The fire ants had made their way from my toes to my shin in a quick fashion, all the while staying true to their name. The slowly intensifying burning sensation was palpable, and the miniature red sea swarming my legs showed no signs of slowing down. Still, I was concentrating on what Dwayne was telling my wife and me about the endangered status of the howler monkeys in Belize without grimacing in pain.
“The black howler monkeys are endangered because of hunting and habitat loss. You can find them here in Belize, Mexico and Guatemala.”
Dwayne struck me as a quiet and passionate advocate for all things environmental. Belize was his home and he was proud of it. He had been working at the Community Baboon Sanctuary in Bermudian Landing for three years, and had been regaling the visitors of the centre with Indigenous worldviews on the flora and fauna around the area.
Taking us through various hiking trails around the centre, he explained that most of them were maintained by the local villagers and farmers in the area who had altruistic interests in helping maintain some of the howler monkey territories.
Dwayne, with his sun-strained eyes and tattered baseball cap, asked what we had planned for the rest of the afternoon as he leaned against an ancient-looking jungle tree. I noticed a row of leafcutter ants forming a line of red and green that was moving up the tree, dangerously close to his hands. He didn’t seem to care.
We both shrugged our shoulders in unison.
“Would you like to eat lunch with me?” He asked innocently.
I was struck by his gentle kindness towards two complete strangers coming from a place much colder than his. He led us to his battered and rusted truck, completely unidentifiable, and disappeared back into the visitor centre.
“You think this is a good idea?” My wife asked with some trepidation. “We don’t even know him.”
“It’ll be fine. He seems like a nice guy,” I said, briefly putting my wife at ease. Besides, this is why I travel in the first place. To meet people like Dwayne who are always willing to show strangers the genuine and unique nuances of their home.
I noticed my wife frantically looking through the passenger side window as we were driving, and it took me a minute to realize what she was doing. She was trying to memorize the route from the visitor centre to our destination, just in case something unsavoury was about to happen to us.
A 10-minute drive through the emerald-green farmland and we had arrived at our destination. To our surprise, that destination turned out to be a local villager’s home. Or, at least that’s what it appeared to be from the outside.
An island-time lunch hour
Dwayne, with his lackadaisical pace, approached the house just as a woman had exited, smiling and waving at us.
“Hi Mum,” he said.
Confused, I looked at my wife and whispered “Did we go to his parents’ place?”
“No, I think it’s a term of endearment,” she whispered back.
Marie was the owner of this house-turned-pop-up restaurant somewhere in Isabella Bank. A woman in her 50s, she and a team of two other people working in the kitchen created the local delicacies that were written with a black permanent marker on a piece of soggy, weathered cardboard hanging by the kitchen window.
Tostadas – $1
Rice and Beans – $2.50
Dates – $1.50
Assorted fruit – $3
Fry Jack – $1.00
We ordered the Spanish-inspired tostadas.
We were the only ones sitting on the porch who could fit exactly two picnic tables. Dwayne’s gaze wandered over to the banana tree standing in the distance. I had never seen bananas that weren’t bright yellow, sitting in a cardboard bin at our local grocery store ready to be purchased, like something out of a home decorating magazine. These bananas weren’t perfect, and yet, looked more inviting than the grocery store variety.
Dwayne shared stories of the political unrest in 2005, what family life in a country where time didn’t matter was like, and his future aspirations of wanting to travel just like my wife and I were doing at that moment. The conversation lasted an hour and a half, amid two more orders of tostadas and candied dates.
“Dwayne, I think your lunch hour is over! We’ve been here for almost two hours,” I said in a heightened panic. I’m going to get this awesome guy fired, I thought to myself. He looked at me stoically, concerned and amused at the same time. He waved his hand dismissively and mumbled something about island time. Perhaps I had been projecting onto him the anxiety-ridden and fear-producing pace of Western life.
After a few minutes of relaxed silence, taking in the sunshine and quiet sounds of the surrounding farmland, he mentioned in passing, “My girlfriend is having her ultrasound right now. She’s pregnant. We’re very excited.”
Mid-tostada, my wife blurted out, “Don’t you want to be there?” with a shocked expression, crumbs and cheese falling from her mouth, not knowing if she had overstepped her bounds of the newly formed friendship.
“I was supposed to be there, but she’ll be OK. I’m having lunch with some new friends.”
I understood at that moment that Dwayne was the essence of Belize. Not moving with a sense of urgency like I was accustomed to back home in Canada, he was able to slow down and reintegrate with life and the nature around him.
Life was meant to be lived slowly and thoughtfully, not to be wasted by assuming we have more time than we do. Immediacy had not cemented itself in the Belizean psyche, and Dwayne was living proof.
This was a gift I could take back home with me, if even for a little while. Now, when I see red ants in my garden, albeit not the same hellish ants taking bites out of my shin, I’m reminded of Dwayne and his Belizean hospitality.
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image 1 Black howler monkey family at Baboon Community Sanctuary by Kent MackElwee via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0) 2 image by Ralph Klein from Pixabay 3 image by Bình Nguyễn from Pixabay 4 Belizean lunch, Kaldari, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
