All you need is love: A Mayan immersion in Belize June 22, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Belize , add a commentMy first day in Belize, I had come in from the dock, hot and confused and dusty. My pack weighed like a grey elephant on my back, and I had to find the bus stop. I stopped in at Gloria’s Restaurant, a big, breezy dining room where I could get directions and maybe grab a bite before heading into the jungle. I wasn’t in a conversation-striking mood.
But then I saw Brenda. She was enjoying a meal by herself on the plastic checkered tablecloth, a faraway smile in her eyes. I sensed a woman with a story to tell – not a tourist, but a traveler. I couldn’t resist, and I asked if I could join her.
She had just come from spending a week in a Mayan village in an experience that she said had changed her life – but then, she had opened her life for the changing some months ago. Like me, she had begun her journey in Mexico with a mission. Hers was a spiritual quest, and she wasn’t sure where or how long it would take her; she was just following her heart.
It’s a heart worth following, as I learned when I read her beautifully written chronology of those seven days – adventures that brought me to the edge of my seat, and reflections that moved me to the verge of tears. I, too, traveled these roads, but not with the depth and intensity of Brenda, and I thank her for slowing me down to see a little deeper.
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Dining with Gomier, The Rasta veggie man April 1, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Belize , add a comment
PUNTA GORDA TOWN, Belize – The best meal I had in Punta Gorda was prepared by a Rastafarian vegetarian by the name of Ignatius “Gomier” Longville. And the conversation was even better than the food.
I asked Gomier to explain to me how he came to be a vegetarian. “I consider myself a Rasta man,” he said. “To be a Rasta man you have to be respectful; what I don’t like for myself, I shouldn’t like for you.
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Road to change for the Maya March 28, 2010
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SAN ANTONIO VILLAGE, Belize – The green school bus was already full when I climbed aboard in Punta Gorda. It was market day, and all the Maya ladies with their colorful satin dresses sat amid their purchases and their children, ready to make the journey home. As my eyes sought an opening, one of the men in the back got up and approached me with a broad smile.
It was Reyes Chun, chair of the Toledo Ecotourism Association, who lives in San Antonio Village, which is why I chose to come here. “This is my wife, Jenny,” he said, pointing to a smiling woman in purple satin, her hair combed carefully into a tight knot. “She will take care of you.”
Jenny and I chatted for the 40-minute drive, most of it down rugged and rutted gravel roads through the jungle. I asked her about the coming of the Guatemala Link Road, a feeder road for the Puebla to Panama highway, which will pave the way for the Free Trade Zone of the Americas. The highway is slated to run a few miles from her village, I have been told.
I’ve read a consultant’s report warning of severe environmental and community degradation in the highway’s wake if the government doesn’t provide a plan for their protection, and San Antonio is on the list of affected communities. Jenny doesn’t know about this. She’ll be glad to get to town more quickly, and she hopes that with the highway, electricity will come to the rest of the village. For now, however, this all seems a distant mirage.
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Hope for Toledo, Hope for the World March 25, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Belize , 1 comment so farAuthor’s note: This is the first of a several-part series on Toledo, the so-called “Forgotten District” in the south of Belize. As for myself, I know I will never forget.
PUNTA GORDA TOWN, Toledo District, Belize – White-capped waves are slapping the shore along Front Street, sparkling in the first light of day. Rhythms with their roots in distant Africa resonate from the Catholic Church, while at the other end of town, Mayan women in their shiny satin dresses, hair pulled up in tight buns, arrange their fresh cabbage, squash and greens to the plaintive ranchero of a Guatemalan radio station from across the border.
Later, the town square will ring with the melodies of Maya marimba musicians, facing off for their annual competition; in the evening, a Garifuna punta session breaks out on the balcony of The Reef Bar, its infectious drumbeats echoing out over the waves.
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From one jungle to another: A modern-day pioneer March 16, 2010
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It may not look like it at first, but Christopher Nesbitt has a big crew working for him here at Maya Mountain Research Farm.
There are the chickens, who recycle kitchen scraps into eggs and meat. There are the soldier flies, who recycle what the chickens don’t want into larvae for chicken food. There are the leaf-cutter ants, who aerate the compacted soil and serve as more chicken feed. And then there are the vast armies of microbes working to bring back the natural balance to what was once a stripped and sterile cattle farm.
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Life lessons on Maya Mountain March 13, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Belize , add a commentSolastalgia – 1. A feeling of loss at demise of Earth; mourning for Gaia; profound ennui.
2. Lost connection to nature; an eco-psychological imbalance.
Antidotes: Ecological restoration
Permaculture
So begins Albert Bates in his introduction to permaculture – a design system whose name originated from the idea of “permanent agriculture” and evolved into a system promoting permanence in the human culture itself.
“Solastalgia is what happens when we find that we are one of the only animals that soils its own nest, and then lives in it. Then we get sad and depressed,” he says. “We ask ourselves, ‘Can we survive?’”
Bates, a founder of the Global Ecovillage Network and a prolific author and public speaker, has made his way through miles of Mayan villages and tropical forest to Maya Mountain Research Farm in southern Belize, as he does every March. It’s part of a hectic schedule that has him traveling all over the globe, from Estonia to the Holy Lands and beyond, preparing willing participants for what he calls The Great Change: a transition to a world less dependent on petroleum and other carbon-based fuels, and more in harmony with the Earth.
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Boats, buses and banana plantations March 12, 2010
Posted by Tracy in : Belize, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras , add a comment
It’s hard to believe it was just two days ago I awoke at 2:30 a.m., had one last coffee with my new friend Homero (host of a highly recommended casa particular, more info below), and headed for the Havana airport. The trip to Belize would be a long and grueling one – there are no direct flights to Belize from Havana, and I had to pass through Mexico City, then spend the night in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
The contrast could not have been greater. The Cuban landscape is free of commercial clutter; aside from a few billboards proclaiming the values of the revolution, or lamenting the Yanqui bloqueo (embargo) or the imprisonment of the Cuban Five, there is no advertising anywhere. For a Yanqui traveler, it’s at once a shock and a relief to the eye.
From the moment I landed in Honduras, on the other hand, my eyes were assaulted with ads for cell phones, soft drinks, snack foods, cars, and any number of consumible items. Dos Molinas Guest House – also highly recommended if you find yourself in Honduras’ second city, the gateway to Roatan, Copán and many other tourist destinations – is located in a typical dusty Honduran street but just two blocks from the City Mall, a brightly lit megaplaza filled with Guess jeans, StrideRite and PayLess shoes, Starbucks coffee and the like. I thought I had stumbled into a forgotten corner of the Galleria by mistake, with blonde, scantily-clad models around every corner.
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