[Leica] Guatemala children

[Gwpics@aol.com]

Following is a sad email I got yesterday from Nancy in Guatemala:

Dear Friends,
I waited until after Christmas purposely to spare you the bad news. The
school was broken into the night of the 23rd of december and they took all
the computers (8 of them garnered over ten years of donations) and zip
drives, scanners, printers, answering machine even the telephone and the
tank of gas for the stove. They didn't take any darkroom equipment or
cameras, and they did leave the stove.

We had the police in, and they took fingerprints, etc. I 'm sending a list
of items along to other graphic arts centers-as they were MACs, they are a
little more obvious here (not so common)-Have the kids gettting the word
out that there is a reward and having them do a little undercover work.

I don't know what to tell you. We will of course, pull up our socks and
just keep going-The money to replace them will be in part what we were
going to use to help out our Honduras project.. What I dont know is whether
to move from our present location (maybe they will be back after we replace
the computers) or just fortify it, maybe get someone to live there. Someone
older and who doesn't drink. A good neigborhood would cost us double,around
$1,000 mo/ rent which is stiff for the project.
For those of you in the U.S. there is another shipping container going out
of Madison Wisc. in january ( I don't know the date yet) so if you have
Macs that can handle PhotoShop 5.0 and Freehand 8 (we had G-3's and a
SuperMac) that we can buy off you let me know.The other things we could use
are zip drives, scanners , etc.

Anything anyone can do would be very welcome. If UK/EU luggers wish to donate 
money I now have bank account details.

Gerry Walden (UK)
Tel: (0)23 8046 3076
Fax: (0)23 8034 8542