Several years ago, my cousin-in-law, Papa Dee (also known by his Christian name, David Banner), suffered a heart attack and died – he couldn’t have been more than sixty-five. Just after his death I told his nephew, Dale Banner, that we had to get together and chronicle, put down on paper for posterity, who he was, and what were some of his exploits. Ah, Dale and I have not reached there, yet, but in the interim, I tell you this riotous story. Riotous — he was that sometimes.

Papa Dee was a very strong man, and very active, so it was a complete shock to most of us when we learned of his passing. The two snake bites he survived might have contributed to it. The public hospital being impatient with him, not understanding him when he visited with a respiratory illness, must have contributed to it. His disappointment with the establishment must have contributed to it. At some point in most of our conversations he’d say, “Kalingo [that’s what he called me].. Kalingo, dehn *^*#*!*#* think da only dehn have to eat.”

He spoke strongly flavored Kriol. When a baby uses a kos word the first time, it is cute. If the baby uses a kos word a second time, it’s worrying. If a baby uses a kos word a third time, they ought to get smacked. When a young man wishes to taak Kriol with strong color, he should confine himself to his group. Young females really should try to control themselves. Really, all young people should make the effort to improve their vocabulary.

When a young person taak Kriol with strong color in a public place it is a crude sound, grates on the ear like a guitar out of tune. Full-color Kriol is strictly for older people. Age makes wine and rum sweet. Age does the same thing to colorful Kriol. Then, it becomes music.

Now there are some people in Belize, male and female, who will go back to tortilla and beans before they bow down to rich foreigners and the elite for their crumbs. Some people will go back to that before bowing down, and some people won’t. Papa Dee belonged to the former group. That’s the way he lived.

Like many villagers who grew up in rural Cayo in the forties and fifties, he was deprived of a high school education. Formal education enhances intelligence, it does not create it. Let’s just say that Papa Dee knew that all laws were made by men who wear white shirts, and many of them, the laws, are FOR men who wear white shirts.

I knew Papa Dee for a quarter of a century and I never saw him in a pair of shoes or a fancy suit. He must have had such equipment. But in the world where we interacted, he was always shirtless, or with shirt unbuttoned and tied at the waist. He always wore shorts, and had cha-cha-cha or short rubber boots on his feet.

He farmed, and did various manly jobs, and various not altogether legal business to gain his means. I think that if you asked him what his trade was, he would have said, hunter.  It was on one of his hunting trips that he found that famous tapir, April, that used to star at the zoo. When he took April there it was just a baby. He told me the parent attacked him, and he had to protect himself.

Yes, Papa Dee was strong as a lion, and feared no one. No, he did not respect all of Belize’s laws. On the matter of laws, he particularly disdained those ones that interfered with how he earned his living. I bet he had a good working knowledge of English, and that his Spanish was at least serviceable. I will remind you that he spoke Kriol. I tell you that because Kriol is a language that can’t go ten words without an expletive. You either break into English, or you kos.

He had a lot to say about those SOBs who ran the country, be they red or be they blue. He was not partial to political beasts and their lackeys. He didn’t hate them. But he didn’t like them.

In this story, when we meet Papa Dee, he is working at the toughest ferry in the country, the one that used to be at Young Bank*, in Cayo. This ferry was a large barge, large enough to take three vehicles across easily. (There was another like it, at Kitty Bank (same district), but that had nowhere near equal traffic.) The Young Bank ferry connected to Valley of Peace, John Carr’s tourism and farming enterprises, the Christian missions along Banana Bank, and a number of farms, including our family farm.

I said, this ferry was very busy. It leaked, so it often sat heavy in the water. For their reason, the Ministry of Works rarely detailed their water pump to ease the ferry at Young Bank of its waterload. Consequently, it was not an easy or swift crossing.

In the teeth of the dry the ferry actually straddled both banks of the river. But when the river was in any degree of flood it was hell. The journey across could easily take fifteen, twenty tough minutes. No man with any salt in him could stand by and watch the ferryman take the beast across without putting in a pound. Only a shameless weakling, or a shameless white-collar, would keep their hands to their sides during the crossing.

When the river was up, for almost half the journey across two good men were needed to turn the winch. When the ferry neared the middle of the river you really had to double down so it didn’t lose momentum. It took a lot of energy to get the ferry moving again. To come to a complete stop in the middle of the river was dangerous. When the ferry was in the middle of the river the strain on the guide cables was immense.

When the river reached top gallon (full flood) it had to be drawn in to the banks as the water level rose. If the ferryman didn’t get up in the night to keep an eye on the ferry, sometimes it broke loose and went down river. It would take all of two weeks for the Ministry of Works to dismantle the tongues (loading ramps) and bring it back on a lowboy. Needless to say, those times were tough on people who lived or had business across the river.

Three men operated the ferry. Two of them, Cayetano “Ka-yeh” Nah, and Papa Dee, are deceased. The third, Morgan, still lives in Roaring Creek. There were others, at different times, but these were the three who had the longest tenure.

I think those ferrymen had license to shut down the ferry at the slightest hint of danger. It was quite a costly job when it got away, to repair it and to haul it back to its place. They would still get paid, so when the river was way up, they crossed you if they liked you. Ka-yeh didn’t like anybody. There were times we felt he shut down the ferry way too early. Morgan and Papa Dee went the extra yard. They definitely did so for us –my family and my sister and her husband, and the workmen who went to help us on the farm.

You had to gauge the river when it was rising. Sometimes, when it was coming up in a rush, we just zipped to farm and zipped back, so we didn’t get trapped across the river. When the river was high the crossing was extremely slow, so oftentimes there was a long line of vehicles waiting to cross.  When the river got too high, even if the ferrymen wished to help you, they couldn’t.

One evening, when the river was up and the crossing was tough, Papa Dee set off from the Valley of Peace side with two vehicles on board. There was quite a queue on the other side, a lot of folk tired after a hard day who were hoping to get across the river so they could get to eat from their home table and bathe and then go to sleep in their very own beds. Getting home after a hard day is beautiful.

Someone who had just visited Valley of Peace was in a rush to get across the river. The ferry was about a third of the way across when his super SUV came roaring down the riverbank and screeched to a halt at the river’s edge.
Papa Dee had had a hard day, and there was still a lot more people to cross before his day was done. A couple stalwarts, men with dignity, were pumping the winch, and he was regaling them and the rest of the passengers on the trip across the river, with one of his colorful stories, when a clamor came up from the riverbank behind him.  There were shouts of, “Come back! Bring the ferry back!”

Now, I will not hazard why Papa Dee responded the way he did. I wasn’t there; this story was told to me. It was evening and I know he must have been tired. I also know there were circumstances where he would have countenanced turning back the ferry, when so many people were in line on the other side, waiting their just turn to cross. That evening, he didn’t turn back.

If the cries from the imperious entourage on the benk side reached Papa Dee’s ears, he was deaf. He ignored the shouting and continued his story, until one of his passengers interrupted him.

“It’s the Prime Minister,” the passenger said. “It’s Esquivel.”

I might have a told you a piece of this story before. I’m not too sure. Anyway, I choose today to not tell you what Papa Dee said, beyond that his response was in the strongest Kriol.

Punishment was swift. The next day Papa Dee was called to the Ministry of Works for his severance pay. Someday, somebody will tell me what he said to them when they told him he no longer had a job with the government of Belize. But maybe they don’t need to. I believe I know already. I bet it was in the strongest Kriol.

*The ferry at Young Bank has since been replaced by the Agripino Cawich Bridge.