Paget's Belize Journal

The Preliminary Trip - It Begins - First days - A tourist trip - Flying, sand crabs - San Pedro 1 - San Pedro 2 - Braids, snakes, dogs - Leaving Dangriga The Actual Stay - Help for library - Books; departure - Arrival; weather - Sensations, housing - Security, more housing - More security, snorkeling - Dock activities - Day-to-day life 1 - Day-to-day life 2 - The Quadrille - The apartment! - Cleaning and culture - Hurricane Irene - Too much reality - Hopkins Village 1 - Hopkins Village 2 - Weather - Minimum wage - Transportation - Food Experiments - The Brits; furniture - Meeting and greeting - Night noise, Settlement Day - Dragonflies! - More noise - A good 19th - Wrapping up the 19th - Traveling to Mexico - Thanksgiving in Mexico - Cockscomb Basin - A Belizean week-end - Tobacco Caye - Is it really Christmas? - This is the life - Christmas wishes - Headwear - Christmas Experiences - Lottery - Caye Caulker haircut - Caye Caulker 2 - Geckos - Red Bank - The last few days		Nov 12, 1999 The Brits; Furniture Therese and I just got back from a trip to the capitol, Belmopan, to talk to the British High Commissioner (a super-ambassador) and his staff about developing a web site. It looks like we'll get the job, partly because the Brits want to show up the Americans (that is, the U.S.) who used a Mexican web development firm to do their Belizean web site. This isn't the worst thing I'm trying to live down here. Long, hideous stories about the ambassador under Carter, perhaps, a party chairman from New Hampshire who shipped his baby grand down here and held formal dinners and chamber music evenings where everyone had to dress up. Only a few people in any given group could go, because statistically there's only about two or three sport coats or suits for every 100 middle or upper class men here. But I bet they were drawing straws *not* to go. Anyway the Commissioner was so veddy, veddy British it was a hoot. Once he actually uttered the sentence, "What else is key, chappies?" But the staff seems reasonable and competent. It's going to be an interesting line to walk. Of course, it has to be dignified, but also follow the "formula" that the overseas embassies are supposed to use, but since Belize is so beautiful, we'd like to show it off, just a little. And they'd like a photo of the Commissioner of course, but nothing too tacky, like a virtual tour of the embassy residence (which is actually on the Britain in the U.S. embassy site). Then, since we were in the area, we went to the local rattan and bamboo furniture-manufacturing place. This is beautiful stuff, very well made. And we got to wander through the whole manufacturing side as well. Half a dozen Mayan men and boys sitting on a beautiful verandah sanding away (AND wearing dust masks!), others carefully doing those incredibly precise rattan wraps, sewing up cushions or otherwise assembling the furniture. A couch, two chairs and a coffee table would be about US $1500 purchased here. I haven't seen such quality in a long time, most pieces carefully re-inforced with hidden pieces of mahogany to strengthen them. It's tempting to see what it would take to bring something back. But it might look just silly in gloomy Oregon. That's all for now. p.s. Oh, Dennis Quaid is in the country doing something beneficent for sick children. Surely I have a better chance of meeting him here than in Oregon. You'll be the first to know if I do.   Next