(05/29/23)

Junglepixiebelize - Recollections of a Gringa Pioneer ​

​Nancy R Koerner - Copyright@2023 - All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
"Sub Umbra PWD"

​ Dry Season – February to mid-May – Three and a half months of scorching sun and billowing limestone dust. Time of year in which it is not likely to rain, but once-in-a-while, still does.
​
Rainy Season – June through January – Eight and a half months when it mostly rains, at least, a lot of the time, IF it’s going to rain, except, sometimes, it doesn’t.

​In the mid-to-late 1970’s, the Western Highway was paved only on the long stretch between Hattieville and Roaring Creek. And some pretty terrible paving it was. With miles and miles of third-world, cheap, crumbling asphalt, it was so deeply potholed and patched, it could have been Detroit. What was supposed to be a two-lane road had somehow ending up being only one-and-three-quarters lanes wide. There was no gradual berm on which to pull over. Instead, the abrupt asphalt edge was a drop-off – a four-inch vertical cliff – with big chunks broken off. The bad news was that you could break an axle hitting those potholes. Hell, you could break an axle just trying to pull over. The good news was that your speed was self-regulating. 

​Beyond Roaring Creek, it was all dirt-road through the near-contiguous villages all the way to San Ignacio: first Camalote, then Teakettle, Blackman Eddy, Ontario, Unitedville, Georgeville, Esperanza, Red Creek, Santa Elena… ​
On the Western Highway, the condition of the road
itself ​limited how fast you could go.

​Well, actually, that’s not exactly true. Each of the villages had a dirt-road thoroughfare, but the short stretches in-between were paved. It was maddening. Why was there paving where the people didn’t live? Why not pave through the respective villages, and have the dirt road in between? Because, unfortunately, the dirt road was never “dirt.” In the wet season, it was MUD. In the dry season, it was DUST.
 
Belizeans were fastidious in their level of cleanliness. Even if old faded clothing had worn thin, or had been skillfully patched, it was properly laundered. Mothers bathed their youngsters in late afternoon, served “tea” as the shadows grew long, and then took their children out to “go walk.” During the day, these women had worked and they took pride in the homes – cleaning, dusting, cooking, washing, and mopping the linoleum floors daily. But evening was for “promenade,” the social hour.
​My old friend, Miss Alice Nord (“Mizz Nawd” - RIP) told me that, twenty-something years before, in the 1950’s, when the Hawkesworth Bridge was new, only about one vehicle per week drove to Cayo from Belize City. A lorry, or a Land Rover, was a novelty back then. Being accustomed only to the sounds of breeze and birds chirping, the little children would hear the motor from a long way off, and come running to watch in utter fascination. But now, in 1979, dozens of vehicles per day rumbled past the colorful wood-frame houses of the villages. And, with each one, a giant cloud of dust rose up and slowly drifted on the trade winds. It wafted over the newly-washed clean clothes on the line, right through the open windows, louvres, and doors of the fastidiously-cleaned houses. The women wailed, and angrily shook their mops at the passing traffic.
 
At some point, the Public Works Department (PWD), developed the kindly practice of using water trucks – with a big tank, piping, and a horizontal spray-bar – to go out on those dry parched roads and spray them to keep the dust down. Perhaps each village had to be treated according to its own autonomous municipality, when the situation could likely have been better-handled by means of a country-wide agenda. But Belize was young, and infrastructure still emergent. We had to crawl before we could walk.
 
You’d see them with their shovels, on the roadside, filling dirt potholes with more dirt, packing it down with their foot. You could almost imagine them, looking at the repair, and saying "NOW STAY” – even though the pothole would be back to its original depth and treachery as soon as it rained again. 
 
As progress came to Belize through the years, eventually, the PWD in Cayo was issued their very own yellow and black safety sign:

SLOW    MEN WORKING 
Except that it was spaced badly, so it seemed to read:
SLOW MEN    WORKING​

In fact, the PWD had a reputation for working so S-L-O-W-L-Y, it was the butt of many jokes.
 
Question: How many PWD workers does it take to fill a hole on the Western Highway?
Answer: Eight. One to fill the hole, and seven to stand around, and encourage him. “Yah, mayn.” 

There also seemed to be some unspoken PWD rules: 
  • 1) Never assign 3 men to a job, when 12 will do. 
  • 2) Never work too fast, or you’ll get fired by making the other men look bad. 
  • 3) Never work a job on a weekday that could be better done on a weekend for time-and-a-half pay. 
In fact, the PWD had a reputation for working so S-L-O-W-L-Y, it was the butt of many jokes.
 
Question: How many PWD workers does it take to fill a hole on the Western Highway?
Answer: Eight. One to fill the hole, and seven to stand around, and encourage him. “Yah, mayn.” 

There also seemed to be some unspoken PWD rules: 
  • 1) Never assign 3 men to a job, when 12 will do. 
  • 2) Never work too fast, or you’ll get fired by making the other men look bad. 
  • 3) Never work a job on a weekday that could be better done on a weekend for time-and-a-half pay. 
There was even a question, sometimes, about the occasional bulldozer or road-grader, that was found, seemingly abandoned, on the Mountain Pine Ridge, a mile or two south from the Western Highway. 

One  such story was that maybe the driver was simply honoring the National Motto: "Sub Umbra Floreo." Maybe he had sold off the diesel to a local farmer, then gone back down the road, and purchased a chapparito of extra strong rum at Mizz Helen Gray’s ​shop in Georgeville. (Of course, she would have proved it was extra-strong by pouring a few drops on the counter-top, and lighting it with a match. 

​​WHOOSHH! 🔥 Yah, mayn! Dis da di reel ting, fu tru. Then he’d head for the shade of the closest mango tree, sit down, and do some serious “flourishing." 
​​But my favourite PWD story was heading west for home after a rare visit with John and Carolyn Carr at Banana Bank. And, sure enough, the PWD water truck in front of me was going V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y... diligently spraying the water on the dirt-road to keep the dust down, except it was… wait for it... wait for it... on a Sunday, for time-and-a-half pay, in the wet season… in the pouring rain! 
 
(NOTE: My sincere thanks 🙏 Juan Pasos formerly of the PWD, who not only provided me with a photo of the old water-truck – but also assured me that his compadres at PWD could take a good-natured ribbing.)