Living on the Edge

By anthony sylvestre

He stood at the corner of Tigris Street and Basra Street, one of these commonly referred to hotspots in Belize City, seemingly unfazed by the gunfire that had barked out just minutes earlier. He had the DVDs he was selling neatly displayed on the ground for the passersby who were interested in the Bob Marley or Peter Tosh or Burning Spear genre of music.

Less than 24 hours earlier, a nineteen year old girl, in the prime of her youth, was shot in her head for no reason: she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The body of another teenage girl, it would be learnt later, was found partially decomposed near the Mile 5 Bridge on the Western Highway.

“Yuh brave tho,” I said to my friend, as I drove up slowly, trying to make light of a very serious matter. “You nuh hear how people di get kill just di hang out pon streetside?”

“So weh yuh expect mi fi do?” he asked rhetorically. “Stay home? How ah wah mek mi money fi live?”

My friend is right. What is a man to do?

The streets of Belize City are dangerous, cold, treacherous and unforgiving right now. There is no gender, ethnicity, age group or social class which is immune from the vices of the cold, treacherous streets. Man, woman and child; prominent people and people of straw, at any given time, can be victims of the cold, treacherous streets.

But, a man has as his first priority- to take care of himself and those dependent on him. He must live so he must plod on through these same dangerous, cold, treacherous and unforgiving streets in order to survive. And so, my friend being consumed with his own personal issues of survival was hardly troubled by the shootings and killings around him. So long as it was not someone close to him or someone he knew personally, my friend could hardly be bothered by the personal misfortune of others in the society. His personal survival took priority over anything else. And I suppose there is nothing outrageously wrong with that. Just that, it seems to me, that that psyche of personal survival trumping everything else, is having a debilitating and regressing effect on the society at large.

When you think about it, this psyche of personal survival over everything else is what drives the gunman who is given a hit to take someone’s life. This is what drives the person who jacks, the thief (white collar or common thief)), the drug dealer or the corrupt government Minister or official. At the end of the day, it comes back to the question my friend asks: “how ah wah mek mi money fi live?”

And therein, seems to me, lies the problem.

When the economy of the country is comatose as it is right now; when citizens (especially the young) cannot make an honest living doing legitimate work, then illegal and criminal activities mushroom and spiral out of control; the psyche of personal survival over everything else also spirals out of control.

The government has launched an initiative called “Restore Belize” which it says is a crime prevention initiative.

The best known crime prevention strategy is to give people opportunities in life. To do this the government of course needs the money and resources. But this cannot come from an economy which is almost dead. It has to come from without. It has to come from an economic boom brought on by foreign investment.

This government has shown that it cannot do that. All it continues to do is spit out plans and initiatives that are bureaucratic layers of committees.

The only way to restore Belize is to for government to attract foreign investors. This government has shown that it cannot do that. Far from that, this government has shown an intention to keep foreign investors away.

In the meantime, the rest of us, who don’t have the luxury of police security, continue to live on the edge, not knowing if we will be the next victims of the cold treacherous streets.

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