How to Invest or Retire in Belize

Hey Dad, This is Belize!

I Spent It All In Belize

The Little World of Danny Vasquez

Belize, 1798 -The Road to Glory

Slavery in Belize - A Family Affair

The Great Story of Belize Vol. I

The Great Story of Belize Vol.2

Emory King's Driver's Guide to Belize

Living in Belize

In Belize I have been poor and I have been rich, (as Sophie Tucker used to say, "It's better being rich."), and now I am neither. I look forward to being one or the other again soon.

This in-between status, (too much income to be one of the idle poor and not enough to be one of the idle rich) is maddening. But in all these years I have never regretted a minute of choosing to stay in Belize. I wouldn't live anywhere else.

It's the only country in the world where you can live without working. The fish swim in the sea and the coconuts fall off the trees. You can't starve.

The Belize City I discovered almost 33 years ago was still very much a
Nineteenth Century village. Only a handful of cars and a sickly electric power
system, which ran blaring radios and a couple of jukeboxes represented the
Twentieth Century.

Bicycles abounded and so did pedestrians. People literally danced in the streets and cars proceeded carefully through the throngs. It seemed nobody stayed home after dark.

The electric power was D.C. and the light bulbs cast as eerie yellow glow on the whole town. The Town did not extend beyond the Pound Yard bridge on the Southside and the Belize Estate and Produce Company on the Northside.

There were only two hundred motor vehicles of every description in the entire
colony. Today there are nearly ten thousand. There was no Hummingbird Highway or Southern Highway. You went south by sea on the Heron H., the Maya Prince, the O.C.L. or flew one of the light planes owned by British Colonial Airlines Limited. (The company was owned by a New Orleans mahogany buyer, the chief pilot was a real Kentucky Colonel, the second pilot was an Austrian ex-Nazi flyer.)

The road to Cayo, (now San Ignacio) was asphalt but only one-lane wide with curious little passing bays every mile. The road north led to Chetumal eventually, after you crossed a ferry on New River and another one on the Hondo, but once you got to Chetumal you were at the end of the line.

There were no roads through the jungle to Merida. We drove on the left side of the road in those days, very British, don't you know. It was years before we could get the British Colonial Government to agree to switch to righthand driving.

I was Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce during these years we wrote reams of letters, held hours of meetings on the subject. To listen to some of the British Colonial Officials to abandon lefthand driving might shake the Commonwealth to its foundations, bring down the British Government in the House of Commons, or force Queen Elizabeth to abdicate.

When we finally won the battle the date set for the changeover was November 1st, 1961. For three months before the newspapers warned drivers and pedestrians to beware, signs were painted, radio programmes were devoted to discussions of the new rules of the road, and school children were drilled on how to cross the street.

On the night before the grand event, the biggest hurricane in the history of the
country hit Belize City causing tremendous damage. All thought of righthand
driving was put off for weeks.

During the emergency period I ran into Mr. T.D. Vickers, English Colonial
Secretary. He fixed me with a baleful eye. "I told you changing from lefthand
driving would have serious effects," he said.

It was while I was the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce I got my first
lesson in the mysterious and exciting world of mercantilism as practiced in
Belize.

Mind you, I was 22 years old and too green to burn, especially in business, so I was filled with righteous anger at the Government when a director of Brodie's complained that he was only allowed to make one dollar on a hundred pound bag of rice. The Government had enacted a price control law on certain items such as rice, beans, meat and milk in an effort to keep down the cost of living.

The Brodies's man insisted it was too small a mark-up and would result in his
withdrawal from the rice business altogether. So I fired off a letter to the
government stating, nay, demanding in the strongest possible terms, that the law be amended forthwith if not sooner.

I followed up the letter a few days later, with a personal visit to the Price
Control Officer. He turned out to be a kindly Englishman of 60 years who started out calling me "Mr. King;" in ten minutes had shifted to "Old Boy," and ended up the interview with "Emory, my lad."

You have to admire the English for being the best diplomats in the world (when they want to be). This one, whose name unhappily I have forgotten, made me comfortable and at ease immediately, and steered the conversation into the weather, fishing, the newly discovered cave in the Mountain Pine Ridge, and generally went on as though he had all day to gossip. (And he did have all day.

So did I. So did everybody in Belize in those long gone days of moribund
colonialism. Only George Price and his Merry Men were out thrashing around
trying to get something done. And you know what that led to - Self-Government, Independence, and the frenetic pace of today's Belize City, at least 500 times faster than the lazy afternoon in 1954 of which I speak.)

Finally I said I wanted to discuss my letter about the profit on rice. "It won't
do, old boy. It just won't do at all. I have it here. Thank God you didn't send
it to the Col. Sec. or H.E." By Col. Sec. he meant the Colonial Secretary, the
second most powerful man in the Colony, and H.E. of course stood for His
Excellency, the Governor, the number one boss of all bosses who at this time was Sir Patrick Renison, K.C.M.G.

"I had thought of sending it to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in
London," I said, deciding two could play at this name dropping, or rather,
titles dropping game. "No doubt, old boy, but before you do let me point out a few home truths to you. Rice is one of the staples of the British Honduran's
diet. Everybody eats it every day including me and the Col. Sec. and even H.E. and if the bloody Secretary of State for the Colonies come here he'll eat it too."

"Yes sir," I said meekly. "Right. Now then, the man over at Brodie's buys a bag of rice for nine dollars and sells it for ten and makes a dollar profit.
"Tomorrow he will take the same nine dollars and buy another bag of rice and
make another dollar. And the next day and the next and at the end of the year,
taking out Sundays and holidays, he will still have his nine dollars and three
hundred dollars profit. That is not 10 percent.

It is more like 3000 percent in a year! "And on top of that he borrowed the nine dollars from the bank at 7-1/2 percent interest per year - or, to be precise, a total cost to Brodies of 67-1/2 cents to make three hundred dollars. And on top of that Brodie's doesn't sell one bag of rice a day. They sell between six and ten bags a day. "So, Emory my lad, shall I send your letter, through channels, of course, to London?"

" I would be much obliged, Sir, if you would give the letter back to me." He
gave it back to me and said "If you come round the Pickwick Club tonight I will tell you some interesting stories about condensed milk."

I did and he did, but I won't tell because it concerns a dear old friend of mine
who is no longer around to deny it. That was the day I started to grow up.

The years passed. I had a number of adventures, a few of which are recounted in this book. In time I got married and in time I had two sons.

One day about ten years ago I told the boys, "Boys," I told them, "when I came to Belize I had ten dollars in my pocket, the clothes on my back, and a
university education, but I am going to do better for you. I am going to give
you a university education, your clothes and twenty dollars! You are going to
have twice as much money as I did when I started out."

This gets a big laugh every time I tell it, but I really told them this because
I have seen too many parents give their sons the idea that because daddy is rich the boys don't have to work. This almost always ruins the kids. So I made my boys understand they have to fend for themselves. Don't wait around for the old man to croak thinking you are going to get houses and businesses, money, cars, land and stock. Because when they read my will it is going to say "I, Emory King, being of sound mind and body spent it all in Belize before I died."

So, gentle reader, prepare to go on a roller coaster ride through 30 years of my experiences in the most wonderful country in the world. You will find a liberal dose of history, some politics, a dash of philosophy, a pinch or two of fun, even a smidgen of tears. I spent it all in Belize. I did indeed; my youth, my energy, my hopes, my dreams, and my money. And I will spend the rest of my life, if I am lucky, spending everything else I get in Belize. It's worth it all.

Home: EmoryKing.com