Dec 15th, 2025
In The Road to Belonging: My Journey to Punta Gorda, Belize, Francis Mandeweh offers a beautifully written memoir about migration and the human search for home. After a 14-year career as a probation and parole officer in Milwaukee, Mandeweh decides to retire and seek a place where he can finally feel a sense of peace and belonging. What unfolds is not simply a retirement story, but an exploration of identity, displacement, cultural connection, and a final triumph.
From the opening pages, Mandeweh’s prose is lyrical and memorable. Sentences linger long after you read them. “Books are heavy and hard to transport, but they are like old friends—impossible to leave behind.” This is a perfect metaphor for a narrative that carries the weight of memory, but still remains hopeful about the future. The road he travels is both literal and symbolic: “a ribbon of possibility leading me toward a new life.”
The memoir weaves personal history with broader social realities. Mandeweh recounts the discrimination he faced in the United States, particularly in Wisconsin, where he spent years working in environments where few people looked like him. His calm, disciplined response to workplace racism is one of the book’s more powerful lessons. Equally moving is the support he received from the Ojibwe Chippewa community in Hayward, Wisconsin, whose solidarity provided his first true sense of belonging in the U.S.
Belize, however, becomes the emotional center of the book. Mandeweh introduces readers to the country with patience and respect, offering insights into its history, cultures, and landscapes without slipping into travel-guide clichés. Once settled in Punta Gorda, thanks to the generosity of friends, Belize begins to feel less like a destination and more like a return.
One of the book’s great strengths is its attention to people. Mandeweh’s encounters with Garifuna communities, Mennonites, Maya villagers, and fellow African expatriates form the heart of the narrative. His attempt to learn the Garifuna language, though incomplete, reflects a genuine desire to engage deeply rather than remain a passive observer. A particularly powerful moment occurs when he meets a Canadian peacekeeper who served in Sierra Leone during the civil war, an encounter that reveals how lives intersect in unexpected ways.
Mandeweh also explores Belize’s natural environment with wonderful imagery. His descriptions of the barrier reef, the heat of the dry season, the rituals of hurricane preparation, and the lush tropical climate evoke a sensory richness that almost seems to mirror his sense of coming home. For someone who never acclimated to the cold winters of Minnesota, Belize’s warmth feels restorative, echoing the climate of his native Sierra Leone and allowing his body and spirit to finally align.
The book does not shy away from complexity. Mandeweh offers a thoughtful critique of tourism, observing how unchecked development often enriches outsiders while marginalizing local communities.
While the memoir is consistently engaging, the brief detour into efforts to adapt his first book into a film feels unnecessary and slightly disrupts the otherwise steady emotional rhythm. Still, this is a minor flaw in an otherwise cohesive and heartfelt work.
Ultimately, The Road to Belonging is less about retirement than it is about resolution. In the epilogue, Mandeweh reflects on returning briefly to the United States before heading back to Belize, realizing that while America once held his dreams, Belize now holds his peace. “Not only was I going home, ” he writes, “but I was going home to a place where I felt honored, and that my presence had value. I was going home to a place not where I originated from, but to a place where I knew I belonged.”
It’s a beautifully written book and a heartfelt journey.
Buy the book on Amazon.