By Coco McCabe, Huff­in­g­ton Post

Chris­ner Roche has sent his chil­dren to school in Port-au-Prince, far from where he lives, because there are few good schools in Haiti’s rural areas.

The plight of Chris­ner Roche is a text­book case for all that’s wrong with the edu­ca­tional sys­tem in Haiti.

As rain pelted the metal roof, Roche lifted spec­i­men jars from a shelf, tick­ing off their con­tents and exam­in­ing the embryos one by one. This was a rab­bit, that one a pig. Here was a goat. And here was a whole jar of intesti­nal par­a­sites, grown long and fat.

We were in the com­mon room of the Cen­tre de Sali­gnac, an agri­cul­tural research, train­ing, and local devel­op­ment facil­ity high in the hills of Nippes in south­ern Haiti. A com­plex of stone-walled build­ings, the cen­ter works with local farm­ers to pro­duce high-quality seeds and cut­tings, and is a source for the tens of thou­sands of yam cut­tings Oxfam Que­bec has dis­trib­uted to farm­ers across Haiti.

Roche is the Salignac’s direc­tor and the rural life seems to suit him: He has been con­nected with the cen­ter since 1978 and has been work­ing in the area since he fin­ished school. But he’s here alone among the rolling green hills and open sky–without his wife and children.

They’re far off, in Port-au-Prince, where he can be sure the kids will get a solid edu­ca­tion. Way out here, good schools are few and far between. And that’s one of the biggest imped­i­ments to the hope many have for decen­tral­ized ser­vices and a robust rural economy–goals some have set their sights on fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake that destroyed so much of the cap­i­tal in jan­u­ary. With­out schools, or other essen­tials such as reli­able elec­tric­ity and decent roads, Haiti’s rural areas hold lit­tle attrac­tion to peo­ple look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties for them­selves and their families.

About a quar­ter of Haiti’s dis­tricts have no schools, and all of those dis­tricts are in rural areas. The vast major­ity of schools in the country–80 percent–are pri­vately run and many schools don’t even have the most basic ameni­ties includ­ing san­i­ta­tion, class­room equip­ment, or sup­plies for stu­dents. Still, fees and tuition at many of these places are often more than most fam­i­lies can afford when the aver­age per capita income is $414.

That explains why 8-year-old Noel Jolins was work­ing side-by-side with his mother, Marie Camel Rubin, weed­ing a large field of man­ioc, corn, and beans in Pail­lant yes­ter­day after­noon. Bent at the waist, the pair made their way slowly along one row, with many to go. Noel’s mother, a thin woman with a warm smile, said that her son had to quit school because she didn’t have enough money to con­tinue send­ing him. She offered that infor­ma­tion as though it were the top thing on her mind: it spilled out, a long­ing that she could do noth­ing about.

Edu­ca­tion is one of the basic ser­vices rural areas are cry­ing out for–and it’s key to the long-term reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Haiti. Though Oxfam itself does not work in the edu­ca­tional arena, we’ll be advo­cat­ing for increased invest­ment in rural schools so boys like Noel will have the chance to con­tinue their stud­ies and make their own choices about their futures.

In my mind’s eye, I’ve been see­ing Rubin’s stern expres­sion as she posed for a pic­ture, and the seri­ous look on the face of her son stand­ing close to her, his fate sealed in that field. I was think­ing about them when we pulled into a hotel in Petite Riv­iere de Nippes that evening and there, hunched in their chairs, was a small crowd of school chil­dren each with their own sturdy green and white lap­top. They had come to the hotel to bor­row its electricity–kindly offered by hotel owner Emmanuel Pressoir–and his wire­less con­nec­tion. Their town has nei­ther. They looked up just briefly, and smiled in a dis­tracted way when I asked if I could snap their pic­ture, before get­ting lost again in their on-screen projects.

It turns out that the com­put­ers are part of an ini­tia­tive their school–Complexe Edu­ca­tion St. Antoine et St. Augustin, just down the road–launched last year as a pilot, expanded this year with 50 more com­put­ers, and will grow again in the sum­mer when 200 addi­tional lap­tops arrive. The machines are part of the One Lap­top per Child pro­gram founded by MIT pro­fes­sor Nicholas Negroponte.

Pres­soir plays a role in the Amer­i­can Hait­ian Foun­da­tion which helps to fund the school, where he also serves as trea­surer. Painted bright pink, the school has about 900 stu­dents in grades one through 12–and offers each of them a meal every day, no small ges­ture in a coun­try where many peo­ple strug­gle to feed their families.

For Pres­soir, feed­ing minds is essen­tial, too. And that’s why he’s happy to let the kids come to his salt-splashed rotunda by the sea, plug into the rusty out­lets, and dive into their laptops.

“It’s not only look­ing on the Inter­net,” he says. “It’s devel­op­ing their minds.”

That ‘s a mantra that all of Haiti could use.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coco-mcabe/in-haitis-countryside-sch_b_584027.html