By Peggy Ann Bliss

Of the Daily Sun staff

pbliss@prdailysun.net

When children in Haiti return to school classes in a few weeks, elementary schoolers in Leogane will enter a new building erected entirely by Puerto Rican volunteers

They will also be greeted by a wall full of their own smiling faces, one by one.

The $500,000 building, designed by architect Edwin Quiles, will replace one that was destroyed by the recent hurricane in the southern área near Jacmel. One of his special touches will be a mural created out of 300 squares with self-portraits painted on them.

A concert Saturday night at 8 at the University of Puerto Rico Theater in Río Piedras will help raise the rest of the money needed to make the school a reality. The concert by Haitian singers Sara Rénélik and James Jean Baptiste and the Puerto Rican singing group “Asi Somos” will be offered as a fundraiser by the Committee in Solidarity with Haiti,  a group of Puerto Ricans who banded together to help the neighboring Caribbean nation after the devastation of an earthquake killed thousands and left thousands without homes, schools and public business. Jacmel, south of Port-au-Prince, was the center of the eruption.

“We need all the money we can get,” said Quiles, noting that the actual cost is only $250,000 because most of the work is volunteer. The school, which will be built around a common space which Haitians call a “lakou,”    will have "two arms embracing a common space,” said Quiles, who considers the children and their parents his clients. 

The school will contain all the facilities required for a good education, including six classrooms, a computer room, a library, a dining room/multi-purpose room, kitchen, storage room and faculty rooms.

“You have to understand the culture to build the best kind of school,” Quiles told the Daily Sun. “They like lots of color, ornamental blocks and open spaces, such as the “lakou,” which is like a “batey” shared by several families in the community, and which we have incorporated into the school.

Outside, there will be an orchard, where they will plant food for their own consumption, a creative playground, a few mascots, a rain collection system for drinking water and solar power to make use of the open natural space.

The playground, using sand for a safe floor, will have several levels, a slide pipe, a ladder and a rope for imaginative play, he said. The money will also be used to buy chairs and desks and other equipment for the new school, a spokesperson for the committee said.

 The three dogs they rescued from the earthquake as puppies, and several resident chickens who survived the disaster co-exist happily, said Quiles.

One positive element is the way the 15 Haitian volunteers  and the Puerto Ricans who travel back and forth have worked together. The Haitians are also learning useful work which could help them in the future, and the Puerto Ricans are learning a lot of intangible values.

“There has not been a holiday or weekend that there haven’t been volunteers working there to complete the school,”  said Quiles, who will soon return to Haiti to put the final touches on the building. He says he can hardly wait to see the looks on the faces of the children and their parents.

Tickets to the benefit are $25, and half price for students. For tickets and information, call (787) 448-2621 or (787) 751-9551.