Belize is a third world country.  I’m not sure where the second world is, but I guess there’s the old world, (Europe & China) the new world, (“America”) and the third world.  (?)   “Emerging nations”, eh?  I can only describe things in Belize, but perhaps you can draw some inferences about other countries in the same boat.  Bear in mind, however, that, from what we saw of the ravages of Hurricane Mitch, Honduras, Nicaragua & El Salvador may be a cut below Belize.

[New footnote: (Nov 2002)  A reader sent me this definition of "third world".]

First of all, Belize doesn’t have any oil or other mineral resources that would give her a natural base of something to export.  She exports sugar and fruit (mainly bananas) and not much of these, because she’s competing with many larger countries, as well as huge combines in the US like Chiquita and Dole. [Footnote: Shrimp] As a result, the Gross National Product is pitifully small, and the general standard of living is low.  The per capita GNP in Belize is about $3000 US, which means that a family of four might have income of around $12000 per year.  As in most countries, 80% of the wealth concentrates with 20% of the population, the folks out in the hinterlands are well below the “poverty level” in the US. They don’t have a car, a refrigerator, a VCR, a big TV.  (Two or three families might share a TV)  Country folk have a well (no running water) and an outhouse. 

The typical provincial family gets by on about $60 a week.  How they do this is interesting.

WATER

Corozal has running water.  It is pumped out of shallow (20 foot) wells, chlorinated heavily, and accumulated in a very large elevated concrete tank which looked to me, the first time I saw it, like one of the floating apartment buildings in BladeRunner. It is distributed through out the town in PVC pipe.  Each house has a little water meter; the average monthly water bill is 15 dollah.  ($7.50 US) The water department hand delivers the bill.  The geology of Belize is, in a word, limestone.  I looked at a recently dug well, and the water was white with lime.  This lime accumulates in your pot when you boil water, and on your skin when you shower.  It will accumulate in the bottom of our hot water heater when we get one.  (We have one in the trailer, and it has a special chemical rod to deal with minerals.  I just looked at it and it is about half coated with little calcium barnacles after only two months here.)

The more affluent people have a cistern that accumulates rain water.  Getting this to flow is a trick; some just run it out and drink it or wash in it.  Ideally, you have a pump that pumps it into another tank on the roof so that you can use it for showering. I use a little tap water for boiling potatoes & pasta, and we wash & rinse the dishes in it.  It has so much chlorine in it that you can taste it, and that’s reassuring!!  We brush our teeth in it, but we don’t drink it. 

Drinking water is available in liters, gallons & 5-gallon jugs.  The Crystal truck (a Bowen & Bowen enterprise) comes by three times a week, and delivers water when I need it; 5 gallon for 5 dollah.  It is “treated by activated charcoal filtration, reverse osmosis, ozonation and ultraviolet light.”  In spite of being ultraviolated, it tastes pretty good. It sits on a stand next to the reefer, where we use it for coffee, ice cubes, drinking water, kept in the reefer in smaller bottles for drinking. 

REEFERS

I thought that was a necessity.  They have all sizes here, at varying prices.  A tiny one, maybe two cubic foot (size of the one in my camper trailer) costs $200 or so, we bought one before the trailer got here, so now we have two.  Fortunately, the one in the trailer runs on gas; handy when the power goes out.  The Belizeans who don’t have a reefer buy for today, eat at noon, and eat the leftovers for dinner.  You get ice cream from a guy on a bicycle.  He has a little bell that sings (to me) “good humor, good humor”.  I’ve developed a craving for ice cream down here that I thought I’d forgotten.  (is that what they mean by “second childhood?”)

SHOWERS

Taken for granted in the US, hot water heaters are a real luxury here.  You can boil up some water for washing dishes, but the shower is generally cold, and innervating (to say the most.)  It’s less cold in the summer, and if you let it run for a while, while you’re soaping up, it seems to warm up.  Charlotte and I speculate about whether we’re just getting used to it, or it’s actually getting warmer.  After scheming to put black PVC pipe on the roof as a sunshine hot water heater, I have decided to get a real gas hot water heater. [Footnote: See El Calendador] The sun goes away at night, or for a couple or three months here in the fall, and I’m worried about my heart.  

FLUSH  TOILETS

You have to have running water piped into the house to have a flush toilet. 

SEWERAGE

If you have a flush toilet, you need sewerage.  In Corozal, there is no city sewer system – each house has its own septic tank.  If you’re “city folks” you may not know about a septic tank and how they work.  Sewage goes in one end, through a couple of baffles which encourage the solids to settle in the bottom of the tank, where they decompose.  (If they don’t you have to pump them out every couple of years.)  The waste water comes out the other end into a leeching field, where it soaks into the ground.  My leeching field in the states was about fifty yards long and 20 yards wide.  The leeching field here is much smaller, maybe 6 feet square.  In Creole, it is called the “soakaway” and you can see it.  (If you’re lucky, you can’t smell it.)   It works because the soil is very sandy.  It rains one or two inches an hour here when it rains (I mean the sky opens up, and I start thinking about building an ark) but the standing puddles are almost gone in another hour. [Footnote: Septic pumpers.]

HOUSING

Forty years ago, when this was British Honduras, all the housing was wood.  (Maybe you’ve heard of “Honduras Mahogany”?) Technology, in the form of concrete blocks, changed all of that.  Now we have a nation of masons, some very accomplished, and some who think they’re a lot better than they are.  They are so convinced of their prowess that you can’t change their ideas at all.  They generally mix both concrete and mortar on the ground, with a square shovel.  Then they put it on a hod, or in a wheelbarrow, and take it to the work.  The idea that they might mix it in a wheelbarrow is far from their minds.  The entire town is dotted with five- or six-foot splashes where they have mixed concrete.  (This includes my back yard, where it is thwarting my dreams of having a lawn.)   They use concrete blocks in the mistaken confidence that their house will be more hurricane-proof.  In fact, the blocks are not very strong.  (This is because they were built with sea sand, which doesn't have enuf edges to hold the 'crete together. )  If you hold a block over your head and drop it, it will break.  (Not on your head, Fool! – hold it out and drop it on the ground!)   This quality makes it easy to drill holes thru the wall for gas hoses, water pipes and electrical wires, but it doesn’t reassure me about the security of a block house.  A determined thief could just break through the wall, eh?

The old wooden houses are still around.  Many of them are beginning to list to leeward. Old Belize hands tell me that the families will live in them until they (the houses) collapse.

The termites are reputedly able to eat an entire (wooden) house in one day.  Our house is concrete block, but the ceiling has wood beams in it, and a colony of termites.  They chew, and little dusties accumulate on the surfaces below them.    You wipe these surfaces with a Chorox-soaked rag (like for example, the dining room table) before you eat. Once a month, our cleaning crew beats on the ceiling with broom handles and shakes down a cubic foot of dust, and then we don’t have dusties for a while.  (Life in the tropics, eh?)

LAWN CARE

Some people have lawn mowers, but the standard treatment for a grown-over lot is one or two guys with machetes.  The “mah-shet”, as they call it in Creole, is the national weapon.  Many people up here in the north are sugar cane choppers, but everyone has a machete.  They sharpen it like a razor, and keep it by the door.  Some carry it along when they go out.  Every week you read in the papers about someone being hacked severely or to death.  I think it’s ironic that a nation that outlaws guns is so heavily armed and violent. 

Anyway, I was talking about lawn care.  Some of the lawn care guys will manicure your whole lawn with a machete, using little short chopping strokes to cut the grass very close to the ground.  My lawn guy, Elvis, has access to a mower, but he does all the trimming around the house, plants, walks, etc. with his machete.  I am always very diplomatic with Elvis!!!. 

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