Belize - 3. How to tell if your hotel room is just TOO dirty

I travel for work, and am usually away at least once a week at some hotel somewhere. Most of the time, I don’t worry about a mark on the wall here, or a thinning carpet, or a bathroom that looks like it stepped out of your Gran’s 1970s re-make. A hotel room can be worn down, and fringing along the edges, and that’s fine with me as long as it’s clean.

My husband’s grandmother use to get into a hotel and whip back the covers to see if they were smooth and ironed. This was her fail-safe ‘clean’ test. I am sure that we all have pet peeves when it comes to a cleanliness standard. I have friends that are paranoid about bed bugs. Never seen one myself. Ever.

I once stayed in a hotel in Chicago where the carpet by the door had been ripped out in the shape of a body, and the door had a huge dent in it that had been covered with steel bars. Not sure what happened there. But I stayed, and it was fine for the price.

I have also stayed in a motel room in Niagara Falls where they charged extra for a second pillow. There, I woke up to a man vomiting outside of my door. Nice. Those are the low points. My minimum bar of [un]acceptable.

And so, having arrived in Central America, my expectations were already low, but how low can they go before you just can’t live with it anymore? Sure, at the Chateau Caribbean the carpet is falling away in threads, and the walls, judging from their marks and exposed studs haven’t been painted in awhile. The air conditioner didn’t work and the windows were wide open to the street traffic. Still, not worried.

Upon arrival, there was even a small lizard - a ‘makalah’ (“MA-Kah-Lah”) the locals call them in creole- that greeted me on the wall as I entered. Even makalahs don’t concern me. Nope. Not worried about it jumping on my face or anything in the middle of the night. After all, at home we have the odd mosquitos, spiders and flies coming and going, don’t we? And European travellers find those offensive.

No, I was completely content until I woke up last night to go to the toilet, and found two three-inch cockroaches running across my bed. To give me credit, I didn’t scream (although I wanted to). I didn’t even pack my bags right then and there. The one I chased down and smushed flat with the telephone book.

It took five tries, but then these are the creatures predicted to survive a nuclear holocaust after all. The other got away. And I spent the rest of the night with the lights on worried he was going to bring all of his friends back. When dawn finally surfaced out of my nightmare, I said, “Okay, this IS the limit.”

And I packed my bags, took the dead roach to the front desk, and left.

Belize - 2. Finding Homes for Children

If you are a child and become a ‘ward of the state’ in Belize, then instead of being placed in a foster home, you would likely be placed in a home like ‘Liberty’ in Ladyville, Belize (if you’re lucky).

Liberty Children’s Home is a privately-run, donor-sustained residence and school for children without parents. It is located in ‘Ladyville’, an area close to the airport, former area for the bawdy houses, or ‘ladies of the night’ for visiting merchants and sailors. 

Years ago, a large parcel of land was purchased and sustainable buildings erected for the students. There are 40 students at Liberty, and they live as one large family. Both the director and principal live on site with their families, and there are a rotating group of visiting volunteers that work in the school house, or at maintaining the water, septic, gardens, or other jobs that Liberty needs help with on an annual basis. 

Liberty is really a model institution. The residences and buildings are designed in cylinder fashion to withstand hurricanes, and the ceilings are tall to draw the warm air up, and keep the cool air cross-breezes circulating at the living level. There is a grey-water filtration system run by gravity and the sun, and a working garden, greenhouse, and hens supplying the kitchen with food.

There’s even a pet fawn named, ‘Sweetie’ always looking for a handout from Mrs. Tillett the principal.

I was wondering if the lessons on display in the school house – everything from the parts of the country to its shield and even a copy of Hamlet – were there for show, or if the students actually learned the symbolic parts of their history. 

But, sure enough, when I asked a small girl walking by if she could explain the shield to me, she said,

“yes, there is the ship representing people coming to Belize, and the ax and battering ram represent the war with the Spanish who wanted to take over the country. We beat them by surprising them while they slept! Now slaves aren’t forced to mill wood.” Wow. Good enough for me.

Liberty receives an annual income of about $4,000 from the state, and the other 98% of its expenses are raised through fundraising (T-shirts, micro-enterprises, grants) and donations. The director works hard to keep Liberty in the news and to communicate its needs to its network of donors. It is active, well known and well equipped.

Even Radisson hotels have a 50-50 donation policy for Liberty. If you donate any amount of money to Liberty, the Radisson will match it.

There are other state-run children’s homes in Belize which aren’t so well off. They are funded entirely by the state, with no donations, and are often in large cities rather than the country, so the available space to grow one’s own food, for example, is non-existent. If you don’t think just one active person can make a difference, then think of Liberty.

Belize - 1. Steaming Air and Friendly Neighbours

Stepping out of ice fields into a soupy thick air is draining. When I left home this morning, the snow and ice were still a stark, crisp landscape along the Great Lakes in Canada. 

In December and January, Belize has day after day of 30°C rain. With the riverbanks bursting, and the air heavy with salty water, visitors not use to the humidity can only slowly move and try to adapt.

This is why many of the buildings, like the Chateau Caribbean, where I am staying in Belize City, require constant maintenance. The wet, salty air damages the paint and wood and carpets so that the natural world is constantly re-claiming the constructed one. At our hotel, for example, one of three locally-owned hotels in the city, the carpets are wearing thin and fraying by doors and windows, and the paint in the baths and window panes is flaking and black with mold. It is clean. The staff are constantly scrubbing. It is just difficult to keep up with the organic nature of the land.

It is holiday season in Belize. The schools are out, and neighbours are walking the boardwalks by the marinas and socializing on the streets. Belize is a small country, and the cities are the size of small villages where everyone knows everybody else. Crime is also low because of this reason. Walking along the street a vendor at one store suggested a ‘Chinese restaurant’ for lunch, and when my colleague showed some interest, the man simply went into the back door of the restaurant and got a menu for her. They weren’t related, but as neighbours, all of the residents work together to help each of their businesses succeed, and they work as a unit with each other to welcome visitors and travellers to the island. They are one, large family absorbing each new person into their world. It’s a warm feeling (no pun intended).

Belize City has an active group of street musicians known as the ‘Drums not Guns’ group led by saxophonist ‘Bro. Nafty’. They play together with whomever wants to join them down by the swinging bridge in the middle of the city, and hope to attract enough youth and people to promote traditional music and community to still crime. They even have a very popular Facebook page where fans and participants can contact them and message them.

Belize is a poor country. It is not uncommon to come across abandoned lots, houses, open sewers where cats and dogs run wild. The one redeeming quality of the city (also the name of the main, open air church – Redeemer) is its family. How does the saying go?

‘We may not have much, but at least we’ve got each other.’

Canadian Contemporary Art - 3. Russwurm Oils Evoke our Renaissance Women

If da Vinci was painting his Mona today, or Clouet was painting one of his bawdy Renaissance women, the subjects may well have looked like Liana Russwurm’s “Judy” on exhibition now at Chatham’s Thames Art Gallery.
Russwurm’s masculine, rich oils, traditional woodsy browns, maroons and 1500 blueish-blacks, evoke a portrait typical of the Renaissance or Baroque period, but Russwurm’s subjects are certainly not your everyday aristocrats! The “Mona Lisa” is probably the most parodied and viewed portrait in the World, and yet those same colours are evident in Russwurm’s “Americana” woman:   a full-bodied female covered head to toe in various tattoos and a short leopard-print skirt. Is this our contemporary “Mona” with the scandalous smirk at society? “Americana” even provides a tapestry rug in the background, completing the illusion of age.

“The Judy” has that same layered oil look in 1500 colours. There is even a “portrait” within the portrait which has caused some controversy about the subject. Judy is a ‘small woman’ without arms; the portrait within the portrait of Judy contains a dressmaker’s mannequin torso, the same size as Judy. And like “Americana”, Judy has a scowl on her face and spiky blue and pink in-your-face hair.

Are these our contemporary “Monas”? These richly painted, ‘rough-around-the-edges’ women? In 500 years, will people be lining up to get a view of “The Judy”? Will she have a nickname too? It is interesting that Russwurm has chosen these specific oil colours to complete these portraits. What does she say about us?

Ian McLean’s “Guy Wire” is another study in colour. His use of oils, while not Renaissance, give the viewer a creepy, Sci-Fi feeling to the painting. His wood house study in night-glowing blues and greens make you feel as if the entire room has just been covered in nuclear radiation fallout. There are no people. There is a house, a woods, and the bizarre blue and green hue of a horror flick, or the Northern Lights. You decide.

The 'Canadian Sport' in Scotland: Edinburgh Capitals v Fife Flyers, October 20, 2013, 6-8:30p.m.

At a wedding last week in Scotland, we were surprised to learn that there is a professional hockey league there, complete with five teams and paid players from around the world. There was a game on the Sunday evening before we left, so being the good Canadian hockey fans we are, we went to investigate what hockey in Scotland is like.

The Edinburgh Capitals rink is located in an ancient little arena just behind the national Olympic rugby stadium, Murrayfield. Murrayfield towers over the rest of the Haymarket area in Edinburgh, with bright, shiny silver stands; green, manicured grass, and eight-story billboards of their national rugby heroes in their masculine, sweaty form. Everyone knows where Murrayfield is, but no one knows that there is an ice rink there.

“They’re playing ice hockey at Murrayfield? Ya sure it’s nae Shinty?”

“What do they do? Freeze the field or something?”

“I nae heard of an ice hockey rink there hen.”

Below, and behind, Murrayfield arena is a small, white cement building with small, black lettering that read, “Murrayfield Ice Rink”. (The melting piles of snow gave it away.)

We went early because we were afraid that we might not be able to get tickets. After 45 years of watching hockey on television, for example, I have still never been to a Toronto Maple Leafs’ game. At 4:30p.m., an hour and a half before the puck drop, people were leaving from the Sunday afternoon ‘Disco Skate’ (the arena’s main source of revenue), and some of the Capital players were just arriving for the game.

We stopped one man with a ‘Hockey Canada’ bag, never dreaming that this would actually be one of the players.

“Are you from Canada? Do you know where the box office is?”

“No, I’m Czech. They don’t start selling til five.”

“Where did you get the bag?”

“Another player gave it to me.”

This encounter was similar to arriving at any travel rep game around Canada. You park. You bring in your bags with all of the other players, and you ask someone where the dressing room is. These guys might be paid to play hockey, but they are sure not treated like the huge Sidney Crosby celebrities you see in North America.

At 5:03p.m., the box office did indeed open for the 6p.m. game, and we and 23 others made our way in to get tickets. Think for a moment what you would have to do to get tickets to an NHL game in Canada: If you aren’t lucky enough to win the ‘season ticket’ lottery, you go online the first minute of the first hour the tickets become available. Then, you pray that you can afford, or get tickets, as close to the ice as you can. Tickets for the January 1, 2013 Winter Classic, for instance, are currently sold out, but the last tickets sold cost close to $1,000. At the Edinburgh Capitals ticket booth, we bought “gold” seats right beside the players’ bench for the whopping-low, bargain price of £8 each! Yes, you read that right. And yes, we were stunned.

Making our way into the arena, we had to walk through a dimly-lit, industrial-green corridor with the players, the professional players, coming and going in half states of dress and their sticks and equipment just lounging about the walls as if they were leftovers from some beer league match. No security. No walls. No ‘do not enter’ signs. Just the public milling about with macaroni pies and poorly-made coffee (yes that’s the same) on their way to their seats. Our children have never been this close to professional players. In Canada, the security won’t even let you near the ice, let alone the changerooms!

We all looked at each other, “something must be wrong,” my one son said,

“Are these the players?”

“Wow!” the youngest said, “these must be really amazing seats!”

When we finally came out of the corridor to our seats, we were indeed behind the players. I know, I know, you are waiting for the catch. We were too. But unbelievably, in this old, decrepit arena, with seats still made of wood, our ‘gold seats’ were behind the players, and I don’t mean they were up behind a wall, sectioned off, with glass and several security guards checking our tickets and telling us to stay back. No, they were right behind the players. Reach out and tap a guy on the helmet kind of behind. Say, ‘Skate hard!’ kind of behind. Watch the steam come out of the helmets kind of behind.

Maple Leaf and Senator fans will be happy to hear that there were actually Toronto (four) and Ottawa (two) jerseys in the crowd. Two patrons wearing Toronto jerseys sat beside us. They said they were sent the sweaters from family in Canada; they have never been to Canada themselves.

All the other viewers were wearing soccer scarves and chanting football songs. The two teams’ fans are segregated – the home team fans sit behind the benches, and the visiting team fans sit on the opposite side of the arena. (There are no seats behind the nets. This is where the coffee, meat pies and chips are sold.)

If you close your eyes, it sounds like you are at an international soccer match with the drums drumming and chanting, rather than a hockey game. In fact, the announcer calls it a ‘match’ too, not a game, and the goalie is called a ‘keeper’ by the patrons in a country full of soccer.

Predictably, the majority of power lines on the teams are made up of North American and Czech players. The Scottish league is only allowed to hire 10 “imports” at a time, however, so the other lines are a mixture of local Scottish or EU players who all work full-time at other jobs during the day. What was interesting was the North American players did have very distinctive moves. You know they are from Canada just by what they did. The defenders from Canada or the U.S.A., for instance, were superb at backward skating, using the long stick, checking in the corners, and throwing a fit if any player from the opposite team hung around the net after the whistle. The forwards from North America all used the backward short pass and kept the passing hole in front of the net open. One poor Scottish defender named Beatson kept shielding his goalie, and unfortunately scored on his own net twice by missing the puck and letting it bounce off of his own glove.

Sadly, the other passing lines couldn’t receive the passes much better. I don’t think I have ever seen so much icing, off-sides, or pucks bounce off of boards. One “newly acquired import” from Canada named Reaney was so overweight that he could barely move on the ice. Essentially, he was making $30,000 a year in a beer league. So all you players out there who love hockey, but feel like you’re too old – begin applying to the Scottish league!

The one truly redeeming quality of the Scottish hockey league is the informal, family atmosphere that exists between the players and the fans. They walk in and out of the arena together; share the same halls; and greet each other and chat informally both before and after the ‘match’. In this way, all of the Scottish players are brought up through the same club, starting as fans when they’re children and becoming involved in the teaching programs and workshops like the country’s top soccer club leagues.

In Canada, it would be very unlikely for most young players to ever met an NHL player. They are kept separate and above from the plebian population (unless one has the money to pay for the privilege of even having a card signed). It was nice to know that professional players, even in Scotland, actually dress, warmup, and change and chat after the game just like any other person. Yes, they actually are human; their equipment stinks the same as any bag in the back trunk or basement. They are not just gold two-dimensional statues on a card – they are real working players! Good on ye!