Jitterbugging for Jesus

Belize has actual “Dollar Stores.”
If you like the garment and want to try it on behind the hanging curtains and it fits, the cost is an actual dollar.

I watched the axle break on this car as it turned a corner, an event that’s not at all uncommon in a country where most of the cars are pre-historic and most people don’t have enough money to buy cars anyway.

Speaking of broken . . .

I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be MINISTRY of Works & Transportation (and that door’s been broken since I arrived in town three years ago):

This is what the locals call “super” fruit, which is ripe and abundant this time of year on small trees along the rivers. You pick off the golf-ball size balls, take a sharp knife to remove the shells, boil them over a pit for two hours, remove the water, add more water, throw in 4 pounds of sugar, cinnamon sticks and tiny, sweet spices, stir and stir like, a lot, put five in a small bag and sell for a dollar (50 cents U.S.), or pass around at the party or group occasion.

It’s muy, muy tasty.

That’s my good and very good friend Jan, or as I call her, “Jan the Mennonite Yogi Lady.”

She and two of her daughters, who chose to be Mennonites, unlike most of the five or children of her and her late husband (a tour guide who was not a Mennonite) have a 70-acre dairy farm just outside of town called “Cool M Farms”). I buy four quarts of homemade yogi (yogurt) and pure milk right out of the cows from them at market every week, but they also sell great cheeses, breads, dressings, brownies and fudge and whatever they decide to make.

Jan was born and reared in very England but she and her husband wandered all over the place, including Mexico, where they heard about Belize, drove in one day many and very many years ago, and stayed with their first baby. She was so impressed by warmth of the members of one of the many Mennonite branches here that she converted even though her husband wanted none of it. One daughter lives in the States but the whole, extraordinary family is known and highly regarded around these parts.

The bed-and-breakfast cottage at their farm is on Trip Advisor, btw, if you want to look it up–the reviews are great.

Jan’s husband once survived alone on an island for months, but that’s a whole other, long story I need to get briefed on to share some day. Her life is the stuff of movies.

Cool M Farm products at market.

Speaking of market, mango wine is fairly popular but nothing is as popular with Belizeans as cashew fruit wine, which is definitely an acquired taste.

And one I’m pretty sure I will never acquire.

Until next time, buckaroos . . . live large wherever you are.