23 de February, 2023

Walking along trails and rowing canoes: how boys and girls get to school in Catrú

Tricio Forastero is a teacher at the Patricio Mecha Educational Institution, located in Catrú Central, in Alto Baudó (Chocó), an indigenous community who live in the Dubaza river basin. Within the framework of the emergency education strategy that Unicef Colombia and Click+Clack are implementing, we had the opportunity to talk to him to better understand the emergencies and challenges faced by the community and how this affects the educational career of boys, girls, young people, and adolescents.

Click+Clack: Tell us a little about the Patricio Mecha Educational Institution.

Tricio Forastero: It is an agricultural school. The institution has land, it has plots where the students practice planting and breeding… We grow different crops here: plantain, cassava, banana, guadua trees, and coconut palms. The courses always take place here within the institution and the students do them with the help of the teacher from that subject area. And all the teachers, from different subject areas, are close by, helping to carry out this practice or this planting.

CC: What are the emergencies you face in the community?

TF: One is the phenomenon of nature, for example, the winter seasons, because it rains a lot and the students do not go to school. There are also floods, landslides and rising rivers, which also prevent many students from traveling from home to the community to attend their classes. When the floods come, the students stay at home looking after their things so they don’t get damaged. In addition, there is the public order situation, the presence of armed groups… due to fear, the children also do not attend their classes.

CC: How do students get to school?

TF: In the institution there are students from far away communities. They are 3 or 4 hours away. Boys and girls travel down to school in their boats. There are other boys and girls who live in a ravine, who take a path and when they reach the big river, after walking along the trail, they take a boat. Other students are from the community itself and they can easily get to school.

CC: Who drives the boats?

TF: The boats are canoes and they drive them themselves. They are canoes in which they themselves can row and get here. Without any adults. They are all boys and girls from the institution, they are older, but they usually bring siblings who are 8 years old, 10 years old, 11 years old. They bring them so they can attend classes here at the institution.

CC: Apart from school, in what other places can boys and girls learn? How do boys and girls learn when they face emergencies?

TF: At home. They can learn from their mom, from their dad, from their siblings and aunts and uncles. Because the older ones can tell something to their children. When faced with certain emergencies, such as floods, physical education teachers use them in sports activities, but not all the time… this only happens when the river is flooded.

Who is Delia and how is she transforming education in Catatumbo?

On January 6, 2015, Delia Carrillo arrived in Colombia from Venezuela by crossing the border through the Pica del Dos, an unofﬁcial trail to enter the country through Norte de Santander. The Pica del Dos leads to the municipality of Tibú, Catatumbo, an area hard hit by armed conflict, drug trafficking and gasoline smuggling.

Delia, like many Venezuelan women in her community, never imagined that she would have to live in an informal settlement flooded by mud and with enormous infrastructure deficiencies. “We came here out of necessity; the pandemic arrived, we had no money for rent or food,” says Delia. After several years of living in the Nueva Esperanza 3 (New Hope 3) human settlement in Tibú, she asserts that this place has transformed her purpose in life.

This woman, leader of the settlement and head of a foundation called Fundación Generación Resilientes del Catatumbo (Catatumbo Resilient Generation Foundation), created the school ‘Proyecto de Educación Mis Primeros Pasos’ (My First Steps Education Project). Delia, along with fellow comrades, observed a huge gap in education: migrant boys and girls dropped out of school due to a lack of documentation and a lack of student places in the main schools in the area. Not being in school in a setting like Tibú translates into boys and girls ending up on the streets, working, collecting scrap metal, or becoming victims of forced recruitment. And in the case of girls, pregnancies from 10 to 12 years of age.

Although Delia never imagined having the vocation to teach, she felt the need to face up to this educational reality by reinforcing basic learning such as reading and writing. She did not have training in teaching, nor did she have the space or the pedagogical tools, but little by little and together with 12 other leaders, what was just a plot of land became a space with plastic walls, zinc roofs, some tables, decorations made from recycled materials, colorful signs, and a few other educational materials that gradually arrived as donations.

Today, the 12 leaders, mothers of the community, fulfill the role of teachers and assistants in two shifts: from 8 to 11:30 a.m. they teach classes for students from 4 to 7 years old; from 2 to 5 p.m. they teach classes for students from 8 to 14 years old. “No one has training,” says Delia, “but now we have the support of Click+Clack and Unicef, who are training us to be able to teach children,” she adds.

Her time, her resources, her ideas… Delia, in addition to being trained in initial education, has invested everything she has to make the school a safe space, a space, she says, that students never want to leave. For this reason, she, together with her colleagues, has made the most of everything that comes into her hands to transform it into something very powerful. As such, something as simple as a La Aldea handbook can be brought to life in the form of puppets created by Berta, Delia’s mother.

Puppets have become a very valuable pedagogical tool. They represent learning, reflection, laughter, play, creativity, art, a tool to face emergencies within this context, in a fun and different way.

“The children are learning… they are learning to express what they feel, what hurts them, what happens to them. Before they were too shy, but through singing, dramatization, and games, they have been experiencing that feeling of ‘yes I can do it’. Now, when we give out roles for them to play with the puppets, everyone wants to take part,” says Chely, co-founder and leader of the Fundación Generación Resilientes del Catatumbo.

Click+Clack, Education in emergencies

23 de February, 2023

“The river is the backbone of the people, it communicates, protects and threatens them.”

Ómar Ángel is one of the Click+Clack pedagogical mediators who is dealing with education in emergencies in some of Colombia’s most remote communities. The teacher training processes he has led and the meetings he has held with the communities have taken place in several municipalities in Chocó. We asked Ómar to tell us about his experience in one of those places, and above all, to narrate the space, time, emergencies, the comings and goings of a place that few have had the opportunity to experience and acknowledge.

Click+Clack: What is the most challenging or remote place you have ever had to visit?

Ómar Ángel: I would say the most challenging, because of the time, transportation, distance, etc., would be Riosucio, a municipality in Colombia located in the Urabá area in the department of Chocó.

C+C: How do you get to Riosucio?

OA: It can be reached by land or by river. By land, you have to get to a newly created municipality, which until December 31 belonged to Riosucio, called Belén de Bajirá, and from there continue by UAZ (old trucks that can be driven on any terrain). This journey lasts from 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours and 30 minutes, depending on the state of the road. When the river rises, you cannot take this route because sections of the road disappear under the water. On this route, the dominant landscape is farms, banana plantations or cattle ranches. They raise buffaloes in several of these.

You can travel there by water from Turbo, in the north (the route I usually take), or from Quibdó, in the south. From Turbo, the boat (or panga, as they say in the region) takes a little over three hours, although the trip includes a stop in Bocas del Atrato to have fried fish for breakfast (fish is not included in the ticket price). This section of the Atrato River is full of jungle, although in some parts of the river there are banana and corn crops (those are the ones I am able to recognize). There are several farmhouses, and you can also see small wooden houses far away from everything. The river is the backbone of the people, it feeds them and takes away their waste, it allows them to communicate with their neighbors, it protects, and threatens them. Usually I arrive by river and leave by land, because when I visit Riosucio I also take the opportunity to go to Belén de Bajirá.

C+C: What is special about Riosucio? What emergencies does the community face?

OA: Riosucio is one of the oldest settlements in South America. Despite this, it is a town that seems forgotten by the world. Its streets are still made of dirt, and it can remain flooded for several months at a time. During my last few visits, the river was paying a visit and I had to test my balance to walk on the boards that are set up in the middle of the streets so that people can move around. Despite this being a common scene, this continues to influence the continuity of the educational career of the students. When it rains, classes are postponed or canceled, because walking on the slippery planks is dangerous, especially considering the number of children who must walk on them. The houses and schools are built on stilts, which saves them from flooding, but does not stop the impact of water on these wooden structures. There are still many houses and classrooms that are made of wood, and these buildings have to be continually repaired to prevent them from collapsing. There are temporary classrooms, which were built during an emergency 15 years ago, that are still used, but they constitute a risk due to so many years of use.

On another note, the threat of illegal groups is ever-present. The AGC marked almost all the houses in the town, as if wanting to warn locals and foreigners as to who the authority is. Certainly, they gave permission for us to arrive, so it is important to notify the principals and the authorities of our visits in advance. In the work to identify emergencies, this issue is not directly discussed; there is an obvious veto in this regard. Only one of the institutions spoke of the potential risk due to having a police station next door.

Click+Clack, Education in emergencies

23 de February, 2023

How do boys and girls learn at this experimental farm in Uribia, La Guajira?

Pedro Córdoba is a teacher of Spanish Language, Culture and Language at the Institución Integral Rural Juyasirain Jorge Mario Aguas Menco in the municipality of Uribia, La Guanira. In a mission to La Guajira within the framework of the emergency education project that we are developing together with Unicef Colombia with the support of PRM (Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration of the United States Department of State), we had the opportunity to talk with him about his institution and about the emergencies that the municipality is facing. Listening to Pedro and other people in the community is relevant to strengthen the strategy of putting education at the center in emergency contexts.

Hand in hand with the initiatives, games, activities and reflections fostered by Click+Clack and Unicef, it is a priority to approach the community to find strengths, learn the methodologies of teachers, recognize their needs and build new tools collectively as a result.

Click+Clack: What is the heart of the Institución Integral Rural Juyasirain Jorge Mario Aguas Menco?

Pedro Córdoba: “The core of Juyasirain is the experimental farm. On the experimental farm we have medicinal plants, cassava, wheat and corn. We have goats, 12 big goats and 4 small ones. On the pigpen we have three large pigs.”

C+C: How do cross-cutting strategies work in on-farm learning processes?

PC: “From the area of Spanish Language, students are asked to come to the farm and from there an exercise in description is carried out. From reading comprehension we also address natural sciences, social sciences, artistic education, arithmetic, and worldview. In social sciences we also address history. How does everything come together? The main axis is the area that I am teaching. Spanish Language. I take the other areas and, from a common point, like traditional medicine, we observe and explore plants. From there, since teachers of artistic education are working the types of lines, we look at how students can recognize vertical lines, horizontal, zig zag, curve, and diagonal on the farm. In statistics, random and possibility experiments are conducted: what is certain, possible and impossible. Then we move on to the area of cosmovision and approach the importance of traditional medicine. In natural sciences students look at the kinds of plants that exist on a general level, but they also recognize which plants are local. Within the framework of worldview, the outsü is taken as the main figure (the outsü is the traditional wayúu doctor). This proposal was implemented throughout this period, which we are already finishing, so that students did not feel overwhelmed. It’s a way to help them weave all areas together in a striking way.”

**The woman curator –outsü– as a spiritual authority in the community of Wararalain and how these practices and knowledges are still active in the 21st century, taking into account the political, environmental, cultural and health context of which the historical reality that the Wayúu people have lived in Colombia is part.

C+C What are the emergencies that interrupt the educational process of the students in Uribia?

PC: “One of the emergencies that has affected us the most is the issue of the floodings because the institution does not have a point of drainage, so water is repressed, especially in the primary school area. In the entrance, children walk and wet their shoes. The halls and the roofs have deteriorated and broken by the winds. There are also leaks. That’s a distraction when we’re in class. The floodings have damaged the walls of the rooms, which are made of clay; there are rooms that flood and we have to look for sand to fill the room.

Another emergency is the climate issue, heat, which is very strong between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm. Since we have some kiosks, we have gone outside in some moments to give the classes there. The issue of transport is another problem. As it is not constant, sometimes children must stay on the road. This is dangerous and that does not allow them to reach the classroom. That’s why parents decide not to send them, to avoid a possible accident. And there is another problem that is that of teenage pregnancies. Some girls have become pregnant. The institution feels sorry for them and they send them some guides so that they learn during their confinement. ”

C+C What other threat does education face and how can that threat be addressed?

PC: “There are children who are mechanics, who work in bakeries. Because of work, they often do not study. But our emphasis is on entrepreneurship and this allows us to turn that threat of desertion into a strength: we are telling them that if they want to work and grow in their jobs, then we support them in continuing their studies, because they need them to become professional. “

Click+Clack, Education in emergencies