A great worker, and horse crazy to boot!

Although Noah has no new news on the closing, we’re still trying to move ahead on the property without spending much money. We ran into Bol near his house in San Antonio on Sunday, and asked if his son would be willing to put in a few days of work, even though we haven’t closed and had previously said we weren’t going to do this until after closing. He said sure, and his 22-year old son Selwin showed up bright and early Monday morning. We weren’t sure what to expect, since this was the son that Bol had said had lost his previous job because he stayed out late partying and didn’t show up for work on time. We were very pleasantly surprised, since Selwin jumped right into the work and worked with Tom for the entire day. They took down all the drywall on the ceiling in the first cabin, took down the termite-infested eaves, took that mess to the dump which is seven miles/45 minutes down the Georgeville Road, then started clearing the roof and gutters of the jungle that has started to grow up there in the past two years.

Selwin worked hard all day, and Tom said he works as fast as he does, which isn’t blindingly speedy, but is steady and consistent and a lot gets done. The other reason we hadn’t been sure what to expect is because the Belizean man who worked at the campground where we had been staying outside of San Ignacio worked steadily, but very, very slowly, and we didn’t know if that was the standard Belizean work speed. His name is Armando, but we had given him the nickname Slo-Mo, or Slow-Mow, since watching him amble along behind the lawnmower as he cut the grass was almost painful because he walked so slowly. Selwin isn’t like that; in one day, he and Tom finished what Tom had thought would take two days. Plus, Selwin, having been trained as a guide, is very knowledgeable about the Belizean flora and fauna, and things like scorpions dropping out of the ceiling didn’t really bother him because, as he explained to Tom, although their sting is very painful, there are no lasting ill effects. The girls next door had been right that the sting is worse when the scorpion is laying eggs, but it’s still only a matter of degree. Unless a person is allergic, they will recover from a scorpion sting.

Selwin also told us that the lizards are poisonous, which we had questioned since we’ve done a lot of reading about Belize, and we’d never read anything about poisonous lizards. Like the scorpions, they’re not deadly, but if they sting with their tails, it hurts more than a scorpion sting. Tom thinks he may have earned a little respect from Selwin, because at one point as Selwin pulled down a piece of drywall, a snake fell down. Selwin yelled “Snake!” and Tom grabbed his machete. Then Tom saw that it was a black snake, did a quick check with Selwin that black snakes are good because they eat the poisonous snakes, and rather than killing it he just steered it out the door. Tom has been feeling a little bit bad because he killed a red and black snake in the driveway the other day thinking it was a coral snake, but later found out that it was a fake coral snake. The woman up the road who runs a small bar told us the rhyme all Belizean kids learn in school: “Red and black, friendly jack; red, black and yellow, kill a fellow,” which is how the kids learn to recognize the very dangerous coral snake which won’t bite unless threatened, but if it bites a person, the person will probably die because no anti-venom is available in Belize. Selwin did warn us, however, that it’s likely we will come across the dangerous fer-de-lance on the property because the property has been empty so long. He said that once we clear the jungle away from the buildings and start getting more traffic, they’ll stay away, but we need to be cautious right now. We’re not looking forward to seeing the first fer-de-lance.

The only problem Tom had with Selwin was that he is as horse-crazy as I am. They stopped for lunch, and the three of us sat outside the camper watching the many birds in the custard apple tree, with Selwin telling us their names and how to identify them. At some point in the conversation one of us asked Selwin what he wants to do long-term, and he confessed that the reason he knows so much about nature in Belize is because he wants to get involved with a horse ranch, working with the horses and taking people on long rides, where he’ll have to be knowledgeable enough to answer all their questions. That opened the door to a lengthy horse discussion, where Selwin and I started talking about every horse we’ve ever owned, their good and bad points, how to care for horses in this climate, our various horse injuries, that fact that both of our mothers hate/hated the fact that we wouldn’t give up horses despite the fact that the mothers see them as dangerous, and how our dream jobs would be taking care of horses. At the end of the lunch hour, Tom had to basically tell us to shut up so Selwin could get back to work – but not before I found out that the job Selwin lost had been taking people on rides through the jungle, and that he would be willing to take Tom and I out for as long as we want to go when we get horses. And, since both Selwin and George now know what we want and are keeping their eyes open for us, we should be able to find a few horses we like relatively quickly after we close. As I said to Tom, we have a lot of work to do around here, but we have to relax a little, and it might as well be on horseback.

Despite the concerns with lizards, scorpions, and snakes, ants are quickly becoming our least favorite pest. They come in all shapes and sizes here, they’re everywhere, and they’re all annoying. If you stop to talk to somebody, you have to make sure you’re not standing in a fire ant nest because they’ll crawl up your legs, get in your pants, and bite. If you leave any type of food out for even a few minutes, they’re in the food. They’re crawling on trees, along the ground, in the bushes and leaves, and in every building. As Tom and Selwin were pulling down the ceiling, they found tons of big black ants. Selwin says these ants go into the termite nests and eat the termites, which is good, but what’s bad is that if they do this in a house that’s lived in, when the termites are gone they get in your clothes, and then they bite. Ant bites really burn, and although they’re not incredibly painful and don’t cause any long term damage, they’re so prevalent that it’s hard to get through an hour anywhere without getting bit.

Besides the ants, the only other struggle we’re having is with water and electric. Selwin says the reason we don’t get enough water pressure during the day is that the farmers down the line are opening their valves to irrigate their fields. We turn the hose on and stick it in the camper’s water tank first thing in the morning, and it usually runs for a few minutes while it bleeds out the pressure from the previous night, then stops until lunchtime when it runs for an hour or so, then it stops again until after dark. We manage to fill the tank every day, but it requires more time and attention than we’re used to having to spend on water. We’re also having trouble with our camper’s electricity. We run the generator for a few hours every day, which should be enough to charge the deep cycle battery, but by the time we go to bed the battery is usually so dead that the lights are dim and we can’t run the water pump and have light at the same time. We’ve solved the problem by running the generator while we shower and I make dinner, then I wash all the pots and pans before we eat, then we shut down the generator, turn off the lights and the pump, and spend the rest of the evening in candlelight, which is very romantic but not so convenient as flipping a switch and having light. Fortunately, unpacking the front of the camper allowed me to dig out the candles and candle sticks, as well as a few other necessities like the juicer, a rolling pin, and my small pizza stone for the oven – funny what we’ve decided we “need” to unpack. Both of these problems are easily solved, but we don’t want to spend the money on tanks and a pump for the water and a battery bank and inverter for the power until we close, so for now we’re making do.