School is starting!

Here’s what our friend, Darling, shared with us this month about the start of the school year and hurricane season:

 

My most distinguished and respectful greetings.

August is the month when all Haitian parents in general and those of Pignon find themselves in a real puzzle for the new school year which usually begins in September of each year.

With an inflation rate of more than 29% according to IHSI (Haitian Institute of Statistics and Informatics), the country has not experienced this alarming situation since 2004. This situation puts parents in Pignon in trouble. Even at the public markets, we noted the presence of school supplies, but not in large numbers as usual. As a result, if parents have not been able to find out so far whether their children will return to the path of education on September 4, the date set by the country’s Ministry of National Education (MENFP), this will undoubtedly have a significant impact on the number of children who have not had the chance to complete their school career as intended.

In fact, the purchasing power of people in the community is drastically reduced. Misery is in full swing and the gang war in Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital, continues to affect the entire national territory.  The situation is going from bad to worse. The authorities continue to turn deaf ears to a population that is engaged in it and it alone on the peninsula of Haiti, the first country of independent blacks, the poorest country in the northern hemisphere.

The hurricane season now adds one more threat. Haiti is one of the Caribbean countries that is exposed to natural disasters such as cyclones and earthquake. Pignon is no exception to these difficulties. For the truth and for the story, the community, due to its geographical position, is not strongly affected by natural disasters, but being a city in the country, their consequences always affect it. Now that the hurricane season is fast approaching, the city is subjected to another weight out of the control of the state authorities.

Translated from French by Lauren Thompson