It's no trouble at all...

I will be working in Balbara this term, linked to an application school in one of the greatest need districts.  My counterpart is a dynamic Yemeni-Djiboutian dressed in a brilliant purple veil, a black gown applique-d with glittering flowers at the wrists, and glossy pink heels.  She is small in stature and vibrant in bearing.  I climb in her tiny white vehicle and we head off, past the Palais du Peuple, past the Port, past the camel farm and out to the Quartiers.  It is a long drive, by Djiboutian standards, but in our first two working days, I have seen my colleague make the trip four times.

This morning, we went out to watch a model class demonstrated by one first-grade teacher for the others.  When we arrived at 9 am, the gates of the campus were locked, and a gaggle of food vendors sitting in front informed us that the guard had wandered away.  Meanwhile, I looked over their wares.  Perched on disabled propane stoves and upset buckets, the mamas were as brightly-wrapped as the items they were selling.  Each sat before several large platters, arrayed with small cookie packs and hard candies.  Nearly each was also selling a platter of pommes sauvages (wild apples) which blossomed with flies.  I remember my replusion with these hard, reddish, misshapen fruits from my years in Benin: their smell so sickly-sweet that the insects could not be kept at bay, their tangy bitterness lingering long on my tongue.  I was surprised to see that the fruit is popular at all, but especially here, so far across the continent.  From within, the guard appeared, and all of the ladies began to disassemble their stands to let the vehicle pass, shifting cartons and buckets, and platters and food items out of the driveway.  We entered and the gates swung shut.  Then, one by one, they rebuilt their stoops, and arrayed their goods to block the gates again.

We dropped in to see the school director.  Oh no, his face told us immediately.  He related that the model class had been shifted to the afternoon.  There would be no one to watch the other first graders while all the teachers were at the in-service if the training had gone through this morning as planned.  So, through clever organizing, the director had determined today that the morning teachers would come back in the afternoon, along with the model class' students.  My colleague and I, we too would come back in the afternoon to participate.  So, she and I loaded back into the little white car, smiled at one another while the ladies diassembled their stands, and headed back out toward Djibouti City.