Brigada Eskwela: Getting the school ready

Manila, Philippines - “With the recent daily heavy rains that brought about a number of landslides, there is so much to be done,” said Francisco Dagoy, head teacher of the Don Bernardo Alvarez Elementary School in Tabango, Leyte. “We cannot just sit around and wait for the scheduled dates.”

He was referring to the proclamation of Education Secretary Armin Luistro on the Brigada Eskwela campaign slated for May 23 to 28.

Also known as National Schools Maintenance Week, launched in 2003 and made an institutional event in 2008, Brigada Eskwela is an annual week-long project where teachers, parents, students, the business community and civic organizations participate in the clean-up and repair of schools and its surrounding areas.

Following a quick ocular inspection of classrooms and the school compound, we realized the great need to clear and clean, to refurbish and rehabilitate. Rusty, leaking roofs waiting to cave in. Warped ceilings about to fall. Walls ready to crumble. Trails of cracks on the floors. Doors that don’t close. Broken windows. Jalousies that no longer work. “Even blackboards are damaged and student chairs and desks badly need repairs,” lamented Constancia Loberas, a veteran teacher and herself an alumna of the school.

Carpenters are busy at work inside the Don Bernardo Alvarez Elementary School.

All that from inspecting only two classrooms. It was time to whisper a little prayer, hoping we’d seen the worst.

Save for two other classrooms which were relatively new and only needed a little sprucing up, our prayer was not answered. Three other classrooms needed major, major reconstruction. Our jaws dropped. Our hearts sank.

With mud and water all around, we carefully trod on, exploring the school compound. “The strategically located deep canals are now fully covered by dried leaves, huge twigs and tiny branches. Not to mention the shifting earth,” chorused fellow teachers Jocelyn Buscay and Laila Dayon, both former students with fond memories of their primary school. “As you can see, there is water everywhere.”

We must admit we were stunned, dazed. We didn’t know where to begin to be ready for the opening of classes on June 6.

Something had to be done  soon and fast.

Volunteers clear the roof of fallen leaves and other debris.

People immediately met and organized a thorough door-to-door, call-to-action campaign, followed by the constant reminders through the popular texting  it was a pleasant discovery how many have mobile phones  and the not-to-be ignored, the ever dependable word-of-mouth. They all gladly responded and gathered on that early, damp, muddy morning of May 16, in front of the Don Bernardo Alvarez Elementary School.

Named after the original haciendero from the small town of Entrago in Teverga, Spain, the four-building, seven-classroom farm school sits by a sloping hill with a panoramic view of the sea and is situated within a hacienda that gainfully grows coconuts and raises mostly cattle and horses, sheep and goats, by the tranquil beachfront in the sitio of Buho, within the tourism-oriented municipality of Tabañgo, a quick, less-than-two-hour land trip from Ormoc City in the province of Leyte.

A spruced-up classroom is ready to welcome back its students, in time for the beginning of the new school year tomorrow.

It initially offered only primary levels for almost four decades. “That’s how far we want to go  until grade four only,” boasted a proud, practical old-timer without any expression of regret in his voice. It eventually evolved into a full elementary school with grades five and six only four years ago to fulfill the wishes and needs of a more enlightened and ever-increasing population  now all true believers of the life-changing effects of education.

Practical experience brought them up, as they later plowed and fished, most of them neither attended nor finished formal education. Unfortunately, they grew up with a disbelief in the importance of schooling. But they now wanted to eradicate this belief and do away with all other hindrances that put them in the situation where they were.

Classroom furniture gets a through cleaning.

Yes, they were mostly farmhands and cowboys, fishermen and farmers, vendors and peddlers, wives and mothers, even lolos and lolas, ready with their ever present, always dependable bolos strapped to their sides, hammers and shovels, barras and picos, rakes and pails, walis tingtings, abaca brooms and dust pans, empty cans and used sacks to transport soil, pebbles and sand and basically anything they could get their hands on. They were prepared to meet the challenge.

Brigada Eskwela, here we come,” without a doubt, was their collective, passionate, yet silent battle cry.

The willing, ready and able brigade included zealous teachers, born-and-bred in sitio Buho; enthusiastic parents; excited students; a group of proud alumni who earnestly believe in payback; and other members of the community from the neighboring sitios of Dapanas and Cabalanan who take pride in the advocacy of grade school education.

Moneky bars get a fresh coat of paint.

Professional help such as carpenters, masons and painters was provided by some generous benefactors to assist in reconstructing some of the classrooms. The members of the brigade worked tirelessly for two weeks, except for some afternoons when the heavens poured and again for a couple of days when a minority begged off to attend some fiesta in the neighborhood because of their promise to the patron saint. They religiously pruned the trees, cleared the mess created by the heavy rains  that itself was a gigantic job  built canals, created steps from one building to the next, planted several areas of the school compound, washed tables and chairs... and the list goes on and on.

They did all that and more with an enviable spirit of camaraderie, with smiles often accompanied by banter and laughter with the all important feeling of belonging.

Volunteers select cement blocks removed from cracked classroom floors to be reused for steps on carved paths.

Brigada Eskwela was alive indeed in the small school in sitio Buho, several hundred kilometers away from Manila and truly a world apart. It was definitely a feat that proved that distance was not an obstruction, but rather an inspiration, to continue to provide basic education opportunities even in the farthest of places.

Tomorrow Monday, June 6, some 176 eager students plus some tag-along siblings enrolled in the first-ever kindergarten class will march into the improved, upgraded, took-a-turn-for-the-better-and-headed-for-a-new-lease-of-life Don Bernardo Alvarez Elementary School, a home-away-from-home, for at least 180 days of actual teaching-learning days, out of the total 202 school days until the last day of class envisioned to be on March 30, 2012.

The ready and able volunteers of Tabango, Leyte.