Lunchtime Commotion

Lunchtime Commotion

Haiti Family Inititive.Org
Summer Wellness Program
Children's camp
2013

Monday, July 29, 2013 - We pay Adeline and  another woman $5 each, each day to prepare food for all of the campers, the translators, the women from our women’s group and all the other kids who scaled the walls and didn’t get caught.  They make roughly 120 meals a day.

I really can’t figure out how many are actually served because chaos and panic set in with the first smell of sardines.  No one, except me, wants to be left out of this unsavory culinary treat of rice, beans and sardines.  With the first hint of lunch, we are all under foot of one another.   Kids scheme one plot after another to trick us in to believing they have not been served yet.  They try desperately to snatch a second bowl. For many of them, this is the only meal of the day. Hunger can make the best actors out of some of these kids.

As I am checking to see if everyone is feed, I notice a commotion.  Two girls are verbally accosting each other. I intervene and quickly assess that a 10 year old girl was trying to steal a bowl of rice from an 8 year old girl.  It turns out the 8 year old had two younger siblings under her guard and she was attempting to feed them.  I stood guard between the two older girls.   The sister sits between the two toddlers so she could spoon feed them.  The older sister saved just the last bit for herself.  Handing me her empty bowl, she looked right at me, “Merci, Madame.”  She runs off and joins the other kids.