"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