The Creek
We had contacted this family before we went to the resort and they were sad that we had another obligation, but they were thrilled to know we could now come and would be assisting them on their land.
They were a family of 7 and 3 dogs. The children were home schooled and the father worked in web and graphic design.
The place they lived used to be a rustic resort with restaurant, but they were winding down the business and now they were just living there as a family.
A typical day would be waking up at 7:30am. Sweeping the Outpost, cleaning the bathrooms, raking the leaves on the paths and then having breakfast,cleaning up after breakfast then doing various duties like cutting, digging or planting flowers, helping with home schooling the kids or looking after the 1 year old baby Jack.
We would then have lunch, clean up after lunch and have the rest of the day to do our own work.
Some days we would have to work until later if they had a flower order that needed processing, but sometimes the family would go out to stay in town and we would have the place to ourselves for the weekend.
There were other helpers that would come and go but we remained there for about 3 months. We would take trips into the city and stay over night, mostly to just get away and have a nice warm shower. (Our bathtub and swimming hole was the creek and most of the time it was nice, but sometimes you really miss having a warm shower…)
We came to love that family like our own, but after 8 years they were done with the jungle life and we were basically there to help them with the transition. The day before they left the dad said to Rob that he should get his nose looked at. He had had sore on it for a couple of months and it hadn’t gone away. He mentioned that it might be Leishmaniasis.
The transition of the family left us with our own piece of land most days. We couldn’t really leave for a month because the new owners didn’t have anyone else to stay if we left. There was a man that came that knew a lot about the trees and plants of the area. He was going to be a worker for the new people moving in. One day he mentioned to look out for a bug called Chagas, aka the kissing bug. The very next day we were getting up for the day and I was handing Rob a shirt from next to our bed and I saw it there. We captured it and killed it but kept it just in case…later that day the neighbor came by and said that we could go to see a doctor she knew in the city who would work with payments, so we were able to work out leaving to go to the doctor for the day. He basically said we both had Leish and that we probably should worry about the Chaga, many of the Chagas bugs are not infected and we weren’t presenting with the symptoms of it. But he did want to treat us for the Leish. He gave us topical Antimony injections in our lesions that day.
The next day when we woke up I looked over at Rob who’s face was swollen and eyes puffy. The new owners were coming later in the day but I was freaked out and want to get him to the doctors as soon as we could get there. We ended up stopping at the neighbors house before we went to the doctors and she gave us some cleansing things to do to help us clear out our bodies and when we finally got on the road again we met the new owners on the road and they gave us some money to get everything we needed and then they told us that we should stay at their resort and get the wounds tested the next day.
They brought us out to their very fancy resort and we were treated to the Honeymoon Suite. The next day they lent us the car and we were able to go to the doctor, we got our wounds tested and the results came back positive for Leishmaniasis and negative for Chagas. We heard about a specialist in Belize city, so the day after that we said good bye to the Creek and were on our way to Belize city.
During all this time Rob’s mom wanted to fly us home to London. We weren’t sure if it was the best option, but when we found out that the best treatment could be found there we said yes. We wanted to go see the specialist first to just make sure and he said yes, we should go to London right away.
We told Rob’s mom that night and we were on a flight the next morning.