Mirna's Story

Here's where Mirna's used to be.  Arguably the best business location in town!

Mirna told me her story, and I don't have permission to repeat it, but it's a good story and deserves to be heard. 

In 'olden times', Mirna opened a 'super' way down south on Fifth Avenue. She lived upstairs.  It was pretty successful, but the location was certainly not central.  [By the way, almost all little grocery stores in Belize are 'Supers']

Mirna secured the location you see right above, and built the store you see.  By the time she finished the store, she had exhausted her limited resources. She had a store, but she couldn't afford to stock it!   She had been getting groceries from Santiago Castillo, the biggest grocery wholesaler in Belize, and so she made a deal with Santiago; he would buy the store and stock it, and she would become a partner and run it for him.  

This came to pass.  It was called Mirna's U-Save, and it carried all the things that Gringos like to use for cooking, and it was the only source for exotic things like olive oil and good pasta and Barry Bowen's new Gallon Jug Belizean Coffee.  It was also the most expensive grocery store in town, so lots of Belizeans shopped somewhere else (usually Kardim's, across the street.)    ...Until there was a hurricane warning. 

When the hurricane was coming, Mirna stayed open, when nobody else did.  When everyone was stocking up so that they could go up to the hurricane shelter on Mary Hill (big primary school)  Mirna sold out everything in the store!.  You could always count on Mirna.  

Times change.  Santiago got old and retired.  His son, Santino [who had previously started a band -- "Santino's Messengers" -- so that he could sing in it] took over daddy's business.  The first thing he did was fire the accountant who had talked daddy into buying Angeles Press, which was a 'cash cow.'  He sold Angeles Press.  And then he came up to Corozal, fired Mirna, and gave her a week to liquidate her stock and get out of the building.    

The Gringos flocked to her store and cleaned out her stock at bargain prices.  Mirna went back up to her original store, and began to slowly stock it up.  About that time, another big super opened up way out on the East Side and they stocked exotic Gringo ingredients, and all the Gringos have a car and could get there, and it was just about as easy to get there as to get to Mirna's, so she didn't really prosper.

But fate had an opportunity waiting for Mirna.  Court's, the biggest furniture dealer in Belize, needed a new location in Corozal.  They took over her new/old location (beneath her home out on 5th Ave) and renovated it -- put in A/C and tile floors -- and paid her a bunch of rent.

Mirna still wanted to sell groceries and sundries, so she put in a little store next door (which she owned and had rented out to some Chinese Fan Distributors) and painted it up, and ran if for a while.  But she was selling mostly ice cubes and phone cards, and when Court's wanted that building to use for storage, she closed it up and went out of business.  She probably makes more money now -- clear profit -- than she made on the grocery business -- with a lot less effort!     

Meanwhile, downtown, Santino had turned the super into a wholesale warehouse.  It was a terrible location for a warehouse -- right in the middle of town -- and the traffic was getting worse every day.  Eventually he closed the place.  And there it sits.  

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