Rural school near Punta Gorda, 1962
Since the beginning of the 1900s to around the 1970s, Garifuna teachers were hired and deployed by the R.C. Church to head and teach in schools in very remote communities all over Belize. Early on most of these teachers were from P.G. and later Seine Bight and Hopkins (then known as Jonathan Point).
In some of the remotest communities, teachers served as the only one to teach all grades of the entire school, from Infant 1 to Std. VI. These 1962 pictures show what one of these rural schools looked like, with a teacher tutoring either a pupil teacher or senior student.
Gregory Arana:
My grandparents are from PG, but my father was born in Sarteneja, Corozal. My grandfather Adriano Arana was one of the many Garifuna teachers of whom you speak.
A Magna Avila Gibbs:
Chances are they were being tutored in preparation for the Primary School Leaving Certificate Examination!
Dedicated Garifuna teachers that only wanted the best for their students!!
Sandra Brown:
Back then as soon as graduation from high school you were qualified to teach. Not only the garifuna was deployed to the villages but also people of different cultures’. My cousin Mundo was teaching up cirque sarco area , Faustian and Marva to San Antonio and Columbia, Marsden Skeen from Belize distinct and many more thought in the Maya villages and thought for many years some of them even retired from the village. I was one of the few who was lucky to be assigned to stay in town to teach but I left for the US instead. All great teachers and pillars of the community.
Photographs courtesy Jeremy Enriquez
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