Jitterbugging for Jesus

Guys from the bush wash their horses down below the San Ignacio Library where I spend a lot of time reading, writing and looking out the window at people washing their horses and doing whatever else they do down there in that shallow water.

My sweet and lovely friend the street vendor Emcy and her sweet and lovely young beloved whom the locals call “Emcy 2” (I just call her Junior). I buy my 50-cent bags of juicy slices of morning papaya from the Emcy girls every morning, along with a bag of sliced watermelon, pineapple or mango. (I think it was Jesus–or was it Cheech–who said, “Man cannot live by morning papaya alone.”) Emcy’s brothers help out with the street vending business and they always have the best tropical fruits in town somehow.

Ferry operator cranking it at the river crossing to Spanish Lookout–not a job I’d want all day.

Waiting to cross the river over to Spanish Lookout, that great, sprawling and beautiful farming and ranching and dairy community that has everything you could want at its excellent stores–they import maybe more American made products and groceries than anyplace in Belize. It’s also one of the cleanest, most litter-free and safest places in Belize–and has the best and most paved roads in the country. It’s predominantly German/Dutch Mennonites and they do farming and commerce about as well as anybody in this world. And with its rolling, green pastures–as I’ve noted here before–it looks a lot like the rural Texas I grew up in. Of course, a friend from rural Missouri once told me it reminded her of where she grew up in Mizzou. (Of course she’s a St Louis Cards fan so what would she know about anything. Just sayin’.) It’s a wonderful, peaceful community, Spanish Lookout. They have a little police department but the cop is never in town it seems. Seriously, it’s also the safest place in Belize, which ain’t to say there’s never ever crime. That’s anywhere in this broken world and there ain’t no Utopia.

Farmer’s Center at Spanish Lookout, where the stores have everything you could want from imported rugs, great American-made tractors and farm machinery, American gum and locally produced chicken, beef and dairy products out of this world, to a motorcycle dealership where I got my the motorcycle serviced yesterday. Some will recall that Spanish Lookout, with its rolling pastures and all the cattle, and pretty horses and watermelon patches and corn fields and lazy river bottoms, reminds me of where I grew up in the great nation of Texas. And of course, that American expat from Missouri said it looks just like her home country back in Mizzou. I had to ask, “There’s pretty rural places outside the nation of Texas and Spanish Lookout in the nation of Belize? Show me.”

The Golden Corral in Spanish Lookout is not THAT Golden Corral–not the Hog Trough that the corporate-owned Hog Trough Corrals are in the States. But the locally owned restaurant is like a mini-Golden Corral, complete with excellent buffets of excellent Belizean foods and of course, a Golden Corral type of Hog Trough for the wonderful local ice cream and stuff like cheesecake with the cheese right out of the local cows.

Until next time, from me and my best friend in the world, who’s quite the radical rebel and always was, have a blessed weekend.