“Is this the water taxi to Belize City?” I asked.
“It sure is,” the boat captain replied. “This is our new service from Dangriga to Belize City with stops at Gales Point and Nesbitt Caye. Enjoy the ride.”
“Are you going to Belize City?” I asked the old, grey-haired Belizean man sitting across the aisle from me.
“No. I’m getting off at Nesbitt Caye,” he said.
A young, college-aged man sitting next to him got very excited.
“Hey!” he said. “I’m a sociology student at Southern California University. I have a professor who is doing a population study this summer on Nesbitt Caye. His name is Mandell. Have you seen him?”
“Nesbitt Caye is real little,” the old man said. “Everybody sees everybody. I know who you talking about. He got a bunch of people always asking questions and getting up in everybody’s business.”
The student said, “They’re doing a study on population growth. Did you know that Nesbitt Caye has the highest birth rate in Central America? They are doing studies to find out why that’s so. Scientists think it might be genetic or maybe even something in the water that causes it.”
The grey-haired man said, “They nothing but fools. Anybody know why they so much babies on Nesbitt Caye.”
“Do you really think you can solve a puzzle that is baffling science?” the student asked.
“Sure enough. We got no electricity on the caye so we go to sleep early. Then every morning at five’oclock a barge from Placencia comes through the cut by Nesbitt Caye. It blows the loudest horn of any boat in the Caribbean and wake up everybody. At five in the morning it’s too early to get up and too late to go back to sleep.”
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