Elaine Ollivierre, principal of the Bequia Community High School (where I taught literacy for a short stint) tells me that the newly refurbished school library is in desperate need of books, especially those geared towards reluctant readers. I visited the library today and spoke with Sakiko Forbes, the Library Assistant, who agreed that what they really require are more books that grab the students’ interest so that they will want to improve their reading skills. I have offered to publicize this request for books through my blog, and an email campaign, and hope that anyone who knows Bequia, or loves reading, will help us by sending children’s books directly to the school. (Mailing address below.) Or, if you happen to be coming to Bequia for a visit, please pack a couple of extra paperbacks in your luggage and drop them off at the school when you arrive. We’ve been assured that any books donated to the school will arrive there duty-and-VAT-free.

Elaine is happy to take anything, including slightly-used books, as long as they haven’t been stamped “Discard” by a library. So if your children have outgrown their own personal library and wish to make a donation - great! Send them on! At the moment we’d rather receive the actual books than a money because there are few books available to buy locally anyway. At some time in the future, I would like to organize sending a barrel of books from Toronto, and we may need monetary donations to cover shipping expenses at that time. I’ll let you know if and when that happens. In the meantime, books, books, books is what we need!

Here are some suggestions:
Anything suitable from Grade 1 - Grade 11 level
All reading levels, but a concentration in the middle school level would be preferable
High interest - Low vocabulary
Books for reluctant readers
Oxford English Dictionaries
Books that come with story cassettes
(The library was given a Lakeshore-brand listening station and headphones, but received no cassette player to go along with it. If you can supply one, please contact me first before sending it, just so we avoid duplication.)

They would also like an up-to-date encyclopedia - from any publisher. The one they have is not current and missing volumes. This might be better supplied on CD-Rom to save on shipping costs and library shelf space. (Again, please contact me first if you wish to purchase and send one to the school.)

As well as books, they would like to receive copies of several movies on DVD, movies based on books the students are currently studying: To Kill a Mockingbird and The Glass Menagerie are the two that Elaine requested be sent immediately.

Roderick McKree, the Spanish teacher, was also in the library and asked if people could include children’s books written in Spanish as well. He said he would be happy to receive anything as their collection is currently very low.

Someone did make a fine donation of children’s classics. It doesn’t hurt to have duplicate copies, but Elaine says they would really rather prefer that people send what I’ve outlined above. Unfortunately, the students are not yet all that anxious to read the classics.

Elaine is planning on setting up a regular “10 minutes for reading” so students are encouraged to read something every day aside from school texts. But she needs a good supply of interesting books to make that happen.

And please, do not send any religious tracts or Bibles. What we’re trying to do is get these students interested in reading, not to convert or indoctrinate them.

So, the address to send the books is:
Bequia Community High School
P.O. Box 75,
Bequia,
St. Vincent & the Grenadines, West Indies
Attn: Elaine Ollivierre - Books for Bequia

If you’re in the States, you can save on shipping charges and send the books to Boaters for Books in Florida and ask them to direct your donation to Bequia.

Please feel free to link to this page on your blog, or send the URL for this post out to other friends who you think may be interested in supplying books. Every single book donated will be a big help in encouraging these children to read.

I thank everyone in advance for whatever help you can give us.

This week’s writing prompt on Writers Island was The Gift.

More Than a Dime
By S.M. Toy

How can a dime be worth more than five dollars? It all depends on where the money comes from.

My grandfather was a great man. Not in the save-the-world, make-a-difference, lead-others-on-to-do-good-things sense of great. But he was great to visit, easy-going, had a good sense of humour, and loved seeing all us grandkids - for a certain length of time at least; then, when he’d had enough of the family, he’d disappear to the basement to play solitaire with a moldy deck of cards and visit his secret consoling-stash of cigarettes and beer. He was the only member of the family who could silently endure my grandmother; sadly hen-pecked as he was, he’d long-since learned that when it came to his stern wife, silence, and total compliance, was golden.

Plus he knew the value of a dime.

We lived about six blocks away from our grandparents. My younger sister and I were sent most weekends to their house for a visit, sometimes having to stay overnight on Saturdays so our parents could take a break. We cringed at having to spend time with Grandma, a mean old woman who caused us untold humilities and embarrassments. I know, I know; we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But Grandma… well, she was something else! My other three sibs will agree with me on this. And our mother agreed as well. That only-child relationship with her mother was a contentious one, but she was always the apple of her father’s eye.

Generally our visits consisted of Grandma lecturing us from her big armchair, always set in the corner of the kitchen, next to her ever-increasing row of pills. Grandpa, his back to Grandma, was constantly reheating thick, strong, earlier-perked coffee in a small aluminum pan on the stove top, an ever-present cigarette stuck firmly between his lips, the inch-long ash constantly in danger of falling off into the pot of boiling coffee.

Some days, the really excruciating ones, we’d have to go shopping with Grandma along Queen St. Or, worse, if Aunt Polly and Aunt Irma came along, we would trudge through Shopper’s World for the afternoon, dragged along by the three biddies. Much better was when Grandpa offered to take us to the bakery around the corner where we could choose from chocolate éclairs, Napoleons, custard slices, and palm leaves. Or, if he managed to escape Grandma’s clutches, he’d take us to the (still then) Woodbine Race Track a few blocks west. She allowed him to go as long as he had only enough cash to pay for our entry. He was never given any money to place a bet. But all he really wanted to do anyway was watch the horses run. Having been a stable boy back in Belgium, he still loved to be around horses – possibly more than he liked being around people in general and my grandmother in particular. Other times he’d take us for walks in Kew Park to watch a baseball game at the diamond, or right down to the boardwalk by Lake Ontario so we could play in the sand.

But best of all, as far as I was concerned, was when we helped in the garden behind the house. During the early days of summer we could always count on being handed the first of the thin, sweet carrots Grandpa pulled out of the ground and brushed off against his pant leg. Maybe it was the remaining dirt clinging to the vegetables that made them taste like they were the best in the world, but likely it was just because they came from Grandpa. Then there were the pigeons he kept in a coop at the fence line. We were allowed to go inside where Grandpa would hand us each a squab to cradle. The first time I realized that what I was eating for dinner one evening was actually one of the baby birds I had been recently cuddling, I was traumatized. But they tasted so good, prepared lovingly as they were by my grandfather, who did all of the cooking anyway, that my horror soon passed. I’m absolutely certain my grandmother had a hand in making Grandpa eventually dismantle the coop and release all the birds. Horrid, filthy things, according to her. Which they were, but that fact had never seemed to stop her from gobbling up her share whenever Grandpa cooked them for us.

On Saturday afternoons we sat on Grandpa’s lap while he read the comics to us. How were we to know that he couldn’t actually read at all, but was making up the stories as he went along? There were a lot of “Pow”s and “I’m going to get you, you bugger!” that I’m sure were not written into the originals. But he kept us laughing, not only because he made the comics funnier, but because he was also giving us surreptitious swigs from his bottle of Labatt’s IPA the whole time. Then, after we’d finished dinner, Grandpa, my sister and I would be relegated to the kitchen table where we’d play cards, usually Go Fish, and listen to the Maple Leafs playing Saturday Night Hockey on the radio. No TV for us because Grandma was in the living room watching Stampede Wresting.

If it hadn’t been for Grandpa, I don’t think our parents could ever have dragged us, kicking and screaming, over to that house to visit. The worst part always came when we were leaving to go back home. Grandma would open her purse (I’m sure a moth flew out every time the snaps were released), hand us each a five dollar bill, and say, “Here’s your money. I know that’s why you came.” The sad part for me was that, as far as Grandma was concerned, she’d hit the nail on the head, and it made me feel excruciatingly guilty as I kissed the pointed-to spot on her cheek in thanks. It didn’t happen as often, but every once in a while Grandpa would pull out a Seagram’s velvet bag, the kind the whiskey bottles came in, that closed with drawstrings. (I still keep one in memory of my Grandpa.) All his worldly fortune of change was contained in that bag because, as you guessed it, Grandma also controlled the family money. He would search around with his hand and pull out a dime for each of us, saying, “You go buy yourself something.” And with a smile playing on his lips, he’d add, “Now get the hell out of here!” We would run off, giggling.

That gift of a dime was like a million dollars to me, especially now that Grandpa has been dead for these past thirty-five years. A million dollars worth of memories.

Yes, we’re back from our 2 1/2-week trip to Canada — back in Trinidad, where we’ll probably
be for the better part of another month. Receta is in the middle of several spa treatments, including the refinishing of all her exterior wood. The work is 95% complete at this point, and she is looking fabulous, thanks to Averia and Alicia, the two lovely young Trini women who are doing the job. And yesterday, Receta went on the hard, so that her bottom can also be repainted: The barnacles have been finding it all too easy to get a toehold recently. While she’s out of the water, we’re staying in the hotel that’s part of the marina where the work is being done (I’m too old to pee in a bucket, and we can’t use our head — or our refrigerator, for that matter — while the boat is on the hard), and already I’m
impatient to have her back in the water so we can return to “normal” life.

Work aside, we’ve been enjoying Trinidad. We’ve already made several trips to “Patricia’s
Restaurant” in downtown Port of Spain, for some of Miss Pat’s wonderful cooking. (I wrote about her in the May 2007 issue of Gourmet). On our last visit, she took me into the kitchen and showed me how to make her killer hot sauce. Very easy — as long as you remember to cover your nose and mouth while the blender is whirring so you don’t choke on the hot-pepper fumes…. And although pre-Carnival activities are not yet in full swing, we’ve gone to several panyard evenings (featuring performances by steel, or pan, orchestras in their practice yards). It’s impossible to stay seated or stand still while a big pan band plays — and equally impossible not to smile at the sheer joy of the players and the sound.

Two Saturdays ago was the 9th annual Scotiabank Women Against Breast Cancer 5K Classic here. Along with 8 other “Cruisers for a Cure” and more than 4,000 Trini women, I took part, and it was truly amazing. Some women ran, some women jogged, some women fast-walked, some women slow-walked — a veritable river of women flowing around the Queen’s Park Savannah in downtown Port of Spain. The Savannah is beautiful at any time — an
expanse of vivid green in the heart of the city, with the dark mountains of Trinidad’s Northern
Range rising in the distance behind it and dramatic clouds moving overhead — but it was
lump-in-the-throat beautiful on Saturday. A very powerful experience, especially in a foreign
country, especially knowing the money raised will be used to provide free mammograms for Trini
women who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

Not being a runner, I mostly fast-walked it — with a little jogging thrown in from time to time
– and got a real feeling of accomplishment since I had never participated in this sort of thing
before, and given that even “fast walking” 5K is tough when the temp is close to 90š. The woman who crossed the finish line first is Trini: finished in 18 minutes, and ran in her bare
feet…..

When we leave Trinidad in mid to late October, we’ll return to Grenada to spend some more time there. Rumor has it we’re slated to be the godparents to Belicia, the gorgeous
nine-month-old daughter of our friend Gennel and her partner Blaise.

Thanks, Ann!

Please use the comment section of this post to send greetings or questions to Ann & Steve. I’ll ask her to reply through my blog whenever she has internet connections and can access it.

This week, Booking Through Thursday has asked the following question:

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

(Any bets on how quickly somebody says the Bible or some other religious text? A good choice, to be sure, but to be honest, I was thinking more along the lines of fiction…. Unless I laid it on a little strong in the string of catastrophes? Maybe I should have just stuck to catching a cold on a rainy day….)

I’ve never been down this low, thank goodness. But when I have been feeling down, or think I’m just about to catch a cold on a rainy day, I’d be more likely to make a big bowl of popcorn, a latte-sized cup of extra-chocolate hot chocolate, and watch the DVD of Love Actually. I’m less likely to read to find comfort than I am to cook something that tastes yummy and is fattening. But if I were to read a book, it would have to be How To Be Good by Nick Hornby, just to remind me that there are people, albeit fictional, who are worse off than me, but that life is likely to get better, despite the odds. And Nick Hornby tells a very funny story. I know I’d be feeling much better by the end of that book.

The other day, after the gardeners picked coconuts for us, they immediately left to go to work, taking the only cutlass with them. Shedroy, or Sheddy as everyone calls him, had stayed behind to do some cleanup work around our house. I asked him to open a couple of the coconuts for me, which at first he didn’t think he could do without a cutlass to whack off the tops. But he was able to knock them against a sharp corner of our stone wall to make a split big enough for the water to be poured out into a glass. The next day, as I had neither a cutlass nor a man to wield it, I tried Sheddy’s method - and it worked! And it was rather therapeutic, too, as I imagined all sorts of heads in place of those coconuts I was whapping against the stone… Quite proud of myself, I have been opening all my own coconuts ever since. Next up will be figuring out exactly which water nuts are at their peak to be picked. I will likely need a cutlass for that to cut them off the palm trees, but, Hey!, who needs men? As Snowy said yesterday, when I mentioned my newly discovered skill: “A lot of times, I think women are much smarter than men…”

Yes! And don’t you forget it!