Belize and the End of the First Month

So this week has been much less stressful work wise. A month in, I have all the material under my belt, but because of that I’ve had a lot of trouble focusing. It’s tough to motivate myself to continue to put effort into this music, because most of it is not very stimulating for the drums; kick on 1&3, Snare on 2&4, 8s on the hi-hit, rinse and repeat. Because I’m checked out of what I’m playing, I’ve been making silly mental errors. It’s frustrating on the one hand, but the entire band messes up. Sometimes they make huge, obvious errors, other times it is very subtle stuff, but when I make a mistake, it is much more out in the open. Maybe I’m just more attuned to recognizing percussive mistakes, but when I skip a beat, the audience knows. When a horn player skips a beat, there are 4 other horns playing the same line, so the audience doesn't notice.

On Thursday, I ventured out into Belize for the first time. There was a 15 minute boat ride into the port, and as we approached, the water turned from the brilliant turquoise of Caribbean seas to the familiar, polluted green-brown that I know from New Jersey. The area around the dock was your standard tourist fare, cheesy t-shirts and souvenirs that bastardize the indigenous culture for profit. The whole place reminded me of a mall, complete with store-maps and unintimidating security. There was a marimba duo, a man dressed up in Mayan garb, and tropical cabana-bars selling the local beer; the whole place felt fake. So I wandered past the ominous, barbed-wire fence into the real Belize.

Tourists shop for chocolate and diamonds at the Belize dock.

The locals began eyeing me as soon as I left the docks. I was white, had not tattered clothes and a backpack, so I must have looked like a dollar sign to them. I was offered weed almost immediately, and then again. It must have happened at least ten times during my time spent there. Two young boys sat on the curb, banging on buckets and tin cans with sticks of driftwood.  A three legged dog wandered the streets, begging for scraps and sifting through garbage. One dreadlocked man shook my hand, “Good for you for coming out to see the locals,” he slurred in a deep creole twang, “most tourists don’t venture out the gates,” I could see why.

Locals get off the bus in front of the courthouse.

There was a bridge, one local told me that they called it the money bridge, because on one side was the rich tourists, and the other side was the crime filled ghetto. From the bridge, the economic disparity was flagrant, with the run down fishing boats moored on one side, and the tourist charters on the other.

Fishing boats from the "money bridge."

When I crossed to the poor side, I was immediately approached by a man who insisted he was a tour guide. I said no thanks, but he followed me and began to tell me about a few of the sites around Belize City. Just like that, I was swindled into a tour I didn’t want to pay for. We passed the old British courthouse back from the colonial days, long since abandoned by government officials. He pointed out St. John’s Cathedral, the oldest church in Central America. Inside it felt more like a museum than a prayer house, complete with mandatory donations to enter.

St. John's Cathedral

He explained that Belize had a prime minister election the day before. The Democratic Party had won, and the corrupt Dean Barrow was re-elected. Remnants of the election still filled the city; signs painted in red about the failures of Barrow’s administration were hung on lampposts and banners displaying the voting results hung over main street. We passed the prime minister’s office, an angular post-modern villa made of stucco that stood out from the rest of the city’s run-down colonial architecture. As we finished our loop, he pointed out a spot where there had been a gang killing few days earlier.

Anti-Barrow campaign sign

My self-appointed tour guide stopped following me eventually, and I made my way back over the bridge, where I tried the local beer in an open-air dive and made my way back to the ship. We played the repeat guest’s party and then I ate dinner. One of the dancers who I had never met joined our table. The other musician sitting with us left for a minute and she had this look in her eyes that screamed “please don’t leave me alone with this kid.” I tried to relax the situation by making a joke about her fuzzy sweatshirt, but she just laughed dismissively and didn’t respond. I guess I’m an elusive person, but the coldness I experience here is pretty dehumanizing sometimes.

Friday we went to Carnival’s man-made beach in Honduras. One of the solo guitarists invited me to go snorkeling with him; it was the first time I’ve been in the ocean since I got here. The water was murky because there was a tanker drilling up sediment about half a mile from the beach. The snorkeling was a bit boring, but we went to a small reef and saw a few schools. When it was over we went to a buffet with jerk shrimp and lobster tails, it was great to eat real food again.

When I got back to the ship, a rehearsal was sprung on me, so I hurriedly washed the salt off my body and went to the theater. We went through the production singer’s replacement show because for some reason the show for that night had been canceled. It was another one of those fly by the seat of my pants moments. The show went well for not having rehearsed much. We had a dance set afterwards and it was a good one, lots of fun.  

Today was a very long day for a cruise ship musician. I worked a whole seven hours, and let me tell you I am out of practice. We had rehearsal for the show where guests sing in the morning. Then we played our farewell party which kinda sucked. I played well I suppose but the audience was not engaged at all so the set had no energy. Then we had three production shows tonight. The ones that were supposed to be yesterday got rescheduled to today, and the one that is normally today went on as well. Playing three of those was exhausting, there’s only so much fake music I can make before it starts to drive me a little crazy.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is the juxtaposition between my desire to be nomadic and my difficulty with new social situations. Why do I continue to place myself in places where I need to start from scratch when I know that I am not good at that? Maybe it’s just a product of getting older, but I’m ready to stop moving so much. The silly thing about it though, is now that I’m getting comfortable here, I want to leave! Well, I guess I wanted to leave as soon as I got here, but now the possibility of getting out of here seems much more real. I wanted to give this place a legitimate chance, and I did (I think.) Now that I’ve really got a feel for it, I thought I would be able to make a level headed decision about staying or not. Yet, at the closing of my first month here, I still have no idea if this job is for me or not. Most of the time I am pretty unhappy or bored, but there are moments of elation that make it difficult to make a decision about staying or going. It all really depends on what is waiting for me at home. We’ll see.