A New Schoolhouse in Chacho

Fon Ibo is a small, agricultural suburb, if you will, of Gros Morne. It is there that the Religious of Jesus & Mary, a Catholic women religious order for which I volunteer,  has expanded a one room school into a 15 room one and has continued to support the grade school (pre-k through 6^th grade)  for many  years.  The school is operated by Haitians but, the RJMs provide most of the $75/mo. salary for the teachers as well as the bulk of the food for each day's freshly cooked lunches.

Across the river from Fon Ibo is an even smaller community called Chacho. Many children from Chacho attend the Fon Ibo school.  The problem (or one of them, anyway) is that the youngest children (ages 3-5) are too small to cross the river, at least when it is swollen after rains.  So, the sisters built a “school” for the little ones in Chacho.  Right now, this school is essentially a tent like structure with dirt floors, a tarp for a roof and intertwined coconut tree branches for the walls.  When it rains, the floor turns to mud and then there’s the matter of the chickens, etc., wandering into class.

Last month, Nick, recently retired from the construction business, visited us for a couple of weeks and designed and helped lay the foundation for a new one room school in Chacho.  Some weeks later, an American engineer came through town and he designed and helped obtain the supplies for a railing around the platform.  Our job, on Thanksgiving morning, was to take photos of the construction project.

So, on Thanksgiving which, of course, is just another day in Haiti, the three of us volunteers plus a visiting Mercy sister, drove over to Fon Ibo for the morning flag raising/prayer ceremony at the main school.  Everything was going fine and the Haitians working on the new school all loaded up in the vehicle to head for Chacho when, as things go in Haiti, we ran into a little snag.  The car wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even turn over. There was just a clicking noise when I tried to start it.

But, not a problem, or so I thought.  The last time this happened I watched what Barak did to get the darn thing started and I even put a pair of pliers in the glove box to assist in the project.  So, we all piled out of the car, I popped the hood and started to unhook the battery cables in order to clean them.  Second problem; with only a pair of pliers, I didn’t have the strength to loosen the bolts.  Again, no problem;  the Haitian men took over, got the battery cables off, and cleaned them up a bit, even cleverly squeezing a bit of a lemon juice  on them to help the cleaning process.  Third problem; the darn thing still wouldn’t start. So, in defeat, we had to call Barak who came and got us going again. (We just hadn’t tightened the bolts on the battery cables enough).

I then managed to get us all across the river and back with Barak’s persistent command from the back seats: “plis gas, Laurie, plis gas” (more gas, Laurie, more gas).

The photos below are of our trip.  The first one shows the existing school, the next two are the kids in the school, the next one the platform for the new school and finally, a view from Chacho with our vehicle in the foreground and the river in the background.