Marga Flader and Tanja Khorrami reporting from their October-visit
Afghanistan –failed state, dominated by war, terror, corruption and economically without hope, dependent on foreign help, with everyone worried about the future, especially after the irregularities in the last election …???
Yes, all this is true: But there is so much more to tell - about the people and their life in the towns and vil-lages. Much has happened during the last years. Many big and small roads have been built; the traffic is start-ing to work according to rules. Electrification is reaching more places and is mostly available 24 hours/day. Water is still a problem; however, also this problem is being tackled. The pump stations and pipes from the Amu Darya to the northern region of Andkhoi are almost completed. Now the people are waiting for the next project – getting their houses connected to the water supply. Then drinking water which is not salty would be available. The weather was also merciful this year: The harvests were good. All this gives rise to hope, pro-vided that security does not worsen. There are no signs for improvement at the moment; the many check-posts at the roadsides make it obvious: The country is not safe.
Of course, also the people in Andkhoi feel this, however, right now the situation seems calmer here than in other places. Lots of construction projects are going on: houses, schools, roads, shops and petrol stations. Every day there are wedding parties with music till late in the night. We took also part in a wedding party. Rahmanqul’s son married a girl from Andkhoi and celebrated there together with his friends. It was a nice celebration. Everyone was remembering our beloved friend and regional director who was murdered 2 ½ years ago. It made us glad to learn during this visit that finally the Khancharbagh High School would be named in his honour. Also two more schools will bear the names of two other headmasters who were mur-dered in the last two years.
We spent 12 days in Andkhoi which gave us enough time to see many schools and other projects. We were very impressed by the many young people (130 boys and 60 girls) who do not only attend the schools, but also take part in English or computer courses starting at 7 o’clock in the morning and after school go to classes in our education centre (EC) for extra tuition in Dari, English, mathematics, physics, chemistry and religion in preparation of the university entry exams. We found the students tremendously open, inquisitive, determined and critical and at the same time thankful for the chance for additional tuition at our education centre. In the hands of such young men and women the future of Afghanistan will certainly look different than in the past.
We could see how necessary it is to continue the support when we went to the state schools. Some schools are really excellent, teachers and students are giving their best; there is a good working atmosphere, the buildings are well looked after, different cultural activities are organised and sports clubs are working well. Unfortu-nately, there are also some schools which have a good building but the lessons are not so useful. Text books are missing, there are not enough teachers or the teachers are not qualified enough. Most students who leave school after 12th grade get a job as a teacher if they do not pass the university entry test. The need for teachers is still great because every year many more children start school. However, as the tuition of these young teachers had been flawed because of the years of war, they cannot pass on any more to their students than that contained in the textbooks. We met teachers who were teaching English without having learned English them-selves. These young teachers attend teacher training college in the afternoon and only after completion of this three years’ course they are entitled to receive their full salary. In a meeting the responsible heads of education at district level promised to support the schools in their endeavours to get extra help from the education offices in Kabul (capital) and Maimana (province). They were grateful for the new school building which we could inaugurate during our visit.
The Parents-Teacher-Associations (PTA) now take care of small repairs of the school buildings: They replace broken window panes, put a layer of mud on the mud roofs to waterproof them, paint walls and fill small holes. For some repairs they have asked us to provide the material while they organise the labour. For bigger repairs we were asked to carry out the repairs, i.e. termites have attacked some schools buildings and we shall have to replace the wooden windows with metal ones. In some villages new schools buildings are needed. In Galikhana for example more than 400 girls are taught in four rooms which they themselves call „stable“. In summer they are sitting under the trees. The committed principal promised to build a boundary wall with the help of the villagers around the new school plot. We shall try to obtain the necessary funds for a new school building. In another village the situation is similar. Here too the villagers would be very happy to get a new school building and they promised to help as much as they can.
In some remote areas, where some years ago the girls where hiding their faces behind their scarves, we now met very open-minded inquisitive young girls who demanded better lessons, more teaching material and more support. Some of them are now attending teacher training college. They start from grade 10 and after five years they will be a qualified teacher. It is obvious that they have the support of their fathers – something which we could not imagine some years ago. Many girls together with their mothers and aunts came to the „women’s day“ which took place on 8 October in our education centre. They enjoyed their chats, played games or took part in sports activities. In a very nice ceremony certificates were handed out to the students of our home courses, computer and English courses.
We enjoyed very much our visits to some families in the district of Khancharbagh where we had organised our first „chicken project“. After some theoretical training 23 families received 20 chickens each for which they had built some houses from mud. The women were very hopeful to be earning their own money from selling eggs in the near future. On this day we could see again with our own eyes: The endeavours of our committee are bearing fruit, even if it takes some time. We hope that you will continue your support of our projects.
In Mazar-e-Sharif we visited four schools during our three day stay. The school in Chooghdak was already using four of the newly built classrooms although the building was not finished yet. During the break the stu-dents were crowding the playground which was fitted out with new swings, seesaws and climbing frames during the summer.
The principal of the agricultural school where we have almost finished the last of our construction projects (school building, dormitory and kitchen/dining room) told us enthusiastically that he had just received a letter that the school has now been promoted to an Agricultural Institute. This means that from now on the students can attend the institute from grade 10 to grade 14 after which they would have a very good chance of getting a job in agriculture or administration.
At present we are constructing a double story building for another school, Maqsadullah Shaheed with the fi-nancial help of the German Foreign Ministry. We were impressed by the quality of this school, however, not only us, but also the representative of the Foreign Office who accompanied us; especially the young chemistry teacher impressed us. She openly talked about her problems and asked for a laboratory for the school which, we think, would be a good investment for this school where only well qualified teachers teach the 972 girls and 856 boys.
The representative of the Foreign Ministry also accompanied us to the Nahr-e-Top Girls School which urg-ently needs a building for their more than 3000 students and 60 teachers. The land is available and the princi-pal promised to build the boundary wall around the 6000 m² plot with the help of the parents.
For the many projects and new schools we shall need quite a lot of money in the next years. Even if we re-ceive financial help from the German government, our committee needs to bear 25 % of the project costs from private donations. We trust that you will – as always – continue your support to enable us to continue our work.
With best regards
Marga Flader Tanja Khorrami
Marga Flader and Ingrid Fraser report from their trip in May 2009
Dear Friends
After the drought of last year which brought a lot of suffering upon the poor people, we saw a lot of fresh green during this trip. In the garden of our Education Centre were lots of beautiful roses which were looked after well in memory of Rahmanqul, our murdered regional director, who had planted them. The downside of the plentiful rain: flooding and destroyed houses. We saw tents made from plastic sheets and carpets in which the victims have to live until the water recedes and they can start rebuilding their houses.
In Mazar-e-Sharif we visited the school in Chooghdak, which we built in 2002 and which is getting a second floor at present, the agricultural school where two buildings will be finished pretty soon, and the Maqsadullah Shaheed High School for Boys and Girls where a 8 classroom school building is under construction. As always, we were satisfied with the construction works. Not only we were satisfied, but also the students and the teachers are grateful for this help.
In one of the schools, a school headmistress was waiting for us. She asked if we could come and have a look at her school and we did: 2400 girls are being taught in an old derelict building, one ruin and many torn tents. The headmistress has already managed to obtain land for a new school building but all requests to NGOs or the government have so far been in vain. The open minded girls and lady teachers (who are all well educated) really impressed us.
In Andkhoi we again visited the Daulat Gildi Fidayee School for boys and girls in Andkhoi who are being taught in the hallway, in small side buildings and rented rooms. They were a bit disappointed to hear that we have not managed to collect the money for their school so far. We want to build a second floor and are looking for sponsors. A primary school in Germany has already organised a sponsored run and “earned” EUR 5000. We also visited a building site for a boys’ lycee. As usual, it looked good and we expressed our thanks to our construction manager and his good team. The foundation stones had already been delivered for the next school where construction should start soon.
We also went to see some of our own educational projects and some schools in the four districts which have a partnership with a German school in order to see if they still need help. Recently, we supplied notebooks to all students of the 47 schools in the four districts. Our carpentry workshop is regularly making tables and benches which we give to the state schools. However, we still saw children sitting on the floor. Naturally, we were asked for further help: rooms for a library, new classrooms for those students who do not have a proper school building and also for the many girls and boys have been enrolled in first grade. Our help is still urgently needed.
Our courses in our education centre are particularly important: The preparatory courses for university, the computer and English coursers and the carpentry workshop are all running well. The carpentry trainees are in their second year right now and they were busy making a wall-to-wall cabinet for the teachers’ room of our education centre. We had meetings with the teachers and students of our preparatory courses. Since our last visit, they had elected a new students’ council. We told the students to pass questions on to their representatives so that we could discuss their ideas with them. In this way we hope to promote democracy at grassroots level. We had very good discussions; the young men and women were very happy to talk with us. It was important for us to hear their views about the recent changes. They confirmed to us that the courses were useful and suggested that we introduce a new Dari/Pashtu department because they had problems with these two official languages of Afghanistan as their native tongue was either Uzbek or Turkmen. Another complaint concerned one of the teachers and they requested outings to interesting places in Afghanistan. We can, of course, understand such (even unrealistic) requests, however, we could not fulfil these wishes as on the one hand the security situation does not allow any outings right now and on the other hand we obviously cannot use your donation in this way. But it was very nice to see that these young people are really interested in the running of their Education Centre. We are sure that it would be such young people who bring the change Afghanistan needs so urgently.
The students of our home courses (courses in private homes where young girls and women are prepared for attending state schools from grade 7) told us their wish: being able to attend the Yuldoz Lycee in Andkhoi.
The students of the sewing courses were busy working for the “bazaar” which was to take place on the first “Women’s Day” in our Education Centre. All female students and teachers were invited and they could bring their mothers and friends. They had been told that they could sell homemade food and clothes and other small things. Approximately 200 girls and women came. In four classrooms some of them offered their handicraft, finger food and also cosmetics. They played table football, basket ball and skipped in the three small gardens. Others borrowed books in our library and sat down on the grass to start reading immediately. Everyone was happy and lively. The girls of the English courses enjoyed long conversations with us. We are always surprised about their excellent knowledge of the English language. It was a very nice day and the best day of the trip. We hope that these „Women’s Days“ will take place in our education centre in future, too. We leave it to the women themselves to organize their day.
During our three weeks in Afghanistan, we had many discussions with our employees. They organise and implement our projects. Not all problems can be solved by mail and telephone and, therefore, these visits are very important. Especially in our jubilee year we ask ourselves if changes in our work are needed. We will continue our discussions in Germany and Afghanistan along our code of conduct which we set out some time ago.
It is not easy to obtain the funds for the construction of school buildings. Even if our proposals to the BMZ (German Ministry for International Cooperation and Development) or from the State of Schleswig-Holstein are successful, we still have to bear a 25 % share from donations. So we hope very much that you will continue to support us to enable us to continue our support for the children of Afghanistan.
We would be very happy to meet you at our jubilee celebrations on 4 and 5 September 2009 in Hamburg.
With kind regards
Marga Flader Ingrid Fraser
For futher information you can contact us as follows:
Afghanistan-Schulen, Deefenallee 21, 22113 Oststeinbek
E-Mail: info@Afghanistan-Schulen.de
Tel. ++49 40 712 24 67 or 713 83 01 (Marga und Klaus Flader)
or Tel. ++49 / 4541 / 80 20 90 (Helga Schumacher)
Fax ++49 40 713 83 04
