“Promises have been made to us but they have not yet been kept,” said Eugene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If we get tents in time we can be ready for the start of school on October 4, because we were able to salvage the furniture,” added Eugene. He insisted he is optimistic despite the prospect of having to teach on the school’s football field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The L’Asile district, tucked away in the mountain range that runs across Haiti’s southern peninsula, was among the worst off after the August 14 quake, leaving residents desperate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The building might be ready, but I personally do not know how I am going to get back to work,” said Brenus Saint Jules, an elementary school principal whose home was destroyed in the temblor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day after the quake, a neighbor lent him a pair of pants. And he spent the next 10 nights sleeping in the back of a truck with his wife and two grown children, along with four other people left homeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– ‘Mentally ill’ –<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Saint Jules, 60, now lives under a crude shelter made of sheet metal. He can barely think about the coming school year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stress and drama of recent weeks have left him feeling “mentally ill,” he said. “I spend my time thinking about how I am going to recover.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A teacher for more than 30 years, Saint Jules takes consolation from the fact that the school he has overseen for 12 years was only damaged and not altogether ruined. Still, he is a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I have become poor like the people who do not work,” he said. “It is really hard from a human standpoint.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He continued: “But from a material standpoint, if the building is repaired, if the government intervenes to help parents, to help teachers, we can open the school on October 4.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that despite the fact that Saint Jules, like most of his 400 students, now lives outdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Haiti is struggling to send children back to class amid the devastation of the earthquake last month that killed more than 2,200 people and destroyed tens of thousands of buildings, including many schools. It is a logistical and humanitarian challenge in the disaster-prone country — the poorest in the Americas — one that never fully recovered from the huge quake in 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people and caused billions in damage. Classes for most students, initially scheduled to start September 6, have been pushed back by two weeks. And they have been postponed until October 4 in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[550,544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n