Going to school...

This is the face of a girl who EXTREMELY excited to be going to school. Salvacienne along with 7 other girls weren't going to school because they didn't have socks, shoes, and hair ties. In Haiti these things are required. There were 12 or so total girls who weren't in school for various parts missing. For some it was simply barrettes. I wish I had a video tape of the joy Salvacienne had when we gave her her shoes, socks, go-go's, & barettes. She literally screeched & was jumping up & down with joy! That moment made anything I have ever done in Haiti feel worth it. I really felt like I accomplished something :) It was pure magic!

Let me give you a little glimpse into finding everything we needed for the girls. The hair things were the easy part. We got those immediately with no problem. For the shoes & socks though we had to put in some serious work. We didn't have access to the car so we rode the tap tap. The tap tap stops at the edge of Leogane so we had to walk to the middle of town for the Market. Here is a great point to tell you that the Kreyol word for walk is mache and the kreyol word for market is mache. So we mached to the mache. Before going we traced all the girls feet. We found a shoe store just outside the mache. That was good for us because we had to come back twice to exchange sizes. If we had bought them in the Mache the vendor might not be there again. It took a long time and a lot of searching but we found shoes for everyone. Thanks to Pam Roberts & Chris Codelli who sent money for the kids we could pay for the shoes!(The other half of the money they sent payed for the beach day!) Then the real work began. In Haiti they have these crazy ruffely socks. They were actually pretty hard to find. We only got 4 of those then 8 smaller ruffle socks.

(You'll notice these socks are on white legs...more explanation of that later!)