POST by FRAN: Our Horsey Highway

Outward Journey to Collect Capital Edge Community School kids

We have six horses. Two of them can pull a cart (the ‘school bus’ as dad calls it), our bigger white and spotty horse and our black horse are the ones that were trained to pull carts. The tall white horse is better because he doesn’t mind pulling a lot of weight, and he doesn’t get mad and start kicking like the other carthorse.

Every day we use the horse and cart to collect the kids for school. School bus duty is twice a day in a school week. Yader’s whistle is the ‘bus horn’. We put cushions on the cart so that our little bottoms don’t bump against the wood.

At eight thirty, Yader hooks up the horse to the cart, I grab the reins and off we go. I’m only permitted to drive when it’s just Yader and me on the cart. Lorenzy had an accident where the rope burned her leg when the kids were on the cart and Rene almost flipped the cart over the same day.

Antonio & Jorbin running behind the cart

I drive until we get to the bottom of a large hill that leads into la Canada (the n makes a weird noise in CANADA like nnaaa). At the top of the hill, Yader lets Francesca, the student, know that we will wait for her at the bottom of the hill. He communicates this by whistling. He rolls his tongue underneath his teeth, he closes his lips over the tongue but not completely, that forms a canal in his tongue in-between his jaws and blows out a whistle sound that makes me deaf.

We wait at the bottom of the hill for Francesca. When I see her come down with her mum I start plodding up the death-climbing hill. We meet half way “HOLA FRAN!” and then come back down, her dainty hand holding mine.

We both jump on the cart to go pick up the loud bunch of bananas! Antonio, Jorbin, Diego, and Aaron. They take forever to get outside and on the cart. Antonio and Aaron’s mum is the cook but she doesn’t like going on the cart.

Squiggly Trees, with their roots - beautiful!

We turn around and start our way out of La Canada, up the hill again, but this time Yader is driving. The hill is a beautiful, dirty hill, it is steep and not that long but it has the ‘snake trees’ as Rafi calls them. One can see the roots from the squiggly trees, they are beautiful.

At the top of the hill there is a drop off where you can see trees and houses and in the rainy season you can see a river.

Next stop Moises and Luisita’s house. Sometimes their older sister and brother come as well, and when they do come, that makes eleven people on the cart, poor horse!

Next to Nayelly. Now Nayelly is the youngest girl in the school but she is never in the same house! So we sometimes pick her up at her grandmother's house or at her mum's house. Nayelly doesn’t know her dad, her mum is sadly a prostitute. Nayelly is the sweetest thing that you will ever know!

After we pick up Nayelly we head home all twelve or thirteen of us - I lost count! We usually get back around nine fifteen and sometimes nine thirty depending on how fast we go.

When we get home the kids jump off the cart, some in tears and some beaming with joy! When they are all off the cart, Yader drives the cart over to the garage or shed-looking-thing. We ‘undress’ the horse and put the things that we used away and we tie the horse up outside so that he can eat. Then we do the whole routine again at midday after all the kids have eaten.

I love going on the cart because I get to see and meet more friends and get to know the place a lot more, like in La Canada - when it rains, it RAINS! The whole street turns into a living river and the boys, Antonio, Jorbin, Diego and Aaron, can’t get to their house so dad drives them home in the car. And if it rained the night before, there will be large pools of water outside of my house and in Moises and Luisita’s street.

I’ve learnt a lot about where we live through driving the 'school bus.'

Our faithful, beautiful steed, such a blessing to Capital Edge Community School kids