Belizedragonfly

Election Day

The 2008 presidential election was going to be a historical one, that was obvious. Personally I had lost on my vote for both the previous elections, both times voting against President Bush and both time losing. So, in my opinion, for the last 8 years things have been sad on many different levels. Needless to say I was ready to vote and get President Bush out of there. Just one problem, I would be in Belize for this election. We had a mailing address so I crossed my fingers that the absentee ballot request that I faxed in before I left would get processed and sent to me in Belize. I had heard the postal system here was slightly questionable. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt though. I had almost forgotten about the ballot until one morning the noise of a little bell rang outside one of our gates. I looked out the window and there was a man waiting by the gate on a red scooter. I went outside to check it out, at this point we hadn’t had many visitors so I had no idea who it could be. I greeted the man and he handed me a piece of mail. To my total shock it was my ballot. It was the very first piece of mail I received in Belize and I was jumping around the house in excitement at its arrival.

There were only a few weeks until election day though and I was nervous that my ballot wouldn’t get back to the states in time to count my vote. So I filled it out as quickly as I could and went to the post office the next day to get it back in the mail. I had a little over two weeks for it to get back and I had heard the standard amount of time it takes is 10 days. So fast forward a couple weeks and I was watching election coverage live from my home in Belize. I was sort of expecting to be up all night waiting for results but it was all over so quickly and I am convinced my vote counted because Obama got the win. It was an emotional night, mostly to be getting rid of a president who I thought had been in office for way too long. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off of America and I was sort of sad I wasn’t in the country to experience that night. It was strange going around town in Corozal though because before the election I would walk around and see ‘Belizeans for Obama’ signs everywhere. Many of the local people would ask me if I had voted - everyone seemed to have an air of excitement about the whole thing.

After all that excitement was over it was back to business for us. So next on our agenda was to hire our first employee. We really had no idea how to go about this process. We knew we had to make sure the person we hire had a valid social security card. Other than that we were blindly going around trying to figure it out. It was an important decision though, we needed someone we could fully trust and count on. Well, the problem was that we didn’t know anyone in town to give us advice about that. We happened to be walking - in the mud - one morning and a local guy on his bike yelled out to us, “Hey! Miss Nance!” By the way, this was a custom that we would all have to take some time to get used to. Most people here say, Miss Nance or Miss Kristi as a sign of respect. It’s a very nice thing but at the age of 28 it’s a little weird to get used to. So here is this guy yelling out my mom’s name, strange. She turned to look and it happened to be a guy who she and my dad had met on one of their previous trips a couple months ago. He had remembered her name after all that time. She remembered him too, his dad had been the man who fixed part of the thatch roof on our business that had been damaged by hurricane Dean. We all stopped and talked with him for awhile, Salvador was his name. He had been unemployed for quite awhile and has a wife and four kids to take care of. We told him to come by the next day and talk about a possible position at our restaurant. He agreed that he would see us the next day and we parted ways.

After our conversation with him we started discussing whether or not he would be a good candidate for a job with us. There were some blaring issues, he didn’t have any experience in a bar or restaurant whatsoever. Will decided that he wanted to find a cook to train that didn’t have any kitchen experience. My mom and I thought this was a slightly strange method but his basic justification for that was that he would be able to train this person from the ground up; they wouldn’t have any bad habits to break so to speak. Well, Will was the person in charge of the kitchen so we let him go for it. We decided that since we had some knowledge of Salvador’s family that he may be a good person to bring in as part of the team. We settled on a salary that we would offer and waited to see his referrals. He had a reference letter from a previous employer that he told us he would bring along with him.

So the next day we hung around the house waiting for Salvador to show up. He arrived just about when we told him to be there, so that was a great start. We all talked to him for a little while and then we left Will to talk to him for a bit on his own. We basically explained the job to him, we would hire him as a cook and Will’s assistant in the kitchen. When the interview was over, we all wanted to process the information and have another conversation about it, we also wanted Salvador to go home and think about it so we told him to come back the next day.

That night we decided that we would offer the position to Salvador, he seemed very excited at the opportunity and willing to learn. When he arrived the next day we told him what the salary would be and asked if he was interested. He said that he was and would do his best to learn as much as he possibly could. He seemed to embrace the role of a cook right away and he seemed like a great guy which made the working environment that much easier. So we had hired our first employee. The plan was to hire two waitresses and have a staff of three people total. We got all of Salvador’s social security info from him and went to the social security office to start the process of registering our business and getting him set up as our employee.

We were continuing to move forward and it was feeling great. The only problem now was all the bad stories we were getting from different people about how we had to get dogs and take more precaution to be safe. This was getting to Will and probably should have been getting to my mom and I more than it was but he was really having a hard time with not feeling safe. So the next plan was to find a couple dogs. That would be a very interesting experience.

Getting settled in | admin | June 25, 2009

belize, election, travel

2 Responses to “Election Day”

By Sue, June 29, 2009 @ 5:59 pm

Pretty funny how the “guy” is the one that is scared!!
By How I Make $300 a Day Posting Links Online, June 30, 2009 @ 6:16 pm

Cool post, just subscribed.