Impromptu school a safe haven for kids at Haitian camp (Feature)

By Andrea Sosa Cabrios Jan 29, 2010, 4:40 GMT

Port-au-Prince - There is a small oasis for children inside the huge camp at 33 Delmas STreet, in the Haitian capital Port-au- Prince: children have started to take lessons with volunteers.

They work in groups of about 20 children, divided by age. They look at the pictures in a book that the teacher shows them, answer questions in Creole, smile and generally have a few moments of distraction from the tragedy and deprivation afflicting their families since the devastating earthquake of January 12.

According to UN education experts in Haiti, around 90 per cent of the schools in Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed in the quake, along with 60 per cent of school buildings in the country's southern and western provinces.

'All schools remain closed, and there are no firm signs as to when they might reopen,' the UN said this week.

The collapse of education affects 500,000 children ages 4-14, for whom 3,000 to 4,000 temporary classrooms need to be built.

The goal is to find safe places for learning despite the disaster, in an effort that brings together Haiti's Education Ministry, UNICEF and the non-governmental organization Save the Children, among others.

Despite being displaced from their homes, children within camps find small spaces to live their childhoods.

Mickeale, 5, and some friends are playing with a Barbie doll in the back of a grey, 1994 pick-up truck that has become her home. They comb the doll's hair, and they chat and get on with their lives in the truck as they would in their backyard.

The roof of the truck, parked under a tree, holds several small suitcases and packages that contain the few things the family salvaged from a quake that destroyed their home and left them among some 500,000 homeless Haitians.

'Now the car is my home,' says the girl's father, Roger Mathurin, 48, smiling in spite of everything.

Mathurin was a bus driver before the quake. He is living in the camp with his wife, four children - ages 28, 14, 12 and 5 - and a sister-in-law. His foot is broken, and he cannot work for now, but he vows to work at whatever he finds as soon as he is able to.

In the camp, which stands in a severely damaged neighbourhood, a mother enters a tent and brings out her newborn son. Jacques Valencia was born in the camp on the day after the quake.

'He's a little bit sick, he needs medicine,' says Lolo Eleda, 45, a camp neighbour. 'There are many sick children here with infections.'

Everywhere in Port-au-Prince there is dust that irritates the throat and the eyes. With sewers destroyed and corpses still buried in rubble, the stench is unbearable in some areas, though locals take care of their hygiene as well as they can.

Naked and completely lathered in soap, a boy of about 3 finishes his bath inside a pail. A little further, a mother plaits a young girl's hair.

The youngest Haitians can barely understand what is happening. For them, the camp will soon seem like normal life.