Af­ter over two months of wait­ing, pupils of the Bras­so Ve­na­do Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School were able to re­turn to school this week.

This fol­lows the re­pair of a mas­sive land­slide that pre­vent­ed vil­lagers from safe­ly tra­vers­ing the road.

Guardian Me­dia re­vis­it­ed the scene on Wednes­day and Lak­sh­mi Ali, a moth­er of six, ex­pressed re­lief over be­ing able to send her two chil­dren back to school.

“I am grate­ful and thank­ful be­cause my chil­dren are get­ting an ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.

Ali’s ten-year-old daugh­ter, Sophia Sam­path, is in Stan­dard Five and ex­pect­ed to write the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) this year. Ali ex­pressed con­cern for Sophia, since she missed some of the cur­ricu­lum.

“She didn’t get to work. The on­line wasn’t work­ing out for her be­cause the in­ter­net was giv­ing trou­ble and through the help of our vil­lage coun­cil pres­i­dent, Mrs Vil­lafana, we were able to get her to do a lit­tle stud­ies by her house,” Ali not­ed.

She said her daugh­ter need­ed some ex­tra at­ten­tion. How­ev­er, she is hope­ful that she can catch up in time. Ali al­so has a son in Stan­dard One who was ex­cit­ed to re­turn to school this week.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Nan­dal Jookoo, came to pick up his grand­chil­dren from school. He said he was re­lieved they were back to school be­cause it was dif­fi­cult to su­per­vise them at home.

Mean­while, a fa­ther from a neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ty, Lin­coln Subero, said al­though he is con­tent school has re­opened, he is still un­able to dri­ve to the school to drop off his daugh­ter.

“One thing I have a prob­lem with is the roads, the roads con­nect­ing the two vil­lages to­geth­er. My daugh­ter is go­ing to school there (Bras­so Ve­na­do) and I’m liv­ing down on Al­leyne Road. I have to walk every morn­ing, drop her off and come back, then pick her up like what I’m do­ing now,” he said.

The Al­leyne Road he speaks about is the al­ter­nate route to Bras­so Ve­na­do, which peo­ple from out­side the vil­lage use. Subero said the road is in de­plorable con­di­tion, caus­ing some dam­age to some teach­ers’ ve­hi­cles.

Res­i­dent Mar­tin Vil­lafana shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments to Subero.—Lee An­na Ma­haraj