My Alternative New Year

On 28 December I caught the ferry to San Pedro to spend a few days over New Year with my new American friends Kath and Cullen.

They picked me up at the dock in their boat to travel the few miles to where they live on Coco Beach, and on arrival I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. A beautiful apartment, just a stone's throw across the sand to the sea, my own gorgeous room with a six foot bed and a bathroom with constant hot water.

It was hard to do anything the first day except just sit on the verandah in a rocking chair, feeling the warmth of the sun tempered by a mild breeze, and gazing at the hypnotic turquoise water with the white surf breaking gently on the Barrier Reef. Truly God's own country.

The next few days were spent lazily on the beach enjoying the lovely weather, good company, reading, watching tv, a bit of retail therapy and generally being spoilt and pampered by a wonderful couple whose mission in life seemed to be attending to my every need.

Every silver lining has a cloud though, and on 31 December Kath and Cullen took me to San Mateo, the village just three miles away where local people live in poverty and squalor on the swampy filth-ridden edges of the lagoon. Most houses don't have electricity; those that do might have a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling of the 12 x 12 one room box on stilts they call home. There are no roads between the houses - just a collection of rickety planks forming precarious bridges over the swamp to connect each house to the dirt path which leads to the main road. We chatted to some of CARE's clients as we walked around, and it was hard not to feel despair for these people who lived without sanitation,clean water,decent food and proper shelter.

We went to see the school that had been built by the Anglican Church of America and was heavily subsidised by Americans on the island and their friends in the USA. In just a couple of years the school has been built from scratch , complete with a special needs unit, and now educates over 400 children who previously didn't go to school. Each child is also provided with two cooked meals a day.

That night, we walked a few hundred yards along the beach to a lovely restaurant where we ate sublime stuffed grouper cooked Belizean style by a local lady. Afterwards we strolled back to watch a fireworks display just out to sea on a barge, thoughtfully provided by another restaurant owner.

Not for the first time since I arrived in Belize, I pondered on how lucky I have been in life, and felt sorrow for the vast numbers of people in the world who have no way out of the extreme poverty they have been born into.

I caught the early ferry (10.30am) back to Belize City on New Year's Day, and particularly enjoyed the trip because for once there were very few passengers. As the boat sped through the water, faster than usual, the spray from the wake turned to a fine mist and created a rainbow on the turquoise water. It was amazingly pretty, and I saw it as a good omen.