Life in Benque

A busy highway, roosters crowing, a mother doing laundry, music blaring over a static radio, the honking of angry drivers. These are all the sounds that pound my ears from the minute I wake up to the minute I fall asleep. All sounds that make for life in Benque. While the town seems small and slow-moving, it has a lot of character and a constant flow of activity.

When in Benque, I rarely ride in a vehicle. I walk everywhere. Home; Church; school; supermarket. There and back again. (On a random sidenote—my egregious use of fragments here make me seem a hypocrite, since I just told my English students that they were the greatest sin of English writing of all…) I never realized in the states the true beauty of walking. When you are in your car you jam your music, blast the AC, and try to get to your destination as quickly as possible. You are in your own isolated universe. But when you are walking, you get to truly study the patterns of the road. You see each bump, each crack, each person, each chicken, each flower. You get to feel the sun on your back, or the rain. You get to appreciate the temperature of the outdoors. You can choose the pace. Often I am rushing to make it to mass on time, or rushing to school to make copies, but mostly I am just walking. With aim, but without hurry. And how refreshing it is. I can pause at a moment’s notice to examine a flower, to watch the men in the feed store work and to ask about someone’s day. And while everyday the paths are the same, the scenery never remains the same.

It seems that in the states people remain indoors, lounging in their air-conditioned prisons, hiding away for fear of what might be outdoors, whether it be heat, strangers or the general unknown. But here in Benque people do not have such luxuries as AC, the internet to escape to, and are blessed with no unknown to fear. Because of this, you are never alone on the streets. You constantly pass by people lounging on their porches or in their hammocks (which are the national porch furniture of the country, speaking to the laid-back nature of the Belizean people). The children are playing futbal, basketball, or riding bikes. Or even sometimes they are throwing rocks at each other, as I was horrified to see one evening. As you past by, the people say “hello”, or “good morning” and offer a wave or a smile. And then there are those men who offer their opinion of you, in a not-so-gentlemanly fashion (You just ignore those greetings). The only real form of danger the city presents is the vehicles that wind through the narrow streets of the city.

A curious thing about this town is the presence of Asian community where you least expect it. Zhen has as much a monopoly of this town as Coca-Cola has on the whole country. Zhen’s Supermarket. Zhen’s Hardware store. Zhen’s restaurant. We are as dependent on this Zhen character as my family is on Kroger’s. And Chinese food holds the country fascinated. For a town that only has a handful of restaurants, the majority of them seem to be Chinese. And on the storefront of each of these restaurants, the slogan “Welcome, and Good Luck” graces the front. “Good Luck for what?” I once asked. Good luck eating the food without getting sick? Good luck that you are you not eating dog? Good luck that you will ever make it out alive. I’ve tried the Chinese food here, because let’s face it: who doesn’t love Asian food? And I must say I was impressed. And I survived to tell the tale.

One more interesting feature about this town that my first two weeks have taught me: dogs. Sad dogs, yappy dogs, emaciated dogs, happy dogs. I have never hated dogs so much. When I was in Peru the dog population was terrible. There were 3 dogs per 5 yd². Here it is not quite that bad, but they have to be 3X more annoying. You can’t help but feel bad for some of these dogs as you walk by. You see the ribs, the momma dogs with no milk for their young, the doleful eyes. But the yappy dogs are really yappy dogs. As soon as you decide to lay your head down on a pillow, they start to fight and bark and bark and fight. It's all very annoying. You wish you had windows you could close, or a rifle. As an American with a soft spot for any kind of animal, I am torn between sympathy for the sad dogs and just utter annoyance. According to the stories, the dog problem used to be worse, but then the town of Benque decided to go around and collect all of the dogs in the night, and have a mass extermination of them. It was probably sad for the people of Benque, for a great majority of my students (all of which are female) stated that their favorite animals were dogs. All of the cool animals in this country that you can practically see in your backyard; toucans, monkeys, lizards, jaguars, and the girls chose dogs. It’s way beyond me.

It will be interesting to see how my relationship to this town changes in the next several months. Now I have this romantic notion about the simplicity of life and yada yada yada, but will I feel that way in May? Who knows? I don’t.