SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

When­ev­er sto­ries about walk­ing miles to get an ed­u­ca­tion are told, most peo­ple think about the ex­pe­ri­ences of their grand­par­ents or great grand­par­ents.

But for the chil­dren of Rin­con Vil­lage, Las Cuevas, this is their present-day re­al­i­ty.

The com­mu­ni­ty, nes­tled in the foothills of the North­ern Range and home to the stun­ning Rin­con Wa­ter­fall, has no cell­phone re­cep­tion or in­ter­net sig­nal. This means that the over 50 stu­dents liv­ing there must walk to the Las Cuevas Main Road if they hope to get an in­ter­net sig­nal to join their vir­tu­al class­es.

Petal Walters, Jarod Clement and Isiah and Levi Walters sit on the side of Rincon Road, Las Cuevas, doing their online classwork, as it’s the only place they can get internet in the area.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Jared Clement, 21, a sec­ond-year stu­dent at UWI-Roytec, says he walks three kilo­me­tres from his home every day. Clement has vir­tu­al class­es once a week but on the oth­er four days, he ac­com­pa­nies his two younger broth­ers, 17 and sev­en, to the main road.

“When you come out here on the junc­tion, the wifi box­es will work. When we are home, you can­not get a phone sig­nal, far less for an in­ter­net sig­nal. So hav­ing da­ta does not make any sense. It is very hard to make that walk every day, get­ting up ear­ly be­cause my younger broth­ers have class­es start­ing from half sev­en in the morn­ing,” Clement said.

Clement said they go to a friend’s house where he can sit with his lap­top and help his younger broth­ers through their class­es. Since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic start­ed, Clement said he has com­plet­ed four cours­es thanks to the dai­ly treks.

Nathaniel Pierre speaks to GML about the difficulties he has to go through to do online classes.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

“It’s very dif­fi­cult be­cause some­times you have to leave home with­out eat­ing be­cause of the time you have to get up and walk­ing three kilo­me­tres with noth­ing in your stom­ach is not easy,” he said.

For sin­gle moth­er Sab­ri­na Su­perville, the prob­lem is mul­ti­plied by five. Her el­dest son Nathaniel is a Form One stu­dent at the Barataria South Sec­ondary School, while her four younger chil­dren at­tend the Las Cuevas Pri­ma­ry School.

Su­perville said she was able to pur­chase one tablet and a WiFi box about two weeks ago. On a dai­ly ba­sis, she gives the de­vices to Nathaniel, who packs them in­to his school bag and leaves the house on his bi­cy­cle for class­es.

Nathaniel said he has two pe­ri­ods of vir­tu­al class­es a day.

“Some­times it does be re­al hard to get up so ear­ly to ride out the road for class…and if my bike not work­ing good, the walk takes me about half an hour, some­times I miss half the class,” Nathaniel said.

Petal Walters helps her cousins Isiah and Levi with their work on the side of the road, as it’s the only place they get internet access.

SHIRLY BAHADUR

Su­perville said she tries her best to teach her four younger chil­dren at home but she ad­mit­ted she of­ten has trou­ble un­der­stand­ing some of the work as­signed to them.

“My four that go­ing pri­ma­ry school, the teach­ers do pack­ages for them. Some­times, it have some of the work that I do not un­der­stand and I have to call the teacher to ex­plain it to me what the work is about, or some­times I try to fig­ure it out for my­self to ex­plain it to them,” she said.

How­ev­er, even those calls are of­ten im­pos­si­ble for Su­perville.

“For in­stance, I does walk by my fa­ther garage to put my phone in a cer­tain an­gle just to call the teacher or some­body, some­times they tell me put da­ta on my phone, yes I have da­ta on my phone but I still will not get the full ser­vice to go up on What­sApp or Google, so it does be re­al hard.”

A group of children play on Rincon Road, Las Cuevas.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

If the chil­dren are as­signed projects that re­quire in­ter­net re­search, Su­perville usu­al­ly makes the trek to the main road with them, where they do the re­search and write down their find­ings be­fore re­turn­ing home.

Su­perville is ap­peal­ing to ser­vice providers to bring their tech­nol­o­gy to Rin­con.

“At least if they could come and run lines or put up a cell tow­er so the chil­dren wouldn’t have to be strug­gling with their home­work, es­pe­cial­ly my big son who go­ing sec­ondary school,” Su­perville said.

Any­one wish­ing to con­tact Su­perville can con­tact her at 326-3904 be­tween the hours of 6 am to 10 am, when she will be at work out­side of the com­mu­ni­ty.