Going back to the three primary schools where I worked for
two years was wonderful. I was welcomed
back by teachers cheering and the students singing and dancing. There were some very pronounced changes, however,
and not all of them for the better.
There seem to be significantly more students with classrooms filled to
capacity. And at the closest school, St
Felix, the ministry has reduced their budget and there are now only 4 teachers
for 7 grades, which seems like an impossible task.
Also the school lunch program has drastically changed. When I lived here there was a different meal
each day, to provide students with a more balanced diet. (The meals were: Monday: pap (maize meal) and
milk, Tuesday: beans and bread, Wednesday: pap, cabbage and eggs, Thursday:
split peas and bread, Friday: pap and cabbage).
Now there is just one meal served every day. It’s pap and sometimes an oily canned fish,
something that teachers won’t even eat themselves. It is very worrisome, children do not seem to
be getting nutritious food at school anymore, the one place they used to be
able to count on it.
I worry that all the children’s growth I can see from the past two
years, might now be stunted.
In a family of orphans that live near my old house, the youngest girl is
taller than her older brothers and sister, who are 6 and 10 years older. You can really see the difference the school
lunch program has made in the youngest generation’s lives. Some schools are trying to grow some of their
own vegetables to supplement the meals, but it is very difficult for them to provide
for hundreds of students. All these
changes have been done to “reduce waste and lower the budget”, but what can possibly
be more important than the education and nutrition of the country’s children?
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