The resort around the corner had its grand opening reception Sunday afternoon, so Tom and I went both to see their progress, and to meet some of the people who live around here. Everybody around here keeps pretty busy, so there’s not a lot of visiting between neighbors, especially since the distance between us is measured in miles rather than feet. Apparently everybody wanted to meet new neighbors and catch up with old because most people who live around here showed up for the reception. Tom and I were laughing because they all knew who I was but didn’t know Tom, and the reason they knew me was because they’ve all seen me out on the horses and had figured out that the tall woman with the long blond hair was one half of the new owners of the cat farm. Lilly, our closest neighbor to the south was laughing when she realized this was how people identified me, because she said that she’d initially thought “Poor Tom” when she got to know me because I was always out on a horse while he was slaving away on the property – until she walked by one day and saw me weed whacking, when I suddenly became “the gringa who works.”
This image was reinforced when we met one of our neighbors to the north, the owner of a nearby equestrian resort who is currently living in Washington State while his adult son and daughter-in-law manage the business here. His son and daughter-in-law were visiting her family in the States for Thanksgiving, so Jim came down to manage the resort for a couple of weeks, just in time to get an invitation to the reception. Tom shook Jim’s hand and introduced himself, and then I shook his hand and introduced myself. I began to take my hand back, when he reached out and said “Give me that hand again.” I held my hand out, and he took it, squeezed it, turned it over, looked at my palm, rubbed one of my calluses, and said “I love it. This is the hand of a woman who works.” Lilly was still there, so she, Tom and I all laughed, and then had to explain to Jim that Lilly calls me “the gringa who works.” After years of keeping my unmanicured farmer hands folded under the table at corporate meetings, it was kind of refreshing to have my hands be my business card and explain what I do!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Spanish is easy, as long as you don’t mind the occasional gaffe…
Since Monday was a holiday and Tuesday is Iris’s birthday, Olmi and I spent yesterday afternoon baking a birthday cake for Iris. Most of the women around here don’t have ovens, which seemed strange to me initially since I’d never even considered having a kitchen without an oven. But, they all have gas ranges in their inside kitchens, and wood hearths in their outside kitchens. Because it’s frequently so hot, most of the women around here use their wood hearths far more than they use their inside ranges, and they can cook and bake almost anything on a hearth, moving pots and burning wood around to get the right temperature in the right place for whatever is cooking. They make great bread on the wood hearths, but have found that cakes are just a little too delicate, which is why Olmi talked to me about making the birthday cake here.
Yesterday turned into a very rainy day, so as we were waiting for the cake to bake and talking, I remarked to Olmi that it was a good day for baking…or at least that’s what I thought I said until she started to giggle. Olmi is as seriously trying to learn English as I am to learn Spanish, so she usually quietly corrects my mistakes and doesn’t laugh. But even I had to laugh when she explained what I’d said.
“To bake” in Spanish is “hornear” with a silent “h.” What I said was that it was a good day for “orinar,” which, in Spanish, means “to urinate.” So, instead of saying “It’s a good day to bake,” I said “It’s a good day to pee,” which Olmi explained through her giggles, and then had me practice saying the two words slowly after her to make sure I understood. I got it, eventually, and I’ll try not to make that mistake again!
Yesterday turned into a very rainy day, so as we were waiting for the cake to bake and talking, I remarked to Olmi that it was a good day for baking…or at least that’s what I thought I said until she started to giggle. Olmi is as seriously trying to learn English as I am to learn Spanish, so she usually quietly corrects my mistakes and doesn’t laugh. But even I had to laugh when she explained what I’d said.
“To bake” in Spanish is “hornear” with a silent “h.” What I said was that it was a good day for “orinar,” which, in Spanish, means “to urinate.” So, instead of saying “It’s a good day to bake,” I said “It’s a good day to pee,” which Olmi explained through her giggles, and then had me practice saying the two words slowly after her to make sure I understood. I got it, eventually, and I’ll try not to make that mistake again!
Sick kids
I spent half the day last Friday at La Loma Luz hospital with Selwyn’s wife Hilda and their three kids. Selwyn was dragging all week because he was trying to get rid of a cold, but having a hard time because all three of his kids had it, and nobody in the house was getting any sleep. Thursday evening, he came in the house and sat at the table after work because he wanted to talk to me before he left and I was out feeding the horses. When I came in the house, he had his head down on the table and was almost asleep – very un-Selwyn-like behavior. Friday morning he showed up looking like he had a pretty rough night, and when we asked him what was wrong he explained the situation at home, and said that he was afraid they were going to have to take the kids to the doctor over the weekend. Selwyn didn’t ask, but we asked him if it would help if I took Hilda and the kids on Friday, and Selwyn was very accepting and appreciative of the offer. I left mid-morning and picked up Hilda and the kids, and we went to town. Junior was actually on the upswing and feeling a little better than he had for the rest of the week, but Ali was extremely quiet, and poor little Kristalee was having a hard time breathing.
She didn’t look too bad, and didn’t seem to be running too much of a fever, but when I lifted her up to hand her to Hilda in the truck, I could feel her breathing rattling under her ribs. To nobody’s surprise, the pediatrician said that they had bronchitis and sinus infections, and both kids came home with a bag each of antibiotics, cough medicines, and other medications to make them more comfortable as well as vitamins to boost their immune systems. Hilda was a little upset because between the office visit - $15BZ per child – and the medications, she spent almost $250BZ. We were both shaking our heads on the way home because I thought $125US was dirt cheap, especially considering I probably would have spent that much just on deductibles after shelling out hundreds of US dollars a month for insurance, but to Hilda, that was a lot of money to drop in a quick visit to the doctor. However, the doctor had made it clear to her that bronchitis can be pretty serious for one-year-olds, so both he and I assured her that she did the right thing in taking the kids to the doctor. As of today, Tuesday, the kids are better but not back to normal, and now Selwyn is home sick with a cold which I suspect is bronchitis and a fever. I guess the winter colds come even in the tropics.
She didn’t look too bad, and didn’t seem to be running too much of a fever, but when I lifted her up to hand her to Hilda in the truck, I could feel her breathing rattling under her ribs. To nobody’s surprise, the pediatrician said that they had bronchitis and sinus infections, and both kids came home with a bag each of antibiotics, cough medicines, and other medications to make them more comfortable as well as vitamins to boost their immune systems. Hilda was a little upset because between the office visit - $15BZ per child – and the medications, she spent almost $250BZ. We were both shaking our heads on the way home because I thought $125US was dirt cheap, especially considering I probably would have spent that much just on deductibles after shelling out hundreds of US dollars a month for insurance, but to Hilda, that was a lot of money to drop in a quick visit to the doctor. However, the doctor had made it clear to her that bronchitis can be pretty serious for one-year-olds, so both he and I assured her that she did the right thing in taking the kids to the doctor. As of today, Tuesday, the kids are better but not back to normal, and now Selwyn is home sick with a cold which I suspect is bronchitis and a fever. I guess the winter colds come even in the tropics.
RIP El Negrito
Alas, El Negrito is no more. He still walked with a limp from being hit with the rock, and after the Nock incident he was having trouble using his wings. He seemed to find it too difficult to keep up with the big chickens while he was recovering from his ride in Nock’s mouth, so he’d come out of the chicken cage after the other chickens, and peck around on his own. Friday morning, he was pecking around at the edge of the yard, and I didn’t see him and let Mel out when Mel asked. Mel did his business, and then spied El Negrito. Despite charging the big chickens occasionally, Mel hasn’t been fast or strong enough to catch them, but El Negrito wasn’t able to get himself out of Mel’s way fast enough, and Mel picked him up in Mel’s signature scoop-double-chomp. Like Nock, Mel dropped him when I yelled, but unlike Nock, Mel’s jaws are a little bigger and were enough to be the end of El Negrito in his weakened state. He breathed his last breath just as I picked him up, so instead of taking him to the coop to recover, he went to the chicken graveyard in the back field. Rest in peace, El Negrito.
Nock is not adjusting well to wearing a muzzle when she’s in the house with the rest of the dogs. She mopes around and looks at us like she’s been severely injured, and crawls under the shelves in the kitchen. We’re hoping she gets used to it, but if not there’s not much we can do about it since even with the muzzle, she’s in Beli’s face as soon as she realizes Beli is in the same room with her. Between Nock and the boys next door, we’ve been doing a lot of soothing of hurt feelings lately.
Nock is not adjusting well to wearing a muzzle when she’s in the house with the rest of the dogs. She mopes around and looks at us like she’s been severely injured, and crawls under the shelves in the kitchen. We’re hoping she gets used to it, but if not there’s not much we can do about it since even with the muzzle, she’s in Beli’s face as soon as she realizes Beli is in the same room with her. Between Nock and the boys next door, we’ve been doing a lot of soothing of hurt feelings lately.
Cabin Progress & Life with Neighborhood Boys
After finishing the first room in the second cabin just in time for Marjie and Chuck’s visit, Tom and Selwyn got right back to work when Marjie and Chuck left for southern Belize. Tom has started tiling the shower in the second bathroom, and has been working on installing the sink. Tom and Selwyn dismantled the quickly assembled bed, and those two and Wilton have been working on finishing the rest of the pieces and sanding it.
Wilton, by the way, is over being Bad Wilton. According to Olmi, he avoided Tom for most of the week because he was ashamed of having lied to him. But, we had lunch here with Damion and Olmi and the kids on Sunday, so Wilton could no longer avoid Tom. While he was here, Wilton realized that Tom wasn’t mad enough at him to not let him work, so he agreed to work with Tom on Monday, which was Garifuna Settlement Day, a national holiday in Belize. Before starting work, Wilton apologized, and we talked to him a little bit about trust. We also told him that we’d been kids once and might have even possibly lied to our parents or other adults so we could do something we wanted to do that we knew wasn’t allowed. We ended the discussion with smiles all around, and Tom and Wilton spent the morning working on the bed and other carpentry work in the second cabin. We had to laugh, because a few months ago when the BDF was doing military maneuvers up the road and the road had lots of military traffic, Wilton wanted to be a soldier when he grew up. More recently, he’s been studying how governments work in Social Studies, and he’s wanted to be somehow involved with running the government. Now, after a morning of sanding, he wants to be a carpenter when he grows up. Being ten, I guess he has a few years until he has to make up his mind.
While Wilton has been avoiding Tom, Hector has been avoiding me. Hector, a year older than Wilton and the only boy in the family with five sisters, has the habit of moving around very quietly, probably for good reason since none of his sisters would hesitate to let him have it if he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Around here, there have been a few times when he’s come up behind me and startled me, at least partly intentionally, so Tom and I have both talked to him and told him that we don’t like him sneaking up on us. We understand why he does it, but we don’t like it, and don’t want him doing it around here. He’s been pretty good, until the end of last week, when I was riding Glinda down the road, and he snuck up behind me and Glinda, and then jumped at us and shouted my name. I jumped and Glinda spooked – fortunately to the left and not back onto Hector. I was mad, mostly because I’d been scared – not only did Hector do something I’ve asked him a few times not to do, but he did it behind the horse, who could easily have kicked out at him, and one or both of us could have been seriously hurt. So, I yelled at him, in the street in front of his house, and explained in both English and my version of Spanish that what he did was not only bad because I don’t like it, but because it was dangerous and one or both of us could have been seriously hurt. Julian, Hector’s father, came out from behind the house, and I suspect Hector was further reprimanded after I went on my ride. In any case, I haven’t seen Hector in a few days, and should probably go over and talk to him and his parents so he knows that I don’t hate him, I just don’t want him to get hurt.
Wilton, by the way, is over being Bad Wilton. According to Olmi, he avoided Tom for most of the week because he was ashamed of having lied to him. But, we had lunch here with Damion and Olmi and the kids on Sunday, so Wilton could no longer avoid Tom. While he was here, Wilton realized that Tom wasn’t mad enough at him to not let him work, so he agreed to work with Tom on Monday, which was Garifuna Settlement Day, a national holiday in Belize. Before starting work, Wilton apologized, and we talked to him a little bit about trust. We also told him that we’d been kids once and might have even possibly lied to our parents or other adults so we could do something we wanted to do that we knew wasn’t allowed. We ended the discussion with smiles all around, and Tom and Wilton spent the morning working on the bed and other carpentry work in the second cabin. We had to laugh, because a few months ago when the BDF was doing military maneuvers up the road and the road had lots of military traffic, Wilton wanted to be a soldier when he grew up. More recently, he’s been studying how governments work in Social Studies, and he’s wanted to be somehow involved with running the government. Now, after a morning of sanding, he wants to be a carpenter when he grows up. Being ten, I guess he has a few years until he has to make up his mind.
While Wilton has been avoiding Tom, Hector has been avoiding me. Hector, a year older than Wilton and the only boy in the family with five sisters, has the habit of moving around very quietly, probably for good reason since none of his sisters would hesitate to let him have it if he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Around here, there have been a few times when he’s come up behind me and startled me, at least partly intentionally, so Tom and I have both talked to him and told him that we don’t like him sneaking up on us. We understand why he does it, but we don’t like it, and don’t want him doing it around here. He’s been pretty good, until the end of last week, when I was riding Glinda down the road, and he snuck up behind me and Glinda, and then jumped at us and shouted my name. I jumped and Glinda spooked – fortunately to the left and not back onto Hector. I was mad, mostly because I’d been scared – not only did Hector do something I’ve asked him a few times not to do, but he did it behind the horse, who could easily have kicked out at him, and one or both of us could have been seriously hurt. So, I yelled at him, in the street in front of his house, and explained in both English and my version of Spanish that what he did was not only bad because I don’t like it, but because it was dangerous and one or both of us could have been seriously hurt. Julian, Hector’s father, came out from behind the house, and I suspect Hector was further reprimanded after I went on my ride. In any case, I haven’t seen Hector in a few days, and should probably go over and talk to him and his parents so he knows that I don’t hate him, I just don’t want him to get hurt.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
No, we haven’t been eaten by jaguars
Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again…but we’ve just been so busy that blogging has been the last thing on my mind, and answering email has been a close second to last thing on my mind. We haven’t been doing anything earth shattering – if we had I probably would have blogged about it – but we’ve been pretty busy with the day to day stuff of living. But, I’ve now received enough worried emails from people who are either wondering why the blog hasn’t been updated or why I haven’t answered their emails, that I finally decided it’s about time to update the blog.
A few weeks ago, I started corresponding with a woman online about moving to Belize with horses. The woman, Marjie, and her fiancé, Chuck, were planning a fact finding visit to Belize from November 10 to 18, so I invited them to spend some time here, thinking that Tom and Selwyn would have at least one, if not both, rooms done in the second cabin before then. Of course everything still takes longer than we expect, and we were all busting our butts last week to get everything done. Tom and Selwyn were working on the ceiling in the room, and I grouted the shower and did a lot of the clean up and finish work in the bathroom. And, Tom and Selwyn got to work on a bed. Tom decided that he’d use the sapodilla posts he purchased the week before for the legs of this bed, even though he’ll probably choose a softer hardwood for the next bed. But, he wanted to make the rest of the bed out of milady, a beautiful hardwood which is either a light beige or yellowish background with a very pretty pink grain. So, he purchased to wood he needed, and he and Selwyn made admirable progress on the bed.
We weren’t exactly sure when Marjie and Chuck were arriving, which was fine, but Tom considered every hour that they didn’t show up a bonus so they could get just a little more done on the bed. Fortunately for Tom, Marjie emailed with the exact time they were leaving Caye Caulker on Tuesday. Unfortunately for Tom, when I told him of Marjie and Chuck’s ETA, he had about three hours to get the bed into some sort of usable condition and get the room, bathroom, and porch cleaned up and ready for guests. Saying Tom looked like a deer in the headlights when I gave him the ETA is probably an understatement, but despite his look of utter shock, he and Selwyn sprang into action and got the bed put together and stable. I showed up with my bucket of soapy water, a broom, and an armful of linens, blankets, and pillows, and the three of us must have looked like some sort of speeded-up video as we got to work making the room look like it was ready for guests.
Marjie and Chuck arrived right on schedule, and Marjie said exactly the right thing when she looked at the room: “Wow, did you guys get a lot done in the past week!” She had been reading the blog, and even with what she could see from the little blog pictures, she could see that a lot of work had been done. It definitely helped with our peace of mind that she knew what was going on, and wasn’t expecting five-star resort accommodations!
We spent the next 24 hours or so talking, talking, and talking. Marjie and Chuck are planning to do pretty much what Tom and I did, so they had a ton of questions for us about things we did that we think really worked, things we would do differently if we did it again, and about what it’s like making the move from the US to Belize. We were really glad they came, because besides really enjoying getting to know them, Marjie, who is a farrier who does a lot of therapeutic work on horses’ feet, spent most of Wednesday morning working on Nessa’s feet. Nessa wasn’t exactly cooperative, but Marjie is both patient and persistent, and works pretty quickly, so she managed to get Nessa’s feet looking like normal horse feet, and she trimmed the hoof on Nessa’s bad leg so that she can actually use the foot and stretch the tendon, which should help with both Nessa’s comfort and healing. Marjie flew down here with some of her tools, and when she and Selwyn were talking and she realized how difficult it is to get good farrier tools here, she very generously left some of her tools for Selwyn, along with nails, pads, and a few specialty shoes. She also brought fly masks for the horses because she had read about the problems Nessa was having with her eyes because of the bugs, and some toys for the dogs, along with a few other things that are difficult to find in Belize.
One thing she brought isn’t very popular, but unfortunately has become necessary over the past couple of weeks: a muzzle for Nock. A couple of weeks ago, Nock decided that she was going to kill Beli. Every time the two bitches crossed paths, Nock ended up attached to some part of Beli, biting and shaking and growling for all she was worth. Beli is a real sweetheart, and didn’t get the little dog in her mouth and shake her to death, but that meant Tom and I would have to wade in and try to pry Nock off, which resulted in multiple bites for both of us. We had been keeping the two bitches separated, but every once in a while Nock would shoot through a door and get in the same room as Beli, or they’d run across each other outside, and the fight would begin again. We had been trying to keep Nock outside more, which worked until Nock decided that El Negrito was also on her hit list. That wasn’t any huge surprise; the surprise had actually been that the chickens were roaming around the property and the dogs really hadn’t been bothering them. But, Nock was outside with me and I was rinsing some grapefruit off with the hose, and I looked up and she was trotting across the yard with El Negrito in her mouth. I yelled at her to drop him, which she did. I put Nock in the house and went to pick up the carcass. To my surprise, he wasn’t dead. He was laying there like he was dead, on his side with his neck out, one wing up and one down, and his feet just sticking out in the air, but when I picked him up he righted himself and sat in my hands with his head up. I put him in the coop for a couple of hours, and when I brought him out he ran to join the rest of the flock. This happened three days ago, and he’s still not really keeping up with the other chickens and he doesn’t appear able to fly, but he’s eating and it looks like he’ll be okay. Nock, on the other hand, is not okay with the new muzzle. It’s nice for us that we can muzzle her and not have to keep her separate from all the things she wants to bite, but from the way she’s moping and looking like she’s being abused, it’s not nice for her. Oh well is all we can say about it.
The other dogs are all fine. We removed the stitches from the puppies, which didn’t exactly go as we had expected. When we left the vet’s office after their surgery, he gave us a couple of syringes filled with what he said was a mild tranquilizer so we could calm the puppies down enough that we could get the stitches out without dealing with wiggly puppies. I’ve taken stitches out of un-tranquilized dogs before, so I took the syringes even though I didn’t think we’d use them. When the stitch removing day arrived, however, the puppies seemed to be feeling especially good, so we decided to stick them with the needles to keep them quiet. Whatever was in the syringes kept them quiet all right – we had them outside where the light was better, and they both dropped in the driveway within about a minute, and were completely out. We removed the stitches and figured they’d be up and around in a few minutes. Nope. Those two dogs were unconscious for about three hours, and were pretty quiet for the rest of the day. It was a nice break from our usual raucous puppy mornings, but the only downside was that after we decided they weren’t going to come around too quickly, we carried them onto the porch, where they both wet themselves while they were sleeping. But, the puddles cleaned up and the puppies were fine the next day, and now everything is back to normal.
In addition to our bad dogs, we had a Bad Wilton last week. Wilton is the ten-year old from next door, and he is always a perfectly delightful kid. He usually comes over and works with Tom for one morning over the weekend, and he came over last Saturday morning. His parents were both working, and his sister had gone with his mother, so Wilton was home alone. Damion and Olmi knew he was working here, and knew we’d feed him and make sure he was okay, so they didn’t worry about him. After Tom and Wilton finished working, we had lunch and were chit-chatting. After lunch, Wilton said he was going to go home. We asked if he wanted to work any more, or if he just wanted to hang out here rather than going home to an empty house, but he told us that he was going to ride his bike into San Antonio to his aunt’s house, where his grandmother was staying for the weekend. Tom asked him point blank if he was allowed to ride into San Antonio by himself, and he assured us that he was. We know that he sometimes rides towards San Antonio to get ice for his mother, so we didn’t think that much of it. But, we got the real story from Damion and Olmi on Sunday. It seems that Wilton only rides about a mile towards San Antonio to get ice, to the last house on the electric lines. He is NOT allowed to ride all the way into San Antonio by himself. And, he didn’t even leave a note, so when the rest of the family got home, they didn’t know where he was. Elizabeth told them she’d seen him heading towards San Antonio, so they figured out what he did, and Olmi was so mad that they left him there over night and didn’t pick him up until they met at church the next morning. Bad Wilton!
We didn’t find any of this out until late Sunday afternoon, because we spent Sunday in the village of Buena Vista with Selwyn’s wife Hilda’s family. Her very elderly grandmother is quite sick, bedridden and not eating, so Hilda wanted to take the kids to see their great grandmother for what is probably the last time. We volunteered to provide the wheels, so everybody loaded up, including Selwyn’s mother Petranela and sister Nellmarie. Busses don’t run from San Antonio into San Ignacio over the weekend, so as we drove down the San Antonio road, we picked up a whole truckload of people trying to get into town for the day. We arrived at Hilda’s parents’ house just as lunch preparations were beginning, so although Tom and I had planned on amusing ourselves for a couple of hours, we ended up hanging out and visiting and eating with Hilda’s family. It was just like the Sunday afternoons we’ve spent with our families and many friends’ families, except we were trying to understand what was going on in Spanish, which is all Hilda’s parents speak. However, most of the kids are bilingual, and plenty of kids were running around. Despite the reason for the visit, everybody had a good time and we got home in the late afternoon, relaxed and stuffed full of yummy chicken, rice, and beans.
Although last week was absolutely gorgeous weather-wise, this week it has been raining, raining, and raining. Everything is mud, and the trees drip pretty much continuously on our metal roofs, and we’re finding leaks we’ve never had before. We were a little surprised yesterday morning to look out the window and see that Tinkerbell had been attacked by the banana tree. The big banana leaves were holding so much water they became too heavy for the roots in the very muddy soil, and three of the shoots fell on the truck. No harm was done to the truck, and there are still plenty of shoots to provide us with lots of majunches in the future.
A few weeks ago, I started corresponding with a woman online about moving to Belize with horses. The woman, Marjie, and her fiancé, Chuck, were planning a fact finding visit to Belize from November 10 to 18, so I invited them to spend some time here, thinking that Tom and Selwyn would have at least one, if not both, rooms done in the second cabin before then. Of course everything still takes longer than we expect, and we were all busting our butts last week to get everything done. Tom and Selwyn were working on the ceiling in the room, and I grouted the shower and did a lot of the clean up and finish work in the bathroom. And, Tom and Selwyn got to work on a bed. Tom decided that he’d use the sapodilla posts he purchased the week before for the legs of this bed, even though he’ll probably choose a softer hardwood for the next bed. But, he wanted to make the rest of the bed out of milady, a beautiful hardwood which is either a light beige or yellowish background with a very pretty pink grain. So, he purchased to wood he needed, and he and Selwyn made admirable progress on the bed.
We weren’t exactly sure when Marjie and Chuck were arriving, which was fine, but Tom considered every hour that they didn’t show up a bonus so they could get just a little more done on the bed. Fortunately for Tom, Marjie emailed with the exact time they were leaving Caye Caulker on Tuesday. Unfortunately for Tom, when I told him of Marjie and Chuck’s ETA, he had about three hours to get the bed into some sort of usable condition and get the room, bathroom, and porch cleaned up and ready for guests. Saying Tom looked like a deer in the headlights when I gave him the ETA is probably an understatement, but despite his look of utter shock, he and Selwyn sprang into action and got the bed put together and stable. I showed up with my bucket of soapy water, a broom, and an armful of linens, blankets, and pillows, and the three of us must have looked like some sort of speeded-up video as we got to work making the room look like it was ready for guests.
Marjie and Chuck arrived right on schedule, and Marjie said exactly the right thing when she looked at the room: “Wow, did you guys get a lot done in the past week!” She had been reading the blog, and even with what she could see from the little blog pictures, she could see that a lot of work had been done. It definitely helped with our peace of mind that she knew what was going on, and wasn’t expecting five-star resort accommodations!
We spent the next 24 hours or so talking, talking, and talking. Marjie and Chuck are planning to do pretty much what Tom and I did, so they had a ton of questions for us about things we did that we think really worked, things we would do differently if we did it again, and about what it’s like making the move from the US to Belize. We were really glad they came, because besides really enjoying getting to know them, Marjie, who is a farrier who does a lot of therapeutic work on horses’ feet, spent most of Wednesday morning working on Nessa’s feet. Nessa wasn’t exactly cooperative, but Marjie is both patient and persistent, and works pretty quickly, so she managed to get Nessa’s feet looking like normal horse feet, and she trimmed the hoof on Nessa’s bad leg so that she can actually use the foot and stretch the tendon, which should help with both Nessa’s comfort and healing. Marjie flew down here with some of her tools, and when she and Selwyn were talking and she realized how difficult it is to get good farrier tools here, she very generously left some of her tools for Selwyn, along with nails, pads, and a few specialty shoes. She also brought fly masks for the horses because she had read about the problems Nessa was having with her eyes because of the bugs, and some toys for the dogs, along with a few other things that are difficult to find in Belize.
One thing she brought isn’t very popular, but unfortunately has become necessary over the past couple of weeks: a muzzle for Nock. A couple of weeks ago, Nock decided that she was going to kill Beli. Every time the two bitches crossed paths, Nock ended up attached to some part of Beli, biting and shaking and growling for all she was worth. Beli is a real sweetheart, and didn’t get the little dog in her mouth and shake her to death, but that meant Tom and I would have to wade in and try to pry Nock off, which resulted in multiple bites for both of us. We had been keeping the two bitches separated, but every once in a while Nock would shoot through a door and get in the same room as Beli, or they’d run across each other outside, and the fight would begin again. We had been trying to keep Nock outside more, which worked until Nock decided that El Negrito was also on her hit list. That wasn’t any huge surprise; the surprise had actually been that the chickens were roaming around the property and the dogs really hadn’t been bothering them. But, Nock was outside with me and I was rinsing some grapefruit off with the hose, and I looked up and she was trotting across the yard with El Negrito in her mouth. I yelled at her to drop him, which she did. I put Nock in the house and went to pick up the carcass. To my surprise, he wasn’t dead. He was laying there like he was dead, on his side with his neck out, one wing up and one down, and his feet just sticking out in the air, but when I picked him up he righted himself and sat in my hands with his head up. I put him in the coop for a couple of hours, and when I brought him out he ran to join the rest of the flock. This happened three days ago, and he’s still not really keeping up with the other chickens and he doesn’t appear able to fly, but he’s eating and it looks like he’ll be okay. Nock, on the other hand, is not okay with the new muzzle. It’s nice for us that we can muzzle her and not have to keep her separate from all the things she wants to bite, but from the way she’s moping and looking like she’s being abused, it’s not nice for her. Oh well is all we can say about it.
The other dogs are all fine. We removed the stitches from the puppies, which didn’t exactly go as we had expected. When we left the vet’s office after their surgery, he gave us a couple of syringes filled with what he said was a mild tranquilizer so we could calm the puppies down enough that we could get the stitches out without dealing with wiggly puppies. I’ve taken stitches out of un-tranquilized dogs before, so I took the syringes even though I didn’t think we’d use them. When the stitch removing day arrived, however, the puppies seemed to be feeling especially good, so we decided to stick them with the needles to keep them quiet. Whatever was in the syringes kept them quiet all right – we had them outside where the light was better, and they both dropped in the driveway within about a minute, and were completely out. We removed the stitches and figured they’d be up and around in a few minutes. Nope. Those two dogs were unconscious for about three hours, and were pretty quiet for the rest of the day. It was a nice break from our usual raucous puppy mornings, but the only downside was that after we decided they weren’t going to come around too quickly, we carried them onto the porch, where they both wet themselves while they were sleeping. But, the puddles cleaned up and the puppies were fine the next day, and now everything is back to normal.
In addition to our bad dogs, we had a Bad Wilton last week. Wilton is the ten-year old from next door, and he is always a perfectly delightful kid. He usually comes over and works with Tom for one morning over the weekend, and he came over last Saturday morning. His parents were both working, and his sister had gone with his mother, so Wilton was home alone. Damion and Olmi knew he was working here, and knew we’d feed him and make sure he was okay, so they didn’t worry about him. After Tom and Wilton finished working, we had lunch and were chit-chatting. After lunch, Wilton said he was going to go home. We asked if he wanted to work any more, or if he just wanted to hang out here rather than going home to an empty house, but he told us that he was going to ride his bike into San Antonio to his aunt’s house, where his grandmother was staying for the weekend. Tom asked him point blank if he was allowed to ride into San Antonio by himself, and he assured us that he was. We know that he sometimes rides towards San Antonio to get ice for his mother, so we didn’t think that much of it. But, we got the real story from Damion and Olmi on Sunday. It seems that Wilton only rides about a mile towards San Antonio to get ice, to the last house on the electric lines. He is NOT allowed to ride all the way into San Antonio by himself. And, he didn’t even leave a note, so when the rest of the family got home, they didn’t know where he was. Elizabeth told them she’d seen him heading towards San Antonio, so they figured out what he did, and Olmi was so mad that they left him there over night and didn’t pick him up until they met at church the next morning. Bad Wilton!
We didn’t find any of this out until late Sunday afternoon, because we spent Sunday in the village of Buena Vista with Selwyn’s wife Hilda’s family. Her very elderly grandmother is quite sick, bedridden and not eating, so Hilda wanted to take the kids to see their great grandmother for what is probably the last time. We volunteered to provide the wheels, so everybody loaded up, including Selwyn’s mother Petranela and sister Nellmarie. Busses don’t run from San Antonio into San Ignacio over the weekend, so as we drove down the San Antonio road, we picked up a whole truckload of people trying to get into town for the day. We arrived at Hilda’s parents’ house just as lunch preparations were beginning, so although Tom and I had planned on amusing ourselves for a couple of hours, we ended up hanging out and visiting and eating with Hilda’s family. It was just like the Sunday afternoons we’ve spent with our families and many friends’ families, except we were trying to understand what was going on in Spanish, which is all Hilda’s parents speak. However, most of the kids are bilingual, and plenty of kids were running around. Despite the reason for the visit, everybody had a good time and we got home in the late afternoon, relaxed and stuffed full of yummy chicken, rice, and beans.
Although last week was absolutely gorgeous weather-wise, this week it has been raining, raining, and raining. Everything is mud, and the trees drip pretty much continuously on our metal roofs, and we’re finding leaks we’ve never had before. We were a little surprised yesterday morning to look out the window and see that Tinkerbell had been attacked by the banana tree. The big banana leaves were holding so much water they became too heavy for the roots in the very muddy soil, and three of the shoots fell on the truck. No harm was done to the truck, and there are still plenty of shoots to provide us with lots of majunches in the future.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Fixed Cabins and Fixed Dogs
Another week has flown by with a lot of progress around here. Tom had the shower to the first guestroom about half tiled when he ran out of cement, so he and Selwyn transferred their attention to the wall and ceiling in the guestroom.
The center wall is done, and they were done with part of the ceiling when they moved some insulation and discovered a termite nest and a badly eaten, untreated, pine two by four.
They knocked down the nest and are replacing the board, and then they can finish that part of the ceiling. They’re going to check the other three corners of the building, and hope that they don’t find any more nests. The termites were all dead from the Dursban treatment we did on the building, but the bug spray doesn’t fix the damage.
Tom is out today getting the ceiling board they need to finish the ceiling in the bedroom and bathroom, so that should be done early next week, and I picked up more cement yesterday, so Tom will probably finish the shower this weekend.
Tom is also buying most of the lumber he needs to make the bed for that room. Tom loves working with the hardwoods that are so readily available here, and he and Selwyn are both looking forward to a change from the big construction job to the finer job of furniture making. Tom knows it will be a learning process, and has already found that his original design of a bed with sapodilla legs isn’t practical because it takes each side of a sapodilla three by three four runs through the table saw and a lot of sanding to get it anywhere close to furniture quality smooth. So, he’s looking for a slightly softer hardwood today, or a mill that would be willing to plane the lumber for him.
The big event around here this week was the spaying and castration of Beli and Stout. We had an appointment with a vet in Belmopan for 9:30 Wednesday morning, and we knew they’d come home that day, but we figured we’d drop them off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon, but that’s not how it works around here. We took them in, and the vet got to work sedating Stout right away. He doesn’t have a kennel at his Belmopan office, so we quickly realized that we were going to be waiting since one of us needed to hold Beli, but we didn’t realize that we’d also be assisting in the surgery. We waited for Stout to get logy, then the vet and Tom lifted him onto the pre-op table, where the vet administered the general anesthesia, and then we all went to work scrubbing him. The vet is a really nice, funny guy, and we were all laughing a little because I asked him if he did an open castration, and he said no, and then proceeded to explain, using himself as a model, what he was going to do. He left his pants on during the demonstration, of course, but it was still pretty funny and reminded me of how my horse friends and I talk about horses, using ourselves as models to illustrate how they’re moving, or where and how they’re injured.
When Stout was out and scrubbed, the vet had Tom help carry him into the surgery room, and to Tom’s surprise he seemed to be expected to stay and to hold Stout in position on the table while the vet did the castration. Tom was a trooper and watched the whole thing. I stayed in the pre-op/waiting room with Beli, and suddenly heard Tom and the vet laughing. When they were done, Tom explained to me that the vet had pulled a tube of Super Glue out of his surgical supplies, and when Tom asked what it was for, the vet, in his Belizean accent, said he put it on the knots. He meant the knots of the stitches, but the way he said “knots” it sounded like “nuts” to Tom, so Tom was questioning why he was going to put Super Glue on Stout’s nuts which were, by this time, in the garbage. It didn’t take too long for them to understand each other, but they were both still laughing when they carted Stout out of surgery and put him on a mat on the floor, still out, while we got Beli ready.
While we were getting Beli ready, a Mennonite farmer came in and asked the vet if he had any snake antivenin. His favorite dog had been bit by a snake, and the Mennonite didn’t know what to do. The vet very calmly explained that he does not stock the antivenin, but if the man went to the Belmopan hospital and explained what was going on, the hospital would give him the drug, which he could bring back for the vet to administer. And that’s exactly what happened. The Mennonite was gone and back within a half hour, so before Beli went in for surgery, the vet injected the drug into the vein on the dog’s foreleg. The dog, an Australian shepherd, was acting very shocky, just lying on the ground and panting, with her tongue, throat, and lips swelling, and bleeding from the inside of one of her back legs where the snake bit her. However, the vet said she should be okay, and gave the Mennonite a needle and instructions so he could inject a second dose of the antivenin later in the day. We don’t know how the dog is doing, but we were sort of glad to have been there to see this. We now know exactly what to do if one of us is bit, and seeing how calm the vet was about the dog makes a snakebite seem like a little less of a death sentence – just get the antivenin, get it injected IV, and get better. The vet also told us that living where we live, we might want to consider getting a couple of doses and keeping them in our fridge, since it’s a long ride to the hospital, the drug has a fairly long shelf life, and after years of horse and dog care, Tom and I could figure out how to do an IV injection in a pinch. And, the same drug works for people, horses, and dogs, so at the very least it would give any of us a little better chance of getting into town and into the care of a medical professional, be it a people doctor or a veterinarian.
We were, fortunately I think, not required to assist with Beli after she was secured on the operating table. Stout was still out on the floor, so the vet told us to go get some lunch and then come back to get the dogs. That’s what we did, and when we got back to the vet’s office both dogs were completely unconscious on the mats on the floor. We paid the bill, which was, I think, comparable to spay/neuter prices in the US, although it’s been a while since we had a dog spayed/neutered there – Beli was the equivalent of $100US, and Stout was $50US. Tom and I were a little surprised that it costs as much as it does, since it would be really good if more dogs were fixed here. Everywhere you go, you see skinny, mangy, sick-looking dogs wandering the streets, and there are always a few bitches wandering around with their teats dragging on the ground because they’ve had so many litters of puppies. None of our neighbors fix their dogs, and dogs will have litters of puppies where only a few live because they’re so malnutritioned and their mother is so sick when they’re born. Plus, there’s some sort of doggie venereal disease that’s an epidemic here, and it seems like most of the dogs have it since they’re all trying to breed. There’s no shortage of dogs, so there’s no reason not to fix the dogs, except that it costs more than most people have, and, we’re told, some people’s religious beliefs make them feel that it’s wrong to fix animals, and if they breed, it’s God’s will. I have a little trouble with that since I can’t image a God that wants sick, starving animals all over the place, but since we can’t afford to collect up all the animals and have them neutered, there’s not much I can do about it besides make sure our animals don’t contribute to the problem.
Anyway, we carted the two unconscious dogs home, although I ended up riding in the back seat to hold Beli in place, and we put Stout on the floor in front of the passenger seat. By the time we got home Stout was alert enough to walk, but we had to carry Beli in and she didn’t really come around until some time in the middle of the night when she got up and took herself outside. Stout made a very quick recovery and once he was up, he was up, looking for attention, things to chew on, and his dinner. They both seem pretty much back to normal now, although Beli is still a little quieter than usual. It’s amazing how quickly dogs recover!
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