At the risk of the UDP Secretariat rejecting my application for a party card when I’m good and ready to fill out the form, I want to tell the paati: no, there’s no way under God’s skies that I would give unu my vote this March.

My, I hear the paati is calling on the people to send a message to the PUP in these municipal elections. Already? I’m for the four-year term, absolutely, but I’m not about sending any message to a party that just won an election. I will want to talk when the next municipals roll around, but for now I’ll send a note, not a vote, to remind them of all the good things that they promised in their manifesto.

In the realm of most needs, remember Mr. Macbeth, when he said after executing the foul deed that his lady love set him up to do that he had most need of blessing and amen stuck in his throat? Well, guess who is in most need of another trashing at the polls. Gimme a U, gimme a D, gimme a P, it is the UDP that needs that most!

This party that just handed a bankrupt country to a new government is trying to make hay at the polls off the fact that we are broke. I think that’s kind of, criminal. Instead of sackcloth, they are into a blame game. Hn, they really might have become more expert at opposing. They have been accused of being in opposition even when they win the vote, and if we compare the time they spent in the House between 2008 and 2020 discussing PUP business, against the time they spent discussing projects to develop Belize, a wud a haffu seh da troo.

They left the coffers bare. What did Francis say Dean said when he looked at the numbers? Deluge! It’s a debacle they left behind, and they want to blame the Blue crowd for that. Come on, the PUP has sins enough; it can’t be fair to pile on sins on top of sins. By the way, the people said 13 years on the sidelines were enough.

Hmm, I notice even a little history has been thrown into the pot. Brother Delroy is around and about saying that it has happened before that we voted in a government and turned right around in the municipals following and voted in the other party. You know, there was a time when we really didn’t know how to handle our vote. We knew what it meant, aaright; that’s why we fought for it, but it took us some time to really figure out how to use it.

Why do you think George Price won…whoa, I was going to say something unflattering about the great hero and his politics, but it just popped into my head that the grandnephew is in the House now, so I had better watch my step. I felt a lot safer when the grandniece was the lone flag carrier there.

Brother Delroy, dat deh kind of reverse voting was when we neva know betta. I don’t buy voting in a government and then immediately taking away municipal bodies from them. Ouch to this suggestion that municipal bodies could function like, like check and balance. Municipal bodies work for the upkeep of a city or town. They don’t have the purpose of a senate. Municipal bodies don’t scrutinize laws, they don’t question government spending, and they don’t make Special Committees to pry into the felonious practice of mishandling of passports.

The time will come to fight the PUP, because absolute power corrupts absolutely, or because they have grown stale and the promises from the other party are just too good to resist, or because they stray from their promises.

Can you recall any party getting the heave ho recently because they strayed from their promises? Bingo, you got it. There was a crowd that promised to cut out corruption with a sharp machete, and to give us a 13th senator so we could begin to have a proper check on the doings of the people who control the House of Representatives. Boy, did we get had.

Madam Speaker, I don’t give weight to this call from the UDP to send a message to your crowd ataal. It is the UDP that needs a message, so it fully sinks in that November 2020 was no error. If the message wasn’t to tell the PUP we believe in their kind a love, then it was to tell the UDP to go and reform their ways, to go shed their baggage and renew dehnself.

The four, five, or six hamlets in Camalote

Those of us who study the daily infographics put out by the Ministry of Health and Wellness, and maybe all Belizean adults are in the study group, will have noticed that among villages reporting cases, Camalote wasn’t last on the list. I could be wrong, but the only villages that might have reported more cases thus far are Ladyville and San Felipe.

There was a point where villagers here thought the ministry would have come and locked us off, put us under strict quarantine like they did in San Pedro, and I bet that others in the village, just like me, wondered if the ministry would consider the departments here or they would just blanket everyone together, like we do on election day to choose a village council.
Prior to Hattie, Camalote was a farming settlement, and its capital was Roaring Creek, which is a couple miles to the east. Most of the original residents of Camalote lived on the banks of the Belize River, but a company, Machete Nile, owned the land, and a time came when the colonial government ordered the people to vacate. Most of the families were given 10, 15 and 20-acre blocks alongside the now George Price Highway.

Incidentally, my father-in-law got the absolute worst block. That’s because he was too young when the first parcels were being given out, and when he came of age there was only one that remained, a parcel the government had used to mine and store white marl when the highway was being improved.

One of my professions is farmer, and when I went to live on a piece of my father-in-law’s land, naturally I planted. The old folk in Camalote teased me. They said, Colin is a farmer, but his coconuts and plantains will bear underground. The land within a couple hundred yards of the road was that bad. One of these days, God spare life, I’ll explain why I didn’t go deeper into the bush to try and find some better soil.

Anyway, about Camalote, in time some of the owners of the parcels subdivided their plots, to share with their children and grandchildren, and the government turned some of the land it still had in the village into residential lots. One mile west of where I live there’s a community called Ranch; a half-mile from me is another settlement, behind our primary school, St. Jude R.C.; and a couple hundred yards from me, on the side of the road opposite from where I live, is another residential area.

One mile east of where I live there is a settlement, at Young Bank. There is a Young Gal in Teakettle, and Young Bank in Camalote. Half a mile from where I live there is another settlement and, gradually, this settlement and the one at Young Bank are merging. Hmm, someday when you visit Camalote you’ll have to say which part of the village you were in.