A resourceful Maryknoll priest supports an education project for children in Bolivia.
Growing up in South Dakota, young Paul Sykora came up with an innovative way to get around his family’s farm. “I would take the motor off a lawn mower and put it on my bike,” he says.
Nowadays, Maryknoll Father Sykora nurses the engine of a 1985 Volkswagen Beetle. This beat-up but reliable vehicle takes him up the mountainous roads of Zona Sur, an arid, underdeveloped area on the southern outskirts of the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia.
There the missioner serves some of the region’s poorest children in a Maryknoll project called Apoyo Escolar (School Support), which offers afterschool tutoring and a nutritious meal to this vulnerable population.
Father Sykora — “Padre Pablo,” as he is known — is the heart of Apoyo Escolar, says Jhovana Reyes. An accountant by training, Reyes coordinates the program, which last year served 160 pupils. Apoyo Escolar reaches students in their own neighborhoods, and she and Father Sykora make the rounds to each of its three sites.
Their first stop is the local public elementary school of Lomas de Santa Bárbara. The principal provides classroom space and a sheltered outdoor area for the Maryknoll project.
Beatriz Beltrán has been a facilitator (as the tutors prefer to be called) in the Apoyo Escolar program for seven years. Teachers appreciate the extra help, Beltrán says. “They let us know what subjects the students are falling behind in.”
Ezequiel, for example, needs help with reading, she says. His classmate Francisco has to practice writing.
But the staff of Apoyo Escolar are familiar with more than their pupils’ academic needs. Zona Sur is home to a burgeoning population of poor Bolivians — mostly Indigenous — who have come to Cochabamba in search of work.
Reyes discreetly points out one girl, whose mother is handicapped. Another child lives with only his father after his mother abandoned the family. Two siblings are being raised by their grandmother since their parents emigrated.
The project provides a welcoming place for them. “Sometimes the children don’t want to leave,” Reyes says. She and Father Sykora deliver meals cooked by her mother, Severina Reyes, who prepares a soup, pasta or another dish for the children.
Then it is on to the next site, and Father Sykora’s hardy little VW Beetle heads toward the hills.
The Apoyo Escolar project started almost two decades ago at Nueva Vera Cruz chapel.
Sister Maribel Crispín Egúsquiza, of the Misioneras Parroquiales del Niño Jesús de Praga (Parish Missionaries of the Infant of Prague), was a catechist there at the time. She says that she and others simply started providing activities and helping children with homework. Jhovana and her sister Milenka Luján, also a facilitator, were among the youth who received both sacraments and support — and stayed on to help.
When the municipality stopped providing a small stipend for supplies, Sister Crispín explains, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers — who were ministering at the chapel — took up the program in 2009. The project flourished under Father Francis Higdon and Father Sykora. Over the years, other priests, seminarians, brother candidates and lay missioners have served with Apoyo Escolar. The largest of the program’s three sites is a neighborhood center built by the late Father Higdon with several classrooms and a spacious patio.
Diego Santiago Berrios Galarza, 16, attended Apoyo Escolar from 6 years old until high school. He says that his tutors helped him to stay in school: “They teach us well. They motivate us to do better.”
With one more stop to make to complete today’s rounds, Father Sykora downshifts the Beetle’s grinding gears as it leaves the pavement to chug intently up a dirt road.
“If you’ve got a rosary, I suggest you get it out now,” he tells his passengers wryly.
Further up the mountainside, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers built a small tutoring center in Alto Monte Rancho, a new settlement that is home to the Zona Sur’s most recently arrived — and poorest — families. Many residents lack running water, sewer services or electricity.
The children were coming from higher and higher up in the hills, Reyes recalls. So, she explains, “Instead of making them come to us, we had to go to them.”
Father Sykora arrives at the two-room structure with an ample playground. Facilitators Sabina Mamani Ortega and Rosario Moreno take a break from their respective groups of about 20 students to greet him.
Mamani, a Quechua-speaking catechist who lives nearby, has worked with Apoyo Escolar for 11 years. She says people are receptive to the project because it is associated with the Church.
Working as day laborers or street vendors, the children’s parents have little time to help their children with homework, Mamani says. Furthermore, she continues, few parents have gone to school beyond second or third grade, and many do not read or write Spanish.
The population is transient, with high rates of family disintegration. “About half of the children are from single fathers or mothers,” she says.
In early January, when registration opens for the new school year, the spots fill up within two or three days, Mamani says.
She explains the meaning of the words Tikuna Wasi painted in a mural outside the center. The students’ Quechua-speaking mothers chose the name, she says. “They wanted Tikuna Wasi, which means ‘house of encounter.’ It fit very well.
“We have earned the trust of the people,” she adds.
Facilitator Sabina Mamani Ortega (standing) leads an afterschool session at Tikuna Wasi, a tutoring center built for a marginalized community by the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers as part of the Apoyo Escolar program. (Adam Mitchell/Bolivia)
Father Sykora, 79, has spent most of his life with Indigenous people. He grew up among South Dakota’s Native American reservations. “We were relatives and neighbors,” he says. Outside of his tight-knit community of 95 people, he became aware of discrimination against Native Americans.
While the young Sykora was in the seminary, his father died suddenly. The missioner took time off from his studies to run the family’s farm. He also pursued training in aviation.
Ordained in 1976, Father Sykora served for 25 years in Chile, most of that time with the Mapuche Indigenous people.
In addition to exercising priestly ministry, the hands-on missioner started a dairy farm, fixed windmills, built chapels and provided transportation for medical needs. He has driven various types of vehicles and piloted planes and boats.
Wherever he serves, Father Sykora says, he feels most at home in small rural communities where people define themselves through their kinship with one another. In mission, relationships are what is most important, he says. “Projects can be a failure, but people are changed by knowing you.”
Jhovana Reyes says that Padre Pablo belongs to her family in Zona Sur. Her daughters Saraí, 11, and Khyara, 4, are Father Sykora’s goddaughters.
The plainspoken priest summarizes bluntly his five decades of service.
“I said, ‘I’ll follow you, Jesus — but show me the way,’” Father Sykora recalls. “And he did.”
However, he continues, mission is not for the faint of heart.
“Sometimes, you don’t follow,” he says. “Jesus pushes you.”
Featured Image: Maryknoll Father Paul Sykora, shown with pupils and facilitators at a tutoring center on a mountainside in Cochabamba, Bolivia, is the heart of Maryknoll’s Apoyo Escolar program. (Adam Mitchell/Bolivia)
