I couldn't help myself...

Once again a delay in posting here, this time because I am starting two businesses I had not expected to start. Last Wednesday, following my 5PM AA meeting, I wanted to stop someplace to eat. However, I wasn't feeling adventurous, and didn't want to go to my reliable place, Wendy's, and have the fabulous sauted fish with lime sauce. What I wanted was a menu guide. So over the next three days I created Placencia Marketing Insights to produce a menu guide, and Food to Go, a delivery service formed in partnership with a couple that own a local wine bar/restaurant. By Monday I had a mockup of the guide and am getting quotes for printing it. By this coming Monday I'll have established the prices for inclusion of menus and listings, and will start hustling it to the restaurants.

It is a much needed publication because there is no regular media restaurants can advertise in, and those out of the village, particularly, need a way to reach the tourists who pass through in the heart of the season. Expats I have talked to love the idea - some nights you don't want to cook, or go out, and to have a menu, and then have the dinner delivered, has great appeal. This is a service available all over the U.S., if it is available in Portland (Maine) it is not been promoted properly. So my time has been consumed putting that together.

Life has gone on - perhaps not the best choice of words to use in talking about the local cemetery. Our Rotary club spent Saturday cleaning and raking the cemetery, cleaning the fence etc. It is very small, but remarkably sustainable. Back in Maine, the temperature of the ground deeper than 4 feet is 54 degrees (F), but here it is much warmer. That means that bodies tend to decompose faster. In the following photograph you can see sand (the ambient soil) mounds for graves, as well as concrete coffins or covers, I'm not sure which. The small blue one you see is for a baby who was either still born or died at birth. As you can well imagine, the sand mounds have a tendency flatten over time, and because there are no plans or maps of the cemetery showing where people are buried, it is not unheard of for a grave to be dug, with pieces of bone in the diggings.

As you can see in this picture, even the concrete ones can be swallowed by the earth.

One of the Rotarians helped with a burial - they hit the water table 1-1/2 feet down, and with some difficulty dug a grave 4 feet deep. When they put the wooden coffin in, it floated, so they had to pile sand on top of it to sink it.

What I find very interesting is how death is referred to - people's birth dates and death dates are given - it is their sunrsie and sunset. So my sunrise is April 20, 1945. Unless there is some catastrophy that befalls me, it'll be a while before my sunset, and who knows where that will be.

Enough about death - or sunsets. Here's a picture of two people with interesting stories. The gentleman is Harald, the current president of our Rotary Club. She is Sandi, the immediate past President. Fifteen or so years ago she was hitchhiking around Central America, stopped in Belize, and never left. She manages a local airline terminal at the airstrip, and sells quality shrimp on the side. Harald came to Belize, or should I say British Honduras, 35 years ago. At that time

none of the roads in the country were paved, and in the rainy season it was quite possible to get trapped between rivers when rains in the mountains caused the rivers to submerge bridges. At that time there was a narrow gauge railroad that served the banana plantations. The railroad is no more, but the bridges are still in use as part of the highway - and are one lane wide, probably not much more than 8.5 feet, if that. Harald came because he wanted to be a bush pilot. That didn't happen, but somehow he ended up in Placencia, which at the time was a remote fishing village accessible by boat or a foot trail. Four wheel drive was required, and every week he would buy fish from the fishermen, truck it through the brush up the peninsula, and take it to other towns in the country and sell it. The "road" started in Maya Beach, about 10 miles north of Placencia, and he had a trailer there and would use it as well, bringing back fruit and vegetables and other goods to Placencia. He would have to unhitch the trailer in Maya Beach, and then shuttle back and forth to get the stuff to Placencia. Now he has Placencia's answer to WalMart - his store sells groceries, alcohol, hardware, lumber, appliances, furniture, housewares - and his daughter runs the pharmacy upstairs. They are good people. (Harald and Sandi are not a couple.)

A word about sleeping - For most of my life I've cuddled under a pile of quilts and blankets, warding off the cold. Exceptions in the short Maine summer, though it was only a handful of nights each summer when a sheet would do, or not. Now I go to sleep on top of the bed in my shorts, ceiling fans and a pedestal fan creating a caressing breeze. Occasionally I wake up and have to get under the sheet if it has gotten so cool that the fans are uncomfortable. This time of year I have to keep the east widows closed because thunderstorms can blow through in the night. As I write this the wind is blowing 19 knots with gusts to near 30. In a few minutes when I finish this I will go up on the roof and enjoy the wind, and watching distant flashes of lightning. Then to bed - a truly sensual experience.