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Kids too scared to study
10/01/2005 08:49 - (SA)
Aceh Besar, Indonesia - Schools began reopening across Indonesia's tsunami-devastated region on Monday, but many students, still traumatised by the disaster, stayed away from schoolyards crammed with refugees.
Children who did show up skipped regular lessons for group prayers.
UN officials estimate up to half of the 104 000 dead on Sumatra island are children, and aftershocks on Monday from the December 26 earthquake-triggered tsunami stoked many survivors' fears, undermining government efforts to bring back some sense of normalcy, especially for the region's youngsters.
"By opening the schools, we're just trying to make the kids happy. They're so depressed," said Sutrisni, the 40-year old principal of Guegajah Elementary School, where only half of the 130 regular students gathered in the two classrooms not occupied by homeless families.
Teachers would return to the regular government curriculum in the coming weeks, said Sutrisini, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.
"Today we're just teaching them how to pray in these difficult times," she said.
The government said on Monday that 420 schools had been destroyed and 1 000 teachers killed in Aceh province.
"The government will try to provide new teachers to Aceh and immediately to construct schools," Welfare Minister Alwi Shihab told reporters. "Meanwhile, tents can be used as school buildings as well as other public sites, like mosques."
UNICEF is sending mobile schools to Sumatra, where they're expected to arrive in the coming days.
But since many people in makeshift shelters are still waiting to move to more permanent relief camps, it may be some time before there are population centres where UNICEF can pitch its tented classrooms, said Gordon Weiss, a spokesman for the agency.
"It's a brave gesture to set the mark out there by opening the schools," Weiss said. "It's symbolic for the people."
Weiss said there would likely be empty seats in classrooms across Aceh, since students are either dead, staying in relief camps far from their communities or petrified by the kinds of fixed-wall buildings that collapsed in the earthquake. Many schools would stayed closed.
"There are great reasons not to go to school," said Weiss. "It's well-founded terror. The kids are in deep shock."
At the school in Aceh Besar displaced people crowded four classrooms, and another 3 000 were living in a field up the road. The quake and waves left 500 000 Sumatrans homeless.
A 6.2-magnitude aftershock early on Monday sent homes swaying across the region, contributing to children staying away from school, said Sutrisni, Guegajah's principal.
Syarita, a 15-year old waiting to register for classes, lost five members of her extended family when the tsunami swamped her island just off Aceh's coast. "I'm a kid and I need to go to school," she said. "I have nothing now. I'm working for the future."
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