Sorry I did not post last night, I am exhausted. I am not here as a tourist but to work (volunteer).
If you want to catch up on my series, here are the first 5 diaries.
Dispatch 1 Dispatch 2 Dispatch 3 Dispatch 4 Dispatch 5
I want to tell you about some young women who I met today and a bit about their lives and stories.
They graduated our school (we go up to 7th grade) and are now in high school, 11th or 12th grade.
They are the reason I am here.
This is the school:
These are some graduates of our school. Bet you cannot guess which one is me...
The woman with the black scarf next to me is our Director of Education, and the Headmaster of this school is the older woman in gray with a white scarf. They are amazing women and the students just love them.
These girls are no longer in our school but in high school. They really would have preferred to stay in our school but we have not yet raised the budget to go up to 12th grade, though we would like to.
Before I tell you their stories, here are some girls in our first grade class learning how to embroider. They were very excited to see the graduates!
The graduates told me about what they want to do, and a bit about their lives. Many lived in Iran for years and either did not get to go to school at all, or only for a short time. There is some kind of deal there where they can only go for a few years then Iran says no. One big thing they liked about coming to our school is we offered English, which was not offered to them in Iran.
One of the girls who is now in 12th grade (not sure how old she is, but would guess about 18) is already married with a child. She is a lucky one, her mother-in-law (she lives with her husband's family, which is the norm) is insisting she finish high school and even go to college. This is not common, and she is very happy to have this situation.
Many want to be doctors. Not only because it is so prestigious, but because they have seen their mothers suffer not going to a doctor because there were no female doctors available, and the Taliban did not allow them to go to a male doctor. Yes, the Taliban were and are truly evil doers.
Quite a few wanted to be journalists and/or TV broadcasters. There are many women here doing the news, I even saw one the other day doing the sports!
They think this is a important job because they think the only way their nation will be better is if people understand what the government is doing, etc. Pretty smart girls.
One wants to be a police officer, one a lawyer (to assure equal rights for all, including women), and several wanted to be teachers because they thought their teachers at our school were so nice. That was a good thing for me to hear!
If anyone reading this ever thought that the Afghans did not believe in education for their girls, I can assure you it is not always the case. In fact, as the fathers learn that they can graduate and earn money to help the family, they decide to send the younger sisters to school too! Funny how that works our huh?
Though I am tired after a long day at the school and finally a chance to do a bit of shopping (I got a great lapis and silver necklace/bracelet set and a couple of Afghan style blouses for under $50 (most was the necklace and bracelet, the blouses were $6 each with recycled embroidery from Gazni province Afghanistan!) I feel so happy to have met these girls.
I leave you with a couple other pictures from today (you would not believe how long I have sat here to upload these, boy is the web slow here):
This picture is educating kids about due process. The police are not allowed to just take you to jail for no reason, but they must explain the charges. In this case they are accusing the man of stabbing someone. It bothers me, but I see a lot of violence like this. But unfortunately the kids here are used to that, and not from TV shows!
And this is a drawing by one of our students which depicts a woman in a burqua who is locked out a school.