Julie's trip to Quetta - Day 3

(if you have not read the prologue or days 1 and 2, scroll down the page and start from there)

Next morning after a very short night's sleep and without any breakfast, as I was still stuffed from the previous evening, we set off to see the other Afghan Educational Trust sponsored school.

On the way we made a detour to see a school that was run by another lady, who hearing that I was coming for a visit from the UK, had come to see me and ask if I would visit her school. She asked this with a view that she may be able to seek some funding to help her school, which had been running in the same location for the last 15 years.

At this school I again I saw a very committed teaching staff, teaching a coeducational school of 150 children in the morning session and 175 more children in the afternoon. It was, as you can see from the pictures, a similar story of very cramped classrooms. But even with few resources and facilities, everyone was so delighted to have the chance to learn. The headmistress and staff were very grateful that I had taken the time to visit them.

It was only a few minutes in the car from here to the second AET school. I thought it would be good to video the drive up to the school but was horrified to find that the video camera didn’t seem to be working. I couldn’t see anything on the screen at all. As this was only the third time I had used it I was most concerned. I tried to keep calm and offered up a small prayer as the technology often seems to bite you at the crucial moments. After pressing several buttons and with lots of advice from Shahzada and Faheem, neither of whom had used a video camera before, it seemed to miraculously start working again.

This was extremely fortuitous for what I was about to witness, as we opened the gate to the school, could not have been adequately described in words. The whole school had assembled to meet me and there was a corridor of girls waving flowers in greeting. I don’t think I have ever been so greeted before. As we entered we were ushered to a prepared seating area in front of the whole school of perhaps 200. Children offered words of welcome, verses from the Koran were sung and the headmistress gave an address which Shahzada translated, listing the her requests for the future expansion of the school.

From this it did seem that it would be polite for me to make a response. So thinking on my feet, I made an unplanned speech which I hoped would encourage both the staff and the children. This was translated by Shahzada to the headmistress who then translated it into the particular form of Dari the children spoke. It took a while to get through the few words I had to say.

After this Shahzada and I were presented with gifts of traditional Afghan vases and flowers. I had thankfully brought my own gifts of Indian tea for the head teachers, so the exchange was in both directions. I was then asked to present the annual stationary gifts to some of the children. They were called up to the front to a round of applause as I handed over books and pencils.

Throughout all this the children had sat on the hard floor very attentively and I am sure were quite pleased when they were told they could stand up. They all crowded around and those that spoke English were anxious to say hello to me. They all seemed very happy as you can see from these pictures.

Jamilla, the lady who was headmistress in this school, was a very committed person, entirely focussed on the need of the Afghan girls for education. Only recently she had visited Kabul as only one of two women in a delegation of ten people who met with Hamid Karzi, the President of Afghanistan, as leaders of education for Afghans in the Quetta area.

Her extraordinary commitment to education for the Afghans is born out through the fact that she has opened two additional schools in Quetta which we also visited that day. Neither of these is sponsored by the Afghan Educational Trust.

The first one, a mixed school, did have some provision for educating older children and she had received some funding from ‘Moslem Hands’. They had provided the luxury of desks and chairs although again the school was very tightly packed with a total of 280 children.

In the next school, which was devoted to the education of boys, Jamilla had literally taken boys off the garbage tips, were they spent their time as rubbish pickers. Cleaning them up and offering them a chance to come to school.

It was at this school that again I was offered lunch with the staff and Jamilla reiterated the need for more funding to expand the AET girls school for the older children. It was clear that she had a number of children that would soon simply have to go back home as there were no staff or resources to continue their education.

I was quite drained from all that I had seen and heard this day and really wished that I was a very wealthy person who could make everything as it should be by giving the schools a big cheque that would change their lives right away. I resolved that when I got home I would re-double my efforts to support them. My mind since then has been buzzing with ideas and possible fund raising projects and I can’t wait to get home and get down to business.

On the way back to the hotel Shahzada asked if he could take me to visit his aunt who had helped bring him up. His mother had died when he was quite young. She was obviously very special to him and he was very keen that I meet her. From the aunt’s house we then dropped into his house so that he could introduce me to his wife, who I suspected was a bit nervous about meeting me. I was due to go to Shahzada’s house for dinner that night. I think she wanted to see me before I arrived. I also met their children’s pet sheep.

I had been invited back to Faheem’s house in the early evening but they knew that I was going to Shahzada’s house for dinner, so it would only be a short visit! At Faheem’s house more aunties were assembled to meet me and all the family came to sit with me as we again had lots of tea and cakes.

I had intended to wear the shalwa kameez that they had given me but the top was too tight. I explained this to Faheem’s mother who promptly went into her wardrobe and bought out another which I then had to try on and wear for the rest of the evening. It was a very elaborately embroidered orange outfit with lots of small mirrors sown onto it.

One of Faheem’s sisters, who had visited the doctors on both days of my stay and had just been diagnosed with malaria, was very keen to show me how body henna was applied. I duly supplied my fingernails, which are now painted with the dye and I have a small design on my left foot, which Sammy has taken quite an exception too!

Whilst in the middle of the henna application Faheem had a phone call to say that Jamilla, the headmistress I had met in the morning, wanted to come and see me again as she had something she wanted to give me. She arrived with a written proposal summarising all that she had said in the morning to make sure that her case for more funding was fully documented. You really have to admire her dedication.

After she left it was time for the next lot of tea and cakes to be consumed. Thankfully everyone else seemed quite keen to join me today and it wasn’t left just to me to do all the eating. However there was a huge number of different things that needed to be tried.

At about 9pm it was time to leave to go to Shahzada’s house for dinner. Everyone seemed very sorry to see me go and they all want me to come back and see them with the rest of my family.

It was only a short drive to Shahzada’s house which he informed me was the one that he had lived in since he had been born 43 years ago. As with many Pakistani’s houses, he shared this one with his brother’s family, who had three sons. Shahzada had four sons and one daughter as well as an orphan boy that they had taken in at the age of seven who was now sixteen. Shahzada’s sister-in-law's father also lived with them. So it was quite a large household!

When I arrived all the adults in the house came to greet me but I was told that the children were too shy to come out. However after half and hour they had all decided they didn’t want to miss out practicing their English and I was soon surrounded by five children all eager to tell me about their school and what they knew about the world. They all attended fee paying church schools in Quetta.

Shahzada, because of his job as a journalist writing for a number of papers and magazines both in Pakistan and abroad as a freelance, was actually quite well paid in comparison to many people in the area and this was evident but the number of people he was supporting in this family.

The children started talking about all the books they liked to read. It turned out that their favourite story was the Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. This is also one of Julian’s and Sammy’s favourite stories so we had much to talk about. They took great delight in showing the small number of books that they owned. They were all very old and battered. They had Treasure Island, Cinderella and Midsummer Nights Dream and that was it for English books.

They children all enjoyed sitting around talking with their parents and their visitors. Although they did have a television, they didn’t have a computer (not surprisingly) and it was for me, refreshing to meet children who didn’t spend masses of time discussing the merits of different computer games. Our conversations covered all sorts of different topics and both mine and their lives were touched by our exchanges.

At 11.30pm dinner was served sitting on the floor as usual. Hot spicy chicken soup which made my lips very tingly, two sorts of chicken, fish, rice, chapattis, vegetables , pickles and of course lots of sweet green tea.

The evening finished just after 1am when the three oldest children accompanied me back to the hotel so they could see what it was like. It was a different guard that evening and I didn’t get into trouble for being out late again!

The end of day 3.