Schneller School overcomes water crisis

The article appeared in the Spring 2010 edition of The Star in the East

Life in Khirbet Kanafar in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley presents many challenges, but last autumn the staff and pupils of the J L Schneller School faced a completely unexpected situation.

The day started as a typical Monday morning, with the students gathering in the beautiful autumn sunshine to sing the Lebanese national anthem. Soon, however, the staff discovered that there was no water supply to the school. 

The maintenance team arrived to sort the situation out, but hours passed and they could not find out what was going on. The situation started getting desperate – over five hundred people, most of them children, were without drinking water or toilet facilities. The Schneller Bakery, which provides bread and pastries to the local community, could not operate, and the kitchen staff were unable to cook the children's meals. The school was forced to close.

The school's water supply comes from its own spring on a nearby mountain, so the Principal, Rev. George Haddad, decided to go and investigate. He and the maintenance staff were puzzled to find that there was still plenty of water coming from the spring, and yet the reservoir a short distance further down the mountain was completely empty, even though the connecting pipe had only been renewed about a year before.

'This was very strange,' says Mr Haddad. 'The reservoir is always full after weekends because the children are away. On inspecting the drain pit, we found that the lock was broken and there was a fresh 30cm water mark on the wall, indicating that it was drained recently.’

A passer-by solved the mystery – a neighbour had been digging with a bulldozer and damaged the school's main water pipe, later burying it without fixing it. The neighbour wouldn't own up to causing the damage, so there was no option but for Schneller's maintenance team to rent an excavator and dig up the length of the pipe to find the break.

Locating the damage proved difficult until another neighbour admitted that he had seen what happened, and pinpointed where to dig. The pipe was quickly fixed, much to the relief of the staff and children, but this was not the end of the trouble – the following morning, the school still had no water. Back up the mountain, local people helped the maintenance crew identify three more damaged sections of pipe. They had to dismantle the whole lot and clean out the muddy water before patching them up temporarily and waiting for the reservoir to fill.

Meanwhile, rumours were spreading that the school's problems stemmed from an outbreak of the H1N1 virus, and worried parents were suspicious that the story about the water-pipes was just a cover-up. After a week of closure, the school was finally able to reopen, thanks to the hard work of the maintenance team and other staff who stayed on to help.

The school's adventures continued earlier this year when it was cut off by a snow storm. Teaching was disrupted because of travel difficulties, but all the staff responsible for the boarding students managed to report for duty. Many boarders were unable to return home for the weekend but the school kept in close touch with parents to reassure them that the children were being well looked after.

'We express our thanks to all our dedicated members of staff who challenged the storm to come and look after our children,' says Mr Haddad, 'especially the house-parents of the boarding department who worked continuously 24 hours a day.'

Mr Haddad and his team are hoping that the rest of 2010 will prove less eventful!

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