| Time's running out for Afghan school Globe and Mail
10/21/2003
By Hamida Ghafour
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A temporary arrangement to share hours evenly between boys and girls may end grade expectations MAZAR-E-SHARIF - The Khorasan High School is known as the school with one wall. On the west side of the playground is a long, low, brick wall left abandoned after the man was to fund the school, northern Afghan warlord Atta Mohammad, decided he did not have enough money to complete the project. It now lies abandoned, a reminder of the lost opportunity for the 3,000 girls who come here every morning for lessons in 11 dusty UN-provided tents, which they share with boys who study in the afternoons. "Always the boys fight with us and say 'This is our school and you are disturbing us,' " said Najla Rufy, 17, as she walks on the hard-baked earth cracking around the playground equipment. "If we had walls then they wouldn't disturb us. We have land, but no school." The families of Mazar-e-Sharif and the surrounding villages have been sending their daughters to study at the Khorasan boys school almost since the day the Taliban government fell. For two years, the girls have studied in the morning, the boys in the afternoon, while a separate girls' school was to be built. But the agreement runs out in December, and the girls will have to leave. There never was enough room for so many students, the school explains. The result will be more tents for the girls, possibly pitched in an open field or desert, unless a German aid agency carries through with plans for a new school. Up to 60 girls already crowd into each canvas tent located in the school yard. A small blackboard is used for lessons. There are no doors to protect against the elements and no chairs or desks. A garbage dump sits next to the water well and the graves of two Taliban victims are near the children's slide. The students are worried the open nature of the school makes it a target for bombs, intended or otherwise. After all, Mazar-e-Sharif is rife with factional fighting. But despite the bleak conditions, the girls are eager to learn. One of the few success stories of President Hamid Karzai's transitional government is that the number of children attending school is the highest it has ever been in Afghanistan's history. There are four million young Afghans attending 7,000 schools this autumn, including one million girls, an astonishing figure considering that only two years ago, the Taliban banned education for females. But education of girls in Mazar was not completely abandoned during the Taliban era, thanks to the efforts of Rabia Rushan-Ayobi, a teacher of the local language, Dari. She set up a secret school in her home knowing that if caught she would be imprisoned, or worse. "I taught 200 girls in my house," she said proudly. "I'm a teacher and my duty is to teach. We knew one day the Taliban would be defeated." Her pupils hid their books in bundles of wrinkled clothes as they walked to her house. "When they stopped us on the street we said we were going to iron the clothes," she said. "In the class we would keep the clothes nearby and when a knock came on the door we would put the books away and pretend we were visiting guests, and ironing." With the Taliban ousted, however, education became the No. 1 priority of Mr. Karzai's government, said Edward Carwardine of UNICEF. "One of the things people are crying out for is education," he said. "It is about saying the old days are past and this is a new era." Najla said she was keen to help in the rehabilitation of her country. "Our people lost their hands, their legs are gone," she said. "One day we can become doctors, and help them. One day we can become engineers and build arms and legs for them." The Taliban's policy of refusing to allow girls to attend school has meant that each class has a range of ages. It is not uncommon to see girls aged 12 or older studying at a Grade 1 level. They arrive in two shifts in the morning for about three hours each and cram chemistry; theology; Dari, the local Afghan dialect; mathematics; geography and English into 25-minute lessons. It makes it impossible to learn, said Mariam Rushan-Ayobi, the Dari teacher's daughter. "We can't learn anything in 25 minutes," she complained. "By the time we say hello to the teacher the lesson is over."
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