Farm Primary & Junior High School

April 29, 2008

Farm Heights is considered one of the more rough areas of Jamaica. I wish I could have captured the long drive up to the school because my words couldn’t capture that scene… it was difficult to see some of the homes and living conditions… Roads were ruins and more the half of the homes being built were basically unfinished. I asked one of the locals later in the week why that was so… His explanation was three-pronged… The buyers and builders of the homes passed away, they completely abandoned the project, or they were in the process of building but ran out of funds and are saving to complete it at a later date. Overall, the average home can take anywhere from 3 to 10 years to build…

You could see the small make-shift shacks lined up outside of the part of the security wall that was in existence for the school. Out of these shacks, vendors sell snacks and little trinkets to the students – this was a regular practice at every school… But that was just about the only regular thing this school had… The school itself was a place that lacked a lot of the things that most schools on the island did have…Out front, the conditions and wear were pretty apparent. Many of the schools that we visited had a security wall. Farm Primary had about half of a wall. This was an real issue as several sad stories were told. Intruders had frequented the campus in the past, harassing students for money, and in one case hospitalizing a young boy… Young girls were assaulted by intruders in the bathroom facilities for the school… And the restroom facilities of the school were also not like other schools – plumbing didn’t work, toilets could not be flushed, the walls were unsanitary, many stalls had no doors, and the smell was described as something never experienced before…

Our volunteers initiated a project to complete the security wall around the entire school (400 ft long open section, 10 feet high) and worked to complete a renovation of the entire restroom - cleaning, re-plumbing, and painting the entire facility. Our media team captured the project at about the halfway point…

The renovation project for the bathrooms at Farm School was about halfway there… above is the girls bathroom, unfinished… as crazy as it looks right now – that’s the way it looks after they mopped it up… below is the boys bathroom, almost completed… Cleaned, power-washed, and painted, it was beginning to come together…

The kids were something else… a little more shyness then Barracks Road, but still the same smiles… this is the part of visiting the different schools of Jamaica that I love…

In the above picture is where you could see the security wall coming together. Some locals also put in time to help build the wall...

I hope what all of our volunteers were able to do was a blessing to both the school and themsleves… It’s one of those experiences that you can’t easily forget.