spoon. its five letters.

we have two different school campuses at CBW. one is k-3, the other is 4-9. at feeding time, man power is needed at the 4-9 campus where you're mobbed with teenaged boys shouting more fish and more soup at you. i don't get to the smaller campus as often because of that.

the small campus though, is obviously the cuter one. the first grade teacher was telling me about how it went this morning, and mentioned how much she loved watching the kids eat. one of her boys in first grade was going at his rice and beans pretty aggressively and at one point shouts that the spoon is taking too much time. he goes outside, washes his hands with his drinking water, and comes in to go at his beans and rice properly with his hand/shovel.

at this point i was helping victoria mix some flour for the fish pies she sells after school. what prompted this story was that i asked if i could just mix with my hands. she looked at me and then at my fingers and points to each of them saying s-p-o-o-n. spoon. use your hand.

clever.

she was also shocked to hear, as we were rolling out the fish pie dough, that i also use a beer bottle (well wine.. keeping it classy obviously) to roll out dough.

as we waited for the fish pies fry under her mango tree (she has my favourite house on camp) i heard two less adorable stories. one was passed on from the neighbour. the man who used to live in victoria's house, but who had moved out to the outskirts of camp, beat his wife to death that morning. the other was about a mother who died from AIDS yesterday leaving behind a HIV+ dad and a baby boy. the dad was at a loss for what to do. the boy wouldn't stop crying and refused to eat. victoria, the teacher/mother/counselor/support network/fishpie seller, was going to go out to help after we finished baking.

there are a lot of people on camp that i pass and wonder what they do with their days... i wonder if they're just waiting for someone else (me) to sponsor them. maybe its a bad assumption based on a few bad relationships with people here, or a growing sense of pessimism.

people like victoria remind me about why i work here. and why i work with the people i do. they have a different kind of strength than what i know in canada. theres too much for me to learn in this last week.. of both the good and bad sides of this place.

i think ill just have to come back again.