As they pulled into the village, children came running towards the car from all directions, cheering and waving. Faced with the reality of his new life and seeing how well accepted he was, Jackie suddenly felt uncharacteristically nervous and very out of place. What if they didn't like her?
"Wow, you're really popular here," she commented.
"And about to get even more popular now that I brought a beautiful girl back with me." He put the car in park and gave her a rakish wink.
"Trying to distract me with the compliment and out of character wink, Forman?"
"Is it working?"
She giggled. She had never thought that he found her attractive before.
They exited the car and were surrounded by about twenty chattering children of varying ages. Their heads were all closely shaved, be it male or female and they were all frantically competing for Eric's attention.
"Mees-ter Air-reek! Mees-ter Air-reek!"
"Who's da pretty lah-dee?"
"Oooooh pretty hair!"
"Ees she yore guhl-friend?"
At that last statement the crowd let out a resounding catcall. "Wooooooh!"
Despite herself, Jackie blushed. She was charmed by them. Their exuberance, their warmth, their apparent love for 'Mees-ter Air-reek'.
She met Eric's eyes and he gave her an encouraging smile.
"Hello everyone. My name is Jackie," she introduced herself with a brilliant smile and wave. "I'm a friend of Mister Eric's. And I've come to stay with you for a while. I hope that's okay."
"Oooooh-ee! Stay! Stay for-evah!"
And the whole lot of them laughed, including Eric.
"Alright kids. So you've met my lady. Now run along and let me get her settled in."
They cackled and waved and ooohed some more before dispersing back to whatever activities they were doing before Eric and Jackie's arrival. He went around back to open the trunk. Standing with his hand on the hatch, he eyed her three bags. "You know, for a week long trip, I kinda expected that you'd bring more."
"Well. I would have, but I ran out of hands to carry more bags. Here, let me take one, you can handle the others." She reached for one. "Careful! Those are heav-,"
He shrugged her aside and slung the giant duffel over his shoulder. Then in one easy motion, picked up her other two bags.
"-vy," she finished, staring at him mouth agape.
He noticed and gave her a half smile. "Don't look so surprised. There is an upside to hauling water out of wells — I can now carry your bags." He threw her another wink then set off at a brisk pace, leaving her to stare after him and wonder at the light fluttering of butterflies in her tummy.
Eric's hut, and really, there was no other word to describe it for it was really a hut; was a sturdy round dwelling with a thatched roof that rose up to a point at the very top. The windows were merely narrow rectangles cut into the walls and a larger rectangle about four by seven feet stood as a door. Planks of wood neatly nailed together swung inwards on hinges to admit them.
Eric set her bags down towards the side of the room, where a neatly made mattress was. There was another one about six feet away that was unmade, so she assumed that that was where he slept. For a moment, the reserve left him and he seemed almost nervous.
"So yeah, this is me." He indicated the room around them. "It's not much, and there's virtually no privacy, but uh, it's home.
"There's a wash stand over there, the toilet is adjacent to the hut, the screen over there is where you can dress and uh stuff." He trailed off, looking at the spartan room through new eyes. "Um yeah, that's uh, pretty much it."
He placed his hands on his hips and chanced a glance at her. This was after all, Jackie Burkhart, princess of Point Place. At that moment he thought his long standing invitation for her to come visit was one of the stupidest ideas he had ever come up with. Next to the maddening feelings that he had developed for her of course. That one was ranked so far up on his Scale of Dumbassery that he refused to even consider the amount of pain it was surely going to cause him.
Jackie ran a hand along the mud walls of the hut. Truth be told, this was pretty hard to take in. When she set out to leave Point Place for Africa, she had to admit that she never really stopped to consider what living in Africa would be like. She had just thought of Eric and an overwhelming desire to simply be with him.
It was that thought that she held on to now, as she looked slowly at the room around her.
"Remember when you once told me that I was a princess who lost her castle?"
Eric frowned a little in thought and looked at her. "Yeah."
"Well I just realized that this is a village," she said, and stopped to stand in front of him, "and guess what? I'm living in my very own fairytale." She clasped her hands together and looked at him with a humorous sparkle in her eyes. "Isn't it romantic?"
Eric looked at her and fell a little bit more in love with her and ranked himself a little bit higher on his imaginary Scale of Dumbassery.
After she got settled in, Eric took Jackie on a little tour of the village. He introduced her to the people, and showed her the sights. He knew a fair amount of people by name, and they all seemed to know him, though that was hardly surprising, for he was the only white man in the village. He explained that he had initially been stationed in one of the more developed areas, in a larger, more modern village, but had decided to move to this one. Jackie asked him why, sensing that there was more to it than what he was telling, but a darkness crossed his face and he shrugged off her question, directing her attention to a small white building with a corrugated roof instead.
"That's where the children go to school. I teach for maybe four hours a day, depending on the turnout. Some of these children can't come to school everyday, and it's an ongoing struggle for me to convince them to come or their parents to let them."
"Why?"
"Why can't they come to school everyday or why won't their parents let them learn?"
She lifted her shoulders. "Both, I guess."
He hooked his thumbs on the waistband of his jeans and raised his head to stare at the schoolhouse ahead. "The majority of the people here simply can't afford the luxury of sending their children to school—" he held up a hand when he saw her begin to interrupt. "They don't have to pay to learn, but what their parents will lose in income when they send their kids to school is substantial — for them."
She furrowed her brow, taking in what he said. "You're saying that these kids can't go to school because they have to work?"
"No," he shook his head. "It's not work work. You can't say that. And it's not just that. You have to understand that things here are very different from back home. It's more like… Helping out. Think about it this way: it's no different from when you do your chores at home. Only here, they help their parents with, say, stripping skin off a shoot of sugar cane for mom and dad to sell, instead of, you know, sweeping the gutter like Red loves having me do."
They shared a smile at that.
She brushed some hair out of her eyes. "I think I can understand that," she said, looking at him. "I feel guilty for saying this, but it makes me feel lucky to be born in America."
He nodded pensively. "It's the same in rural agricultural places across the world. Vietnam. Cambodia. India. China. The kids take pride in being able to help their parents. To be able to contribute in their way. Education right now isn't that important to them. A piece of paper isn't important. Skills here are learnt. And they learn by watching their parents do. Not by sitting in a classroom listening to me talk.
"Maybe in ten or twenty years it will be different," he said and paused to stare off at something in the distant horizon. He shook his head and turned to look back at her. "But we're barely into the 80s now… Mindsets take time to change. And even if they do, these changes don't happen overnight."
He sighed. "But that's just one part of it," he said. "There also aren't enough people suitable and qualified for the role. If you keep sending your kids to school and they have to stop every few weeks because the 'teacher'" —he wiggled two fingers in the air— "leaves to go back to his home country, or because of some corruption or embezzlement charge, wouldn't you be wary too? It just makes things so much harder when the people that are supposed to be helping them don't inspire much confidence."
He hung his head and looked at the ground. His eyes followed a line of ants scurrying across the orange of the ground before he continued softly, "If I can make a difference in just one life, help just one person, I would say that I've accomplished something here."
It was a strong speech and Jackie felt her eyes open to circumstances in a very different way. She wasn't used to the strangeness of feeling sheltered and ignorant and she didn't like it. She frowned, and was determined to educate and better herself. This too, was a new feeling, but she decided that she much preferred it to feeling uninitiated.
Her gaze fell on Eric and slowly traced the strong line of his nose, the angle of his jaw, dropping to the contour of his lips. And when she looked into his eyes she saw a fire in the green depths. He was passionate about this, she realized. She used to scoff at all his Star Wars mumbo jumbo about Jedi warriors and Luke saving Leia, but in a sudden flash of insight she realized that at the heart of it Eric Forman had always been about playing the hero. And here, now, to these people, it looked like he wasn't playing at one anymore. He was one.
This was a side of him she never saw before. And a side that she liked very much indeed. Eric had inadvertently revealed intentions that had struck a chord within her. The very same chord that longed for white knights and dashing princes to play to the typical princess that she was at heart.