Fatima

On Saturday morning Widlyne took me to Fatima.  Fatima is a pilgrimage site south of St. Marc, just off Highway 1, that a priest has been working on for years, it looks like.

The location is breathtaking. It is on a hilltop wedged between the Caribbean Sea and high mountains to the east which are surrounded by clouds.  As you enter the grounds you must walk up a steep hill where they have a series of crosses for people to stop and say the prayers of the Way of the Cross.  This photograph was taken at the end of the day as we were leaving.  As I was coming up the hill in the morning, I did not notice the statue of Jesus overlooking the sea.   Widlyne said it is a miniature of the huge one in Rio de Janeiro.

There is a large roofed area where they say mass and have singing.  A lot of people  gathered and prayed there until the mass began in the late afternoon.  There are several bunkhouse type places for people to stay.  There are lots of little altars and mini chapels.  We walked to a steep hillside where there is a little grotto with a statue.  We stopped nearby without descending to it, and sat down.  Instead of sitting down, some of the oldest people went down the tiny path alongside the grotto to say a prayer in front of it.  At the summit of one of the hills there is a foundation for a big church.  I hope that when it is built it will be left open and the magnificent mountains will be totally open to view. 

Widlyne said that some day the priest would like to have a hotel and conference center, and a system in place for people to come and stay there on retreats.  It was a peaceful and contemplative place, and I would like to go back some day.

Marie Lourdes

This is dedicated to Marie Lourdes.   If I talk her into a picture this week, I will move the mashed potatoes and gravy to the end of this post.  Marie Lourdes is the cook at the school up the street from me. It's run by an order of Catholic brothers and is the same school Dr. Mortel attended as a boy. There is usually a lot of activity there, kids after school, soccer tournaments, and so on. Also, if I want to print something from my computer I take it up there on my thumbdrive and they are very helpful with that (15 Gde a page).  From time to time I go there to see Jean-Rony (who took me on his motor scooter to see the hospital that Sunday?).  

The night I met Marie Lourdes, I had a bad cough and had lost my voice.  To show you what kind of a person she is, she asked me if I liked chadèques, the sweet grapefruits they grow here, and I said yes.  She hustled me into her kitchen, carefully washed one, cut the core out of it with a paring knife, and gave me a spoon to eat it with.  You cannot believe how much better my throat felt after eating that chadèque.  That night might be when I developed such a taste for them.

After that I stopped in to visit her from time to time, and the night I attended Carnaval on the balcony at their school, Marie Lourdes was part of the group.  About two weeks ago I made bread and took a loaf to Marie Lourdes.  She had given me a jar of really good jam that she makes out of the rind of chadèque. Kind of like orange marmelade but spicier.
The next time I saw her, I asked how she liked the bread. She said she never got to eat any; she sent it up with the dinner that night, thinking they would send down the leftovers- and they didn't.  So last week I took her another loaf and said this one is for you, don't share it!  She liked it and asked me if I would show her how I make it.

Last Sunday afternoon I went to Marie Lourdes' kitchen and we made bread.  Also, I took her some of Aunt Clare's chocolate-peanutbutter oatmeal cookies, adapted for Haiti, and they were a big hit.  Brother Elward, who is the principal of the school, stopped in a couple of times and even went and fixed the gas line to the stove, when he heard we were going to be using it. They have three built-in charcoal burners on a big ceramic counter that she often cooks with instead of the stove.  We had a great time and the bread turned out fantastic.  Brother Elward invited me to have supper with them and say the evening prayers, too, so it was a wonderful day.

I need to mention next that when we were in the kitchen, making the bread, I could not help but notice that they had butchered. I am guessing it was the previous day.  There were two big basins of pig quarters on a table in the corner, its trotters pointing here and there, skinned tail draped over the edge, and on the counter behind me was a big pan covered by a lid, from under which the poor guy's snout was poking.  I did not lift the lid to check out the rest of his face.  We had pasta for supper that night; it was mostly veggies and Marie Lourdes grated a little bit of (already prepared) salami into it. I was glad it was nothing fresh, not liking to be acquainted with my dinner.

The next day, Jean-Rony came to me and said that Marie Lourdes wanted to give me some meat. Gulp!  All I could think about was that snout.  Also, my American fetish for refrigerating everything.  Then I remembered! My pressure cooker!  I brought my pressure cooker with me to Haiti, thinking I was going to be cooking a lot of beans, but this was precisely the sort of situation where a pressure cooker will take care of any minute (i.e. microscopic) details.  ¡Viva los Pressure Cooker!  

I went to see Marie Lourdes on the way back from the grocery store. (5 pound bag of sugar; going to make more chocolate cookies)  She gave me probably a pound and half or two pounds of what look like shoulder chunks.  She also had some parsley and a little onion and sprigs of other stuff with it.

I browned the chunks in oil, added about a half a cup of water and set it on low for a half an hour.  When almost all the water was gone (when it started to get quiet- so imagine the tsk!tsk! stopping) I took out my pieces of pork and they really were lovely:  All brown and carmelized, and falling apart.  Since I am a mashed potatoes and gravy person, I put in about two cups of water with all that brown, caramelized broth, and cooked that a little bit more. Also, I went to the market where I was once again robbed over 6 or 7 small, white potatoes.  -But at least I got the lady to go halves, from $1.25 US to $.65, so I am improving. Also, I was able to just laugh, because I knew that I was going to have mashed potatoes and gravy no matter what!

On Friday night I went to Foun's to have dinner with my friend Jennifer and two engineers from an organization (I think it is French) called ACTED. They do municipal improvements like roads and water and sanitation systems, etc.  Sitting around the table was a crew with at least ten years of active work experience in Haiti, not counting my humble two months.  Gerard, who also makes his own bread, by the way, just arrived from France after a one-year hiatus. He had spent the previous two years in Haiti high in the mountains in the border country next to the Dominican Republic.  "No electric, no water, no telephone.  After two years I went home exhausted and 20 kilos lighter.  But now I am better and glad to be back."

I was telling them about the pig parts on the kitchen counter and we were all smiling about my squeamishness, when I went on to say that Marie Lourdes then gave me some of the meat.  Jennifer, a Peace Corps veteran, said, "You do realize what a big deal that is?  Giving you meat?"  Gerard nodded. "That's huge."  Wow.  I did not realize.  

So today I plan on dining on mashed potatoes and gravy and chunks of pork roast.  Thanks to my friend Marie Lourdes.

Riding on a Tap Tap

On Saturday Widlyne asked me if I wanted to go see Fatima, a religious shrine by the sea. I told her I did, and I got to go on a tap tap for the first time.  If you come to Haiti you cannot help but be intrigued by the tap taps.  I will try to get a picture the next time I go on one.  Tap taps are old Toyota pickup trucks that are fitted out with two narrow benches, 6" planks, and iron railings, on either side of the bed. Some of them have a metal rack up in the front of the bed, above the cab, to hold large objects, packages or more people.  I have seen little signs, "Passengers look out for your things!" just like we have in our buses and subways back home.  There are often around twenty people in the back of a tap tap, and if space exists, more will hop on and stand on the bumper or sit up on the roof of the cab.

As we walked through the market to go out to Highway 1 where the southbound tap taps load, Widlyne said, first we must buy handkerchiefs.  We stopped at a stall and each got one; they were only 20 Gourdes. What  relief to be with a Haitian and just pay the normal price! 

The tap taps are famous for carrying severe overloads.  I am so glad I got to go on one with Widlyne; I got to check out the protocol.  Here are some do's and don'ts:  

• Have a handkerchief handy to cover up your mouth and nose for when the road is unpaved or nearby vehicles are spewing excessive fumes. Also remember to cover your hair, if that is a priority for you.  
  
• If the tap tap is almost full, don't get on it. (Here's where I would have been really stupid and figured that was just my lot in life that day.) You'll be standing in the middle, bouncing off the others with nowhere to hold on, if you take a middle spot.
• Try to be one of the first ones on and get a seat. Even if it means you don't get to leave for another 20 minutes. There's always another tap tap.
• Sit in the middle of the bench; let others sit on either side of you. You're going to be tight on that bench, at least six of you side by side, more likely seven. Best not to be on the end.
• You pay when you get there, but check out the price before you get in.
• Hang on tight; springs and shocks are on their last legs on a tap tap.
• There are no age limits!  You should see some of the elderly people getting on and off the tap taps.  

Culligan Water

  

Here is a bottle of drinking water. It costs 25 gourdes or 65 cents U.S., per five-gallon bottle.  Some people call it "ionized water" and it usually goes by the brand name Culligan.

  When I hear the word Culligan I think water softeners, but here it means water purifiers. Most of the people who live here are used to the local water, and I am guessing many drink it from the tap. There are at the same time dozens of these businesses; every other block you see a little storefront or tiny building offering purified water.

   SNEP, le Système National d'Eau Potable, has been busy in St.-Marc both laying new water lines here in the town and hooking up to new wells and springs in the mountains to the east of us.  I saw some of their aqueducts the Sunday I went out to the little chapels. It was very pretty up there in the mountains, and  there seemed to be a lot of activity- recreation, clothes-washing, etc.- in the vicinity of these waterways. So we hope a little chlorine gets added between there and here!

 Back to my Culligan water. I think the water is distilled.  Claire, a Belgian lady who is working with the engineers to modernize the town water system, calls the bottled water "dead water," because all the minerals have been removed by the process, in addition to the bacteria.  The thing that gets me about the bottled water, though, is that I think they just take your used bottle, refill it, and hand it back to you.  I don't know this for sure, as I have only looked in the door of the water stores and checked out the big distilling tank.  Meritesse always goes for me and hauls home the new bottles, and, while they are always capped with a new plastic seal, they seem suspiciously dusty to me.  I don't think I want to know.

  When I first heard the price, I remember thinking, how on earth can they sterilize a 5-gallon bottle, assure sanitary conditions in the distilling room, fill it and cap it and give it back to you for 65 cents?! Jeff, my science advisor, put my mind at ease with his comment on the system:  "Oh, Liz! I'm sure the Haitian department of health and sanitation is all over that!"  So with that cheerful thought I've been drinking plenty of it, and so far so good.           

5 Little Monkeys, Jumping on the Bed!

I am trying to do two different strands of teaching here in Haiti. Widlyne, their Haitian science teacher, and I want to do more experimental science wherever possible with the seventh grade, since they are upper level now. After the Easter break we will begin the electricity section of their physical science book. We are planning to do a series of experiments in the laboratory that should be a lot of fun for the kids, and we'll try having them write lab reports, which will be new for them.

My other assignment here is to teach introduction to English. Up to fifth grade the classes are short and held just once a week. With the younger kids I am teaching the little poems and motions. Check out "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" at the end of this post. Also we're talking about animals and their colors, the sounds they make, what they eat, and so on. In the upper classes we add a little lesson, such as liking something. "What does a cat like? Does a cat like fish?" "Do you like fish?" "Does the monkey like fish or bananas?" "Do you like bananas?" "And the tiger-- what does the tiger like? Does he like bananas?"

In the picture above, I am in the third grade. I look pretty serious, I hope nobody thinks I'm mad. This picture gives you a good idea of the bench-type desks the younger kids have. In the kindergarten they are so small there are some who fit four to a desk! (Also, note the lovely hair ribbons. These are all kinds of real ribbon from the fabric shop. Navy blue ribbons for school, and on Sundays, they must be white. All different kinds, lacy, solid, and striped, but you see this sea of white ribbons when you look out through the church at the children's mass on Sunday morning. Forgive me for digressing, but I love this.)

Getting the kids to make choices and decisions took a few classes. At first, they would not question anything I said- "The cat says 'woof-woof', right?" ("Yes, the cat says 'woof.' ") Then I'd act surprised and glance back at the picture of the cat. "A cat? A cat says 'woof'?"

After a little bit of tricking them and joking with them, they have started to really listen to me. Now even the kindergarteners catch me at it, and they love to disagree and say "No!" Also, they can tell me the fish and the turtle are "quiet." It's really enjoyable to see them thinking and deciding, and it is sweet to see how delighted it makes them feel. They are not usually taught using an inquiry method; I find even some of the older kids do poorly when I ask them simple 'true or false' type questions. The teaching style is didactic; perhaps due to limited resources, the teacher presents the lesson and there is not much time given to investigation or questioning. What the teacher presents is so, and the learning tends to be passive. So when presented with true/false questions, their initial reaction is, everything my teacher says is true. Which makes it psychologically hard for some of them to go back and really look at the statement.

Here is a kindergarten class, the Hibiscus class. There are just a few less than 50 in this classroom, and they are so much fun. They really liked 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, and they got the fact that it was a no-no. Watch some of the kids waving their fingers. Also, note the little hanky pinned to the dress, I mentioned that in an earlier post. That identifies them as a "kindergartener." I didn't realize I was talking into my camera, so I apologize for covering them up, but you can hear them really chanting it. After our vacation we're doing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Baptism in the Courtyard

Today at 4PM a group of students who had been preparing for months was baptized in a very moving ceremony in the courtyard of the school. Dr. Mortel, who is a deacon in the Catholic church, officiated at the service. Haitians love celebrating their Christianity and this was a beautiful example. Here is a video I made of the opening procession. The choir is singing, "Je choisis de suivre tes pas, Jésus," I choose to follow you, Jesus. I love the last line of the chorus, "You loved me first." I know there are some French students reading this. The music is very clear, and if you would like the words to follow along, please write to me and I will be happy to send them to you. (Do not think for a minute that my French has become so good that I can just jot them down as I listen. I have them in the program that was handed out.)

     

     One of the seventh grade girls, Dieula, asked me to be her godmother, and I was happy to be able to say yes.  Her name, by the way, means "God is there." I just love her name.  What a beautiful, overwhelming thought to have, the moment you see your newborn baby: Look- This proves it! God is here.

Here is a picture of Dieula, beside me, and her foster sisters, Océanie, in the middle, and Adeline.  This is just after the baptism.

The Lear Brothers

     Here is a picture of John and Tim Lear, two brothers from Lebanon who have been coming to Bons Samaritains for over ten years.  There is nothing they can't fix, and if they don't quite understand it, they look it up on the internet and get the latest word.

     There are many days here in St.-Marc when the public electricity does not function. At all. Or perhaps it might be turned on for just a few hours.

     I was having longer and longer stretches of time with no electricity and didn't really understand much about it other than how uncomfortable that was.  After Tim and John  arrived, they told me that nine of our solar collectors had been stolen from the roof!  Mind you, it happened one night and I was laying in my bed thinking, I wish those people would quit banging around up there.  At first I had convinced myself it was cats, but after the noise got louder I realized it was definitely footsteps.  I mentioned it to Meritesse in the morning, but apparently nobody thought to go look until one of the teachers who lives within view of the roof came to school one day and said, did they know that the solar collectors had been stolen?  Either they told me and I did not understand them, or they decided it would be better for me not to worry- for one reason or another, I never knew it until they arrived to fix them. They walked in March 6, met the engineer who built the school on Saturday morning, reassembled the remaining 4 collectors, redid the inverter and had it all set up by Saturday night.  And we have had electricity pretty much nonstop since then!

     It seems the thieves cut the wires and left them lay touching the roof which shorted out the inverter. (I wondered why it was making those cranky beep! beep! noises all the time.) In fact, Tim was wondering if maybe the loose wires charged the roof and deterred them from coming back for the other four.  

     Lest you worry about me, I need to tell you that I lock two iron gates every night, before I go to bed. There is one to the stairs and one to the balcony. The building is made of concrete block, with all concrete and ceramic tile floors, so there is minimal danger of fire here (which is a good thing, considering all the open fires they have for cooking, and lighting the streets at night.) I do feel pretty safe, even knowing they were on the roof above me, doing that.  Tim and John were philosophical about it, and said they hoped that the thieves at least used the money to buy food for people or something like that.  And at the same time they were planning how they would secure a new set so that it would not happen again.  And I won't mention where the little array is, that they made out of the remaining four panels, just in case the crooks are into reading blogs about St.-Marc, Haiti.

     In addition to coming to Haiti on a busman's holiday for a week or two each year, they spend the year helping Dr. Mortel to collect supplies and donations for the school.  While they were here, a container that arrived at the port in Gonaives was unloaded, and they spent two of their days unloading everything and getting it here to the school.  And they had stored much of the stuff, and loaded the container up in Lebanon County over the winter.  

     They are incredible.  They say they just love working vacations, and helping people.  They went around on the slow days and repaired desks, made screens, and unstuck window cranks.  The kids all know them and look forward to their visits. 

     Thank you, guys! I can't say enough about how nice these two men are.  Plus they make very good coffee and brought chocolate chip cookies with them.

I Finally Get to Go to the Beach

On Sunday March 8, I finally got to visit the Caribbean. Yes, my apartment is three blocks from it. Yes, I go up to the port when I have a few minutes and sneak back into a patio where a Tai Kwon Do class is practicing, so I can sit on the seawall and gaze at it. Yes, it is visible from my balcony. But that's it. There does not seem to be a great attraction for the beach on the part of Haitians. When I tell my students that North Americans all wish they could come to the Caribbean, and that you are lucky because you get to live here, they really can't see what the fuss is about. Also, I understand they don't swim in it, as a rule. It has something to do with the bogeyman living there, I think.
It was a beautiful day and I got to swim and enjoy the sunshine. There was, however, one fly in my soup bowl of happiness. I took my Flip video camera, which I have been using for all the pictures that you see here, under the water, snorkeling on Sunday. I bought a box for which I paid, evidently, $50 too much, and put the camera in it without testing it camera-less in the sink. I am ashamed to admit this to you. I went into the water with it and when I pressed the "on" button, air bubbles popped up out of my camera box. When I surfaced there was an inch of water in the box. 

It did not leak at the silicon gaskets; it leaked at the buttons. I drained it and laid it in the sun to dry and now it only runs intermittently. I hope that I can get a replacement. Sunday night I looked up the camera case ratings. A perfect 3: People either gave it a 5, because they loved it, and had the videos posted to prove how wonderful it was, or people gave it a 1, because they hated it, and told the sad tale of their once-in-a-lifetime trip to swim with the dolphins and how it was ruined by this box. I was just mad, not devastated, so I felt lucky.

Do NOT BUY this camera case!

The Market, Continued . . .

   I know, you are thinking, what a glutton for punishment I must be.   But in Saint Marc (Sen Mak in Créole) everything is for sale in the market.   If you want a mattress, you buy it in the market. Tools, wiring, shoes, shoe repairs, a baby bathtub or baby walker, all your clothing, a cooking pot, a lamp, a plastic lawnchair, canned milk, powdered milk, padlocks, schoolbooks. There are vendors everywhere selling schoolbooks.  Schoolbooks in Haiti follow a national curriculum. Everyone does the same thing, as near as I can tell.  I only realized last week that all their books were on sale in the market, and I bought the seventh grade science books.  So this week I decided to buy the third and fourth grade science book, as well as the fifth/sixth grade one.  And I also bought the beginning reader series, called "The Joy of Reading."

I had such a nice conversation with the guys from whom I bought the science books last week, that I decided to go back to them.  On the way there, as I passed some other book sellers, I asked about the Joy of Reading.  One guy quoted me 75 Gdes, like $1.90US, until his boss came back and said, "Oh, no! 100 Gdes!"  I put it down and kept walking.

In the end I probably paid a little too much, but my guys were very helpful and explained some things.  When they gave me my change, I received a 5 Gd piece that was also burnished, almost flat, like the other one. I said, "Is that any good? Someone told me they weren't any good."  "Oh, sure, it's good.  See, it's still yellow."  

I had the bad one in my purse and got it out to show them.  I told them my story about the market ladies and they laughed.  Turns out it's the color that is bad.  The government used inferior metal to make them and they did not keep the yellow color, and now some people refuse to accept them.  I said, "But a coin is a coin. It's not your fault if you got it in change. What do you do with it?"  They said a bank would exchange it for me.  "And would they also change those nasty bills that are so brown you can't see if they are 20 or 50 Gdes?"  They told me a bank would exchange those, too.  

This is good to know, because I am sure you gather by now that the money that is on its last legs is still good enough to be handed out one, more, time, to me, but not quite good enough to be accepted from me for the next purchase. I am waiting for the day one of my cruddy brown paper Gourde notes gets turned down.  The ones in the picture in the previous post are worn, but you can read them.  When I think one is so filthy and illegible that I don't even want to touch it, I ask them for a different one.  But the answer is always, "Ce n'est pas possible," because the cash register, malheureusment, is already shut!

Widlyn's Fifth Grade

Widlyn, besides being the seventh grade science teacher, teaches fifth grade. She knows that I am into plants and trees, and today she asked me if I wanted to see her class do brouturage.
Of course I had to say, "Quoi?" So she showed me her science textbook: Cutting and rooting tree and bush stems. Here you see some of her students getting the cuttings ready, while Widlyn explains how to prepare the stems. They planted their stems in tin can pots.

Then later in the morning the fifth grade was one of the classes to come to the group instruction room for English class. Today we worked on animal names, I like, and asking and answering questions. You can see by the end of the video below that they were calling out the question and the answer themselves.
I wrote a limerick for them about some of the animals that they learned. I wrote 3 more verses to do in the coming weeks. I think they liked it. It goes like this:

I went to the Animal Fair,
The cats and the monkeys were there!
The flamingoes were tall
And the frogs were so small
And a mouse wore a bow in her hair!

So we recited the limerick a little bit, and then got up and started walking in a circle to play a game I called the "Animal Fair." They asked and answered a question until I said "I see a tiger!" and then they ran to the far wall to touch it before the tiger "caught" them.
Here is the video on Teacher Tube:

An Author in Church

     Here is a picture of St. Marc's that I love.  On Saturday mornings after mass they have benediction.  It's about 7:30 in the morning.  The sun is still low in the sky and the rays are catching the incense in the air.

     This morning I went to church and saw something assez rare, pretty unusual, I thought.  When I go to church I have taken to sitting in the side aisle, since I make a lot of faux pas.  For example, I forget where I was sitting when I come back from communion.  Without any coat and gloves in the pew to catch my eye, I walk right past.  Then I realize I missed it, and I'll finally notice that a couple of people are nodding and pointing back to my pew.  They don't go to communion in any order, which makes it tricky for me to remember where I was.

     This morning a grey-haired man wearing a cornflakes box on his back came up the side aisle before the service began.  It was tucked into the top of his pants right inside his belt.  He walked up to the front pew like it wasn't even there, and sat down.  I thought at first it was Maxi, the little old guy I mentioned in a previous post, the one who hangs around the church.  But I realized this guy was wearing a FIFA soccer shirt, (International Soccer Association) not a black jacket like Maxi does.  So then I decided maybe it was a back brace.  But after a couple of minutes he reached around and got it out.  From inside it he took a notebook and a pen and very industriously began writing.

     He was in the front pew and kept looking up toward the altar while he wrote.  The priests must all be away, because instead of mass a seminarian conducted a communion service.  I was not the only one intrigued by The Writer.  Halfway through the gospel the seminarian stopped reading mid-sentence.  I think he lost his place, because he didn't start again for the longest time.  The author was sitting in front of him, just a little to the right.  I guess the sight of all that industry at 6:30 in the morning caught him off guard.  

     At the end of the service he stopped writing and put everything away inside the cornflakes box.  He tucked it into his belt again, but this time he wore his shirt out over it.  

     Sister Mary Hardiwin just returned from a visit to Gonaïves.  I mentioned the cornflakes box and she knew exactly who he was.  "Fou," she said.  

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"

I have always liked this Jane Austen quotation, and lately I know just how Mr. Bennet felt when he said it. The alternative title for this post should be, "They don't take any wooden nickels here!"

After school today I went to the market for eggs. If I have one successful transaction in the market, I should head straight home, but I never know when to quit. As I was heading back to the school with my bag of eggs, a pile of dried corn caught my eye. The vendors of dried beans, peas, and things rice have them in tubs or drywall buckets, or sometimes they make little piles of them on mats spread on the ground.

The corn looked more orange that John Cope's corn, the kernels a little bigger, the color of popcorn. I paused and said, "How much?" Thirty Gourdes for a two-cup container. How much for half the container? Fifteen Gourdes. I knew I had three 5-Gourde coins in my pocket, so I said I would take half a container's worth of her dried corn.

So while the vendor measured out a little bag of corn for me, I got out my three coins. I think of them as "nickels" but forty gourdes equal one U.S. dollar, so three 5 Gde. pieces equal about 40¢. I had them in my hand, but before I could give them to her, another woman a foot or two to the left of me started screaming and snatched that brown coin you see in the picture right out of my hand and threw it in the dirt. Actually, in the mud. And kept on screaming.

Ah, evidently not a good coin. But to me it looks like the others, what do I know? Her screeching got the other vendor in the spirit and the pair of them proceeded to tell me off for having the nerve to fob off my fake coins on honest Haitian market vendors like them! And of course a little crowd immediately huddled around, breathless for action.

I leaned down and picked up my nickel. That's a pretty good snapshot of it. I thought that one of the men behind me said something like, "It doesn't have a face." I looked at it and indeed it was smooth as glass. You could read all the inscriptions but only because they were a different color, and that, too, was wearing off. So I guessed that was the problem. The people gathering around kept saying, "It's no good."

So now we have an audience and Mrs. Vendor has her palm out for her other nickel. The problem is, all I have is a 50 Gourde note. So I hand her the note, (I know, you're all thinking, "Without getting your other coins back?! What were you thinking?") She takes my 50 and gives me a 20 and a 10. "Excuse me, I gave you 60 and you told me the corn was 15."

"Twenty Gourdes for the corn! You gave me 50, there's your 30." Something like that and a shrug. "You told me 15, and I gave you 60. You never gave me back my 2 coins." She pretended not to hear me.

That would probably have been the end of the story, but a nice man leaned in at this point and said, "What's the problem here?" in an authoritative tone. The vendor said, "She bought 20 Gourdes worth of corn." He turned to me, "How much did she tell you it was?" "15 Gourdes." "How much did you give her?" "Sixty- a 50 and 10 in change."

He said something to her and she grabbed back the 10 and gave me a 25 Gourde note in its place. I quickly walked away.

How much do you want to bet it's a fake?

My 45 Gourdes in change

A Muddy Day

     The town has been working on the Boulevard, the street where the school is located.  First they dug up the roadbeds, then they dropped off a lot of stone, and then it seemed things ground to a halt. This may have been due to Carnaval. Or not. Anyway, starting last week and yesterday SNEP, le Système National d'Eau Potable, ran new waterlines in the street, (at least I am assuming it was them) and last night I think one of them burst.

     I'd decided to splurge and went to Foun's for dinner, and when I came home- in the dark, no electricity, down the street full of ditches and stone piles, I realized there was moving water. Lots of it. When I finally picked my way down to the school, I stood facing the gates and the driveway and realized I was actually going to have to walk straight through it. Yeccch.       

     Fortunately Wilson opened the gates the second I knocked, plus he turned on the generator for me so I was able to see to get ready for bed- and scrub my feet and sandals!  I am happy to report that the water pressure was much improved, in spite of the leaking pipe.

      Then as I lay in bed reading, what did I hear but a rainstorm.  It poured for a little while.  So things went from bad to worse out on the Boulevard. 

     I know that today some of you had school delays on account of the snow. We did not have a delay, but several teachers and kids were late on account of the mud.   And there were a lot of dirty shoes.  It was actually worse in some of the other areas. The patch in front of the school was pretty well dried off till school let out this afternoon, but I went to the market right across the street, and there were blocks over there that were still a foot deep, that no one walked through all day.  Meritesse got some stones from the construction site and made a path for the kids to walk in. If you want to see the rest of the street, here is a little video that I posted on the internet. Elisa, whom some of you know, is the little girl in the middle. 

 http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=347af553e5910b3024c0