We are so not cooking!!

When I first wrote this segment (sometimes I write and save and then paste when get to the internet.) I was feeling so proud of myself because I had cooked a really good meal. At that point it was titled 'Now we're cooking'. You will notice the change of title and get the idea. Tonight's supper actually went into the garbage and the kids ate KD. I had chocolate cake. I used to think I could cook. I could throw together a nice meal that was totally edible and even earn myself a few compliments from time to time. You too, right? Well, I have learned that I only know how to follow a recipe; maybe create something yummy after reading a few recipes; and I know what tastes good with what. I’ve decided that is not really knowing how to cook. I am having to learn how to cook here in Belize. Firstly, you north American cooks start by going to the grocery store and picking up whatever ingredients you may need for a week or two worth of meals. Here in Belize, you check out the Chinese store and find something that looks somewhat familiar and may be useful but you’re not sure since the label and directions are in Spanish. (also how can you be expected to know the difference between coconut water, coconut milk, coconut cream and cream of coconut - therein lies the problem with tonight's meal. These are not interchangeable!) You fill your ‘cart’ (in quotes because they are roughly the size of the ‘shopper in training’ carts you find at your grocery store) with a bunch of these vaguely familiar items. Filling your ‘cart’ means parking it at the end of each aisle while you run up and down it picking up stuff. The carts don’t actually fit down the aisles. If you need eggs you get a plastic bag from the Chinese guy and buy what you need. You shop and buy by the ‘one’ in Belize not by the carton or bag or whatever. Now comes the scary part. You need meat. First think: ‘when was the last power outage and how long did it last?’ ‘Have they had a delivery since then?’ If all answers are favorable you head down the ‘freezer aisle’. The freezer aisle defined is the three rusted out deep freezers stuffed in the middle of one of the aisles. You steel yourself and open the first one. Peek in. Do you recognize the meat? Is there a label with a name you know? No? Then move to the next freezer. Stew meat is good (has to cook for at least 8 hours but definitely can be used) and so is chicken. One day I decided I would make a roast chicken for a treat. I won’t do that again. I, foolishly, thought that the innards would have been separated from the chicken BEFORE freezing. Now I stick to breasts. I still have to debone, deskin and finish the defeathering but the meat is nice after you chop off the bloody parts. (I just realized that some of you are coming to visit and will probably, now, be on a strict vegan diet while you’re here. I can’t cook for that so you may be on your own!) But I digress. You buy your meat and pseudo-familiar items. Notice anything missing? Right, fruits and veggies! (No smart remarks. ‘fruits’ is so a word. It’s kriol) For these you must go to the fruits and veggies guy up the road. He sells his wares out of what can, optimistically, be described as an open, non-airconditioned shack. The best selection is to be had before 10:00 am before the heat and flies get to the produce. There are onions, cucumbers, carrots and potatoes as well as a vast assortment of unknowns in the veggie boxes, and tons of pineapples and papaya’s on the shelves. Sometimes there are grapes and once in a while apples but these are very expensive. Again you buy by the one not the bag or pound. At home you realize that you have no idea how to make a meal out of this odd assortment of things. (I once made the mistake of thinking I could put cheese on almost anything and make it edible – you know you do it! Well, the cheese here isn’t edible and therefore is not helpful to meals. We are becoming lovers of ‘plastic’ cheese – the packaged slices we avoid at home) You also realize that you only have enough for about two days which is OK because nothing keeps longer than that anyway. We have had some very … interesting and pretty yukky meals but I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. (HA! That's what I THOUGHT!) You don’t need veggies to make a meal – substitute fruits. Coconut milk is a staple and fixes lots of things from baking to veggies to meat (avoid cream of coconut!). Meat has to thaw for at least 24 hours in the fridge (because of the heat and humidity you don’t take the shortcuts we are used to) so you have to think ahead. Also, to move past the problems of power outages, order your meat from the guy with the meat truck. The meat is safer and cleaner. Beans are available everywhere and are very versatile. Again with the thinking ahead, though, they have to soak over night and then be boiled for 10 hours or so to soften them. On the plus side, I have a stove. Some of the best cooks I have met here, and there are quite a few, cook over an open flame in the yard. If I added that in, I’d have to hire a chef and be the laughing stock of Hopkins. Thank Heaven for stoves!!! And for friendly locals. Tomorrow I start wandering the streets like a beggar asking for recipes. The sad thing is that I may have to go through all this again in reverse when I get back to Canada.

It's Just a Phase

I have learned that there are phases we go through when we move to a truly foreign place. I thought I would share this new and exciting information with you! (Do you think I could get grant money to travel from place to place and study the hypothesis? I've always wanted to find some stupid and obvious thing to study)
Phase 1: When you first move to this totally foreign place, everything is so new and different that your brain can't adjust. So It only accepts a small amount of the info your eyes, ears and nose try to send it. You look around and see only a part of the reality.
Phase 2: Your brain has had the time it needed to adjust to the fact that you have thrown it into an alternate reality. Now you start to see things you hadn't noticed before. Your brain begins to let in all the info your senses send it. This should be good, right? It's always good to get the whole truth. Well, it may be good but the shock can be a little disconcerting. Questions like: what have I done? and how could I have missed this? start to creep in and you get a dose of culture shock. Don't worry, this phase doesn't last too long it just feels like forever.
Phase 3: You have adjusted! You can see the places and people for what and who they are and love it anyway. It seems perfectly normal to see: men cutting grass with a machete; twenty people in the back of a pickup careening down the highway at 100+ km/hr; a dad riding his bike with a newborn on his shoulder and a 2 year old riding on the crossbar. You know where to go to get most of the things you want and need and where to find out where the rest might be hiding. It no longer seems strange to have people yell at you as you drive through town (they are just saying hello) or to have them honk as you go by (also just saying hello - isn't it nice that you no longer hit the ditch trying to figure out what you have done wrong?) or to shop at three different stores or trucks for two days worth of food. You begin to realize that the way you used to live may not be the only, or even the best, way to live.
Phase 4: You can speak kriol! This phase doesn't occur for most people until after at least 5 years.
You will be excited to know that I am now firmly embedded in phase 3. This poses a slight problem for the old blog. Nothing seems too weird or wild anymore and I have trouble figuring out what you will enjoy. I have a few ideas yet but am afraid I'll start to run dry. This is the part where you get to help out! YAY! If any of you have questions or subjects you would like to explore, please e-mail me or leave a comment. I'm not going to promise anything but I'll see what I can do. If nothing else, I'll get to laugh at your naivety for a while instead of the other way around. This is your chance to be a contributing editor. Maybe, if you fudge just a little, you could add it to your resume. I'll write you a reference.
Can't wait to hear from you all!!!

This is not a drill! ... or is it?

Last week, Alfred woke me in the morning as he left for work (at the usual time of 5:00am) and told me there was a big storm headed to Jamaica. I am not my best at 5:00am so I rolled over and promptly forgot that there was a big storm headed to Jamaica. Imagine, then, my suprise when, a day later, he tells me to go and get mucho dolleros from the bank and buy a ton of canned goods. In response to my look of total confusion, he informs me that the big storm is now hurricane Dean and is headed our way. Well, I go on high alert and begin to question the locals. "what are the chances we'll be hit?" The unanimous answer was "we won't be - never will happen". No one is panicking so I slowly go about buying a ton of canned goods and other supplies. A day later we are under a tropical storm watch and everywhere we go people are talking hurricane. I start to pack boxes of food and get the girls to pack bags with clothing, etc for three days. (finally I need a 72 hour kit and I can't remember what I'm supposed to have in it!) Friday I make my last trip into Dangriga for supplies. We have decided that we need rubber boots (OK, don't look at me like that. It may be obvious to you but I didn't think of it! There was a lot going on) and that, in addition to all the candles I had bought, we should have hurricane lamps and keroscene. By now I am living on fumes as sleep deprivation has overcome me and I go to the store muttering 'If we needed hurricane lamps why did you tell me to get candles and if we have candles why do we need hurricane lamps? I'm pretty sure the candles work. I guess because they are HURRICANE lamps and we are in for a HURRICANE ...' Whatever.' So I find hurricane lamps in, what can only be described as the bad part of Dangriga. (An oxymoron if ever I heard one.) I buy two lamps for $10 each. Then I head out to find keroscene. I ask at no fewer than three hardware stores before someone tells me I can get it at the Texaco store on the way out of town. Yay! I'm outta there. At the texaco store (gas station for the uninitiated) I discover that the keroscene is in the pumps and you need a gas container to get it. Does the Texaco sell gas containers? Of course not, what are you thinking? I need to go to the hardware store for a gas container. Back I go to the hardware store where I can only buy a 5 gallon gas container. Feeling quite confident we don't need 5 gallons of keroscene for two very tiny hurricane lamps, I ask for $20 worth. Now I am done! I head home feeling very prepared. Later I show Alfred my purchases feeling pretty smug. He decides to try the hurricane lamps. Both of which promptly fall apart! I guess $10 Belize ($5 USD) doesn't buy much for quality. This would be when I find out that one of the chinese stores in town has hurricane lamps. I ignore the feelings of disgust when I think of the unnecessary half-hour dive back and forth from Dangriga and we toddle off to the chinese store to try and discern, through the shrink wrap, if any of the hurricane lamps looks more likely to work than the others. Finally we just guess. Then Alfred has to endure being laughed at by the chinese guy when he tells him he needs more water. Apperantly 5 large jugs of water is an unheard of ammount. Even when you are looking a hurricane in the eye, so to speak, and may be unable to get water for a very long time. We are ready just in time. The TS warning has been upgraded to a hurricane warning. We are otta here. Off to Belmopan in two vehicles, so we can take a generator with us, we head to the sister of one of Alfred's co-workers. Tina is just a real sweetheart and her family are wonderful, even if they do dress a little funny. (they are mennonite) They have prepared for the hurricane too. They have bought all manner of junk food so that while we stay up all night watching the storm, we have something to snack on! Someone checks the hurricane web site every 5 or 10 minutes for updates. No one seems to care that the site only updates every 3-4 hours. And we wait. At 11:00ish, we all decide to go to bed and get some sleep while we can. We are sure the storm will wake us when it arrives. Sure enough, at 3:30, I wake to the sound of rain. I wake Brynn and Kori so they won't yell at me for letting them sleep through it and then I go back to bed. It rains for about half an hour. No wind. No thunder. No trees down. Nothing. The next morning we go home secure in the knowledge we did the right thing. After all, we got rain. Hopkins got nothing at all!

To Read or not to Read

So, those of you that know us, know that we have an all consuming addiction to books. It is genetic and hasn't skipped anyone that I know of in at least two generations. Armed with this knowledge, we left Canada with one or two books each tidily stuffed in our suitcases. We all thought that would hold us until we found a book store in Belize. We were soooo wrong!! The books ran out on about day two. We searched Belmopan... we searched Dangriga... No luck. We asked in Belmopan and were told to find Angelus Press, they have books. We found Angelus Press. They have primary readers and lots of school supplies but no books. We were told to find Dakers. They have one shelf of used books but mostly steamy romances. Not exactly what we had in mind. Then we moved on to Dangriga. Of course they have books ... at the office supply store. (you'll notice no one has ssaid 'try the book store') They have one copy of a Danielle Steele hardcover and, suprise, lots of office supplies. Finally we ask at the office. someone must know where there is a book store! 'Hmmm, have you tried Dakers?' Well, yes we have, actually. Finally someone comes up with the idea to try the 'phone book. (just as an aside - how small is belize really? Well, the 'phone book is both white and yellow pages for the entire country and is about half the size of the Sherwood Park 'phone book) Guess what? There are exactly no book stores in Belize! I am complaining about this in the car one day to one of the girls' new friends. (I was in the crabby stage of withdrawl) and she says 'Miss Dana' (here all the women are called miss something. It is a term of respect) 'you need to join the library.' THE LIBRARY!!!!!!!!! Why had no one mentioned the library? ('Oh, we thought you wanted to own books' was the common response to that query) So off I go and join the library. It is a very nice little library. One room with lots of wood and sections for children, non-fiction and fiction. All of the books have been donated and most are old but they are books! And many, many of them are not steamy romances! They are stacked three deep so it takes a while to look through them and I'm sure we will have read them all by the time our year is up but ... There are books!! We have been there twice now. The second time the librarian remembered us - not just our faces, our names as well. There is no card catalogue that I have seen and it's probably not the place for serious research but it will fill the craving for now. It is kind of like a blast from the past as they use the old card and date stamp system of signing out and everyone whispers and walks on tiptoe as they 'search the stacks'. For me it is like being home.

Odds and Ends

I have just a bunch of pictures with very little story attached that I thought you all might be interested in. A lot of flowers, I know but they are so beautiful! I wish I could send you the smell it is like nothing else. These are the bananas we bought off the banana truck for $6 Bze or $3 USD.

The best time to find the creepy crawlies is at night. Brynn and Kori didn't seem to scare this guy at all.

Just one of the many varieties of bird of paradise flowers that grow everywhere. They are like weeds here. I don't think I'll ever be able to pay for them again!

Here's another variety.

Sadly, this picture doesn't really do this guy justice. This moth had a wing span of about 6 inches. He was hanging out on our deck one Sunday morning.

This is Linda. She is the girls' pet praying mantis. Mostly she stays outside but has been known to come in for a visit. She got mad at Alfred when he tried to tell her it was time to leave and jumped onto his chest. Then she got to fly!

And the wildest life of all. Our very own pirates of the Caribbean!

Wet and Wild

As the title suggests, this was a wet and wild weekend. I'm going to mix things up a little and start with the wild. On Saturday we went out to our first big social occasion since coming to Belize. One of the men Alfred works with had invited us to his daughter's wedding. It was to be on a beach on some property the family owned and was going to be a small family event with a few friends included. He was quite insistent that we attend and, although we thought that we'd be rather uncomfortable and out of place, especially considering the size and makeup of the guest list, we agreed to attend. The wedding was to start at 3:00. The thunderstorms started at 7:00am and continued through the day. (The, heretofore absent, 'rainy season' had apparently decided Saturday was an auspicious day to begin) As we drove into, what was later described as, the parking pond at 10 before three we were congratulating ourselves on being neither too early, and therefore conspicuous, nor too late, also a conspicuous problem. We found a seat at a table in the back and proceeded to take a look around.

Very colorful and the sun had agreeably come out which boded well for the beach ceremony. We watched as more and more people arrived ... and more and more ... and more. The bride and groom were from the same extended family (third cousins or something) and the extended family was a very close extended family. We continued to wait and watch as more people yet arrived - none of whom seemed to be the bride or groom. The 3:00 wedding was quickly becoming a four o'clock wedding but no one seemed worried or even to notice. We amused ourselves by chatting and drinking little water as we hadn't seen a bathroom advertised. At 5:00, one of the other guests informed us that this was Belize and the wedding would start sometime after the bride and groom arrived. By 5:30 the father of the bride had arrived and there was a glimmer of hope. The wedding may happen before the flower girls all fell asleep. Finally the guests were directed down the beach for a beautiful sunset ceremony.

This is one of the five very adorable flower girls. There were also 5 bridesmaids and one maid of honor. All the men, groom, groomsmen and male family members wore copies of the same clothes: panama hats, white or off white button down shirts untucked, white or off white loose cotton pants rolled at the cuff. Apparently it is some kind of family tradition but it made it difficult to distinguish one from the other as there was also a strong family resemblance. As a testament to my tan, people kept coming up and introducing themselves to me thinking I was somehow related and I would then introduce them to Alfred at my side and explain that he works with Johnny (the brides dad). After the ceremony, the sun felt it had given enough of it's precious time to this occasion and turned the time back over to the rain. We had a lovely buffet supper of bbq chicken, plantain, breadfruit and rice'n'beans. I guess the guests had decided they had done enough waiting for the bride and groom and, immediately on returning to the tents began to line up and eat. The MC kept trying to get everyone's attention with the mike but no one seemed to care. So we lined up. The coolest thing was that, as we went through the line there were tables set up with every type of candy you could imagine. There were small paper bags at the first table and, as you went through the line, you took a few candies here and a few there until your bag was as full as you wanted it to be and you had reached the buffet. (Brynn and I both suffered terribly from candy induced tummy aches for the rest of the night!) When we left to go home at about 8:00pm, the bride and groom were still waiting in line for their food and the music could be heard for many miles!

As indicated already, the wet part of the weekend was the start of the rainy season. We decided to go for a sunday afternoon drive and showed our ignorance. The rainy season is not the best time to go for meaningless drives. Here are a few pictures of the road we ended up on without hope of turning around.

As we drove, the road got wetter and wetter and it started to pour. Creatures were literally swimming alongside the truck. We raced lots of crabs, a snake and an otter. Finally we looked ahead and there were two men and two boys wading toward us through waist deep water. They informed us that they were stuck some ways down the road when the water got too deep for their car. We had already been through water that had risen above the running boards on the side of the truck and had been pushing water for the last few miles. We decided that we needed to turn around before it got worse and we also got stuck. As per our adventure traditions we had left home without a cell 'phone, survival kit or telling anyone where we were going. We did have the ever present first aid kit. Unfortunately it doesn't include a rubber dinghy. We did manage to turn around before we ended up in too much trouble and decided that our afternoon excursions from now on will be confined to paved roads and roads we know the condition of.

So that was our weekend. Hope you had a good one, too!

A Day in the Life

Ok, so I am finding that I really love living in Hopkins! Brynn and Kori feel the same and Brynn keeps looking at the white people with their backpacks in town and thinking 'tourists' in that special derogatory way we think of tourists unless we are one! She keeps forgetting she is white. (although both she and Kori are much, much less white that a month ago!) Anyway, I thought I'd share the joy. Close your eyes (figuratively speaking since it is hard to read with your eyes closed) and imagine.
You wake up with the sun at about 6:30am and laze in bed until 7:00.
After a breakfast of fresh fruit and whatever else you may have on hand, it is time to go to town and hit the markets for your daily (or every second day) supply of perishable foods. The stores are all open by 8:00am and the town is 'hoppin'. Gotta get stuff done early so you can be out of the sun by 10:00ish.
You drive through town with the air conditioning on, to give you that feeling of a cool breeze, and your window rolled down because it's impolite to have it up at this point. The fastest you drive is about 20 km/hr on a good stretch and people on either side of the road are waving or saying 'good morning' into the window. Smiles all around. The kids are playing on the street and in the trees as kids everywhere tend to do.
First stop, the fruit and veggie stand. The old man that runs it lights up as you go in. He has been waiting for you. You look through the carrots and tomatoes and decide what you would like for veggies today (and maybe tomorrow) and start to pick stuff up. Old guy comes over and takes the veggies from you telling you that there is fresher stuff over here. He's been saving it for you. Then you start on the fruit - pineapple (better get two or three if you want them to last two days), papaya looks good, some limes (a staple here) and what the heck is this? You hold it up and look questioningly at old guy who laughs and tells you what it is and if it is sweet or has to be cooked. What the heck, give it a try. Old guy has been weighing and bagging everything you have picked up as you have been shopping and you now have three or four bags of the good stuff. He adds it all up on his calculator and gives you the bad news. $13.50 belize (that's about $7 in Canada). Say good day and head to the Everyday Superstore.
The Everyday Superstore is better known as the chinese store because it is owned by a chinese guy. Don't think this will help if you ask where the chinese store is because literally every grocery store in the entire country of Belize is owned by a chinese guy and called the chinese store (I'm not joking. That's true). This is the good chinese store. Meaning they have a better selection in the four rows than the other chinese stores do in their four rows. Here you pick up fresh bread and maybe some banana bread (the kids love it) and whatever canned goods you need maybe some OJ. Milk if you know you will use it within two days otherwise it will go bad. Stop and exchange gossip with the girls working. Maybe someone sees your truck outside and comes in to say hello.
Home again and the kids are just starting to get up (actually not true - Brynn has been up since 7:00am and Kori won't be up for another hour unless you wake her).
Clean house for a bit (Sorry that seems to follow you no matter where you live)
In the afternoon you have lots of choices. You can go swimming, drive out to the resorts on the other side of town hoping to catch some internet that may be working, go for a drive to where you heard there were toucans nesting, whatever. Again, windows open in town so you can stop in the middle of the road when you see someone you want to talk to.
Hey look, that guy is trying to wave you down. Must need a ride somewhere. True story: today I am driving Brynn and Kori to Belizean Dreams (BD) to catch some internet and this HUGE man tries to wave us down. Now hitch-hiking is a recognized form of transportation in Belize and I often pick up women with kids or guys that I know but I don't as a rule pick up anyone that looks like he could overpower me with his pinky. Today as I think to myself 'Wow! That guy is huge and his two front teeth are gold. No way!' I find myself stopping. Now this guy is about 6'4" and built like a brick outhouse. His arms are as big around as Kori and Brynn put together. 'Hi' Says the mountain, 'Are you headed out to BD?' 'Hm' thinks I 'he must know who I am'. Then I hear myself saying 'Yes, want a ride'. AHH!! Are you crazy!! Shouts sane Dana but insane Dana just smiles and lets the hulk into her car. Sane Dana must have shown herself because the hulk smiles (not very reassuringly but at least he'll be happy as he grinds our bones to make his bread) and informs me he is security for BD and his last name is Caballero which means 'gentle man'. And he was just a big teddy bear. Only I'm going back to only picking up women and kids!
So you get to BD and hang out gossipping with the workers, visiting with the guests and walking the beach with whichever kid is not on the computer at the moment. Kori loses a bet with Ernesto and now we owe him KD and a salad for lunch.
Nancy asks if you are heading home soon and could she get a ride. Sure! (she is tiny and looks like a strong wind could take her away - should be safe!)
The rest of the afternoon looks like a good time to sit on the beach and read.
The sun goes down at 6:00pm and it is DARK! Absolutely no light pollution here.
After supper it's time to go to the chiese store and buy more water and say good night to the people you meet in town. Here 'good night' is a greeting. (I may never get used to people saying 'Good night. How are things with you?' and going on to chat for a while). Check out who is hanging at King Cassava's and how many fires are burning in the yards (their way of getting rid of everything) and whether any of them look like something to worry about.
Then home to play cards and visit with the family. Maybe watch a movie.
Bed for sure by 9:30pm and get up in the morning to do it again.
We really are 'Living the Dream'!