Getting used to Belize
Guess what? Moving to a new country is tough.
We’re finding out just what it takes to start a new life in a place very different from the one we came from. From finding places to eat that are both delicious and have options for Camille and Nan, to trying to meet friends, to just figuring out how to pay for my visa once a month (I almost ended up in jail for missing April, but got a verbal warning instead - all good).
Perhaps the biggest surprise has been how hard Belize is working towards modernizing its building practices. Gone are the days when you could slap some wood together on a piece of land and call it a home. Now you are expected to hire an architect to provide plans to the Central Building Authority to get approval to build, all while coordinating finding a builder who can follow blueprints, sourcing all the material from various Mennonite camps all over the place, allowing your lumber 6 months to dry in the sun or else paying twice as much to have it kiln dried, getting the Forestry Department out to look at how many trees you’ll be displacing, applying for an Environmental Impact Assessment to make sure you don’t harm any animals in the process, hiring a watchman to keep an eye on all of your lumber while it sits there, travelling to the various government buildings spread all over Belize in order to pay the fees associated with applying for all these things, and just making up your mind as to what the hell it is you’re trying to build anyway. We thought all this would be the easy part…
Don’t get me wrong, many regular Belizeans are still just building what they want on their own land without going through these processes, and we’ve been encouraged by many people we’ve spoken with to do the same, but we are doing this to ensure that we are not negatively impacting the environment any more than we absolutely have to. We are happy to work harder to make sure we’re doing it right. But it is still a pain in the ass. And expensive.
A Sketchup design of the Long Cabana.
So far, we have an architect drawing up some detailed plans for us and our builder has laid the posts for the Long Cabana and started on the framework. It is amazing to see the ingenuity and hard work put in by these guys. Backbreaking work in the hot sun, without many of the tools that an average work site in the States would have (such as dependable scaffolding or cranes). And the progress is fast once it gets started.
With any luck, if we don’t get hit with a tropical storm in the next few weeks, we’ll have some buildings ready for friends to come stay in by end of July! Once we’re living on the land the first order of business is securing water and growing food. Next comes the smaller cabanas and glamping units, which will allow even more people to come out and stay with us. Then comes the wooden walkways and the decorative landscaping and all the other fun stuff everyone is itching to come help us with!
It’s been a tough ball to start rolling, but hopefully the momentum is just getting going. Keep an eye out for updates and we’ll be making more episodes of Radio Duende soon, it’s been a little too hectic to sit down and make a cohesive radio show while in the middle of all this craziness. Plus covid.
Much love!