Fifth letter – My school

Sunday, 4 May 2008

My dear, here I come with a new letter, I have been thinking for a long time about what topic to write wanting to avoid some sad issues, but unfortunately this time it is going to be the same. I’ll write about my school, how it looks like and in what conditions we learn. Our school is the building that used to be a hall, or to be more precise the Cultural centre.
When the war broke out it had to be transformed into school. The premises were separated and turned into classrooms. Some of them are smaller, some larger, my classroom is on the floor and is dark, the windows are small and the blackboard is made of cardboard. It often happens when we clean it with sponge that it becomes soaked with water and loses its shape.
The desks are old, different names from different generations of children who attended the school before us are printed on them. When it rains we can hear the rain drops, plink, plink…. Yes, you’ve guessed, our roof is leaking...
Sometimes I watch and think how they slowly drop and how they resemble the children’s tears... Then the couriers come and bring a basket and we catch the rain drops so that the floor would not become wet. And it goes on and on all these years... Across my classroom is the staffroom for our teachers and professors. Here they share their common concerns about pupils and we can often hear about what they talk.
The saying goes that the walls have ears. Sometimes they feel sorry for us because they are also forced to work in impossible conditions and they lament over our childhood. A toilet that we use is horrible, we all use the same one, boys and girls, one toilet for all children to use, sometimes it is crowded and we have to wait in line and one has to wait beside the door while the other is inside.
There are around 47 pupils from pre-school up to the eight grade. We attend the classes in the second shift while the high school students attend the first shift classes. It needs to be like that since there are not enough premises. The schoolyard is actually the street where the local people gather and spend their free time. We don’t have a hall in our school as we should so that we could play there; geographic maps are awfully old, damaged and tattered.
Our technical education classes are held in classrooms since we don’t have any workshops. We are frequently without electricity and during winter the heaters quickly cool down and we have to sit in our jackets to warm ourselves up.
Unlike other children we don’t have the school kitchen where we could sit together and share our snacks; during class breaks those who can buy some snacks and we share all the food we have. There are children without parents who would each day give them money to buy something to eat during breaks and I feel so sorry for those children and I always offer them and share with them my food, when I have it…Despite such conditions they can take away and deprive us of everything but they cannot deprive us of our knowledge and wisdom since that is the gift of God, we always defeat those who succeeded in depriving the children from Kosovo of normal childhood.