Day 21

More snake movements – leaves twirling and skitting across a floor in the wind, a sheet drying on a line in the wind.

Today I took the kids to school. Benjamin was a bit clingy, but it sounded like he had a good day. Lane is, no other way to put it – brave. She proclaims nervousness, but does what has to be done. School is an experience like no other – run-down rooms, littered schoolyard with cement corners and exposed roots everywhere. Two white people – Lane and I - standing in yard, with a young black boy – Benjamin - clinging to them, drew everyone’s attention, and many kids walked by just to look up close.

I had a bad feeling in my stomach after leaving the school – both kids seemed to have some trepidations, and I couldn’t decide whether I was projecting my trepidations upon them or they were projecting theirs upon me. I think I was very aware of being in a strange place with no way to communicate. Maybe this is something I’ve been holding onto, but not allowing to surface, and seeing my children in that situation made it real. When I got back home everyone – Amy, Lane and Benjamin – said they had had a very good day, with a breakthrough. Benjamin had gotten his own snack. The kids, during their recess, have a variety of treats available to them – ice cream, hot dogs, candies and, something Benjamin and Lane are fascinated by, a fried dough. As Lane describes it, it’s not a fried dough as we connoisseurs of US minor league ballparks know it, with a heaping of confectioners’ sugar, but a less sweet, thinner and crunchier version, with ketchup instead of sugar on top. When the kids are at recess, they purchase these treats, and Benjamin and Lane have to get in the crowd and let their choices be known without knowing the language. To this point, Benjamin had always stayed out of the line, and either let Amy pick something for him or, last week, been close to tears as the person with the treat cart handed him a jello cup he hadn’t chosen but didn’t know how to say that he didn’t want.


There is kind of a frontier town feeling here - there is no real feel of order, and everyone seems to be solving their own problems their own way. When we moved in, there was a lot across the street being prepared for a new house - they had dug trenches, poured cement sills, and started building cement block walls. One day we came home to discover someone had taken a sledgehammer to the walls, knocking a good chunk of them down. It turns out there is an ongoing property dispute and, even though the homebuilder had gotten a favorable court ruling, the aggrieved party was taking the law into their own hands. What adds to the tale is that there has been an armed guard on the property the whole time but, as one of my neighbors told me, "he probably held the hammer." The last couple days there has been a noticeable (10-12 people) group of people outside our gate, across from the broken wall. There has been no construction since the wall was broken, but the armed guard is there every day. We can only guess that the people are keeping some sort of watch over the property – the group is Dominican, and we have been told the other owner / builder is French.


I played soccer tonight – the Dominican / Haitian players still haven’t rejoined the Europeans, but they watch from the side sometimes, and tonight Cyril started a game with them on a side field.