Cautious Person
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Donna bathing in the jungle
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The next day we met Charlie in a restaurant. We bought him lunch. As we were eating, he asked if we might be interested in attending a special ceremony the next day.
“What kind of ceremony?”
“It’s mysterious. Kind of a religious thing,” he inadequately explained.
“Kind of like magic,” he added. “Normally, white people are not allowed to attend, but I think I can get an okay if you’re interested.”
My wife and I smiled at each other. Of course we were interested. We were more than interested, we were mentally salivating.
Twenty-four hours later we queued up with Charlie outside a circus-like tent that had been raised early that morning. After a ten minute wait, it was our turn at the ticket booth.
“Three, please,” I told the heavy-set black lady selling the tickets.
“Oh no, I’m not going in,” Charlie adamantly stated.
“Uh-h, two please,” I mumbled.
After paying for the tickets we approached Charlie, who had moved away from the line. “I thought you said that you don’t believe in this stuff,” I accused.
“I don’t.”
“Then why aren’t you coming in with us?” I demanded, as we looked at him with questions in our eyes.
“It’s like this,” he said, shuffling his feet and looking at the ground, “I don’t believe in it, but I’m a cautious person.”
With that, he looked up at us and smiled, and we all three laughed.
That was how we came to be in a tent in which voodoo-like shenanigans were to take place.
Voodoo?
Things began when a skinny witch-looking woman with shiny black skin and hair sticking straight out from her scalp undulated and hopped, as she screeched and chanted in the Garífuna language. A man and woman sat beside each other about four feet in front of the chanting witch-woman. The couple appeared to enter a trance-like state. Their heads lolled and their bodies quivered. And their arms jumped about as if they were puppets on a string.
No pins were stuck into dolls. No chickens or goats (or humans) were sacrificed. No one flopped around on the ground, although the couple with the jiggling arms looked as if they might do so at any minute. However, after probably a little more than half an hour a woman approached and quietly, but firmly, told Donna and I that we had to leave. What happened after that, we do not know. And maybe we shouldn’t know. Perhaps Charlie was right in saying that it is best to be cautious, and leave magic, including voodoo, to those who know what they are doing.
No Tigers
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The author trying for a coconut
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Two days later we departed for our home in California, a jaunt of almost 3,000 miles. During the long drive we reminisced about the scary black face framed by dreadlocks that appeared at Donna’s window immediately upon our arrival in Belize City. And we laughed about the friendly black man who guided us to a good hotel, and then offered to sell us some grass. We spoke of the good-intentioned black folks of Belize City who warned us of the dangers of Punta Gorda – that place way down south where they had never been, and never intend to go.
We agreed that the most exciting thing we had done was exploring the cave with white formations hanging from the ceiling and growing upward from the floor. Always we will wonder how far the cave went back into mountain, and what secrets it may hold. Just as we wonder what we did not get to see in the voodoo tent.
Belize is an unusual place, an English-speaking orphan within Spanish-speaking Central America. It is also an exciting place, where you are never quite sure what you will encounter around the next street corner, or around the next bend in the road, or over the next hill.
For us, there was but one disappointment: we never did see any tigers.
Note: Mom’s Café no longer exists
