Post 6 - Rest of the Story

 

If you have already read Mayan Mystery Unveiled, you may want to know what happened to Kelli after she made her decision about the purpose for her life, and what happened to the other characters.  I promised I would tell my version of that.

In the last scene of Mayan Mystery Unveiled, Kelli was standing on the observation deck at the Belize City airport with the guide, waiting for her plane.  As she stood there, she told him about the problem she was facing when she returned home and the decision she had to make.  He reminded her of some wisdom his grandfather had taught him, advice he had already shared with her, and she made her decision.  That is the climax, that is where the story ended.  The rest of the story, what happened afterward, follows.

 Kelli walked out of the Belize City airport terminal with a happy heart, climbed the metal stairway to the open door of the airplane, and she turned and waved to Manuel and stepped inside.  She returned to the States with her mind made up, she knew her purpose.  Robert, her unfaithful husband, again told her that he would build her dream house if she would forgive him.  She replied that she would forgive him, but she didn’t want the house.  She said it was all over between them, she wanted a divorce.  They would have to sell their home and split the proceeds, and she would use her share of the money for a move to Belize so she could take a job at the clinic.

Robert, always quick to adapt any situation to his advantage, offered her a deal.  She knew how badly he wanted the senate seat he was campaigning for and that the divorce would ruin his chance of winning it, so she anticipated that he was going to make an offer and she was prepared.  Robert said that he would buy her share of the home if she would agree to not divorce him, and if she would quietly go to Belize without telling anyone about their arrangement.  She agreed to it, if he would buy her share right away, and she promised to leave as soon as he paid her.  She told him the amount she knew the home was worth, and she informed him that she would not take a dollar less.  Two days later, he laid a contract on the table for her to sign, along with an envelope containing a cashier’s check for her half. 

Kelli resigned from the hospital, packed her beach clothes into her suitcase and flew to Belize, leaving everything else behind.  She paid Manuel one year’s rent in advance, and within a month, he had finished the room beside Dot and Marty for her to live in.

Robert’s political opponent questioned why he was living separately from his wife.  He replied that he was supporting a free medical clinic in an impoverished village in Central America, and his wife had agreed to run the place so it would not close and be taken over by the jungle, as had happened to the pyramids.  His supporters praised him for his sacrifice, and since he opposed everything they opposed and wore an American flag pin in his lapel, they elected him to the senate.

A travel magazine published Dot’s articles, along with the address of Manuel’s website, and he was soon booked solid.  Kelli gave him a loan so he could complete a couple more rooms on his Poinciana House, plus the garden and a pool, and the two of them became partners in the small tourist resort similar to the one in the following photo.  The resort in the photo is named Banana Bank Lodge, you should be able to find it with Google, it’s a nice place and the food is great. 

 

 

Jenny, the nurse who was leaving Belize, returned to the States, and she met with the board of directors for the clinic.  She told them they were not doing their job, they needed to provide more support.  They listened, but since they now had a new nurse in Belize, they decided that they didn’t need to change a thing for Jenny.  At the annual meeting of the non-profit, she confronted them and she was elected president.  With her enthusiasm for the clinic, she grew the non-profit to provide more support, and she developed a plan for the continuity of the work.  Not only did she schedule more medical teams, she started a student sponsorship program to provide education for the children so they could get better jobs and break out of the cycle of poverty that gripped the village.

Glory entered the nursing program at the university in Belmopan, and continued her medical training until she became a physician.  She joined the staff at the hospital there, and she also became medical director at the clinic to make sure it would continue after Kelli could no longer run it.

Kelli did not marry Manuel, of course, because on paper she was still married to Robert, although it was all over between them.  She adapted very well to the Belizean way, and her life became an adventure again.

We already know what happened to Dot and Marty, they rented a room at the Poinciana House, Marty continued his research and Dot continued her writing.

            That tells us what happened to the main characters after the book ended.  But what happened to the ancient Mayans a thousand years ago?  Why did they abruptly abandon their cities right at the peak of their achievements?

            Nobody knows all the details of why they disappeared so suddenly.  Like many ancient civilizations, the Mayans recorded their history on paper and on animal skins.  A Spanish priest considered these documents the work of the devil, and he burned all he could find, but he did not destroy the history that had been carved onto stone monuments.  The Mayan rulers had authorized and paid for these monuments so, of course, no monuments were authorized after the fall of the rulers.  Therefore, no account exists to describe the fall or what happened afterward.

Archeologists discovered monuments that were erected before the fall, many of them pushed onto their faces and buried for a thousand years by the jungle.  The carvings on these monuments reveal some aspects of the lifestyle before the cities were abandoned.  We must fill in the blanks the best we can, and we have done that

Like in most civilizations that attain prominence, the Mayan rulers and the powerful aristocrats gained enough power to divert the riches of the society to their own benefit.  As they lived in their palaces and enjoyed lives of privilege, they forced the farmers and tradesmen and other middle class citizens to work mercilessly and to pay all the taxes.  That situation has occurred to other nations besides the Mayans, and it certainly did not end when the Mayans fell.  It continues even today, look around you and watch for it in the news.

To strengthen their control over the citizenry, the Mayan rulers declared that they were gods and thereby claimed absolute power.  Nobody is allowed to challenge any pronouncement made by a god, of course, and this absolute power led to absolute corruption in the ruling class.  The farmers and craftsmen of the middle class seem to have decided they would rather die than continue to live under this oppression, so they revolted.

            They went on a rampage and killed their greedy overlords, and then they fled back to their farms and never returned to the city.  Without their greedy and ambitious rulers, the Mayans no longer needed war so they lived in peace.  They also no longer needed to build palaces and temples as monuments to satisfy the pride of their arrogant rulers, so their marvelous achievements ended. They refused to again become slaves to tyrannical kings or priests or rituals, so they totally abandoned their old religion.  They recognized their dependence on nature, though, and they developed new rituals in an attempt to gain favor of the unseen deities that they believed to hold control over their destiny. 

When the Spanish came, the independent Mayans in Belize refused to be enslaved by them.  They had made up their minds, long before the Spanish arrived, that they would live free or they would die.  They continued their fight for freedom until the British came to help them drive off their enemies.  Then, they accepted the religion of their protectors, but without the rituals and without oppressive authorities.  They adapted this new religion to fit with their purpose.  It served as the basis for their system of ethics, and for the unusual love these people show to others.

            More people came to this land, then called British Honduras, to experience the freedom found there, and the Mayans eventually slid into a minority.  Britain taught the people to govern themselves and, in 1964, the self-government experiment began.  In 1981, Britain granted full independence and freedom to the small nation we now know as Belize.

            That did not assure the Belizeans would remain free.  Hundreds of years earlier, a religious leader who had absolutely no authority over those people had given their land, and them, to the rulers of a neighboring country.  The leaders of Guatemala still used this pronouncement by a long-dead chief priest as justification for their claim on that beautiful land, and threatened to invade the newly independent Belize and make it a district of their country.  The British stepped in and sent a military force to Belize to assure its continued freedom as a separate nation.

            Thank God for the British.  If only all of our freedoms could be so easily assured.

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