CAI Communiqué (Blog)
Welcome to CAI’s blog. This is where CAI will post news items and stories about what is happening with the organization both stateside and overseas! Please send any comments or questions to media@ikat.org.
February 17, 2012 – Bhamber Girls’ School grew from one-room presidential ‘stage’
BHAMBER VILLAGE, Pakistan – Five years ago, Pakistan’s then-President Pervez Musharraf came to this village in Punjab Province to dedicate a bridge.
The president’s crews arrived early and quickly erected a one-room structure as a staging point for a presidential speech, according to Bhamber Girls’ Middle School Principal Farsana Kosar.
After the president had come and gone, the government declared the structure and an adjacent storeroom would serve as a girls’ middle school for the rural village.
But one classroom was not enough.
So, at the villagers’ request, Central Asia Institute built another two classrooms in 2007, followed by five more in 2011. CAI also provided pump water, installed latrines and erected a boundary wall around the growing school.
And Kosar told me in January that the number of girls attending Bhamber School had doubled in just two years.
“The number of students is increasing, from 111 in 2009 to 200 now,” Kosar said. “Half come here by foot from other villages because the education is better than other schools. The parents prefer to send their kids here. Also, in these villages, people are not allowing co-education, so it’s helpful to have a separate girls’ school. And the girls are eager to learn.”
Teacher Shefaq Raza, 28, has been teaching elementary-level classes here for two years. She is one of Bhamber School’s three government teachers.
“Here in this region, education is low, especially for girls,” she said. “There are schools, but for a long time people did not agree to educate the girls.
“But education is necessary to build a nation. If the mother is educated, the children are also educated. If a mother is educated, she knows about diseases and all kinds of problems she did not know before. People begin to understand this and send their girls to us. Thank you for these buildings,” Raza said.
I visited the school, located in Punjab’s Jhelum district, on a cold, damp January day. When I arrived, all the girls were seated in the courtyard, their blue school uniforms covered by the large red shawls they had wrapped around their heads and shoulders.
Behind them, on the redbrick building CAI erected in 2007, were the words: “The right to know is just like the right to live.”
The girls then did a presentation of songs, prayers and poems and we cut the ribbon on the 2011 addition.
“It is a special gift to the girls to get an education here and we are really strict, but they are able to give you this presentation because they are getting such a good education,” Kosar said.
‘People are poor here’
We had left Islamabad in a predawn rainstorm, headed to the Jhelum district in northeastern Punjab Province. Suleman Minhas, CAI’s operations director in Pakistan, oversees projects in Punjab and had organized the trip. The combination of wet roads and many cars with inadequate lights and windshield wipers created all kinds of slow-moving obstacles on the dark highway.
As Suleman, a former taxi driver, drove expertly out of the capital city, he told me: “You must always come and check our projects, buildings and teachers. When you see it is OK, my heart will be satisfied.”
Just before sunrise, Suleman stopped for a tea break at a Pakistani truck stop on the side of the road. In addition to a big pot of tea, he ordered a typical Punjabi breakfast: tandoori paratha (flatbread), beans (cooked garbanzo beans with onions, tomatoes, garlic and chili), boiled beef and tea.
Nourished and caffeinated, we got back on the road. The rain had stopped and as the sun climbed higher in the sky, I could see the increasingly flat landscape rolling out in all directions. We passed military-green Pakistan Army pickup trucks with armed soldiers in the back patrolling the roads; bakery delivery guys on motorcycles loaded down with dozens of loaves of fresh bread; and donkeys pulling carts of produce toward the city markets.
Near Jhelum, Suleman pulled off the highway onto a dirt road, only to find it blocked by a truck with a broken axle. So he turned his Toyota SUV around and took a side road, which was clearly the preferred route of men and boys riding bicycles to work and school, bicyclists who expertly dodged puddles, cars, and herds of livestock along the way.
I asked Suleman if he liked winter in his home district. “I was born here,” he replied. “I grew up here. I grow all my crops here. Many in my family are still here. Why would I say I don’t like any time of year? I like all 12 months.”
The coal-fired ovens at the area’s brick factories were spewing smoke and Suleman pointed out a couple of gypsy camps, filled with the colorful tents of families who migrate here from southern Punjab to sell handmade children’s toys. He said most people outside the cities are subsistence farmers and a lot of local men also go to work in Europe, mostly in the UK, and send money home to their families. Jhelum district is also known for providing many soldiers to the British during World War II; Suleman’s father, who died a couple of years ago, was one of them.
“Mostly, people are poor here,” he said.
Teachers are more important than buildings
Increasingly, parents understand that education is one of the best ways to ensure that their sons and daughters will have a better future. Yet for Pakistan’s rural girls’ schools, getting and keeping good teachers – especially good female teachers – is a constant struggle.
Suleman had told me that the Bhamber School’s principal was asking for CAI’s help to hire more teachers. “Now here, like everywhere, every school, they demand teachers. But I understand. Teachers are even more important than buildings,” he said.
And Kosar wasted no time getting to the point.
“The main problem is staff. We need more teachers,” she said. “We thank CAI very, very much for the extra rooms. But we request, please, CAI help us with two teachers.”
Even the students got on the bandwagon.
“Teachers come from far and it is very difficult for them,” said 12-year-old Hadija, a seven-class student who wants to be a teacher.
The problem is complicated by the fact that, in many cases, the students in school now represent the first generation of educated girls in these rural areas. And teachers from the city, who have more education, demand more money because they have to travel every day, Suleman said.
Kosar, 40, is unusual in that she has a bachelor’s degree in education and is working on her master’s degree in Urdu. She teaches different subjects, mostly English and Islamic studies, in classes two, five and eight.
Raza, too, has a master’s degree in Islamic studies from Jhelum.
“This is my passion and I want to teach my area, I belong here,” she said. “I know that the teachers did not come here and so I thought I should teach my village people, and especially girls.
“So we thank you for this building. This is a poor area. The people are very poor. The children are very poor. And this is a big problem. People cannot even pay for the notebooks. The government pays three teachers, but for 200 students, this is not enough. This is the main problem for us.”
Then, just as we were ready to leave, Tassa War, the district education officer, arrived at the school. She explained that it is hard for the government to get enough qualified teachers for all the schools, especially after the government lifted the ban on transfers last year and “many left the rural areas.” And she reiterated the Bhamber School staff’s request.
“If you can help, that would be good,” War said.
I promised to do my best.
Since then, I have gotten approval from the home office. When the new school year begins in April, CAI will be paying the salaries of two additional teachers at the Bhamber Girls’ Middle School.
QUOTE: “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” — Colleen Wilcox
— Karin Ronnow
Photos: Students at Bhamber Girls’ Middle School, Pakistan. Karin Ronnow, January 2012.
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February 7, 2012 – Badakhshan: Heavy Snowfall Brings Humanitarian Crisis
The death toll from the severe winter weather in Afghanistan’s mountainous northeast rose again over the weekend following another avalanche in Badakhshan province.
At least four people were killed and six injured when the avalanche hit villages in the remote Arghistan district Saturday, according to news reports. The district is 196 miles northeast of Kabul. Click here for map.
Central Asia Institute project managers in the region said Monday that the deadly slide coincided with the “third wave” of heavy snowfall to hit the region at the western end of the Wakhan Corridor.
A few weeks ago, 10 feet of snow trapped an entire village of 72 families in their homes in nearby Ishkashim district, according to news reports. Rescue teams were sent to the area, but a provincial government official told the BBC, “We don’t have any equipment to help people there.”
More than 40 people have died in Badakhshan this winter as a result of avalanches, heavy snow and freezing temperatures.
CAI has schools throughout this part of Afghanistan, although early reports indicate no CAI projects have been damaged.
Snow and harsh winters are not unusual in the impoverished province, where most people eke out a living via subsistence farming. Two years ago, an avalanche killed at least 171 people near the Salang Pass, the main north-south road through the Hindu Kush Mountains, according to the Associated Press.
But this year’s heavy snowfall follows a long-running drought that had already put tens of thousands of people at high risk of hunger. Government officials and humanitarian groups are worried that those people are now at further risk due to their isolation combined with the severe shortage of food for themselves and their livestock.
The United Nations has sent emergency food to the provincial capital, Faisabad, but in some areas of Badakhshan the deep snow – 7 to 10 feet in some places – has blocked many of the province’s rugged roads and made delivery a problem.
“If the snow continues to keep the roads to rural and remote districts closed and we don’t get any assistance, we would face a severe humanitarian crisis,” Abdul Maroof Rasekh, a provincial government spokesman, told IRIN.
— Karin Ronnow
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February 2, 2012 – Onward 2012
The giving season, overseas priorities, and the start of our annual CAI audit have kept all of us very busy the first month of this year.
First and foremost, thanks to each and every one of you for the encouraging and sustaining letters and financial support — especially over these past few months.
I want you to know that Central Asia Institute is stronger than ever. We remain focused on the work at hand despite the frustrations of having to resist, once again, inclusion in a purported class action lawsuit that now has been reformulated five times. Wild claims, however vexatious and illogical, are only that — “claims”.
Karin Ronnow returned from Pakistan two weeks ago. The first of her reports follows below. Greg is much healthier and working out of the public eye where he is most comfortable for now. CAI staff here in our Bozeman office and our overseas program managers are resilient. We will not be deflected from our great mission to promote education in remote regions of Central Asia and to inform everyone about the need to foster education in Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially for girls. Please see our Master Project List. It is a dynamic account of our projects. We update it regularly.
If you have any question or concerns, we are happy to answer them. info@ikat.org
Your encouragement to all of us has come at a time when we needed to hear from you. All my hopes and best wishes to you in the coming year.
— Anne Beyersdorfer
‘Bad days and tough times’ over thanks to CAI’s KP projects
PAHARPUR, Pakistan –Central Asia Institute’s first primary school in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, “duly furnished and with a playground,” was successfully completed and handed over to government authorities on Christmas Eve.
Since then, enrollment at the two-classroom Sha Daoo Government Primary School – located in the southern reaches of the former North West Frontier Province – increased nearly 10-fold, from six to 55 boys and girls.
And it continues to grow.
“Already the number of students and the strength of the students has improved,” the head teacher told me in mid-January during my visit to “inaugurate” the school. “Thank you for making a school in this backward area.”
Paharpur is in the Dera Ismail Khan District of KP, on the west bank of the Indus River. The CAI-funded building replaces a government school severely damaged by the devastating floods that swept Pakistan in 2010.
Three different Pakistan TV news channels covered the story of the school’s demise, and the village’s subsequent use of an old shelter, but the government did not respond. CAI’s chief operations officer in Pakistan, Ilyas Mirza, saw the broadcasts and offered the community CAI’s help to erect a new building.
“We appreciate Central Asia Institute’s efforts here,” said Syed Feroz Hussain, DI Khan district education officer. “I know that this school will bear very sweet fruit in the passage of time.”
The reference to fruit may have been unintentional, but it suits. The area is famous for its date trees, which look like palm trees to the uninitiated. Farmers also grow sugar cane, wheat and other fruit. Said to be one of the hottest places in the world, where summer temperatures reach 120 degrees-plus, the area is green and lush, even in January.
But its proximity to Pakistan’s tribal areas – Waziristan’s mountains can be seen in the distance –and the presence of militant Islamists means the region is unsettled and dangerous.
Two days before we arrived, a group of suicide bombers attacked the District Police Officers’ headquarters in DI Khan, killed four people and damaged the building. News reports said Tehreek-e-Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. It was one of several recent militant attacks on security personnel in KP’s southern districts.
As a result, the extra security provided for my January visit was especially intense.
“Welcome to the land of hospitality,” Idrees Mirza, Ilyas Mirza’s brother and the man who handled the security logistics, said upon our arrival at the provincial border checkpost. He was serious, but also trying to make light of a tense situation.
“This is no problem. You have many guards,” he told me, gesturing to the half-dozen armed guards behind him. “They are my cousins.”
Family protects family in this region, which is largely populated by Pashtuns. But the local government also provided a police escort, just in case. And we moved quickly across the flat landscape, past date palms, camels and fields filled with families harvesting sugar cane.
At Sha Daoo School students, teachers, and village elders, including the man who donated the land, Ghulum Jilani, 59, greeted us.
“I do this for the education of the children, for their better future,” Jilani, a thin man with a long white beard, said through a translator. “Islam values education. This is something we must do.”
Jilani looks after property, with the assistance of other village elders and government officials – all of who were grateful for CAI’s work in the area.
“The services you delivered here are very good, especially for girls’ education,” Hussain said. “A woman plays a pivotal role as a mother. Men are dominant here, but women should take their own place and play a role in the country’s development.”
The kids said they liked the new school, but they were particularly fond of the new playground.
“Such parks are scarce here,” Mirza explained. “There are no others in a radius of about 100 miles.”
But there will be a couple more when CAI completes its other projects in the area — a new primary school in Matwala Shah, and repairs to two “existing, dangerous buildings” in Jabbarwala, Mirza said.
When we arrived in Matwala Shah, we found the students sitting in the dirt under a piece of propped up canvas practicing their ABCs. They’ve been studying outside ever since the villagers deemed the old school unfit for classes in 2006.
“Nobody took care of the building and it is dangerous,” said teacher Allah Nawaz. “For five years the children have been sitting on the ground. We used to have 136 students, but now some have gone because of the situation.”
The new school, similar in size to the Sha Daoo School, should be finished in March, Mirza said.
“These students are lucky to have been discovered by CAI team,” he said. “Bad times and tough days are nearly over. Soon they will be on chairs in a new CAI building, with books and uniforms, thanks to CAI.”
Persian proverb: “Thinking well is wise; planning well, wiser; but doing well is the wisest and best of all.”
— Karin Ronnow
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