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FROM
CUBA
Headaches with the start of a school year
Marcelo Jiménez Jiménez,
Jóvenes sin Censura
HOLGUIN, Cuba - October (www.cubanet.org)
- For Adela, a housewife in the Cacocún
municipality of Holguín province,
the fact that her two girls started school
has become a headache: her low salary does
not stretch to buy everything they need.
She tells of her younger daughter, who
is in the second grade. She won't receive
authorization to buy a school uniform until
next year, and buying it in the black market
could cost as much as 70 pesos, the wages
for six or seven days for the average worker.
Her older daughter, the one starting eighth
grade, did receive the right to buy one
uniform at government-subsidized prices.
Having one uniform means she has to wash
it every day, and by January, the skirt
will be faded and the blouse so thin that
the girls are ashamed to wear them.
"The situation is worse with the shoes,"
said Adela. "I have had to stand in
line for several days to buy two pairs of
shoes with social-assistance coupons that
I received.
At the beginning, she said, she was ashamed
of receiving social assistance, but then
she said she changed her mind after she
saw some of the people in line with her:
the wives of managers, professionals with
good incomes, and speculators in assistance
coupons or in shoes.
Adela knows school meals will be free,
but won't be enough. Now she is hoping the
younger girl's newly-trained teacher won't
be so new that she'll lose her nerve before
the end of the year.
Versión
original en español
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