I.II.V.II – Placencia?: Day Two
PLACENCIA?
I.II.V.II – DAY TWO
25/09/22
The place I had come to call my ‘safe haven’ quickly stopped being that as my streak of bad luck went on.
At around 1AM, I could hear shouting and screaming coming from the cabaña to my left. Being the observant person that I am (most would describe it as nosy), I took it upon myself to spy from my window, sliding the curtains only enough to accommodate one eye. I froze. A guy and who I assumed to be his partner; screaming and yelling at each other’s faces. Then he slapped her – hard. Then he shoved her and pushed her aside, grabbed her hair and dragged her down to the floor. After more shouting, he put his two hands around her neck and started to choke her. She freed herself and they continued to fight.
I had no idea what to do. The only thing I knew was that she was in actual danger. The only thing I’d tell anyone in my position would be to call the police. And that’s what I did. Instinctively and without thinking much of it. In all my panic I managed to find the police station’s number and then proceeded to recount what I had just seen in a quiet hush. In the meantime, the fighting only seemed to escalate. One yelling over the other. Seconds felt like hours. “Should I go there? Should I call the police again? Should I call the host?” but none of them felt either safe nor effective. Then things got quiet all of a sudden. I didn’t even want to look outside my window. What if he had killed her? What then? My god, I couldn’t believe what was going on.
More insecurity and doubt crept over me. “Did I do the right thing?”. What if she didn’t want to report him? What if he were to retaliate? What if I just made things worse? And, as egotistical as it might sound, what about me? Had I put myself at risk by calling the police? One capable of domestic violence would surely be capable of getting his hands on the defenceless guy who got him into trouble, no? It’d be a no-brainer that it was me – the guy in the middle cabaña – who called the police. It was a mixture of “Why is this happening to her?” and “I don’t want to make this thing about me”.
Throughout this internal conflict, I kept on pacing back and forth in my bedroom, crying my eyes out – the only outlet I had for my anger and fright. I felt so damn helpless, almost as if I were an accomplice just by standing there doing nothing. They kept on arguing, very quietly. Hearing her yelling provided a relief unlike any other. After about fifteen minutes, the police showed up and that’s when I decided to back off and let them be. The police would take control and that’d be it. That night, I cried myself to sleep. What I had thought was a safe haven turned out to be a horror house after all.
As the night crept by...
Needless to say, I didn’t get an inch of sleep after the whole incident. The raucous thunder and the constant lightning flashes didn’t help much either.
The following morning, I received a call from my host. She apologised on behalf of the couple, stating that their behaviour was repugnant to say the least and that she had called the police on them after the other neighbour had reported them. She also told me the guy had checked out and that his partner would be leaving soon. Anything more than that, I felt like I didn’t even want to know about. I just hope she’s doing okay and that she got the help she might have needed. That she never has to go through something like that ever again.
As for me, I can say just about the same thing. Again, I don’t want to make it about me, but this episode did scar me for life. I know domestic abuse is a thing and we’ve all heard stories from friends and family alike, seen it on TV and read about it in magazines – hell, I’ve had patients coming in all beaten up blue by their partners. But it was the first time I had witnessed something like this in front of my very own eyes.
Good morning!
I guess I can’t say it was a surprise when that same morning I got a call from an agency telling me the tour I had booked with them was off.
I was meant to be visiting the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary – a reserve that was established as a protected area for jaguar preservation, with a tremendous diversity of flora and fauna to be found along the mountain ridge surrounding it. There, I’d have the best shot at getting to set my eyes on my favourite mammal – the oh so elusive jaguar. Back when I was planning my itinerary for Belize, this was the thing I was looking forward to the most, so you can imagine my disappointment the minute I got the call.
Turns out, Hurricane Ian, which at the time was classified as a class four hurricane, was so strong that even from hundreds of kilometres away, it was still affecting Belize’s weather systems. By that time, I had practically become a meteorologist, always checking out weather maps and predicting its course. I swear, Windy had become a close friend of mine. That said, this was not what it had predicted. I was genuinely devastated by the news. I tried calling every tour agency in Placencia, but no one in their right mind would go. “The river is too high, the trail is too muddy, the winds are too strong!” they asserted, and of course, I knew they were right. They also assured me none of it would change in the upcoming days given how high the river had risen, which meant postponing wouldn’t even be an option.
I knew this would be part of the deal when I set out on such a journey. That I’d get to miss out on a lot of stuff I’d planned to see and do. I knew it. But, up until then, I had counted myself lucky, because not only had I not missed out on anything, on the contrary, I had done so much more stuff than I had planned. But there was no way around it this time round – no matter how on point my organisational skills are.
Regrouping...
My feelings of resignation and defeat lasted only a short while. Lost in my writing and accompanied by an unlimited supply of coffee, I was in my element. And, given that the storm raged on, I decided to forego everything and just enjoy the cabaña. To just relax, find myself, read, write and consume ginormous quantities of coffee. I had been on the go for almost two months by then, I deserved a day to myself
I was in the perfect place for that. In between long sessions of writing, I’d go out on the porch, stare at this one agouti who’d disappear the second I approach it (I genuinely thought it was a capybara at first – and mistakenly and quite idiotically asked my host whether it was a Chupacabra instead) and have a chat with Clara; the lady staying in the cabaña to my right. German born and raised, this trailblazer had worked as an anaesthesiologist with the government for the previous 32 years before joining the Red Cross a couple of years previously. I swear she was as charming as they come and I had the most pleasant of conversations with her!
Then it’d be back to more hours spent writing. Traumatised though I felt, I still got to spend my day in the cabaña doing everything I had been looking forward to the previous day. To this day, I can say with 100% certainty that that place was easily the best place I’ve ever stayed in.