Apr. 27, 2010 at 11:08am with 70 notes View comments
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Bean started going to school in Grenada when he was about two and a half. He was the youngest kid in the classroom, which worried me a little at first, but it worked out well in the end, because the older boys made him their mascot.  He loved school. He had a uniform, a yellow and white checked shirt and khaki shorts. His hair had never yet been cut, so every morning his father slicked it back into a neat (and manly!) ponytail. Then I we walked together the three blocks to a church with no roof. The roof had been blown off during Hurricane Ivan, and was being repaired the entire time Bean attended, and so the place was kind of like a construction site, which of course the child loved, because he gets almost as much glee from cement trucks as he does from chocolate.  I say the roof was missing, and it was, but Bean and his classmates were well-covered, because the church was two stories, the school was on the first and the floor of the second story was intact.  On Grenadian Independence Day, there was a class trip to Grand Etang, which is a beautiful natural lake in the rainforest that sits right in the center of the island. I tagged along, and it was a wonderful day.  I took this photo in front of the school, in the morning while we were gathered waiting for our bus to arrive. The kids are all dressed in their “national colours”. Independence Day commemorates the end of Grenada’s time as a colony of the British Empire. It should not be confused with Thanksgiving, which celebrates the anniversary of that time some United States Marines landed on the island, sent there by Reagan in response to the (socialist) Grenadian Revolution.  (A photo very similar to this one ended up in the inside cover of the Grenada Yellow Pages. Click here and here.)

Bean started going to school in Grenada when he was about two and a half. He was the youngest kid in the classroom, which worried me a little at first, but it worked out well in the end, because the older boys made him their mascot. 

He loved school. He had a uniform, a yellow and white checked shirt and khaki shorts. His hair had never yet been cut, so every morning his father slicked it back into a neat (and manly!) ponytail. Then I we walked together the three blocks to a church with no roof. The roof had been blown off during Hurricane Ivan, and was being repaired the entire time Bean attended, and so the place was kind of like a construction site, which of course the child loved, because he gets almost as much glee from cement trucks as he does from chocolate. 

I say the roof was missing, and it was, but Bean and his classmates were well-covered, because the church was two stories, the school was on the first and the floor of the second story was intact. 

On Grenadian Independence Day, there was a class trip to Grand Etang, which is a beautiful natural lake in the rainforest that sits right in the center of the island. I tagged along, and it was a wonderful day. 

I took this photo in front of the school, in the morning while we were gathered waiting for our bus to arrive. The kids are all dressed in their “national colours”. Independence Day commemorates the end of Grenada’s time as a colony of the British Empire. It should not be confused with Thanksgiving, which celebrates the anniversary of that time some United States Marines landed on the island, sent there by Reagan in response to the (socialist) Grenadian Revolution. 

(A photo very similar to this one ended up in the inside cover of the Grenada Yellow Pages. Click here and here.)

  1. nerd-gasms said: The little girl with the juice box looks like she is questioning all her life choices. Would a flag be a sweeter accessory than this juice? She suspects so.
  2. socialismandrum posted this
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