Headaches with the start of a school year

Headaches with the start of a school year

Marcelo Jiménez Jiménez, Jóvenes sin Censura

HOLGUIN, Cuba - October (www.cubanet.org) - For Adela, a housewife in
the Cacocún municipality of Holguín province, the fact that her two
girls started school has become a headache: her low salary does not
stretch to buy everything they need.

She tells of her younger daughter, who is in the second grade. She won't
receive authorization to buy a school uniform until next year, and
buying it in the black market could cost as much as 70 pesos, the wages
for six or seven days for the average worker.

Her older daughter, the one starting eighth grade, did receive the right
to buy one uniform at government-subsidized prices. Having one uniform
means she has to wash it every day, and by January, the skirt will be
faded and the blouse so thin that the girls are ashamed to wear them.

"The situation is worse with the shoes," said Adela. "I have had to
stand in line for several days to buy two pairs of shoes with
social-assistance coupons that I received.

At the beginning, she said, she was ashamed of receiving social
assistance, but then she said she changed her mind after she saw some of
the people in line with her: the wives of managers, professionals with
good incomes, and speculators in assistance coupons or in shoes.

Adela knows school meals will be free, but won't be enough. Now she is
hoping the younger girl's newly-trained teacher won't be so new that
she'll lose her nerve before the end of the year.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/oct06/05e3.htm