One last time

Today is my last day here. For this trip, anyway.
This morning was nice and I think the rest of the day will be as well.
My bugbites were limited to 5 last night, so that gave me a better night sleep as well, and the wolf spider just ran off and out my door. It's a good life.

Starry invited a couple (MD and MD - what else do we have here??) for dinner tonight, as a 'going away'. And I was asked to cook which is fun and a blessing. The cook's menu is limited to soups and Ragu spaghetti or canned mac and cheese. OK. Starry doesn't cook at all.
The menu:
for appetisers deviled eggs (as fresh as can be) and thin sliced mini breads with shredded grilled cheese on top.
For dinner Flemish Stew (beef, ale, spices and topped with mustard/cheese bread, baked nicely in the oven we hope will keep up the good work before supper is done), a salad and scalloped potatoes.
The maids, Nan and Tan, hang over my shoulder each time I cook and their menu has been much enriched in the past weeks. Really cute.
Starry asked me for a PB cookie recipe (BEST fresh PB here!) which she'll make for dessert.

To get much of that stuff we had to go to the market.
The local market is a daily affair, with truly poor people selling itsty-bitsy things of whatever they can get. Granted: there are some more stalls with fresh meat (some still bleating) and freshly caught fish and some farmers are clearly better off with a variety of fresh-looking produce. But those are only a few. And the market is quiet, which feels eerie.
We found someone who sold tomatoes! Very expensive for here: 5 for $1, but we bought them anyway (salad). We bought 7 potatoes, 3 shallots grown in you-know-what, two bottles of beer from the wall, a tiny bunch of parsley (all she had to sell) and TONS of grenadiens, a sour fruit related to oranges. Makes THE best juice, provided you have sugar. We bought freshly laid eggs ( chicken tied to the stall to prove it??) and two cokes. (Why?? Am I finally getting that rum and coke??)
The rest of the stalls would have 3 potatoes, 4 carrots, an onion and 2 eggs. Some maggi boullion cubes, sold individually, and perhaps two hair ribbons. And the forever present stick of sugar cane. A very muddy and smelly market, women and men dressed in the poorest of poor. What a difference with the bustling Verrettes market!

The MD here just came in to ask if I'd go and visit a local school with her. She promised to pay the tuition of a boy she knows (8th grade), but he told her that the school does not accept US checks (can be changed at the hosp here..) and does not have an account. So she asked me to come (for my "french") and limited Kreyol to speak to the principal. So off we shall go on the taptap.

Yesterday someone from the hospital made an official appt with me through Erlantz.
Listen to this. Have your gullibility hat on? I am learning!

He started building a house. married, 2 daughters. Borrowd $ from the hosp for each segment, paid it off, borrowed again. He works there - no problem. Done all the time.
Halfway through he relized that he will never build that house w/o some other plan.
So he called the L rm a classroom and asked me to furnish the building's funding.
Sure.
With a straight face (have bought one in Verrettes) I told him I would be delighted to if...
He has a clear plan, both financially, time line and building codes (haha)
Who was going to teach.
Which children he was going to have there. Oh...orphans and street children? So who is going to pay the bills then?
How does he enroll them, and how does he keep the street children in school, who have no discipline to return?
Was he going to offer lunch? How to pay for that?
Which teaching methods was he going to use?
What would the materials cost before opening?

To the street children issue he added that he was thinking recently about opening an orphanage, too.

The people I know who have done either don't do very well.
Many threats and lack of safety. The locals don't trust them.

I finally told him that IF he has a plan for the house, finishes the house, has at least two classrooms completely ready and teachers and lesson plans in place, he should definitely come and talk to me again. No promises. Because I could try and get some friends together and buy some permanent materials for each classroom.
OK my friends: is that a fair deal?

The sad thing is that I get requests about tuition or building things and other dreams every day (incl. requests for visas). And the answer is 'no' 98% of the time. Because the list is endless and you have to pick one cause you can be relatively sure of, and bring that to completion.
It makes me sad. When we can't afford private schools for our children, we send them to public school. Because they're good. And we can even home school Those are not options here. Private school or nothing. And there is no guarantee of the quality of the private school. Sad.

Anyway. We just went to visit one of those schools (since I wrote the above), a 7-room school house where the older students come later in the day so they can work daytime and not have to enlarge the school. It was what we'd call a shack. More like a small barn or cleaned-out chicken coop. The children didn't have desks, just little rickety benches. When they needed to write they'd kneel on the floor and put their work on the bench. The colors of the school were hard blue and white, by the way. When this lady and I were there (I had to speak French for her) the 1st graders were just reciting the x6 tables. The 4th graders were learning French verbs (hard for them) and the Philo -advanced 13th grade/college prep- were reading novels in French.

What are we doing wrong, I wonder? Do our children need chicken coops again? To share dog-eared books, and treasure a pencil? Do our homework by the light of the only streetlight in the village? Stay sparkling clean after a day on dirt floors?
I don't get it. The name of the school, by the way, is The Road To Jerusalem.

Thanks for listening. Be grateful. Share. Have a heart, and I really don't need two of everything.

Much love, Marianne

The end.