Changing lives, one banana cake at a time...

My happiest moment of February 14^th, the first day of the new school year in Vanuatu was when I saw 9-year-old Meriam show up for 1^st grade. It was my reminder of a Happy Valentine, since the holiday is not actually celebrated here. I had been talking to Meriam’s family every time I saw any one of them, which was basically every day since this village is so small, for the 2 weeks leading up to school. Meriam is the only kid in the village who hadn’t been going to school simply because she didn’t want to. (There are some areas, some even close to here, where tons of kids are running around free on school days.) Meriam would cry and cry, her family told me again and again, when they tried bringing her to school in years past. So that was it. Meriam didn’t want to go to school, so she didn’t have to go. Why would anyone force her? Anyway, I tried the best trick I know of on this island to get someone to do something. I bribed her with a banana cake. I told her that if she came to school every day for the first week, that first weekend afterward I would make a whole banana cake just for her. At first she just stared at me and didn’t say a thing. I can’t say she looked convinced. In fact, she looked like she wanted to cry. But I KNOW she wanted a banana cake, because EVERYONE here wants my banana cakes. So I kept bringing up the banana cake to her family, mixed with small “toktok” about why I thought this was so important, whenever I passed them during the 2 weeks before school started. And as discouraged as I was by the impression I was getting (Meriam still wasn’t agreeing to come, they would tell me), I kept at them with this banana cake temptation. And to my pleasant surprise, come Monday February 14^th, there was little Meriam sitting with her mom inside the school grounds, waiting for the school bell to ring. And every day that week she came to school! I was so happy. And of course I made her a delicious banana cake that weekend. Which naturally meant I got something as well in return—delicious fish and sweet potato soup, 2 cucumbers, and some fabric. Her family was so thrilled, with the cake of course, but mostly with Meriam. Meriam’s father wanted me to give Meriam another name, because, he said, I had changed her life. And after another 2 weeks, Meriam is still coming to school every day. I’ve promised her another cake if she’s still coming to school when I leave Tanna at the end of October. And I hope I have to make it for her. Amazing what a banana cake can do here. Amazing that a banana cake is sometimes all it takes to change someone’s entire life.