Flat out I am not in the business of frightening people but, but some little notes I’d compiled popped up when I was sorting some scribbling, the used ones for to throw away, and yet to be completed material, for to stew on or maybe for insertion in my column. Aha, a couple pages of notes came up under the heading: “Who was worse for Belize: Dean Barrow or Ralph Fonseca?”

Both these characters had full turns steering Belize’s economy, Ralph between 1989 and 1993, under George Price, and 1998 to 2005, under Said Musa; and Dean Barrow has been at the wheel to make or break Belize since 2008. Interestingly, both these squanderers faced off in Queen’s Square in 1984, Barrow getting the nod. Between them they have emptied the national vault like Henry money kyaahn done, and they have borrowed like paying back is not a part of loan agreements.

I know it’s not in my power to stop people from thinking wrongly, so it doesn’t bother me a drat that the UDP might be unhappy to know that my research at this stage is leaning toward Mr. Barrow as the more guilty party in this waste of the people’s money. Of course some good things were achieved. You can’t spend BILLIONs and it is all bad.

If you’d like to contribute to this research, make it more scholarly, or influence me to be favorable to your preferred wastrel, ha, ha; you can write to me at Amandala and they’ll pass it on to me, or write to me at my internet address, [email protected]. If you want to cuss me, do the honorable thing and send your offensive material in the regular mail, so that I can have the satisfaction of burning it.

I kudn find a local Krismos card in Belize

When my mom and dad were hale and hearty, every Krismos they would buy a box of cards and all their friends and family living abroad, in England and the USA, would get one. I remember my dad encouraging his braalee, Louis B-lisle, to make Krismos cards, so he and my mom could stop buying imported ones. B-lisle did make Krismos cards, and a number of other Belizean artists have made Krismos cards too, but it looks like all the energy has been sapped from the endeavor.

I checked at Dakers Stationery and Books, The Angelus Press, Brodies, and A&R, and none of them had local cards. There wasn’t a good selection of foreign cards either, and Angelus Belmopan didn’t have any. One visit to the store can’t paint a complete picture, but if what I saw is all that it is, then the card business is dying out altogether.

I’m no economy expert, but I think the story of tulips and the Netherlands is very instructive. Look, the only thing we need is a plate of food, a roof that isn’t leaking, a clean bed, and clean, appropriate clothes. Everything else, everything else, is trappings. The right leaders can get the card industry going, and this time it must be for our artists. Our artists have the talent to make cards for every occasion – Krismos, graduations, funerals, Easter, weddings, birthdays, you name it. After the banana suckers have given up their fruits we can take the trunks and turn them into paper for our card industry.

I repeat that I’m no expert on the economy, but I know that the story of tulips in the Netherlands is instructive. Tulips aren’t used to make houses or clothing. You can eat parts of the tulip if you are starving, but in the Netherlands they serve their economy best by being beautiful.

Cultures are made. An email or telephone call shouldn’t be sufficient in the Belize we are building. A dollar spent at home is worth $5 to the economy. Our artists should make Krismos cards and we should buy them.

My best Krismos gift

My dad had a good office job, but Mr. Hector Silva can tell you that that didn’t amount to much pay in Old Belize, and my dad and my mom had nine children, so money was not plentiful in our home, not ever. On a special occasion like Krismos Day we had lemonade, but we had to split a bottle with a sibling.

Half a bottle of lemonade doesn’t quench anyone’s thirst for soda, even if you’re small, and that might explain my low resistance when I came upon a half-filled bottle of what looked like red lemonade carelessly left on an old bench downstairs of our house by one of my brothers. I wasn’t about drinking it all, I was only stealing a slug, no, a sip. Atakuhma, Atakuhma, da noh sheep da hot ashes! Ugh, the bottle contained lube, which my older brothers used to oil the chain of our family’s only bike.

I remember one year I got a Belize-made wheelbarrow. I remember a Belize-made horse too, but that one could have been for my younger brother. After Hattie our family stayed a few weeks at Camp Oakley in Burrell Boom and our mom made us collect pine cones. That Krismos after Hattie we decorated our tree with the pine cones we collected, and stars and bells cut from foil paper. My mom also painted regular light bulbs which we hung outside our home.

One Krismos our grandaunt, Gladys Lindo Ysaguirre, visited us from New York and she brought fancy American-made decorations and angel hair for our tree. She brought fancy American confectionery too, but they weren’t as tasty as our wangla sweet and coconut fudge. Aunt Gladys also rubbed our dog’s nose in doo he deposited on our verandah. We thought that was very rough, but the dog didn’t need any more potty training after that.

When I was a little boy, Seferino Coleman and Cousin Winifred (Gladys Stuart) were the stars of Radio Belize. No Krismos was complete without some George McKesey stories, about Timi and DaiKan raising dead, and tiger di practice low jump.

My favorite Krismos gift was a bike I got after my dad made a wild stab to encourage me to be more studious. A bike wasn’t a common gift in those days. In my youth we weren’t far removed from the days when Judge Crane said to a bike thief, before dropping the hammer sentence on him: “You didn’t steal a bicycle. You stole a poor man’s motor car!”

After I delivered on the impossible challenge, I naturally wanted my prize. I don’t remember absolutely hegging the patience out of my dad over the promised bike, but on Krismos night I got the motor car. That night I couldn’t get enough of being near it. The scent of it was as thrilling as States clothes. I spun the rear wheel numerous times, just to see the head lamp and the little red light in the dark.

In Belize City, where I lived till I was 12, the only times I went outside of my block – West Canal, Regent Street West, Richards Sidewalk, Water Lane – was when my mom sent me on errands, to deliver clothes she sewed for her clients, or to check in with the family’s old folks up West Canal, on Church Street, and on Berkeley Street.

In Belmopan there were no such limits. There was little vehicular traffic, and there were walkways for pedestrians, so it was total freedom on the streets. There was little traffic on the highways too, and on the weekends my buddies and I biked to visit our classmates, Jonathan Garbutt in Teakettle and Michael Hulse in Roaring Creek, and to Banana Bank to collect govna plum and soopa and custard apple.

The Americans believe that every generation should be materially better off than the one before, but while we all want more wealth for our offspring, I think what my generation would want most is that our children and grandchildren know the Belize we knew. When we were young we lived in a country where a boy, or girl, could ride their bikes, limited only by the wind in their lungs.