by Colin Hyde
Sadness is oftentimes fleeting; where there’s life there’s hope. When there is no life, we are left with a gaping hole, one that sometimes never heals. What a catastrophic accident on our highway on Saturday night! So many young people lost; so many wounded people left behind. The loss to our nation is immense. But the pain of the families is all that matters right now. I add my prayer to those of the nation.
I hope unu new residents love Belize as much as some Belizeans love America
Congratulations to the new permanent residents! And, yes, I hope you love Belize as much as some of our people love the mighty U-S-A.
I am always, always disappointed when I learn of somebody who we baan and raise, falling deeply in love with another country. You know that salmons and lagraheads don’t do that. The story goes that wherever they are on the planet, when it comes time to spawn/lay eggs, they head for home. So they don’t freeze over in the land of their birth, birds of every kind from the north come our way this time of year, but only until the snow thaws back home. Then they will leave us. We thank them for the visit, and the welcome mat is out for them to naturalize. But we, those of us who aren’t nomadic, understand that there is no place like where you were born, so we accept that it is until we meet again.
Hello there, new permanent residents; you’re on your way to getting a full ticket to the Jewel. Get to know our glorious history. Embrace all of our cultures. Laan fu taak Kriol. Noh mek nobody tell unu any bad things bowt Kriol people. We are the lovingest people you will find anywhere. Wi have to be. It’s bikaaz we mix up, mix up.
I say, new permanent residents, noh feel unwelcome if you run into one or two people who act unfriendly. We are not like the Americans. Because we are hooked on American television, we’ve learned a lot over the years about how dehn roll. It astounds me how they, even the intelligent ones, can allow their politicians and media to blow up a single incident into a blanket smear job. Sticking goat with the same knife weh stick sheep; cuidado, you know that all white people are cannibals. Jeffrey Dahmer was a cannibal.
P.S. I reworked this piece Sunday night after I read a report that the new US government was contemplating the deportation of naturalized Americans. Hence, names and all identifiable marks of “traitors” were scrubbed out. Boo hoo, in excising the names I lost all the juice
Belize Billboard, January to June 1967
Last week, I went to the Heritage Library to do a little search, and I chose 1967 because my sleuthing put my matter of interest in that time period. The Belize Billboard was a daily in those days, and I couldn’t get past mid-year in the time I had allotted for that trip to Belmopan. Sifting through the pages, I noted a number of fatal traffic accidents, must be four or five, and also a number of cases of drowning. There were two murders. In one of them an 86-year-old JP/Commissioner of the Court was beaten to death on his verandah in Corozal Town. In the other incident, a British soldier was killed with a piece of wood after a dance at Avonbloom Club on the Airport Road. ASP Collet Gill led the investigation, and three persons were held for the crime.
I didn’t find what I was looking for, but in the pages I viewed, my eyes were drawn to this little blast from the past. You know Albert Cattouse—a big PUP in the 1960s who had fame as a sportsman, and ignominy for his muscling of his daughter, our great heroine, Nadia. In the day, the PUPs were major philistines, both the ones in government and the ones in the entourage. Don’t take my word for it; if you can’t go to the library, ask Hector Silva, the man who knows all the good deeds of the party, and the bad. Those darn PUPs were an unruly set. Here is an extract that illustrates that:
May 14, 1967 – “Cattouse Speaks Out Of Turn” – At the end of the debate, on the motion for adjournment at Friday’s Sitting of the House, the Honorable Albert Cattouse, Deputy Premier and Minister of Local Government & Social Development, rose out of the blue to say that the Leader of the Opposition, the Honorable Philip Goldson , appeared to be afraid of Guatemala, but that Mr. Goldson couldn’t be so afraid since he was building a “big house” on the northern road, only ten miles from the capital.
Mr. Cattouse’s remarks surprised everyone. Under the Standing Orders of the House, a Minister normally only speaks in the House at adjournment time in reply to matters raised by members about subjects in the Minister’s portfolios, and Mr. Goldson had not raised a matter within Mr. Cattouse’s portfolio.
Commenting after the meeting to a Billboard newsman, Mr. Goldson said that Mr. Cattouse was of course out of order. “Any beginning student of Parliamentary Procedure would know that a person’s personal business cannot be raised in the House in that manner,” said Mr. Goldson. “But we have to face the fact that a man like Cattouse can hardly follow what is going on in the House, much less understand the intricacies of Parliamentary Procedure.”
Asked why the Speaker did not call Mr. Cattouse to order, Mr. Goldson said he assumed the Speaker had to hear what he was going to say before ruling him out of order. “I think everybody treated Cattouse’s remarks with the contempt it deserves, except among the more fanatic among the PUP’s,” he said. “But since they are looking at my little house on the road with envy, let me say that I can account for the source of every cent spent or to be spent on that little house,” said Mr. Goldson. “Not one cent comes from the ‘construction money’ sent from Guatemala to the ‘Departamento de Belice.’ I wonder if the PUP leaders can say the same of the big building going up in the heart of the city.”
Seoul sadness
‘As further proof that too much of anything noh gud fu notn, there are stories all over the internet about unhappiness in South Korea, a country with a per capita GDP of US$33,000 per annum. Lee Yeon-woo, in a story in the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) titled, “Why are Koreans getting unhappier despite economic prosperity?”, said “despite economic growth touted as the Miracle on the Han River, with its gross domestic product (GDP) increasing … to $35,168 in 2021 from just $67 in 1953, Koreans’ evaluations of their lives have been negative.”
South Korea is a driven country, a major rat race. Worries about the future—savings and that kind of thing; inflation; the quality of the safety net; and social concerns press on the minds of these people with the world’s 33rd highest ranked economy. Yeon-woo said, “More people agree that it is time to change the country’s policy directions and goals, which have been largely slanted toward economic growth.” Yeon-woo cited a report which said South Korea was “‘losing vigor due to a low birthrate, rapidly-aging population and a high suicide rate’”, and identified “notoriously long working hours, a competitive culture, and excessive fervor in education as other social problems.”
My, in a relative sea of wealth, there is so much poverty of the spirit. I don’t think you have to study sociology to know that the competition, the rat race, is a huge factor, because not all of us are designed to be at our best in the capitalist state.
Looking at home, where most of us only know about being pocket-poor, I’ll never forget a sage from a village in Toledo who said, after a UN survey on poverty in the area pronounced the situation dismal, “I used to think we were rich. Now I find out that we are poor.” I would say that the disparity of wealth is a huge factor in the sadness index in a country like ours, especially because there are people in the society who are experiencing real hard times.