Two weeks of semester break ended on Friday. Home visits were planned for the break, to confirm the families’ economic situation. Visiting children’s homes is the only way to figure out who should receive lunch the next year. Each of us went in a different direction with a different kid, since the streets here have no names and addresses are not used. Somebody’s house can be located by saying that it is the third house on the street that is left from the post office, facing the bus station. We wouldn’t succeed in finding the home without the help from the child. Hence we divided the children of the families planned between the three of us.
Dividing the children would sometimes take up to an hour. It seemed reasonable to pick out three children with homes in the same general direction. Even planning like this we had to admit that we should leave our habit of making plans behind in Estonia. I can’t even begin to describe with words why matters so simple to us just don’t work here. Despite the efforts of our excellent translator the children were not from the same general direction. Distances between kids houses had at times by the end of visiting the third home worn out one of our comrades to such extent that she managed to miss the chair when sitting down at the dinner table, apparently her knees were so knackered from the hike uphill in the afternoon that bending down over the chair turned out to be impossible. Fortunately, or not, we managed to laugh about that mishap for days. Fun also for the person herself, who took the fall, but still in full health continued with the home visits
Friday was the first day of school.
Reaching the schools gate on Friday morning we were greeted my some twenty children and one teacher. Once again the ever-repeating confusion led us to the first cafe where in silence we digested the cultural difference. We had planned that we will get the children’s results from the teachers and by evening all of them are on an Excel spreadsheet.
Our repeated lesson led us to thinking that was our plan to go to school on the given date reasonable, especially when our minds were also advising the opposite on Thursday. We had asked the school’s kitchenlady to start on Monday as well, although we were present on Friday ourselves.
After every such experience it is certain that “time” which in Europe means money, means here that, time does not belong to us!
MERLE
