Back in 2006, Louis Lynch Secondary School was under the microscope because of environmental problems that staff and students were complaining about.
Since the school’s closure seven years ago, there has been an apparently high number of cancer deaths among former teachers and students and many more have been diagnosed with cancer or other debilitating diseases. An environmental study found a high level of a chemical linked to cancer on the compound of the school.
Over the next couple of weeks, the SUNDAY?SUN will be speaking to some of the victims of cancer and parents of children who have died and who have long called for further investigations into the matter.
On her?dying bed Nassoma Jelani held her mother’s hand and asked her if she felt her illness had anything to do with the Louis Lynch Secondary School.
It was a question which Ireka Jelani could not answer; she couldn’t even get a direct response from Nassoma’s doctors.
Seven years after her daughter’s death from ovarian cancer, the question, as well as her death, still haunts this deeply religious Rastafarian mother.
Commenting on the number of former students who have died since her daughter, Jelani asked: “How many more?” as she pleaded with the authorities to do something.
“Based on reports of other young people in recent times who have passed away or [who] are ill, whether teachers or ancillary staff, I think it is high time that the authorities take it more seriously,” she said, as she took a break from farming her land in St Andrew to speak to the SUNDAY?SUN.
The mother of three other children recalled how her daughter fell ill shortly after celebrating her 20th birthday; and in three short months she was dead.
“The thing that is freaking me out, and they say everybody has to die at some point, but as soon as they are diagnosed, quick so the person pass away.
“You got healthy children and then in the twinkling of an eye they come down with a symptom and in a matter of months they gone. I think this a tragic loss of valuable young lives. I don’t know. I cannot accuse. I cannot say for sure but there is a high possibility that the environmental issues relating to that school might play a significant role or is a significant factor in losing these young lives,” she said.
Jelani was among the many parents who marched back in 2006 to the Ministry of Education, to agitate for something to be done about the school after many students and teachers continued to fall ill.
Ironically, it was her then 11-year-old son, Kweku, a first-form student of the school, who was experiencing health problems. Her daughter Nassoma had already left Louis Lynch and was at the University of the West Indies studying for a bachelor’s degree.
“I was one that marched to the Ministry. My son was the one who took ill at the time. When he first went to Louis Lynch he was coming home with headaches, nausea, burning eyes – it was he and some more students from the school. I took him to the doctor and quickly after the school was closed . . . . ”
While her son, who is now 20, no longer experiences these symptoms, Jelani said she constantly monitors him because of what happened to her daughter.
“I remember Nassoma saying to me at the hospital, ‘Mummy, something wrong with that school. Mummy, something wrong with that school’. She even spoke to her doctors. She was asking them, ‘What about Louis Lynch?’ and they were saying unless it is a large amount of persons who went to that school that come down with illnesses, then they could deal with a correlation, but it can’t be just one or a few.
“But how many more?” Jelani cried. “That is my question, in order for something to be done. The school is closed, the laundry was burnt down and students and teachers still dying.”
Jelani also wants to know why all of the details of the scientific study which was conducted on the school were not made public. She also wants to know what became of the plans to have the students and teachers medically tested.
“I have not heard anything,” she said, shaking her head. “I am not dealing political when it comes to my children; I dealing with the lives of my children to try and live and be the best that they could be.”
And she further questioned why people who were affected were not coming forward to tell their stories.
“I don’t understand why people prefer to suffer in silence. My concern is that I have lost. I does try to live life for the other three that I have but this situation with Louis Lynch just would not go away. It is up to the authorities; it is up to parents; it is up to people that are suffering and all the social networks to see what can be done.”
And even though Jelani still feels that she did not get the necessary support when she voiced her concern about the school after her daughter’s death, she is still willing to be involved in any action which would help her answer her daughter’s dying question.
“Let me state this – no amount of money could bring back my daughter. She done already transcend and now is an ancestral spirit but there have other young people who are alive and suffering and if there is a probable cause that that school is the problem, something needs to be done about it.
“What needs to be done, I can’t tell you. How it is to be done I can’t say, but something needs to be done,” she said, adding that highlighting the issue was a good way of raising awareness.
“I am calling on some responsible person, someone with a heart, someone who has a conscience. Somebody really needs to tell us something.”
