As she swallowed the chips and salsa in her mouth, “you really wouldn’t want to spend any time there, its a shithole,” spewed out.
That description of Belize City kept nagging and digging at the back of my mind as we walked around the dusty streets. I had felt this urge to understand the sentiment behind the comment, and with only one real night to do so, we pressed on.
Hurricane Earl had swept through many months prior, and the damage still lingered on battered Colonial-era buildings, shown through the haphazard array of power lines and rotting paint. The city felt as tired as the heavy humid Caribbean air.
As we advanced, glimpses of the Haulover Creek revealed fishermen returning with their day’s catch, the Swing Bridge crammed with locals eager to get home- evidenced by their willingness to utilize their car’s horn- a community alive. It was vibrant, especially with the sumptuous colors of sunset cloaking every corner in a deep warm magenta.
Pushing closer to the coast in hopes of obtaining a meal, a man started closing in behind us. I could feel he was following us. As he marched in step, he finally broke the tension with an offer of narcotics. He wasn’t taking no for an answer, so we ducked into a cafe. Seeing the transaction from inside, two seated men emphatically began expressing their worry for us, and cautioned against having our camera gear out. We thanked them for their concern, and after realizing the cafe was closing, we moved on.
With the sun declining as fast as the neighborhoods around us, I felt that the port closer to the coast would have dinning options. That idea died when an incessant beggar found our path. While he was distracted in conversation, I pulled up the first restaurant on Yelp and had google maps chart the course, something that I felt was an intelligent decision based on our two new friends.
That path took us down an alley choked with decaying two-story apartment buildings. With only a single orange street light guiding the way, the shadows were more numerous than the weak glows of light coming from the apartment windows. As we walked, people stared at us, heads moving from side to side tracing our hurried path. A group of children running and playing rounded the corner ahead, and as they passed by they uttered a giggling and playful “hello, white people!” and scurried off.
We walked even faster.
Rounding the corner the children had just come from, we nearly collided with two police officers. They stared incredulously and started interrogating us: “Who are you? Why are you here?!” They were exasperated at our absurd quest for dinner, and following a lecture on being careful and to not come back the way we had came, pointed us to the restaurant a block away.
Dinner had never tasted so good. Couldn’t tell you what I ate. I did notice however, that one of the officers we had met outside came up to the window to talk with the restaurant owner while we were eating. As I was paying for the meal, I asked the owner about the officer about the visit by the police. “They were checking on you. Wanted to make sure you had made it.” He turned back around to give me change. “You guys are lucky you’re alive.”
He went on to describe Pink’s Alley, the street we had transversed minutes earlier. As the separating line between rival gangs, the street had seen multiple homicides as recently as three days piror. I was shaken. Shaken with disbelief of my own ignorance, and gratitude that nothing had happened. Anxious at the prospect at having to navigate the city on foot again, I asked the owner if he would be able to call a taxi for our return trip, to which he responded, “I’ll take you home.” And he did.
Despite the heckling, nothing actually happened to us. Every time something transpired there was an even greater outpouring of care and concern by the locals, for two people that obviously were not a part of their community. What shines through this experience for me more than my being terrified is the empathy and genuine concern for a fellow human. The character of these particular people is inedible.
A shithole wouldn’t have that.
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