Market Day

After so many meetings and interviews over the course of the last 11 days, today fortunately, was spent primarily in the office catching up on the necessary administration responsibilities. At this juncture, what is needed are contracts and position descriptions for the new staff members, creating the curriculum for our three teachers for the next 12 months and establishing the calender of events also for the next year. In order to be able to stay apprised of how Fondespwa is progressing once I return to the States, we also have to establish dates for reports and Skype sessions. All these reports need to be translated from French to English which takes some time. If only I had paid attention in French class when I was a kid in Canada. It would have saved everyone a lot of time. What a regret now. I will be learning Creole a mixture of African and French that the materially poor speak. Sitting in my room, I could hear the sounds from outside: children saying their lessons from the kindergarten across the road, two women yelling at each other for some reason I don't know. On occasion, I stood on the porch and looked down the street and saw an older man pulling a very large cart (like a rickshaw) which carried charcoal and a myriad of women with baskets balanced on their heads carrying a variety of goods to the market, as this is market day. They were walking by at 4:30 AM. So there was lots and lots of activity on the streets as everyone, merchant or consumer made their way to the center of town. No one seemed to be laughing or smiling, as this day is serious for the women. They must make money on this day. The market, which covers many acres consists of hundreds of machete hewn wooden stalls with corrugated aluminum roofs. You will find everything: shoes, sandals, clothes for men, women and children, mops, potatoes, corn, rice, beans, mangoes, oranges, bananas, charcoal, peanuts, lotions, shampoo, pans, chickens, pigs, goats, mules. Also you can find ready made food like rice with bananas, rice with ochre, rice with tomatoes, rice with onions, rice with corn, rice with mangoes, rice with fish, rice with chicken, rice with beans, also fried rice, baked rice, boiled rice and burnt rice. You get the picture? The noise is loud, loud. People yelling about their products to get customers, others aggressively negotiating, all coupled with the sounds of bleating goats (a little lower than sheep), squalking chickens, barking dogs, the whinny ending in hee-haw sounds of mules, incessant honking of tap-taps, gutteral yet thunderous retort of motorcycles and the constant chatter of women discussing their children, their husbands, their lives. You think its bustling at the mall Christmas week? No contest. Its getting dark outside at 6 PM and as I look down the street the expressions of the returning women this time, are varied. Some are laughing, singing, smiling, chattering, while others look solemn, some with heads bowed, some angry, and many bent over from the exhaustion of the day. Tonight, some mothers will have food for their children, while other mothers....