Tag Archives: no running water

Classrooms near empty as school starts in crisis-stricken Venezuela

A teacher stands next to a billboard that reads "Welcome to classes" and empty desks in a classroom on the first day of school, in Caucagua, Venezuela September 17, 2018. REUTERS/Marco Bello

By Brian Ellsworth and Vivian Sequera

CAUCAGUA, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuela’s school year began on Monday with few students arriving in classrooms amid a crippling economic crisis that has left many families unable to afford supplies or provide their children with enough food to focus on schoolwork.

The OPEC nation is collapsing under low oil prices and an unraveling socialist economic system, leaving millions struggling to eat and hundreds of thousands streaming into neighboring countries in search of better conditions.

Though classes often take several weeks to get into full swing, teachers said the absenteeism was significantly more notable this year.

In the poor, rural town of Caucagua about 75 kilometers (47 miles) from Caracas, only three students had arrived at the Miguel Acevedo Educational Unit, a public elementary school that has 65 students registered, according to principal Nereida Veliz.

School performance “is quite low because children are not coming to class” said Veliz in the small schoolhouse where the power is out and running water only works three days a week. Students generally come to receive state-sponsored meals.

“They do not eat at home, they eat here,” she said.

The Education Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Education Minister Aristobulo Isturiz on Friday said classes would start this week for 7.6 million students at 30,000 schools around the country, a figure that includes 5,000 private schools.

Venezuela’s hyperinflationary collapse has left pencils, books, and uniforms out of the reach of the average citizen.

A steady decay of public transportation has become a growing limitation on activities ranging from delivering products to taking children to school.

“I made a huge effort to bring my son to school. Part of his uniform is from last year and from his brother’s things,” said Omaira Bracho, 50, in the coastal city of Punto Fijo in the state of Falcon. “I found shoes on sale. The hardest thing is the school supplies.”

President Nicolas Maduro says the country is victim of an “economic war” led by U.S-backed political adversaries.

In the border state of Tachira, Javier Tarazona of the state teachers’ association said classes had not started due to problems including lack of power, inadequate sanitation, and insufficient food.

At the Benedicto Marmol school in Punto Fijo, only three of 365 students showed up on Monday, according to Falcon state teachers’ union representative Mari Garcia.

“There are always a lot of children missing at the beginning of the class, but it has never been so noticeable,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo and Anggy Polanco in San Cristobal; Editing by Alexandra Ulmer and Andrea Ricci)

The pain of Syrian refugees: Parents try to forget as children cling to lost past

Syrian refugee children run in a tented settlement in the town of Qab Elias, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

By Ayat Basma

(Reuters) – Warda, a Syrian refugee, wishes she could erase her old life, so painful have the memories become. By contrast, as the conflict in Syria slides into its eighth year, her younger children have nothing to remember of their homeland – nor to forget.

They are part of a new generation of Syrians whose parents fled war and destruction in their millions but who themselves are too young to remember their homeland.

For Warda’s children, home is a makeshift tent in a refugee camp in Lebanon which they share with their grief-stricken, 34-year-old mother.

“Even though I know I can’t, I want to forget Syria. I would forget my home, I would forget the place where I lived, I would forget my friends – I would forget everything. But one can’t forget,” Warda said as tears ran down her face.

Five million people have fled Syria since the war erupted after anti-government protests were put down with force in 2011. The eight-year anniversary of when these protests began is on March 15.

Warda and her son Bilal, 13, daughter Rayan, 7, and her youngest, a 3-year-old boy named Ibrahim, are among the one million refugees who stayed in neighboring Lebanon. Most live like them in rickety tents with no running water and inadequate sanitation.

“When my oldest son and I sit together, we reminisce about the things we used to do, going to the public garden or when I dropped him at school,” she said.

“But she doesn’t know what Syria is,” she said of her daughter Rayan, who sat on her lap.

“She repeats what everyone else says. She says things like: ‘when I saw my father’ or ‘when I met my uncle and grandmother’ – but she doesn’t know any of them and it really hurts,” says Warda, who managed to get work as a fruit picker on nearby farms a few days a week. She earns $5 a day.

Warda has heard nothing of her husband, who remarried and remained in Syria, for the past two years.

Syrian refugee children play at a tented settlement in the town of Qab Elias, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Syrian refugee children play at a tented settlement in the town of Qab Elias, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

OUR CHILDREN DON’T KNOW SYRIA

Moussa Oweid al-Jassem from Aleppo is also struggling to keep the memory of Syria alive for his seven children. His youngest is four years old and the oldest is 16.

“Our youngest knows nothing about Syria, she knows this camp. The children here don’t know,” said Jassem, who is 43 and a former textile factory worker.

His family has nothing to remind them of home or of the lives they lived before. When they left, they had no time to take family albums or even the deeds to the lands they owned, he says.

“We were not prepared to witness the things we have seen. The scale of the violence, the bombings and the airstrikes, we had seen nothing like it before.”

In this small camp on the outskirts of the town of Qab Elias, residents say they are trying their best to make this place feel like a home.

The center of the tented settlement has been kept free to host weddings and wakes, and for the children to play.

On a sunny day, chickens strutted by and a cat looked for scraps as women peeled potatoes and chopped onions on mats spread outside. Black pigeons made nests in tires used as fortifications on tent roofs.

His sons Khaled, 16 and Majed, 14, are among the few whose memories of Syria have not faded completely.

“It felt better than heaven, ” said Majed, when asked to describe what home was like.

What it is like to live in a camp?

“Hell,” replied Khaled.

(Reporting by Ayat Basma; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)