Day Three

We made some significant progress on the house – or at least it felt like it. More is getting painted, more electric is going in, Carl installed one AC unit, Carol and Julie worked on placing gravel around the house right at the foundation. They quickly found out just how warm – or ah, HOT the sun can be here in Belize.

Mike was sort of elected to make the trip into town this afternoon in order to get more supplies. A few hours later, he brought back most everything we needed, including a couple of stories. The most striking was about Phyllis. She lives in Mullins Village, which just today was able to gain access to go into town. They have gotten air drops by helicopter of food and water but this was the first day that they could cross the Mullins River by a make shift bridge just constructed by the government.

Phyllis explained to Mike that most of the wooden houses in their little village of about 15 families had actually washed away. Those wood homes on stilts survived as did the concrete block ones. To make some money she and her sons were helping to clean mud, etc, out of the homes of others in the village. She said that during the flooding, she did not know what to do. As a single mom, watching the water rise higher and higher in their home, she finally reached her wits end and told her 4 boys, you can choose what to do, if you want to leave, you can leave now, if you want to stay, you can stay. The boys stayed and all were spared any more tragic lose from the sudden flood.

We rope through their little village late in the afternoon. You can easily see how high the deadly water was as it swept through this hidden little respite in the jungle. The residents know something about survival as the village has actually been moved from the seashore due to hurricane destruction. Now they have faced and survived a different danger.

It is interesting that other than the high water marks and the personal belongings either drying in yards or being burnt because of being ruined, you might not even know that this destruction had just touched their lives. Perhaps it is just us – but there seems to be something much more simple here about picking up the pieces and moving on. Perhaps it has something to do with having less to begin with. Perhaps it has to do with that Caribbean laid back lifestyle and mindset we hear about. Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with having a simpler sense of life, of values, and of what is really important.

Whatever it is – it makes me wonder if they know something we don’t know.

I think the spiritual formation people would say that there is something here that sounds an awful lot like “Blessed Subtraction.”

Yeah, gotta chew on that one for awhile.