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Warning: Belize Can Be Hazardous to Your Health Along with making an emotional adjustment to the Middle East, given the drastic disparity in wealth compared to Central America, I was also still dealing with some physical effects from the 10 days I'd spent working in Belize. My legs were still splotchy and itchy from the chigger bites I'd gotten in the villages, and my foot was still recovering from being run over by Jonny's SUV.
I didn't describe that somewhat-humorous incident in my last entry, but Jonny, the director of ProBelize, had been having some problems with his car. When he braked to a halt, his SUV's engine would shudder and sometimes stop running, then he had trouble re-starting it.
On my last day with him and the ProBelize staff, on Friday, I was riding with them, sitting in the back seat while traveling through San Ignacio, and I wanted to get out of the car to run some errands. Jonny was hesitant to stop, though, so instead he slowed down to about five miles an hour, I opened the back door, grabbed my daypack and hopped out. Despite my best efforts to avoid it, the rear tire rolled over my foot, which hurt more than a bit. My foot was healing now, though, so it wasn't a big deal.
I was more concerned about the puncture wound on my leg. As I mentioned in my last update, I was hiking in a dark, Belize river cave with my three women friends on my last Saturday in Belize. While taking a picture of the cave, I didn't see a submerged rock (of which there are many). My shin smashed into the rock and I tumbled into the river with a resounding "splash." I got a nice picture but my close encounter with the rock left a deep puncture wound that hadn't healed yet, and I'd been replacing the bandages, which I'd slathered with copious amounts of Neosporin, several times a day. Finally one day in Abu Dhabi, I decided to have someone look at it, so I went to a hospital where an Arab doctor quickly examined it and said, "You're fine, you're fine," and then said, "That'll be 200 dirhams, please ($70)." Gee, thanks doc.
I had also made the mistake in Belize of eating a slushy. If you're not Belizean, you shouldn't drink the tap water there unless you want to get sick. I'd carefully avoided drinking tap water during both of my service trips to Belize the previous year, insisting instead on drinking only from the ubiquitous five-gallon plastic jugs of purified water that you can buy in just about any grocery store in Belize. But you shouldn't drink anything with ice in it, either, since most ice in Belize is made from tap water. Doh – that hadn't occurred to me. On a hot day in the village of Succotz as we were building the library roof, I saw a man pushing a cart selling slushies (shaved ice) and I ignorantly bought one and ate it. Bad move.
My stomach started to ache a few days later and I was still having issues when I reached Abu Dhabi. Jonny euphemistically called this sort of thing a "tummy tickle" and while it wasn't a big deal, it was a tad more than a "tickle." Running low on Imodium, I walked into an empty pharmacy one evening in Abu Dhabi and the pharmacist asked in a thick Arab accent if he could help me. I said, "No thanks," as I scanned the shelves in vain.
But after a few more minutes, he said, "You are looking for… Viagra?" I laughed and said, "No," then I saw the Imodium. I still laugh about that.
Above left: If you're an American, don't buy slushies in Belize like I did. Above right: In search of Imodium in Abu Dhabi a few days later.
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