As we leave Belize and make our way into Guatemala, we feel that now is a good time to get some things off our chests. Remember: judge not, lest ye be judged....
• We frequented a local Chinese restaurant just to get fried chicken and french fries.
• Some of us (we won’t say who) often fought foot fungus by peeing on it.
• We spent many a night watching old Dave Chapelle episodes on our computer.
• We spent over $5.00/gallon for gas. Seriously.
• Sometimes when we were in a line at the bank, we let others ahead of us so that we could stay in the AC longer. And on really sultry nights, we secretly wished for central air.
• We unknowingly let Thea swim in croc infested waters.
• We invited wolf spiders into our room so they would eat the bugs.
• Althea’s favorite toy was an old piece of bamboo that she saddled up and rode around the village.
• We paid $7.50 for Tom’s of Maine toothpaste.
• We still miss Mexico.
• In arguments with Althea, we tell her not to speak Kriol to us, but secretly we’re jealous of her accent.
• We went to a movie and when it was over, we forgot we were in Belize.
• We had frogs living in the water tank (they were small ones).
• We threw rocks at the neighbors’ potlicka dogs (they kept eating our food!).
• For 6 weeks we were right next to the Western Hemisphere’s largest barrier reef and didn’t go diving once.
• Althea dropped a brand new roll of toilet paper down the already full outhouse hole (sorry, Jes).
• We ate bowls and bowls of corn flakes (with warm powdered milk).
• We had the village kids rat Althea out when she ate sugar.
• Althea begged to play with the village kids every morning, but last night she said: “I’m glad to get away from those sick kids who run around barefoot and tattle-tell on me.” She still cried when we left though.
• In 6 weeks we’ve been to 6 mechanics and still haven’t fixed our van.
Where do these solitary wanderers keep coming from, and more importantly, why? Is it simply the same bull-headed fellow returning each time with a renewed determination to pester me? That suspicion seems dubious enough to motivate an at least cursory investigation into the matter. It’s not the fresh strawberries we bought today and left out in a pot. That would make sense. Behind the pot, though, I find a plastic honey-bear container knocked over, lying corpse-like, and though it is not spilling out, some twenty ants seem to find enough residual honey on his outside to make quite a feast. In the stickiness that annoys me so, these ants appear to have discovered a font of gluttonous oblivion. In fact, they appear downright comatose. And their number is growing, now in small swarms, so that it is difficult to discern the feeding frenzy from a slow, silent orgy, bodies piled atop one other listlessly. One ant gently nudges a cluster whose only sign of life is the occasional trembling of a leg. There is no acknowledgement. He moves on to find action elsewhere. Or are all these ants she’s? I have read that male forager ants only come out for a brief tour of duty with the queen. They are not even endowed with mouths, so ephemeral is their solely sexual sojourn on this planet. How much longer shall I let them enjoy their base opiate, their bacchanalia devoid of any decipherable ritual, festivity, or merriment? Maybe they will rid the bottle of its confounded tacky film, much like the brief but overwhelming invasion of army ants that cleans a household of all matter of microscopic detritus. That would be nice. Or perhaps they will diversify their interests here and spread to the – no, they have already made their way into the strawberry pot. I am not as comfortable with this, and now I feel once again compelled to fling each approaching freeloader from the porch of this treetop house, but now with rejuvenated vigor, making use of rusty paper football techniques from my youth. And though these ants soar almost infinitely downward from the heights of the hillside canopy, I have the distinct feeling, at once unsettling and comforting, that they will return.
