Encounters with Poverty & Hunger

I guess the Sisters have a reputation for being a “soft touch” and I suppose to some degree they are.  The result is that most days there’s a stream of people at the gate wanting one thing or the other.  The requests are often for money: 1) for school fees & books; 2) for medicine and medical supplies 3) to bury a relative; 4) to buy food.

Sometimes when I open the front gate to leave, the scene takes my breath away. There’s a woman repeatedly saying “grangou” (hungry) while pulling up her shirt and rubbing her stomach.  She looks like she could use a good meal too.  There’s a shabbily dressed, elderly man, struggling up the hill on one leg and a pair of home made wooden crutches.  There’s an elderly woman sobbing because her child died and she doesn’t have the money to bury him. (A proper burial is very important here).

Another time I was in town sitting in the car in front of the bank, waiting for Sr. Pat.  A very thin woman approached, pulled up her shirt as high as it would go and starting rubbing and patting her stomach, saying “grangou.”  She was not really begging, though.  She stared long and hard into my eyes with a defiant, demanding look as if to say, I’m hungry and YOU need to do something about it. I tried to engage her with my extremely limited Creole but she would have nothing to do with it.  She was hungry and what was I going to do about it.  I did nothing.