Friday: Murals Of Belize City

Today was an unusually full, but very good, day.

It started with a morning in Belize City where I had a few meetings.  One was with the Leader of the Opposition, Shyne Barrow who has a fascinating background as a former hip hop artist in the US who was deported to Belize after serving 8 years for assault.  He has now turned his life around and become quite the politician. He’s quite serious but I really liked him.  

After that it was back to Belmopan to drop off the official car and driver, have a haircut and pick up K.

Then back to Belize City for a fascinating event, one of the best we’ve been to here.  It was to present a concept, and gather support, for a documentary that it is to be made about Nora Parham, the only woman to be executed in Belize.  

She was hung in1962 for murder after the death of her long term partner at whose hands she had suffered horrific domestic abuse for years.  She was found guilty by all male jury who pleaded for clemency, which was ignored by the male judge. She was posthumously pardoned last year.

It was an excellent evening, small but with some really fascinating discussions including with Abigail Parham, Nora’s granddaughter, who spoke passionately about the effect Nora’s death had on her father and seven uncles, who were aged between 3 to 15 at the time of her death.  I really look forward to staying alongside the project and seeing how it develops.  

There were only about 30 guests or so, but one of the more surprising ones was, Attallah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter.  She is also known as Ambassador Shabazz as she has a roving ambassadorship for Belize (I’m not sure any of us knew what that meant).  She had a strange little group of acolytes with her and just drifted around the room in a slightly ethereal manner.

After all that, you’d think I’d have some more interesting photos but somehow the opportunities eluded me, so here is a relatively new mural in Belize City.

We’ve had to stay over as we can’t drive back to Belmopan in the dark.