Saturday, August 27, 2005

What I did this week

Bigness and I went to Chetumal Mexico to buy printer parts, go to the Mall Las Americas, eat at MacDonalds and see a movie. Oh, we also went to smuggle peaches into Belize, but shh, don't tell anyone. Its about a 3 hour drive from our house on the mainland (which is between Belize City and Belmopan) to the northern border and the mall is about 20 minutes from the border on the Mexican side. One good thing about living in Belize is that we border a NAFTA country (Mexico) Until you've lived outside of NAFTA, you don't realize how important it is. My main complaint about Belize is the import duty, 20% plus 9% sales tax or more. The government is in such financial hot water that they have lowered the non-Belizean/Caricom exemption to 50 bzd ($25 U.S.) Citizens still get the $100 exemption when crossing the border. So it becomes a game with the customs man. While in Mexico we always buy the essentials, shampoo, cream rinse, deodorent and everything else personal, at about 1/2 of what we pay in Belize. Our routine is like this: we get up early, go to the mall, walk around oohing and ahhing about the new fangled gadgets, because we just came out of our cave, we eat a burger and fries, shop at Office Depot and Chedraui in air conditioned comfort. Bigness always buys 2 packs of underwear (I swear I'm not lying) I look at the cute clothes and sigh because even when I was 10 years old I could never fit into a 34B which is the largest bra size they carry in the land of Lilliput. They don't have people my size in Mexico. People look at us like giants, well they look at HIM, amd smile at me. Belizeans park in one area of the lot, you might meet up with your cousin Puni there. Strength in numbers. We take everything out of the packaging and hide hide hide. I've found the best place is right under my nasty stank underwear, or in a tampon box, and then I choose a male customs agent, who definitely aint gonna touch dat stinkness. At the end of the shopping we go to the movies and Bigness falls asleep about 1/2 way through, without fail. gggggzzzzz fffffffbbbbb gggggzzzzz fffffffbbbbb This trip we saw Coach Carter, it was is English subtitled in Spanish. The last trip we saw Spanglish, which was kinda confusing because the english was subtitled in Spanish and the Spanish was just Spanish. This trip, we deviated from the norm and did not spend the night in a Chetumal hotel, we left at sunset. With Bigness's newly aquired sight, thanks to the evil Castro, he can drive a night. We got home about 9 p.m. exhausted but happy at our stash of peaches, nectarines, guava, underwear, shampoo, hair dye, file folders, CDs and inkjet cartridges. The sunset photo is after crossing the border into Belize happily we go whizzing through the jungle on our way home, having cheated the customs man once again, with Bigness's newly aquired night vision. For me, I'll stay a passenger, and not a driver. Just an observer and not a participant.

I felt so EVIL when went to eat this peach. That is, until I licked the sweat off it and bit into the pungent sweetness, and the juice dropped off my chin. I'm vagugely reminded of a story about Samson and Delilah in the Bible where she said stolen fruits taste sweeter. Maybe that was stolen kisses. Am I going to Hell?

3 comments:

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

Some customs people here can also ask for bribes.

Hey, you're learning fast!!! Hiding things under undies.

LAUGH OUT LOUD!

Alison Ashwell said...

People are very tiny here too in the south of France-so clothes have to be bought when i'm back in the UK.

Anonymous said...

That was the funniest thing I've ever heard because it is sooooooo true. I live in Orange Walk Town
Belize, and that is exactly what we do. There's a saying here "we da bad picni" which means
we are bad children not bad as in bad but bad as in mischeivous. Daddy tells you, don't do that and
what does a child do... He does it. But come on they're forcing us to. Here you are lucky if you can
find a peach and You know what I found at Bodega which is Walmart, it's down the street from Chedraui,
Asian Pears...I just about died, the first time I had that was on the cruise to Alaska... thought I'd
never have it again and low and behold there they were, in all it's crisp melt in your mouth sweetness.
What did I do, snuck some over, of course... Happy eatin's.