"This is the 19th Century"

A couple of weeks ago we meet a young man (26 or so) in our finance manager's office.  He ask us to go look at the school he attended in a village called Gradiste.   He said the last 3 years the village has been working hard to renovate the school, the kitchen needs a fridge and other appliances.   Tuesday of last week, (I think) we set out.
    The school did look nice they have done a lot of work.  Then we went to the kitchen.  It was built in 1977 and hasn't been touched since.  They have a huge electric oven and another electric stove that are covered with beautiful table cloth and potted plants.    They have abandoned this big room for a small room where they could hook 2 small stoves with small ovens to the gas.   The fridge is smaller than the one we have in our apartment.   They have 186 kids  from kindergarden to 9th grade, in the school and server 120 of them every day.  The serving area is a small window with a ledge and 2 steps up that the children climb to get their food, usually a bowl of soup.  There are lots of spills.    On the servers side it is a long reach even with my long arms over this long, wide, and low heating element that doesn't work.  One reach hurt my back.  I don't know what else was there but it didn't work at all.
    Then we got to the dish room.  As I said they have 120 kids to feed but only a set of 60 plates, spoons, and cups or glasses.  So as soon as one group leaves the dishes has to be washed for the next group.  They have a cook and a dish washer that is all.  The dish room had one deep sink.  The lady had a Big pan of dirty water that she was washing dishes in and rinsing  them under the running water I guess.  I wasn't sure.  The man and 2 ladies going around with us said they needed 2 sinks.  I said no you need three.  He said  "This is the 19th Century".  We all laughed but it wasn't funny really.  They have more than we can do them.  They need to be totally renovated.  We don't know if getting new appliances now would be good or not.  I guess you can move a fridge around the renovation.   We told them about Counterpart a US government program doing some renovations.
     I told them I had worked for 15 years in a school kitchen and that our workers had nothing to complain about.  That man said.  "Be careful they will ask for a raise, if they know how good they have it."  We laughed again.    Everyone count your blessings no matter your circumstances there are other people in the world who are worse off.   This beautiful country of Moldova is working hard to bring a better life to their children.