Japanese Embassy Provides
New Schools in Chirripó
By Katherine Stanley
Tico Times Staff
kstanley@ticotimes.net

Members of one of Costa Rica 's least visible but most needy populations – the young people of the Chirripó Indigenous Reserve in south-central Costa Rica – can now go to school with roofs over their heads and floors beneath their feet, thanks to the efforts of the Japanese Embassy in San José.

Ambassador Yoshihiko Sumi and some of the Costa Rican leaders who collaborated with the embassy announced yesterday that construction on nine new schools in the remote reserve has been completed, and the buildings are ready for operation. The concrete and wood structures, two of which include space for health services and one of which houses a high-school teleconferencing facility, replace leaky, ill-equipped thatch or wood huts and ranchos typical of Chirripó's 61 schools.

All nine schools also have indoor bathrooms, a preschool and a small dormitory for teachers or other school personnel, many of whom live at the schools because they are far from available housing.

The embassy funded the project with a $90,000 donation made last year (TT, Sept. 16, 2005). Former Ombudsman José Manuel Echandi, now a legislator-elect, got the ball rolling in 2004 when he met with Sumi to describe the needs of the indigenous Cabécar people who live in Chirripó. Embassy personnel visited the reserve and the donation was approved within months.

“This is not just one time, one event – it's a continuous effort,” Sumi told The Tico Times, adding that he hopes to sponsor similar projects in other areas of the country. The embassy supports approximately 20 non-governmental projects per year in Costa Rica in addition to the government support provided by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency.

The Association for Integral Indigenous Attention, the recipient of the donation, oversaw the project. Its president, Carlos José Van der Laat, described the seemingly miraculous logistics of the effort during a presentation yesterday at the embassy. One of the most difficult aspects of construction was getting materials to the nine sites, one of which is 10 hours on foot from the reserve entrance.

Some of the materials could be transported by tractor or horse, he said, but some of the sites are inaccessible even by those means. With donations of helicopter flights from the National Emergency Commission (CNE), workers airlifted some supplies into the reserve; zip-lines over the Chirripó River were also used, and community members volunteered to carry supplies on their shoulders for miles.

The Ombudsman's Office, Public Health Ministry and Corporación de Supermercados Unidos (CSU), which donated food for the small team of workers, also supported the effort, Van der Laat said.

The illiteracy rate in Costa Rican indigenous areas (26.6%) is more than five times the national rate (4.8%), according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and indigenous students stay in school for an average of 3.4 years – half the national average of 7.6 years.

According to Van der Laat, Chirripó's 97,000 hectares hold 5,353 inhabitants, scattered throughout the jungle. Approximately 63% of that population is under 19, making its schools essential to the area's future, he said. (The 2000 census put Costa Rica 's total indigenous population at 64,000.)

Severiano Fernández, Director of Indigenous Education for the Public Education Ministry, said public education arrived to Chirripó in 1987, when three schools were opened.

One of the schools that benefited from the project was Xinaquichá, known by many Costa Ricans as China Kichá, the school featured by The Tico Times last year (TT, Sept. 16, Dec. 2, 2005). The new building there – which, in addition to its two classrooms, preschool, bathrooms and dormitories, features a space for vocational training or health services – has been in use for months. It replaced a thatched-roofed structure where water poured in during the area's near-daily rains.

Like other Cabécar children, many of Xinaquichá's more than 50 students walk an hour or more through the jungle each day to reach the school.

For more information on the embassy's work, visit http://cr.emb-japan.go.jp/asistenciacomunitaria.html ; for more information on the Association for Integral Indigenous Attention, call 541-2139.