Is The Speech Over Yet?
The students at the Aibatkhil Girl's School grand opening were pretty well behaved for a bunch of kids being forced to sit through a series of local politicians making speeches...
The younger ones were only a little bit squirmy - I had to smile at their efforts to stay still.
Of course we were a bit of a curiosity too.
I remember how proud the people of Aibatkhil were that their girls would be receiving an education. I think the CERP funds spent on the school were worth it - every penny of them.
posted by LTC John at 8:03 AM
3 Comments:
Yes, every penny.
I remember seeing a photo of a school in Afghanistan that consisted of nothing but a classroom marked out on the soil with rocks. It was worth a thousand words in showing how much the Afghani people value education for their children.
Was it posted on your blog, Major J?
Not that particular one - but if you look back a little while, you can see that we replaced a tent that was serving as a school for hundreds. Schools were the number one request we had for reconstruction work, just ahead of wells. I admired the people of the area - their first instinct was to make life better for their children. They could have asked for things that would have helped them first - public works type stuff, etc. - but they didn't. Bless 'em.
I got requests for schools too. Unfortunately that wasn't my job. I had to send them to other people and yet they still came asking.
One of the things that I felt best about was they mostly asked for schools for girls. I think the boys were first priority and got what was available. That meant that new things had to be built for the girls.
Think about this: In Khowst the women wore full burkas, the girls and boys had to go to school in seperate schools, but the important thing is they WANTED the GIRLS to go to school.
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