The man from Del Monte - He is bad

One of the projects we want to get running at HINT is a school book pool. Primary education is 'free' to all. I say 'free' as last week two children came to out house last week to see Marceline as they had been sent home from school because they were unable to pay some charge the school so got sent home until they could pay it. The charge is for general maintenance of the school or equipment which the government does not pay for. Anyway I digress. Each school child needs 5-10 text books (depending which year they are in). As you can imagine most parents cannot afford to buy these books so Joe had the idea of setting up a library type system. We have been visiting a few of the local headteachers to tell them about our project and get the book lists.

So the other week, with Mum and Dad in tow we went to a school down the road. The head was telling us of a few other problems the school faces. The school is situated opposite a Del Monte banana plantation. The day before our visit Del Monte had been spraying the banana trees with insecticide. They evacuated all their staff from the site and moved the workers out of their compounds while they did it. However they neglected to inform the school of what they were doing. Resulting in the children being covered in insecticide as they were playing outside. The head told us how many of the staff and pupils were off sick that day with coughs as a result of the spraying.