Unplugged near San Ignacio

It's good to step away from the insanity sometimes

Last week, while wandering the dirt roads of rural Central America, I got into a car with an American expat I didn't know. His brown-skinned wife, having found me walking alongside their greenhouse in the opposite direction of San Ignacio, insisted he give me a ride. Along the way he picked up his neighbor, a Jamaican carrying a small box covered with red foil paper and topped with a bow. He planned to propose to his girlfriend.

At the market I walked through rows and rows of misshapen bell peppers and Roma tomatoes, short pineapples and fat cabbages, limes and oranges and lemons I couldn’t tell apart. I passed over the tourist-friendly 50-cent taco stands. I was looking for Belizean food, I told the man who'd begun to follow me, a man who said he was working security but lacked the uniform I'd seen on the other guards. “This is the place you want,” he said, and he left me in front of two long, vinyl-covered tables arranged under a tarp awning. Twenty or so patrons filled the mismatched seats, eating or waiting for food. The woman in the grease-smeared apron, who was tending meat on a griddle only steps from the tables, turned toward me.

“Do you have room for me?” I asked.

She stared at me blankly, stainless steel turner raised. An older woman turned and stared as well. A moment passed before one of them spoke in Spanish to a rotund teenage girl eating fried chicken at one of the tables.

“What do you want?” the girl asked me.

“I want to eat.”

She repeated my request to the ladies. The older one nodded, retrieved a folding chair from somewhere, and shoved it between two of the diners, motioning for me to sit.

A couple seated across from me laughed and chatted between mouthfuls. Men formed a line near the griddle, ordering meals to take home. The younger chef appeared at my side, crawled under the table near my feet, and retrieved a bag of onions from a large plastic tub. Someone passed her money on their way out. A mother spooned mashed potatoes into a toddler's mouth, while a young woman put her plate on the ground, offering her last bite to a stray dog. Ten minutes passed before the teenager thought to ask me what I'd like to eat.

“That,” I said, pointing to another customer's dish, a mound of rice piled high with peppers, onions and beef.

The meal arrived on a flimsy paper plate, no silverware or napkin in sight. Sensing my confusion, my neighbors summoned a Tupperware container from the far end of the table. It was passed from patron to patron until it landed in my hands. Popping open the lid, I found a jumble of metal forks and spoons. A barrel-shaped container made its way toward me, too. Inside was a condiment of finely shredded onions, carrots and habaneros, which I spooned onto my plate. I resisted the urge to snap a photo like some slumming foodie voyeur.

I ate in silence, my view the chefs' foil-covered prep area, pots and pans, gallon buckets with lids, instant coffee, a plastic jug of cooking oil, a milk crate stacked with eggs, an overflowing trash can, reusable bottles filled with a bright red beverage, food scraps spilling from torn shopping bags.

I shoveled the food into my mouth, trying to identify the seasoning on the rice moistened with cooked onions, something unfamiliar whose deliciousness was rivaled only by the fatty meat and the bright, vinegary condiment. The fake security guard was right. This was what I wanted.

I walked the market afterward, watching people converse in Spanish and English, make change for Belize dollars with US coins, handle bags of cumin and black pepper, negotiate weights and prices.

Families were out for the day, the market a community-building center between people who knew each other or behaved as though they did. I saw mixed-race couples, Mennonites selling potatoes, Mayans and Kriols and North American immigrants. I saw people keeping busy, bagging fruit, cooperating, expressing gratitude. I sensed an ease with life despite a prevailing poverty. Nobody's face was pierced, nobody's hair was blue. People were dressed for a day on the town in knee-length shorts and skirts. I imagined the Jamaican man and his girl at home, enjoying stewed chicken and Belikin Stout, retiring at sundown. Just living life, no luxury beliefs, no silicone props, no manifesto.

I wove between textile stalls and shops selling wooden bowls, a place boasting Cuban cigars, a hole-in-the-wall advertising braids but supplied with a broken massage chair and a folding privacy screen. I looked at street art and read signs indicating political unrest. I hailed a cab.

Back at my cabin, I sat on my porch, saw egrets congregate in a tree, watched a crocodile couple and their eleven babies swim across the pond.

I vowed to keep my phone turned off, to ignore the perplexing pull of esoteric theories and online fights. In the evenings I made herbal tea on a gas stove that required lighting with matches, much like the stove of my childhood home. I drank it to stave off hunger, as my groceries were starting to wane. I went to bed early because that's when darkness fell.

In the morning I would hike again, through the old-forest palms of the rainforest, past where I saw the coatis and up the mountain, where hibiscus bloomed and hummingbirds dove.