St. John Bosco Boys Home
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 24/Feb/2011 12:49, 34 days ago
Yesterday I went on a chartered Coaster bus to Mandeville to visit the St. John Bosco Boys Home. This is a very special orphanage where all the boys have very poor beginnings in life but by the time they turn 18 and are ready to leave they will have been educated to their highest intellectual level plus will have learned a valuable trade. The orphanage is self-sufficient. It has a greenhouse and raises chickens, sheep and pigs which are slaughtered and butchered on site by the boys in training. So the resident boys are well-fed as well as well-trained in a variety of fields such as catering, renting dishes for events, animal husbandry and butchering. The meat they produce is enjoyed by Jamaicans island wide.After stepping off the bus it took Delphine all of 2 seconds to climb into the nearest tree. She's a magnet to trees.At the beginning of the tour we were joined by one of the residents who said he was 5 years old and in all honesty he was not much taller than a 5 year old, but Sister smiled and said, no, he is 40, their oldest resident. This loveable man is unable to be turned out into the real world but is able to follow instructions albeit on his own terms which work for everyone involved. Sister mentioned how one day she asked him to pick up a piece of paper and he replied he'd do it tomorrow. When she asked him again, he said "I told you, I'll do it tomorrow." Sister agreed that was a solution she could live with and left the paper for him to pick up the next day.The orphanage was comprised of a collection of colourful buildings, many with professsionally crafted Disney graphics.Laundry for 160 boys would be a huge on-going job.Sister Mimi pointed out the absolute silence of the boys when we passed through the classrooms. It was so quiet in every room you could hear their pencils on paper as they performed their written exercises. Even when the boys were lined up for lunch (below), they stood at arms length from each other, arms outstretched and resting on the shoulder of the boy in front before filing into the cafeteria at equa-distance and sitting down to eat as neatly and quietly as they entered. These are boys who all had particularly difficult beginnings in life, without St. John Bosco, we can only guess where they would be today.Some of the boys in the new computer room. This is of course a very popular class. While below is the lesson for the day in one of the younger classrooms.After touring the school and dormitories we were invited to visit the piggery. Half the group didn't come because of the anticipated smell. But in all honesty, it wasn't bad at all because of the ventilation. No need for windows and heating to keep the pigs warm in Jamaica. Those of us who went to the piggery probably missed out on the kitchen and catering facilities, but I think we had more fun.The pigs above are about 20 weeks old. This one is drinking some water.We all know very well that the only person to pick up a piglet would be Delphine. She put it down quicker than she picked it up because when its mother noticed she was holding it she created a bit of a fuss. Delphine quietly spoke to the mother to reassure her she had returned the piglet to her litter and all was OK.I have never been in an orphanage, nor have I been in a one gender or boarding school before so the experience was completely foreign to me. At first I found the quietness unnaturally disturbing, I live next to Campion College, a school of high achievers, where I hear the sounds of laughter and chatter and practicing the recorder on a daily basis. The sounds come from the outdoor areas and within the classrooms themselves. St. John Bosco is the extreme opposite, but the results are amazing. I understood from our tour that St. John Bosco children are lucky to achieve grade 5 education even when they are 18, they are special needs children, learning as much as they can plus gaining a skill. It was a great pleasure to have been given the opportunity to visit Bosco and see the wonderful results.http://boscohome.tripod.com/