There is one hour left until the Game of the Century starts and there is no electricity anywhere in Livingston, Guatemala. Belgium’s national football team will play its first semi-final since I was five days old, possibly (let’s not get too entitled) the last one in my lifetime. And I’m going to miss the game because a thunderstorm has left the whole town without power?
I want to cry – this can’t be real! Continue Reading →
Imagine a handkerchief of a country, barely 350.000 souls strong, where any of the following could happen:
-A Latino speaks with a thick Caribbean accent: “Hi, my brotha! Wassup?!”
-A Maya bar owner turns on Bob Marley’s Greatest Hits, but switches after a couple of songs to old-fashioned Spanish music.
-With a backdrop of Cohune palms and banana trees, two white men with woolly beards work the field with an ox.
-In a small town shop, a young Chinese boy translates a customer’s English into Chinese for his mum, the shopkeeper.
-A black guy leans out of a bright blue church bus and shouts: “God bless you! Welcome to Belize!” Continue Reading →
You know you’ve been travelling in Belize for too long when…
1. You count your experiences in bug bites, not in days.
2. You know that there’s “no working during drinking hours” and that Belikin is “the only beer worth drinking”.
I ignore the blisters on my rugged hands as I tear a vine with a seemingly never-ending root from the soil. Yes, those hands that are routinely darting over the keyboard and performing other delicate tasks. After all, we become writers because we’re afraid of hard physical work, the heavy lifting and the spine-breaking labour in construction or on the field. I twist out yet another turf of grass, toss it on the ever-growing pile and decapitate a thorny weed with a hoe. I won’t make the mistake again of pulling it until my hands bleed. The dark clay stains my fingers, stains I’ll not manage to get off of my hands with even the most generous helping of soap. Continue Reading →
I realise that the next confession is not going to win me many rock ‘n roll points. But fuck that, Truth is my core value. And besides, I’m too old to pretend to be cooler than I actually am. So here it goes:
I like statistics. Continue Reading →
