SAN JUAN.— The neckerchiefs and smiles are back, just as they were before Hurricane Melissa unleashed its fury on this community in the Santa Catalina People's Council, in the Guantánamo municipality of Manuel Tames, home to the Alfredo López Pérez multi-grade school.
The smell of freshly cut wood and new furniture makes all the difference now. The storm left it reduced to rubble and cut off by road. But the school is back, and its three classrooms welcome the ten children in grades one through five of primary school.
Yoel Pérez García, First Secretary of the Party in Guantánamo, and other government and education officials attended the reopening of the San Juan school in Guantánamo province. The province had restored all of its educational buildings damaged by Hurricane Melissa on October 29th in less than four months.
Melissa caused considerable damage to 277 schools in eastern Guantánamo. Some were completely destroyed. Willpower and solidarity then came together as a saving grace, allowing the school year to continue.
Homes belonging to teachers, neighbors, or family members, the premises of agricultural cooperatives, or simply the shade of trees, were transformed into classrooms.
This is all in addition to the 23 schools in the hills that repurposed their learning spaces to accommodate other schools in nearby areas that had lost their own.
Thus, in places like La Tagua and Santa Catalina de Manuel Tames, cut off by road for several weeks after the hurricane, students' education did not stop. Nor did it in Maisí, Imías, and Baracoa. This was made possible by unity, which also works wonders.
