2 things were on my mind as we queued to pay our departure fee for
Belize both of similar importance to life as we know it. The first was a simple
life lesson that we too often forget on the road concerning a correct diet, it
goes as follows; “If you have 28 hours solid buses, boats and border crossings,
perhaps an entire bottle of tequila isn’t the most sensible dinner option, next
time try rice, beans and bed.” Although having said that the bus from San Pedro
Belize to Guatemala city is pretty damn comfortable and comes with air con as
standard. The battered old seats feel a like your nans sofa and rationed
bathroom visits minimise the ammonia damage to the eyes from the sticky air
with the tangy taste in the spring loaded plastic potty. Approaching which is
not unlike the sting of an entire Glastonbury long drop on a hot Sunday morning,
with the added thrill of being thrown about like a rag doll on the snaking
Belizean back roads. Despite the bathroom,
looking, feeling and smelling like a soviet Russian experiment there are worse
ways to spend a hangover of this magnitude, it is in fact a guilt free way of
sitting on your arse in the aircon on all day eating hobnobs and ignoring the
sunshine and beach. So perhaps diner wasn’t the worst after all.
The second point in my mind is the next step I was about to take, after
my passport was stamped and I had paid my duty to leave, I was going to take a
step no larger or shorter than any other step I’ve taken in my life. There was
nothing special about the way I was walking unless you count the facet that
genius here decided to swim out to sea for solstice and didn’t realise she was
in the docks. thE San Pedro Dock is not too clean and full of debris, including a 3 cm piece of glass I had to pull from my foot. Still the moon swung down
around the stars in a beautiful Cheshire Cat’s smile like a doorknocker and I
just had to swim out to a far jetty and chat with it, slicing my foot in the
process, but so far avoiding, tetanus, sickness, or any of the heps! (woop woop) I digress, aside from my mild limp and shaky hands I was walking just
like any other day.
But this step across a continues piece of land was suddenly a step of
bilateral importance because somewhere at some stage a group of powerful men
got together in a room with a picture of the Earth and drew some lines on it,
sliced it up like a sponge cake and then handed out the pieces. Men with guns
and ugly concrete walls aggressively dissect the valley as we cue to pay our 40
Belize dollars. A woman wielding a blue ink tampon, an archaic triangular stamp and biro offers
me my badge of honour for stepping in Guatemala. The tarmac is the same, there
is no casm to jump, the cars in the lot are the same, the air is no cooler,
fresher or sweeter, the treeline remains constant as does the horizon but for
this step, this line in the sand, these red dots on maps, we fight wars, flying
drones and planting IEDs and killing our neighbours. For this same tree line
and this same sky. The seeds that fall from these trees may grow to be Belizean or Guatemalan trees it won’t change the tree itself, what if a tree has roots on
the both countries where is the tree? Does the tree care? I’m pretty sure trees
don’t give a f*** about borders! Maybe we should be more like trees? Instead after these wars some powerful men
might sit at a big table and draw some more lines, and we’ll continue to stamp,
stamp, stamp over the Earth. Walking across a border and really thinking about
the concept makes it seem quite ridiculous, like saying the word fork over and
over again, soon it starts to loose all meaning. Funny old world really isn’t
it?
PS fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork
fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork
fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork
fork fork fork fork fork fork fork fork
fork fork fork fork fork fork fork Totally ridiculous!
