Meritesse and Wilson

 

  Here is a picture of Meritesse and Wilson, the caretakers at the school.  They rely on these two, especially on Meritesse, for pretty much everything.  If I ask him for something and he doesn't know what I mean, he runs up the street and gets Dr. Mortel's sister, Dinah, to come over.                

   Meritesse only speaks Creole, but if I speak French slowly we can usually get along pretty well.  For example, when I asked him to get the ladder to help me put up the mosquito net, he went over to the closet and got it right out, no problem.

   There are big iron gates in front of the school, and one of the guys is usually always there on duty, or else they have it locked.  One of the first nights, when Jeff was still here, we met so many nice people at Foun's around the corner, and talked and talked.  We forgot to say we would be late.  We had to bang and bang on the gate to wake Wilson up and let us in.  So now I try to tell them what time I am coming back if I go out at night.   

   On Friday morning I went to the market and I bought two carnival masks.  "How much were they?" Elizabeth, the secretary, wanted to know.  They were 250 Gourdes each.  Her eyebrows went up and she shook her head.  "Maybe for both of them, but not for one!  You must get Meritesse to go buy things for you."  I had a fruit in the bag, too, something like a grapefruit.  They call it 'chaday' or something like that.  I had to admit that I gave 10 gourdes for the chaday.  Elizabeth looked at me and I could see the disappointment on her face.  "You should never pay more than 5 gourdes for one." (Which equals what they call 1 Haitian dollar.)

   A little bit later Meritesse brought me a glass of juice that Sister Marie Bernard, the principal, had sent up for me.  It was yellow, and I asked him if it was juice from the chaday.  "Yes," he said, and could not resist raising a finger and adding, "One dollar!"-- so I knew that Elizabeth had been filling him in about my shopping excursion.