Cristo Rey

We turned right from Santa Elena and headed south toward Cristo Rey. We had just driven a loop over the low steel plate bridge on the Macal River, into San Ignacio, and then back across the Macal on the Hawkesworth Bridge, a high and picturesque single lane suspension bridge built by the British in 1949. We climbed a hill and left the village. The road quickly turned to dirt, or actually a kind of familiar East Tennessee sort of wet and sticky red clay. I was glad to be driving a 4-wheel SUV, just in case. Chuck was riding shotgun, with Lynn, Jessica and Peggy in the back. The short trip to Cristo Rey – just a couple miles – was punctuated by real estate signs advertising your own piece of jungle paradise on the banks of the Macal.

My brief phone conversation with Jamie the night before had provided our directions. We were to look for a park on the right side of the road after entering Cristo Rey, and then ask the first person we saw where Atiliano Jones lived. I spotted the park, and pulled the SUV in front of a small tienda a few hundred yards down the road. Peggy and I got out and asked after Atiliano, as instructed. The shopkeeper pointed to a small blue house across the street. We’d found our destination with 20 minutes to spare. As we walked up to the blue house, we saw Atiliano stride out from the porch of a house two doors down. He was a striking figure, large and athletic. His button-down shirt and slacks made me self-conscious in my t-shirt and shorts.

Atiliano invited us to share the porch of his bother’s house while we made small talk and waited for the chairman of the water board to arrive. He was obviously uncomfortable with these strange Americans who not only arrived on time, but even came EARLY.

After several uneasy glances at Atiliano’s watch, the water board chair, Jesus Guerra, came roaring down the trail behind the house in a beat-up pickup truck. We reconvened at the community center with his nephew, the chair of the village council and settled in to talk water. Jesus’ two main concerns were that it would cost too much in electricity (very expensive in Belize) to generate purified water, and that people would think it was inferior to bottled Crystal water. While Lynn and I took and measured water samples, we assured him and his nephew Joe that a Living Waters system could produce water as good as Crystal for way less than the $2.50 - $4.00 Bz that many in the village were currently paying. After treating us to a round of papaya smoothies (made with Crystal water!), Jesus told me he wanted to take me to his house while the others regrouped on Atiliano’s brother’s porch.

Thinking that I was in for a wild ride, I was surprised when we pulled into a homestead not much more than a stone’s throw from the porch where the others now sat, but back in the woods on the bank of the river. Two boys were cutting palm fronds to rethatch the palapa next to the house. Jesus invited me in. It was small – three rooms – and shabbier than Atiliano’s brother's. Half a dozen dogs kept me preoccupied while Jesus found his daughter and had her give me her hotmail address for future email communications. I asked her how often she checked it, and in a worldy tone she answered “Oh, at least once a week, sometimes more!”

Jesus delivered me back to Atiliano, and we walked to the house between his blue house and his brother’s house. His mother greeted us at the back door and ushered us into the kitchen. A bowl full of tamales wrapped in plantain leaves was served up, along with water that we were assured came straight from the cistern.

It was a morning of hospitality. Shared food, shared conversations and a shared sense of community permeated our visit. Although poor, Cristo Rey did not feel impoverished. In fact in many ways it seemed to provide a richer lifestyle than the ones we aspire to in suburban America

- dan terpstra