Andrea had told me before I left for Peru that Leo Paper was looking for some charities to help, and that they often just threw away sample books as they had far too many. So she started saving appropriate children's English and Spanish books for me. And once I was here and I had checked that it was ok to have books sent, 2 packages were prepared and sent off by courier. They reached Lima within 3 days, but then sat in Lima for over a month while we sorted out how to get them to Ayacucho and what taxes had to be paid.
First I was asked to supply a receipt of purchase and Customs would not accept that they were gratis samples and that there was no receipt. And at one point I was told I could go and collect them in Lima - somehow a 9-hour bus journey each way just to collect books that were supposed to be couriered to my door didn't seem quite right! And then we never really understood why we had to pay taxes on books that were gratis samples and were not going to be sold on, but tax still had to be paid and the books were not going to be released until the money had been received. In the end Leo Paper paid the taxes too, which is fantastic!!
I've now sorted out the books and we're keeping the English ones in the CCS Resource Library for various volunteers to use in schools, Wawa Wasis, street kids centres, etc. And we packaged up all the Spanish books that were appropriate for 4-5 year-olds, and donated them to the Yanamilla Primary School, as there are hardly any books there at all! The school was really grateful - see blog entry on Yanamilla Primary School party for more details ... coming soon!
Giving the pre-primary books to Yanamilla Primary School
Many thanks again to Leo Paper, and especially to Andrea for all her patience and determination to get the books through to me!
No comments:
Post a Comment