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 - 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		Sep 10, 1999 Can You Help the Library? As many of you know, I will be leaving for a four-month stay in Belize in two weeks. (If you new guys want to review the earlier trip, go to www.onelist.com, sign in and go to the archives for PagetInBze. You may have to register with onelist and establish a password first.) One of the things I want to do in Belize this time is to help the Dangriga librarian, Mrs. Cornelia Ciego, expand the book collection at the public library there. The library budget is so small, Mrs, Ciego says she rarely can purchase anything other than reference materials and a few children's books. I have visited the library and this is undoubtedly true. The good news is there is no import duty on books, the bad news is shipping costs are heart-stopping--the best rate I've found from Portland is about $1.25/lb and that's a book rate in particular weight ranges and a total of 100 lbs or so shipped. That translates to $12 to send about 30 paperbacks. This e-mail is to ask you to consider helping me with this project. I already have a few contributions for shipping costs and one generous pledge. I can use more. I also can use good quality paperbacks of various sorts -- adult or juvenile/children's, English or Spanish, fiction or *recent* non-fiction, used is fine. Ultimately the books need to be packaged in approximately 10 lb boxes so if anyone can assemble a box, that would be great. I can pick up next week. (Obviously this applies to Oregon folks right now, I'll try to figure out a way for the rest of you to help after I get a better sense of how this will work.) I'm leaving the morning of Sep 23 so I'd like to get this project done by next Friday. I know it's not much notice, but sometimes those projects turn out the best. Anything you can do will be greatly appreciated. Next