Santa Elena Town of Belize expanding and now has three vegetable stands on main street.

Macal River market vegetable stand.


TWIN TOWNS OF WESTERN BELIZE AGRICULTURE AND RECREATIONAL AREA

SANTA ELENA TOWN OF THE WESTERN BELIZE AGRICULTURE AND RECREATIONAL AREA EXPANDING AND NOW HAS THREE PERMANENT VEGETABLE STANDS ALONG MAIN STREET. Bananas every day at 10 bananas for a $1 Belize, or .50 cents USA. Small papaya a $1 each Belize, or .50 cents each all year round. We never shop over at the Macal River Market across the river on the bluff anymore. We go into San Ignacio Town of the Twin Towns on the other side of the Macal River, only to reach the Post Office and check our mail box, to get money from Atlantic Bank and they say they will soon open a bank branch on our side of the river in Santa Elena Town and of course we do not yet have a stationary store and must go across to Angelus Press on the San Ignacio side. The other item we must go across the river for is to find a butcher to buy meat. For everything else you can buy it right here in Santa Elena Town. One day we might even get a police station?

Charlie Trew drops in for visit from Washington D.C.

CHARLIE TREW a friend from our Belize Culture listserve, that has been on the internet about 17 years. Charlie was visiting myself Ray at Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel. That is the hostel community kitchen area in the background. Charlie is drinking Beliken beer, the only beer available in Belize. Sorry the photo got blurred, but since that is all I have? Charlie comes down a couple of times a year, from his job in Washington, D.C. where he works in the Library of Congress as a classified documents person. Charlie also has a vacation home in San Jose Succotz, a small town about 8 miles away from our Green Parrot Valley in Santa Elena Town. This small town of Succotz is at the foot of the hilltop temple Mayan ruins of Xununtanich across the Mopan River by a small barge, hand cranked ferry, then a mile up the hill. Every time Charlie comes, I ask for books for donating to the Santa Elena Town Public Library. I get to read them first. He can get discards from his libraries up there and usually packs a bag for the check in airplane baggage with a dozen or so. Sometimes his taste is gawd awful in reading material. You can't argue with a FREE thing though and our library needs donations badly. Everybody is grateful for his gifts and thoughtfulness. The one thing about this area and Succotz in particular, people have been living around here for the past 14,000 years that we know of. Must be good living hey? I would say so and Charlie says so too!

Western Belize most common languages!

WESTERN BELIZE LANGUAGES

By Ray Auxillou, Nov. 2008

Western Belize has a multitude of languages. About 75% of the Western Belize population, around 125,000 people are fairly new immigrants over the past 30 to 50 years.

The main language for school and government is ENGLISH. This enables everybody to talk together and communicate with the outside world. SPANISH is the next dominant language. There are many lesser languages. Of the 22 Mayan languages in Central America, both Yucatec and Mopan Maya are spoken in some of the older peoples homes here in Belize. Most people speak two languages and often three. Many are versatile in four or five languages.

Languages spoken in Western Belize are German, found in a small way in the commercial sector and among the Mennonites where it is widely spoken. About 35,000 people speak German in the industrial and agricultural HEARTLAND of Belize, either as a home language, or a second language. All of these people in turn usually can communicate in Creole, a version of bastardized English favored in the port town and along the coastal villages and towns to the East. These German speakers also speak good English as well as Creole and often Spanish. Our Creole has more to do with the Jamaican dialect, but has widespread uses among the lower class of clerks in the civil service. At one time, Creole was the main language of Belize during the Colonial times. It is a Caribbean hangover from 50 years ago. Since the media are concentrated in the port town, a bastion of Creole speaking coastal citizens, you will find Creole dominates in the civil service and unfortunately all over the country in the primary schools, on radio and television stations. Creole speakers from the coastal communities often take jobs as teachers, nurses, civil servants and policemen. This is really confusing to children in rural primary school. Often people in Western Belize cannot understand broad thick Creole speakers from the coast, who have a heavy Caribbean dialect. Pretty much like a city person from London, England trying to understand a fellow Englishman farmer from York. Or a high German speaker in Germany trying to understand a low German speaker from Austria. Or somebody from Rome, Italy trying to understand a villager from the mountainous interior of the Southern part of Italy.

Common also are the languages of Arabic, Hindu, French, Romanian, and Italian. These are usually restaurant owners and business people from the merchant class. Very common these days are both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, which while having the same writing, have different languages is my understanding. Cantonese speakers come from the industrial areas of mainland China and the Mandarin speakers usually come from Taiwan, an island off the coast of mainland China. There are a couple thousand Chinese speakers.

To get along in Western Belize, you need both English and Spanish. You will find also a need sometimes to interpret Creole into English. Nearly all Spanish speakers in Western Belize can switch to English easily mid conversation. This is not always true for English speakers trying to switch to Spanish. All the other language speakers can switch easily to English and sometimes fairly into poor Spanish.

BELIZE joins with Guatemala over border Mayan ruins of EL PILAR

Guatemala - BELIZE. The Mayan City of El Pilar was first mapped out by archeologist Anabel Ford in 1983. Anabel Ford had been working in the Mayan jungle since 1972 as a researcher from University of California, Santa Barbara, UCSB. The Archaeological site El Pilar straddles the borders of Belize and Guatemala.

Now the initiative to turn the site into a peace park will become a reality. A Memorandum of Understanding between Guatemalan officials and UCSB will be signed on the 22 of October in Santa Barbara. Guatemalan dignitaries Hector Escobedo, director general of the Directorate of Cultural and Natural Patrimony in Guatemala; Erick Ponciano, director of the Institute of Culture and History; and Vilma Fialko, coordinator of the Project of Archaeological Site Protection of Petén will sign the Memorandum as representatives of the Guatemalan Government.

The El Pilar Peace Park Initiative is a collaborative research project on both sides of the Guatemala and Belize borders. The signing of the MOU marks the 25th anniversary of Ford's discovery of El Pilar.

Several organizations dedicated to the preservation of archeological and cultural heritage will participate, Exploring Solutions Past ~ The Maya Forest Alliance, MesoAmerican Research Center at UCSB and Institute of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, ISBER.

After the signing of the MOU, an exhibit focusing on El Pilar will continue through October 31. The exhibit includes maps of El Pilar, the Maya forest, and the forest garden, and wall-sized panels that feature photographer Macduff Everton's images documenting the research of El Pilar.

Anabel Ford explains that El Pilar at its most vibrant, the period from A.D. 600 to 900, had a population of more than 20,000 people who lived in a mosaic landscape of city homes and gardens. This contrasted with areas of forest reserve and agricultural fields, such as present-day traditional Maya forest gardens. Today, El Pilar is at the heart of a 5,000-acre archaeological reserve linking Belize and Guatemala and celebrating the culture and nature of the Maya forest.

http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventuresinbelize/

Falconview Hostel NEWS SERVICE

NEWS ITEMS OF WESTERN BELIZE RECREATIONAL AREA

• THE EPA, OR ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT WITH THE EU
• JUNGLE SOUNDS OF HILLVIEW,
• UK CITIZENS INVITED TO IMMIGRATE TO THE CARIBBEAN
• BACKLOG IN BELIZE IMMIGRATION APPLICATIONS STILL THERE, AFTER 8 MONTHS OF UDP MANAGEMENT.
• WESTERN BELIZE RECREATIONAL AREA, GETS JAVIER FLYING SERVICE. FROM OFFSHORE BARRIER REEF TOURIST PLACES, TO LOCAL MUNICIPAL CENTRAL FARM AIRSTRIP!

Nothing much in the weekend news. PM Barrow disappeared on personal leave. The Cable Company dropped CARIBBEAN NEWS last Tuesday night after Channel 5 news. I waited for an hour or more to get the CARIBBEAN NEWS and hear about the EPA signing with the EU. But all we got was a substituted USA news TV program of no interest to us here in Belize, on their political convention up in North America. Something to do with Republicans. Will have to pay for some internet time today, to see what happened with the EPA and the position of Belize and CARICOM? None of our local media seem at all interested in the subject and are doing no reporting on the matter.

One item, was the Opposition party the PUP party newspaper rag, the BELIZE TIMES newspaper said something about victimization by the UDP who are in power and control the government. Claimed that Rene Montero our local UDP area representative fired about 15 employees from the BAHA agriculture unit. I wonder what that was about? They didn’t perform to my satisfaction either last year, when I dealt with them. Though I never thought they had that many employees.

Far as my experience has been, BELTRAIDE, BELIZE TOURIST BOARD and now BAHA an agriculture unit headquartered at Central Farm in the Western Belize Area are poor performing entities. At least the Tourist Board provides a useful government function in collecting accommodation taxes. I formed the opinion decades ago that Beltraide and the Belize Tourist Board were simply government institutions created to park PARTY HACKS and political relatives in government salaried jobs at tax payer expense. Surprised that BAHA fits the same mold according to this latest news item. Make work jobs, and no shows, I think the term is?

Neighbor here, supposedly a naturalized Guatemalan Belizean, still cannot get his papers for citizenship and also papers for the government house lot on which he built his house. Time elapsed is measured in years. Apparently a lot of people are complaining about it in Western Belize Cayo District. Obviously the new UDP government has failed to deal with the backlog found in Immigration applications. Down in the CREOLE port town, they are complaining about the shift in demographics from CREOLE to MESTIZO majority. Fact is; that the port town pays a lot of taxes, but it is a re-circulating type circle of government salaries and activity, that is non productive and basically they keep circulating the same tax revenue money. Each tax bite reduces the amount available until the rural districts foreign exchange earnings, trickle in more freshly earned money. The only NEW MONEY coming in; is from the Tourist Industry, oil taxes and the Agriculture Sector mostly. These foreign exchange sources are not in Belize City the port. In order to provide those monies being re-circulated in the port, you have to have the PRODUCTIVE SECTOR earning foreign exchange in the rural DISTRICTS. The new amateur UDP government hasn’t awoken to that nugget of truth yet, it seems? In favoring and pleasing their port town CREOLE dominance of the political process, they are spiting and hurting the economy, because the energy and foreign exchange is coming from out here mostly in the DISTRICTS. The port town media CREOLES argue they want the immigrants stopped from Central America, but heck the port Creoles won’t go out into the districts and start farming, ranching and light manufacturing? It is cheap land that is attracting immigrants and all the associated opportunities to grow with Belize. Thank God for immigrants, without them Belize would have nothing.

It is 1:30 a.m. in the early nighttime morning hours and I guess my noisy tapping away on the computer keyboard is aggravating the birds in their nests outside my windows. Lot of disturbance and jungle noises. Sounds like one of those meditation jungle sounds CD’s you buy to lower stress. All kinds of birds waking up complaining and talking. Sorry birds!

One of the interesting items in world news, is that the UK economy has hit a 60 year low. That is going back to the late 1948 period. That is post war, when the UK was demobilizing their army and pulling out of occupied Europe AFTER World War 2. The USA developed the MARSHAL plan to rebuild Germany and other European countries, funneling billions of dollars into those mainland Europeans, but the UK was saddled with the HUGE lend lease debt for war materials to pay off. England was worse off in that period than Germany and France. No MARSHAL plan for the UK. That has got to be some ECONOMIC LOW indeed for the UK? Think if I lived there, I’d sell everything and move to Belize, or the Caribbean countries. At least the weather is nice all year round, you can sleep in a tent and grow your own food. Lots of business opportunities too. Belize needs machinists that can make things, using applied engineering from off the shelf stuff, for export to Central America, plus food processing skills and modern packaging skills, Belize has a strong but small English expatriate numbers scattered around Belize, of immigrants over the decades. Bare bones living costs for retirees who rent, are about $650 usa per month. Some expatriats are in the offshore barrier reef cayes and some are out here in Cayo Western District living in the foothills. Lot of inter-marriage with Belizeans. The Americans outnumber the British as immigrants to Belize though.

Javier Flying Service offers charter flight now from the barrier reef islands of San Pedro and Caye Caulker tourist towns, to the Central Farm airstrip, five miles from the twin towns, agriculture and tourist shopping centers by local taxi.

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• Falconview Adventure Hostel telephone: 663 5580 Santa Elena Town, on the slope of Green Parrot Valley. Upscale and budget accomodations.
• Charter plane flight, to and from Cayes tel: 223 5360, or 610 0446 to Central Farm airstrip. ($375 or $415 usa plus 10% GST tax. (Cessna 172 ) 3 passengers.
• Local taxis are cars with green license plates in Western Belize, local fares are $8 bz, $4 usa, or 2 EU.

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