Nova Scotia Cuba Association

Cuban children happy and getting ready for school

In the mountainous bowels of the island, 

a little school like a star

Jose Angel Llamo Camejo, internet@granma.cu

August 28th, 2024

There is something deeper in the innocent fervour of a nine year old girl, ready to start her grade 4 in one of the most hidden places of the island.

Mabel Torres describes it as another challenging stage, our main tool is our initiative.

Milkman, Realengo 18, Guantanamo-the groping of adult hands ratifies: the white blouse fits perfectly the torso of Lucimayris “and the saya fits too, did you see, we did not have to change anything,” the young girl celebrates with a clap with Damaris Basulto Hojeda, her “aunt and accomplice in all these preparations.”

Words, looks, smiles, gestures, all denoting complicity between themselves, while the woman tries the uniform on the girl who looks to the Granma lens with her eyes.

The eyes of Lucimayris are the most beautiful and lively eyes that my eyes had seen this summer. That look gets shine from the stars during her last intimate dialogue with Damaris: “I do not need anything, aunt”, she underlies with her left hand palm side up and the index of her right pointing up like someone in a balancing act: “I have the shoes, my mom and dad did not get peace until they bought them”.

The aunt and Gricelda, her cousin, smile, infected by the happiness of the girl: “Look at my plush. And these are the socks. Tell me, ¿Don’t they match the colors of the uniform?

“Of course they do-they answer- they look beautiful!”

“Aaah! Returning the little girl, that is how I wanted them, and everyday, she says with three hits on her left hand, I asked and asked for them from my dad and my mom; now I have them.

“Oh, yes!, they gave me a lot for this course -reacts Luci to a question from Granma-, this blue backpack, look at the case for taking my lunch, the water bottle, these pencils and pens that my aunt who lives there (signally to the southeast of the city of Guantanamo) sent me, but she says she bought them in Havana.”

There is something deeper in that release of innocent fervour of a nine year old girl, at the point of starting her 4^th grade primary school in the mountainous bowels of the island. Her enthusiasm is a song to the individual, home and family responsibility, that other dimension, not a minor one, during preparation for the school year that starts soon, and should not exclude anyone.

 This is how Mabel Torres Bazan, a teacher with 43 years of experience and returning from retirement, takes it: without proclaiming it. She is in charge of the primary school Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz, that Luci attends.

Now the person responsible for this center and her collective work on the schedule of teachers and mobilize the community, the families, make plans for classes, stop at every detail of the Third Improvement, and socialize among themselves the strategies to arrive successfully to the end of a course that once more will find many challenges in its path.

The little school of the Milkman is one of the 817 teaching institutions of Guantanamo ready to open its doors. The province has worked to constructively improve 25 of the centers, without counting the other 14 that required achieving higher levels of hygiene to be ready for the opening this year, as Raquel Laviste Villafruela, who heads the sector in this area informed us.  

In the concert of an island persecuted and blockaded, but not stopped, a little school is just a particle, and Lucimayris one more little star in the swarm of infants, adolescents and youth of the general teaching  provided in the Cuban classes of the coming course.

Surrounded by forests and history, in the community of Milkman heart of Realengo 18, where Lino de las Mercedes Alvarez used to live, work and, with the strength of leadership and bravery, made his legend for ever, is where this little school  is located, the multi-grade school of this impatient little girl.

Lucimayris wants hours to pass fast so the alarm of the telephone announces the down of September 2^nd. That day, after their coming together, she will probably hear Mabel Torres say that in her little school there will be 23 students, of the 87 200 children returning to school in Guantanamo, and of the more than 1.6 million returning to school all over Cuba.

Once more they will have teachers, to educate them despite the challenges, and they will have needed materials. The territory is sending more than 300 middle school teachers in support of education in Havana and Mabel is to inform her students.  

I am stealing from Silvio (Rodriguez) a little piece of one of his songs that may be able to summarize the expectations of little Luci, and of so many Cuban little boys and girls so happy because of the coming Monday that would overcome the pages of any newspaper. As Silvio's song says, we can see in the horizon:  “A happy day is coming.”