SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter wait­ing for more than a year on a school trans­fer, 15-year-old dropout Re­hana Badaloo has fi­nal­ly been placed in a class­room.

Over­joyed that she can now con­tin­ue her ed­u­ca­tion at the Man­zanil­la Sec­ondary School, Re­hana ad­mit­ted she was re­duced to tears when she re­ceived the great news last month.

“Yes, I cried when I heard that the trans­fer was ap­proved by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. I still can’t be­lieve it,” said Re­hana, as she re­called the mo­ment.

Re­hana’s emo­tions al­so got the bet­ter of her on Sep­tem­ber 4 when she start­ed her first day of school.

The teenag­er’s plight was high­light­ed last month in a Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle head­lined “De­layed trans­fer leads to dropout.”

Her touch­ing sto­ry pulled at the heart­strings of our read­ers and the pub­lic.

From a tod­dler to a teenag­er, Re­hana has en­dured a hard life at her Mar­quis Road, Plum Mi­tan home.

Re­hana, whose name has been changed to pro­tect her iden­ti­ty, sat the 2022 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion and was placed at Biche High School which would have cost her strug­gling grand­par­ents, De­or­agie Baldeo and Lu­cian Dan­drade, $70 a day in trans­port.

The fam­i­ly sur­vives on Baldeo’s month­ly pen­sion of $3,500.

It would have cost Baldeo $1,400 each month in taxi fares to send Re­hana to the far-flung school.

Last Ju­ly, Baldeo asked that Re­hana be trans­ferred to the Man­zanil­la Sec­ondary School which is clos­er to their home.

The fam­i­ly wait­ed for 14 months for the trans­fer but re­ceived no feed­back.

They raised their plight in the Sun­day Guardian and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly com­mit­ted to get Re­hana in­to a class­room.

On Fri­day, the 68-year-old pen­sion­er praised the news­pa­per for step­ping in.

“All yuh (Sun­day Guardian) help get that child back in school. Thank God! Oth­er­wise ah would ah still be wait­ing for the trans­fer,” Baldeo said.

When school re­opened this aca­d­e­m­ic term, Baldeo was asked to vis­it Man­zanil­la Sec­ondary where she was giv­en a Form One book­list for her grand­daugh­ter

A good samar­i­tan came for­ward and bought Re­hana’s text­books and school sup­plies.

In an at­tempt to do her part, Baldeo sac­ri­ficed $175 from her pen­sion to pur­chase one school shirt and a skirt for Re­hana.

“The most im­por­tant thing is the child go­ing to school now. When she comes home from school she does have to wash the shirt so it would be clean for the next day.”

She said if rain falls at night, how­ev­er, “the shirt would not dry prop­er­ly and she would have to go to school with the shirt damp”.

Baldeo said, “When I could put aside a lit­tle mon­ey again the child would get a next shirt. Every­thing takes a lit­tle time. God is good.”

Baldeo spends $400 a month for Re­hana to at­tend school.

“It’s a big sac­ri­fice I am mak­ing be­cause I know the val­ue of ah ed­u­ca­tion to­day. Ed­u­ca­tion is the on­ly way out of this pover­ty we liv­ing in. I didn’t get a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion as a child and I want to make sure that what I didn’t have for my­self that my grand­daugh­ter get. I just want her to have a bet­ter life than mine.”

Baldeo ad­mit­ted that the fam­i­ly has to fur­ther cut and con­trive for Re­hana’s ed­u­ca­tion and a bet­ter fu­ture.

Smil­ing from ear to ear, Re­hana said she was faced with mixed emo­tions go­ing back to school.

“Just putting on my uni­form on the first day made me burst in­to tears. My grand­moth­er had to con­sole me. I re­alised that through no fault of my own I was de­prived of an ed­u­ca­tion for all these months. I was left be­hind.”

On the flip side, Re­hana said she was hap­py to be in a place where she could learn again.

Hav­ing set­tled in­to her class of 40 stu­dents, Re­hana said she has made new friends while her teach­ers have been help­ing her along the way.

“If I have a prob­lem in a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject they would as­sist me. I have been try­ing to deal with the school­work. It’s a big shift from pri­ma­ry to sec­ondary school but I am lov­ing it.”

She said her teach­ers have al­ready warned her not to be dis­tract­ed by oth­er chil­dren.

“They al­so ad­vised me to nev­er give up and keep fo­cused on my goals.”

Re­hana, who has as­pi­ra­tions of be­com­ing a teacher, said her favourite sub­ject is Eng­lish.

Grow­ing up, Re­hana’s life was filled with set­backs.

When she was one year old, her moth­er walked out on her fa­ther.

Un­able to care for his daugh­ter, Re­hana’s fa­ther want­ed to give her up for adop­tion but Baldeo and Dan­drade stepped in and be­came her le­gal guardians.

Re­hana lives in a rick­ety two-bed­room home built on stilts. The house, con­struct­ed from crude pieces of lum­ber and sheets of weath­er-beat­en ply­wood, has no in­door plumb­ing. The fam­i­ly us­es rain­wa­ter col­lect­ed in three wa­ter tanks for cook­ing, bathing and clean­ing.

In­side the di­lap­i­dat­ed shack, the on­ly fur­nish­ings are a tat­tered two-seater couch and a tele­vi­sion set that has stopped work­ing.

The fam­i­ly cooks their meals on a makeshift fire­side.

Six weeks be­fore Re­hana wrote the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion, her 30-year-old moth­er, a mar­ket ven­dor, died from a mas­sive heart at­tack.

But not even these cir­cum­stances could stop her from her goal of get­ting a prop­er ed­u­ca­tion. Re­hana is de­ter­mined to suc­ceed.