Tuesday, January 10, 2006

We went back to Tilingo Lingo for breakfast/lunch today. Polo was there and he talked to us for about an hour while we waited for our food. Michael told him we were journalists and that we’d be interested in doing a story on the Garifuna at some later point and he as usual had two almost simultaneous responses, 1) that it was a great idea and he could get us anywhere we wanted to go and 2) that so many people do things half-assed and decide to do things on whims and never follow through and he has enough dreams of his own to worry about and couldn’t be bothered with other peoples’.

Maria told us the reason it was taking so long was because she had to make rice. “It takes twenty-five minutes to make rice beautiful,” she said. “Ugly rice is fast, beautiful rice takes time.” Some kids came up from the beach with giant barracudas that they had caught. Polo said barracudas are good eating and that they are so greedy you can catch them with a piece of cloth on a string as long as you keep it moving, because they’ll bite at anything.

A guy from Colorado came in to eat. We knew he was from Colorado, because Maria asks everyone where they’re from. The mention of Colorado got her all riled up. “I’ve never been to Colorado, just New York and Miami, but I’m going to tell you something that I did in Colorado, something about Colorado that you didn’t know. But in a minute.” And she went to the kitchen.

It turned out that what she had done in Colorado was capture a criminal for America’s Most Wanted. She said she’d always wanted to be a detective when she was growing up, but her father wouldn’t pay for her to study that, so she vowed she’d catch one criminal on her own in her lifetime. So when this guy, Tibis Kneipp, came to Livingston, she was immediately suspicious of him. For one thing, he had “FEAR” tatooed on his knuckles.

So she went to the Internet and looked at the America’s Most Wanted website, where she found that he was wanted for rape and murder in Colorado. So then she trapped him and handed him over to the FBI. It was a pretty good story, and much better when told by Maria.

Then Jason came down the street and into the restaurant. I was afraid he’d be upset at us for changing hotels, though Michael will roll his eyes when he reads this and say we can do whatever we want. I know we can change hotels if we want, but I hate to offend people, especially when they’re trying to make a living. Still, there was no way we could spend another night at the King George with all those mosquitos. Jason was cool about it. “Where else can you get a room with free mosquitos included?” he asked.

Anyway, it turned out that Kneipp had been staying with Jason before Maria captured him and had been constantly trying to get Jason to read his journal, which Jason did not do. And apparently he was big into drugs and eventually Jason had to throw him out, not knowing about the trap that Maria was setting for him. All kinds of drama and intrigue. And my vegetarian curry was delicious. Maria says she’s written a novel, which hasn’t been published yet. I would love to read that novel.

It’s crazy hot here today, and the sun is unpleasantly strong. But otherwise it’s a lovely day. We’re probably out of here tomorrow though. We just need to figure out the lancha schedule. We have the afternoon stretching ahead of us and I feel excited about traveling again.

 

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Detective Maria at Tilingo Lingo.

Jason from Los Scandalous.