The teacher who hitchhikes 200 kilometers every day to teach two children in the middle of the countryside in Uruguay

At the edge of the road, where Route 56 begins, she, wearing her white coat so they can identify her as a teacher, extends her right arm and shows her hand.

It’s eight o’clock on a freezing winter morning and María Domínguez, 29 years old, is standing at the entrance to the small town of Florida, 90 kilometers north of Montevideo, trying to get a driver to stop and offer her a ride.

You must be at the rural school in Paso de la Cruz del Yí before 10 am, 108 kilometers from homein the middle of nowhere, to teach Juliana, 4 years old, and Benjamin, 9, the only two students in that Uruguayan education center.

“They are children of families who live in the area and work in the fields,” he tells BBC Mundo.

María has no other way to get to school other than hitchhiking, which is known as “hitchhiking” in that South American country.

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“If penguins are adapted to the cold, why do they die of hypothermia?”

He doesn’t have his own car, and if he did, he wouldn’t be able to afford the fuel for such a long trip every day.

Yes, he has a motorcycle, but he says it’s impossible to make the whole trip on it. “I would never do it, it’s a lot of kilometers and on the first ride I destroy it. Moreover, the route is not in good condition,” he says.

In turn, he points out that there is a significant flow of large vehicles on these roads, making it dangerous for him to travel those more than 100 kilometers there and then 100 kilometers back on two wheels.

The problem doesn’t end there.

If I wanted to take public transportation, I would have to take two buses, the first one that leaves Florida at 6:15 AM and then another that is scheduled to leave at 9:00 AM. It happens at half past nine, so I wouldn’t arrive on time,” he explains.

For the return journey there is a bus line that only runs along the route past the school when the sun sets, and for the second journey there is no public transport until the next day.

A journey in four parts

María arrives at the starting point on a motorcycle and parks it in front of the door, next to a gas station. Sometimes he even leaves the key on. He knows it will be intact when he returns.

The motorcycle he uses in Florida is not his, but his partner’s. Since he doesn’t need it, he lends it to him so he can make the first part of his long daily journey.

There he waits for Noelia, a colleague who works at another nearby rural school.

If they stop someone to take them, they will first have to travel 31 kilometers to the east.

“The ones I have the most luck with are truck drivers,” he says.

It is also successful among people who work in the fields, and those who agree to wear it are almost always men.

After that first part, they get off at a parador in San Gabriel, a town of 172 inhabitants where the route they followed intersects another that runs from south to north of the country.

They then return to their position at the edge of the tarmac, looking for someone to lift them into their vehicle and put them on the map.

María has a journey of 63 kilometers ahead of her; Noelia descends a little earlier.

María says that sometimes the driver takes a detour or ends his journey earlier than necessary, forcing her to resort to the generosity of a third driver.

After 40 minutes of travel, she arrives at the Jazmín ranch, an estate where she meets Eco, as she calls her, ‘or La Guerrera, because she has been through so much…’.

“She never made a dirt road. “He started building dirt roads last year,” María says, as if personifying her.

Eco is a small motorcycle that his mother gave him when he turned 15.

“He gave me the choice between the party and the motorcycle, and I always thought that the motorcycle would serve me much more than a small party where I would spend a good night and that was it,” he recalls.

Now she is the one who takes her to the remote school every day.

Thanks to Umpiérrez, the landlord of the Jazmín ranch, you can leave the Eco indoors.

Access to rural areas

María completed her education degree in 2019. The following year saw the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and in-person classes were suspended in Uruguay, as they were around the world.

The first students to return to classrooms in May 2020 were from rural areas. That’s the reason María started as a substitute teacher in rural schools and the principals of the schools in the area shared their contact details when they had to cover the absence of permanent teachers.

“When they wrote to me, I first said yes and then asked how to get there,” he says.

But in both 2020 and 2021 he was able to take the bus to and from the schools where he had to teach.

“The hitchhiking experience started last year,” he says.

In 2022, she was assigned to another rural school, close to the current one, and it sometimes happened to her that no one wanted to take her when she returned and she had to return to school on a motorcycle before sunset.

In the dark it is impossible to travel on dirt and stone roads with an engine light that is very dim and cattle running loose in the field.

A second mother

María gets on the motorcycle, rides a mile up a winding dirt road where she passes another rural school, a train station abandoned since the 1990s and whose tracks are covered in grass, and it travels 12 miles until it arrives at 9 a.m. : 45, 9:50, with a short margin to open the premises and wait for the arrival of Juliana and Benjamín to start the class at 10 am.

Why would a school only be open for two children?

“There can be several reasons why that child has to go to that school: because he lives far away and the nearest school is that one; because of the work of the parents, who are allowed to leave the child there along the way; or that there is a ravine that grows on rainy days and that is the school you can go to,” the teacher responds.

The Paso de la Cruz del Yí school is built like a house with blocks and a gable roof. It has a classroom, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a small bedroom that no one uses now, but where María has a mattress and blankets in case she ever has to spend the night there.

Benja arrives with her mother, Carla, who was hired by the Public Education Administration in late March to clean and cook at the school.

Between the start of classes on March 6 and Carla’s arrival, in addition to academic duties, María also had to take care of cleaning and cooking for the children.

Every 15 days the teacher goes to the supermarket and buys food and cleaning products needed for her teaching center. Using a menu previously designed by nutritionists from the public administration, look for the ingredients with which Carla will then cook for the children and for herself.

Teaching two students of such different ages at the same time is not easy. While one has to learn to multiply and divide, the youngest cannot read or write.

Therefore, Start the class by talking about what the children want to say and then, as you continue with each other’s tasks, try to find ways in which you can both work together, even though the learning levels are different.

“With the same instruction, I can ask the little ones to draw and the older ones to write. If there is a craft job, I can add the big ones to the small ones,” he says.

“It would be a shame if every day were separated and everyone was in their own little bubble,” he adds.

The class schedule ends at 3 p.m., and they have an hour break halfway through to eat and play.

Because there are so few in school, things become very familiar.

“The children have told me more than once mother. It is inevitable because the bond is very close,” she says.

After the school closes, María returns to the farm in the Eco, leaves it under protection and goes back to the side of the road.

Waiting for the next ride.