New house & trailer space

We have been looking for a place to park the trailer.  One place had a nice view, but was right by the highway.  Incredibly noisy.  Another had a nice view, but would have had youth groups camping with us all summer.  (a little of that goes a long way.)  A couple were in semi-swampy fields.  And all of them were more expensive than we had hoped for.  Then the lady who runs the store across the street told us about a place her sister has for rent.  It is about a block from where we are now, on a nice level, dry lot.  The house in front has four rooms plus bath, “funky tile floors” to quote Charlotte (they are all different colors, as tho they got a special on a discontinued lot) and a nifty little enclosed porch which we can grow all kinds of plants.  Then there’s a ramada for the Scout, a big back yard where we can park the trailer, and another house on the back of the lot.  The house in back is semi-ransacked downstairs, but we can hang laundry in it to dry when it’s raining. The upstairs has a great practice room for my music stuff and parties.  This rents for $150 Belize, or $75US.  Charlotte is ecstatic, and I’m wildly pleased.  We can use the leftover money to add a washer and a hot water heater. (Most people here don’t have a hot water heater.  Of course, we have one in the trailer, but it’s only 6 gallons, and the shower stall is “smaller than a breadbox.” )

I will probably not get a cel phone, unless I wind up commuting to B-City. We will have a phone in a couple of weeks, since the wires are already in to the house, as is the cable TV connection.  They deliver cokes and Belikin Beer to the house by the case. <grin>

We will have to do some things to make the place totally liveable by US standards, but I will relate most of those as we go along. One of the biggest things is a set of ceramic filters for the house and trailer water lines.  The water here in Corozal is full of lime, and “Mr. Fred”, my local computer guru and former hardware magnate, says that it will clog the filters in a matter of days.  I think this perhaps means I need the Culligan Man (“hey, culligan man!!) but he doesn’t live in Belize.  Anyone with ideas, please respond.

“Mr. Fred” runs the local computer store, a sort of open front place called “The Virtual Office.”  He has Western Union, fax, computers by the minute & hour, etc. etc.  Court Roberson, one of the two CNE’s in the country, hangs out there because he likes to talk to computer people.  Court sells a computer every couple of days, although Mr. Fred swears there’s no computer business in Corozal.  There is an 80% duty on software brought into Belize.  Mr. Fred says this is because “we produce software here in Belize”  (They put high tariffs on everything they produce here.  For instance, if you try to import rum, the customs guys confisticate it and drink it!!)   I pointed out that they don’t produce operating systems or visual development environments, and he knows that, but the govt. doesn’t understand.  This is really dumb.  Of course, it means that a lot of software comes in looking like the latest Pearl Jam CD.

Mr. Fred’s real name is Carlos Orio.  I asked him why they call him Mr Fred, and he said it happened so long ago that he doesn’t remember.  Whenever I talk to anyone about computers, they tell me that if they need help they call Mr. Fred.  I called “the legendary Mr. Fred” and he liked that.  He is totally self taught, except that Court has taught him a lot.  He is very active in the Rotary Club here, which does all kinds of neat things for the town, and very knowledgeable about Belizean economics, which is all screwed up.  They have all kinds of fixed prices and crop quotas, which the US and Russia have learned (after 40 years) DON’T WORK.  Economics may be “the dismal science”, but Belizean knowledge of it is REALLY dismal!

For instance, they cut all the sugar cane by hand, because machines would displace workers.  I pointed out that the cotton gin displaced workers, but Mr. Fred wasn’t having any.  They can only export so much sugar, so the growers can only grow so much, hence the quotas.  Sugar cane grows like weeds here; they could supply half the world supply, I suspect.  I asked him why they don’t make more rum and export that, and he didn’t have an answer.  Probably they have a treaty with Barbados, Jamaica & Puerto Rico; more restraint of trade.  Capitalism, the impossible ideal indeed!!

More on economics after a while.  I’ll probably begin my saga on fishing next time.

Love,

Sr. ric & sra. carla

Belize is so tiny, I guess they have to try to get along with everyone.  And of course, when you do that, as Rodney Dangerfield says, “you don’t get no respect!”

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