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.