“
WITHOUT EDUCATION A PERSON CANNOT SEE RIGHT OR WRONG.
THEY CANNOT SEE THE WORLD.
”
A Kuchi girl peers through a hole in a tent. The word Kuchi comes from the Persian word for migration, and is used to describe groups of Afghan nomads. the open air, shielding their eyes from the hot sun and their papers from the constant wind and the ever-present dust.
They are here because of their parents, who pour every ounce of hope into this next generation.“ All the students who are going to Lokhai, their fathers are laborers and farmers and uneducated. Currently they are suffering and they don’ t want their children to suffer,” explains Wakil Karimi, director of CAI’ s partner organization Star of Knowledge( SKO).
Though Lokhai Primary School is a government school, CAI and SKO have provided support in the way of school supplies like stationery, books, uniforms, and blackboards. SKO donates temporary tents for classrooms to protect the children from the intensity of the sun and the unrelenting wind. In these harsh conditions tents sometimes last only four months, a necessary but temporary fix until stability improves and funding can be procured to build a permanent school.
On a visit to the village in 2016, the walls of recently delivered tents were already full of pictures and the scribbles of students practicing handwriting. Earlier this year those tents, shredded by the weather, were replaced again, but by the middle of summer even those tents were gone. The tough canvas is no match for the sun’ s bleaching rays and the wind, blasting the material with sand day and night until they are shredded beyond use.
The government can only support two teachers for the entire school, but they do the best they can to instruct their hundreds of charges. The headmaster left after last year and still has not been replaced. Each school day students arrive in shifts— boys in the morning and girls in the afternoon— take their seats on dusty carpets, and concentrate on their teachers. The conditions don’ t bother them; their only focus is on the lessons.
Last year the villagers were busy digging a well near the school to provide water for the students. A man in a Pakistani polo helmet with only a wooden rig and a rope was deep in the well, bringing up buckets of sand with the hope of reaching the water. By this year, the well’ s sides collapsed inward. Not to be deterred, the custodian brings water for the children from the well across the village. There are no bathrooms, which puts the girls in danger of bladder infections from waiting to go until they get home, but they keep coming, notebooks at the ready.
The hope of education brings out a resiliency and determination that helps these children rise above the difficulty of poverty, harsh weather, and lack of resources. However, the villagers know if the conditions were improved and they had access to more teachers and a headmaster, even more children in the growing village could attend classes.
THE JIRGA AT LOKHAI
Last year during CAI’ s visit to the primary school, a slow-moving group of men appeared on the rocky outcrop and made their way down to the school as the last classes were being dismissed. The men were the village elders and they had come to request a jirga, an official meeting, to talk with CAI about the desperate need for education.
Settled in a yellow tent, the elders began to tell the story of Lokhai, and the urgent need to educate their children.
The elders explained that they are the only old men in the village, all the rest died in the fighting,“ Each family has lost someone— a son, a brother, or someone disappeared, was killed, or disabled.” They are worried that, without education, the next generation of boys and men will have no choice but to follow their uncles and fathers,“ Without education children will go to the mountains and fight.”
32 | JOURNEY OF HOPE CENTRAL ASIA INSTITUTE