake up in the P house.

Last week there was the tragic death of a little girl while she was in a foster home. The child had bruises on her body, and the foster parents reported that she had been whipped for disciplinary reasons. The couple was held in the P house over the long holiday weekend while the police awaited the results of a postmortem. There was no suggestion that the foster parents were about fleeing the police. Yet, the police rushed them over to the P house, their holding pen.

Hey, I haven’t used that full word, the description of the house where the individuals were held, because it isn’t in my vocabulary. I know many dirty words, but that one, from the first time I heard it I rejected it, because it has no rhyme, no rhythm; it is just plain sour.

Did the police feel that if they waited until Tuesday to make their arrest they were saving other little girls from the pastor? Did they feel that the couple in Spanish Lookout would be around in their neighborhood trying to borrow children so they could beat them up? The individuals who were incarcerated were not accused of shooting, chopping, or poisoning anyone. I’m not aware that anyone in Belize felt endangered by them being free. They have not been found guilty of any crime.

Belize is “worse” than the accused in these cases because, yes, they could very well be innocent, while we have acted with our eyes wide open. We are guilty as sin. We are criminals.

Those P houses, they are not luxury cabins. Why are our authorities so in love with incarcerating people? Maybe the people presiding over the criminal punishment don’t have the empathy to grasp what incarceration must be like. Leadership must know what they are about, so I recommend as I did for a previous minister and ComPol that the next Friday they come to work these two, Musa and Williams, pack a little pataki with a change of draaz, their toothbrush, and a roll of tissue. They need to spend a weekend.

Condolences to the families in Roaring Creek

My condolences to the families of those who died in that horrific accident on the Hummingbird Highway on Saturday night, particularly to Mr. Charles Garbutt, Sr., who lost one of his sons. I don’t know any of the individuals who died, they’re from a younger generation, but I know the older members of their families.

It’s the worst nightmare for those families. You bet that every morning the parents and loved ones of those men prayed that they had a safe journey to their workplace, and every evening prayers went up for them that they had a safe passage home. The story I have is that they were in a pickup, and most of them were in the pan. When there’s a load in the pan, some pickups become very unstable. The Hummingbird is not in bad shape, it’s not as treacherous as it was when it was a one-lane highway, but it’s still dangerous because it has numerous sharp curves and hills.

The engineers will help the police determine what went wrong to cause the vehicle to overturn. But the tremendous loss cannot be reversed. There are no words for what happened here.