Gales Point Manatee, we've gone there to do stories on mining projects, erosion, and the Kriol culture, but tonight we're asking what will happen to the village when it's re-discovered by the rest of Belize via the brand new Coastal Plain highway.
This morning Cherisse Halsall headed down to the Belize District Peninsula to take a closer look at the changes on the horizon for the village.
7News has come back to the village of Gales Pointe Manatee, where thanks to the completion of the Coastal road things are about to change.
But how much change is too much change?
And once it's done will the people, culture, and essence of this once vibrant maroon community be able to survive it?
It's like the village that time forgot but as modern infrastructure in the form of the Coastal Plain Highway knocks on Gales Pointe's door, these idyllic village life scenes may not last too much longer.
This morning when we entered tis village we stopped by the home of James Gauld the man who makes his living selling coconut oil to ask him about the changes he's seen in just the past two years.
Reporter
"So in your opinion since the coastal road has been built and since it open last week. Do you see more people coming in even to visit this place?"
James Gauld, Gales Point Resident
"Well like I said I see a lot of people back and forth. People, vehicles I don't know and thing cause some of them come by my spot. Buy coconut oil from me and things like that so it's gonna improve my business I guess."
Reporter
"And the people who are coming through? The strangers? What kind of questions do they ask?"
James Gauld, Gales Point Resident
"They really just want to know what are you doing here how are you living and things like that? You know for example you got you go fishing. Some come and want to go fishing. Some want to go in the jungle. one want to go and see the Manatee, same thing you know."
Reporter
"Belizeans or Americans or?"
James Gauld, Gales Point Resident
"Lotta Belizean but American too but lots of Belizean pass through cause it's the first time they always hear about the village but they never been through before you know so they come here and they love it. Some want to know if there is land for sale in the village and those sort of things like that."
And just before we left Mr. Gauld he had some visitors who'd made the trek into the villages to check on his health and that of his fellow villagers.
Candice Carnie, Volunteer, Kids Connect for Jesus
"It used to take a lot longer to get out to Gales Pointe, but now it's a really quick trip. I hope that it will carry on through like the locals and the Belizean to be able to help those less fortunate y coming in and taking care of their own like Belize changing Belize so I can see that happening as we have more volunteers that are like from right here within our communities just like Cyril, she is a community health worker and she comes alongside of us every clinic just making sure that everyone is taken care of and all of the elders are reached."
It's a mission that was inspired by Edney Andrews, a once resident of Mullins river who struggled to recover from a stroke while living in this remote part of the Belize district.
Edney Andrews, Volunteer
"So he took me up to the Belize City hospital from the Mullins River bridge all the way to the City standing in a truck back and when I got to the emergency ward the nurse ordered me to have a seat and I said nurse I will explain myself to you I haven't laid down from last night, I haven't sit down from last night. So I have a really bad headache that I got to stand up. Up comes a doctor and he says oh no this guy is having a stroke on his brain. So he ordered the doctor to remove some blood out of the main vein in my body and I was in the hospital suffering from headache like 2 months."
"The coastal road wasn't built then; it was really Coastal Road then."
Reporter
"And how hard was that trip given that situation?"
Edney Andrews, Volunteer
"It's really hard, because if you look back at it, I already died, because being a black person waiving for assistance on the coastal road, people who judgemental in this country the first thing they will say, I don't take chance - that's a robbery, right. So that mentally got to change. Respect a human being. If you want, they render some assistances don't judge the assistant, just do it. So, I was so grateful for that guy who did me that favour."
Edney Andrews sister, Shyril Fuller, is one of those volunteers who has for years accommodated foreign doctors seeing to do some good in the village. She says that mission has gotten a lot easier.
But she also shared some of her observances of the tiny ways in which village life has already begun to shift.
Shyril Fuller, Gales Point Resident
"I've been living here for ill say over 20 years, I've been living here. And before yes it was real rough to get out to um purchase food items to sell stuff and now that the coastal road has been paved it gives us an opportunity to expand."
"Right, we have people that go out there myself and my cousin, we do bread, and bun and crust in the evening time to sell and in the morning time her daughter and her boyfriend do they journey cakes and patties and coffee and things like that. Fresh juice, natural juice, we have some people that sells food and mangoes crabs like how crabs are running now, we have mangoes now in season people go out there to sell those stuff. Soon we will have grapes, so we will have grapes out there selling so that's a little, a little bit more cash you can put in your pocket at least and go on for the day. Its not good everyday but most of the time it's good enough to sustain us."
"But now like how the road is paved and there's a lot of different thing going on around us so hopefully it will get us developed enough, not too much I don't want us to get overdeveloped I just want us to get developed enough so that we can sustain ourselves we don't want to get loss track of nature because there's a lot of natural environment things in here that you know we don't want to destroy right. So just a little bit of development and I think we'll be good enough."
And she's not the only one afraid of overdevelopment, Kevin Andrewin, another Gales Pointe resident is wary of what he sees as an oncoming land grab now that it's much easier to get to the village
Kevin Andrewin, Turtle Man
"The village council and the minister of lands and everybody have to get serious on this, because that is where people would want to start to invade, all of a sudden I get a call yesterday and people are asking about thier ancestors land and I told them I don't know who that ancestor is, where their mother was born and different things from the name that they are calling, now that is not in my file and all of a sudden they have interest but I ask myself why didn't they have interest before when the coastal road used to be rough and had pot holes but now it's paved they want to come back and you know, the we can't tolerate."
It's the type of situation that could be played out over the village's oldest building. Caretaker Leroy Andrewin says that building, the Saint John's church is under threat from a land interest that may want to do away with the historic structure.
Leroy Andrewin, Caretaker
"This building is over 100 years old, over 100 easy. This right here this is the building that the people in Gales Pointe saved in the 1961 hurricane. This was the building that we were saved in all of us packed up in this one building here during that Hurricane and before the Hattie hurricane this building is a school and a church."
"During the Hurricane it was in here that everyone got down on thier knees and prayed in this church for God to get us through this because all these trees were coming around us, you know, and god survived us in this church, so this church here is something that we don't want to lose at all. This is history and we want to continue on with this church right here."
"The church right now you have a guy coming and trying to claim this piece of property from the church but this property belongs to the church period. So I would like for the Anglican St. John's Anglican come down here and talk to us so that we can secure this for the rest of the future, the next generation that nobody gets this right here because they tried to come and claim this piece of property when they can't."
"600 years from now this is for the church."
Cherisse Halsall:
"When is the last time people actually worshipped in this church?"
Leroy Andrewin, Caretaker
"I would like to see the church re-hab not change because there is history just to be rehabbed and we would fix it up and get it back in action again, this church."
"We want to see this church go on as a church and as a little museum like, a church and a museum, we have our service and we still have things to show people."
And despite their fears for overdevelopment Gales's points villagers are still eager to show off their small piece of paradise, they are only hoping that the new road brings much better connections.
Kevin Andrewin, Turtle Man
"There is no excuse for people to visit Gales Pointe, there for us not to have, what we need is a bus run that we can reach Belize. You have to hitch hike and hope that you have people that will take you back and forth and then like when school is on sometimes you have to beg the bus driver to give the drop as far as Hope Creek and different places but I hope with the opening of the road we don't have to be faced with that problem again."
And that much longed for bus run could be the final link that breaks the sleeping spell that seemed to be cast on this sleepy village for the past two hundred years, with it will come opportunity for work and travel, for interconnectivity, and perhaps for the final loss of what is intrinsically unique about Gales's Points way of life that should be long gone but that's still hanging on by some fragile thread.
Tomorrow we'll tell you both concerns for the turtle population in that nesting area.
