By Colin Hyde
What’s this, what’s this—is government really balking over payments made to its lawyers in the dark being brought to the light? Decades ago, my dad, a career public servant, told me that every adult Belizean should file a yearly income tax return. Well, I know many of us who live outside of the system don’t do that, and for most of us it’s not a dodge; it’s because our take isn’t anything to holler about. I think I put that nicely enough. Lawyers shouldn’t have any hesitation in filing their returns. Somebody big in the lawyer business said that what lawyers who work in the system make is quite paltry compared to what lawyers on the outside rake in, so it’s a certain bet that NO lawyer in Belize is anywhere near the poverty line.
Wa, lawyers don’t want us to know what they are making? I’ve told you I suspect that crowd is gouging too much out of our national pie. It wouldn’t be such a big issue if they had the DNA of the philanthropist flowing through their veins. If perception is truth, they are salting it away, so they and their children can live like the rich and famous in the USA.
I’ve told you before that I rate what doctors and nurses take. No job, none carries the stress that their job does. Farmers, fisherfolk, mechanics work real hard for their money; and people who sell their souls, their dignity, pay a high price for the money they earn too. All these white collars working in the insulated system, some living fat off the produce of the land, many of them work hard, yes, but they all live stress-free.
Maybe GoB had to mount a good defense to defend our right to have an election. Really, could the election have been stayed because a group took a beef to court? These lawyers don’t know everything. In respect to our interests, our second PM, Manuel Esquivel, a non-lawyer, had a far better angle in the Ashcroft cases than the high-priced lawyers.
It can’t be that we had to drain the national kitty to pay for these lawyers’ services. Someone will have to explain to me if there’s some principle here. Maybe it’s just hurdles they are setting up to foil Jerry, to slow him down from seeking more revelations. You know how one thing leads to the next.
Hmm, did GoB’s lawyer friends take the job on condition that the fat they got was kept a secret? My, it can’t be so that GoB is going through contortions to haul the tarp over what it paid lawyers to defend our right to have the last general election.
Vibes talking “another” referendum for elected Senate
Vibes is clamoring for an elected Senate. No need to ask: that crowd, you can bet they are not having their way as much as they would like. Poor Vibes; wait, poor Vibes hell, the folk in that party have all the power. I heard words hib in the direction of the NGO senator and the business senator, but I think their main worry is that in a crunch the present church senator won’t be as compliant as the ones under the UDP were.
If I was Vibes, I’d be deathly worried too. I wouldn’t be surprised that if after wrecking the new growth industry, those church bohgaz get to thinking that we are living in Iran.
Somewhere in Belize City there’s a prized Cassia Grandis tree
Back in the day there were a number of iconic trees in Belize City, among them the old gnarled mahogany at the corner of Hyde’s Lane and North Front Street – I think that’s gone now – and the ones that lived in the fabulous garden at Battlefield Park, which are gone now, since a City Council leadership in that municipality which thought Joyce Kilmer was a bore, decided to send in the chainsaws. Whoa there, there’s a story that the trees harbored too many nuisance pigeons. Hey, I think I told you how that Battlefield Park got its name. The story I have is that was the location where the Salvation Army and its leader, “Adjutant” Simpson, battled nightly to save straying souls.
Core Belize City is very fertile land. I can tell you that firsthand because I spent my pre-teen years in that place. Between our yard and our grandparents’ yard next door, we had flower and vegetable gardens, and a number of fruit trees, our guava tree which bore fat, juicy fruits all year round being the most popular. When one of my aunts inherited the yard next door, she planted a Haden mango, which produced a bountiful crop of delicious fruits every year, enough for all her family and friends. Three blocks south of where I used to live, there is a breadfruit tree that just can’t stop feeding the folk in that neighborhood.
My big interest here today is a Cassia Grandis tree somewhere in the old capital. Three seasons or so ago, in May 2023 I think, a lady from the city rented a house in Camalote that belongs to one of my nieces. You know how it was (is) with our old folk, how they share (d) things. There’s always some fruit in season where I live; naturally, she got a portion, and maybe to reciprocate, one day she handed a couple or three of the produce of the Cassia Grandis in Belize City to my mother-in-law. That bukut, yes, that’s the Cassia Grandis, was the highest quality. If you’re ever buying bukut, ask the vendor for permission to squeeze it. The proof of a pudding is in the eating, but you don’t have to eat a bukut to test its grade. The easier the pod, capsule, crumbles in your hand, the better it is. This one’s casing, it was brittle like egg shell!
In respect to the pods, we aren’t living in the golden age of Cassia grandis. Oh, they’re still a landscape winner, a stunner when in bloom that is surpassed maybe only by the Cortez (yellow poui). In the golden era, there were pods as much as 3 feet long, all filled from tip to tip with soft, succulent disc-shaped partitions, each one carrying a single seed. Before I go on, I must mention that there are a few unfortunate people whose olfactory sense is a lee bit offended by the smell of the pulp. Tell me, where in the world do you find everyone agreeing on anything, everyone liking anything?
This pod from Belize City was barely 14 inches long. If I’m going to get what I’m looking/hoping for, I expect I’m looking for an old bukut tree. I’m no fruit or pod expert, but my recollection is that the older a tree gets, the smaller the fruits, and what it loses in size it makes up for in quality.
In the countryside, they soak a bone bukut (that’s a very tough one) in a bucket of water overnight, and the next day they feast on the juice. I tell everyone who will listen that I grew up on silk snappers that feed on the reef. In my early days, I was about as excited about deep sea snappers as I was about grunts. I eat grunts now, but that’s only because I don’t live near the sea. Well, I’m not interested in bone bukut, and the semi-bone, to borrow a coinage from my dad, the best description for that is that it knocks nothing to hell. When you talk boneless bukut, I’m a gourmand. That little pod from the city, I nursed it for three days. It took quite some discipline.
I saved about 40 seeds. I am not aware of any work done on bukut by the botanists, but it’s the rule that seeds from fruit trees are not always true to type. But 40 seeds, 40 plants, if I set them all I was bound to get a few that were A-grade. Whoa there, not so fast, I didn’t count my trees before they sprouted.
The bukut seed has a hard testa, as tough as the enamel on a good tooth. There’s a reason or reasons for everything, and this hard outer-coat helps make the seed survive until conditions are favorable for it to grow, and helps keep it viable for up to 8 years, which serves in its dispersal, helps it find (end up in) an area where it has an open space to grow.
One who is interested in making the seeds germinate has to scarify them, break the hard outer-coat by sanding it (with sandpaper), by giving it a hot bath, and I’ve heard cracking them with a hammer or heavy object. I’m no good. I set some directly, I scarified some and set them, and some I left in their untouched state and set them after 2 years. I am still waiting for a bukut plant.
You know people who are legit don’t ever give up. Saturday morning I got a bright idea after I saw a lee bukut tree growing in the wild. I said to myself, what if the bukut tree in Belize City still stands, and what if the owner or owners were kind souls, and what if a few little wild plants were in their yard, you know, surviving and thriving near a fence or something protective. You see my thinking? Boy, if I had just ONE plant from a proven mother I would be very happy. I could hope that when it grew up the “chip” would be like the “block”, one whose pod crumbles at the slightest touch.
