“Toys, we need more toys for the kids!” – Help for Schools

By Huang Qingrui, translated by Terence Chu

It would be impossible to find Jiulong School had its gates not survived the earthquake. Almost completely leveled when the killer quake hit Sichuan on May 12th, only a few classrooms standing in the midst of rubble are all that is left of the school. Ms. Li Hongliang, the principal, met us in the tents near the school as the headmaster was still in hospital. Ms. Li started crying when she recalled what had happened to teachers and students: “A hundred and ten students and staff died in the earthquake, the school is now in rubble, and all the data files of the staff and students have been lost. We cannot even find all the names of those who died in the earthquake! In the few days after the quake, we divided the remaining staff and teachers into 10 groups and set out for nearby villages to find out if there were any missing children who had attended our school. Some parents whose children had died burst into tears. In their grief and bitterness, some of them said, ‘Why didn’t you die in place of my kid?’ When I heard that, I felt as if someone was strangling my heart … I wish I could have died in place of those kids!”

Jiulong School includes a primary school, a village school and a kindergarten, with slightly more than 900 students and staff. Jiulong Town, where the school is located, lies along the Longmen Mountains. When the earthquake tore through the mountain range it destroyed Jiulong’s infrastructure, badly damaging the town and the school. Little relief aid is reaching the town since it is located in a remote area and its roads have been destroyed.

According to Ms. Li, staff at the school have been so busy trying to locate and identify the dead that they have not had time to plead for aid. “A few days ago we were looking for a teacher who had been transferred to another hospital. All we could do was to send two colleagues to scour nearby hospitals and aid stations to try our luck. Once our colleagues arrived at their destination they would start yelling the teacher’s name, hoping he or some of his friends or relatives would hear it. After going through several spots we finally tracked him down … This is how we find our surviving colleagues who got lost in the chaos.”

Besides locating survivors, there are other problems school staff have to worry about. The temporary classrooms are about to be finished and children will be ready to return to school, but Ms. Li points out that the school still lacks educational equipment. “The only thing I can do now is to ask volunteers for more help, or I can try to contact some organizations or personnel to provide us with educational equipment. If not, we will not be able to conduct classes even if we have temporary classrooms.”

Ms. Li’s effort is finally being rewarded as she has received several computers and some equipment for outdoor activities. She still lacks equipment, though, for the staff and toys for the kindergarten kids. “We have around 240 kids in our kindergarten, when they return to school they will attend lessons in the temporary classrooms. However, many kids were traumatized by the earthquake, and they refuse to come to school. Some of our colleagues are now working with the kids to help them get over their fears.”

Ms. Li is confident that the children will return to school, but she still worries that they will not have enough toys for the kindergarten kids: “If their parents agree to let them return to school, I want to give them a good educational environment, an environment which gives them joy and helps eliminate some of the bad memories of the earthquake.”