Trips to Lalander and Tangi Saidan

Pictures from Lalander and Tangi Saidan

This last one is my favorite picture that I've taken here.

If you go to this set, you can see its companion shot, a more serious version. But I like this one better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157605965176007/

I took this shot last week during a trip to the Char Asiab region, about 5 miles southwest of Kabul city. Trust in Education has a few classes down in there for computer training, literacy and English, and I went down with a few co-workers to check out how things are going. It was great to get out of the city for a day, and really see how this organization carries out its work. Me, Basir, Maiwand and Asma (Maiwand's niece) left at around 6:30 in the morning, because the first class we visited goes from 7am to 9am.

This first class was a literacy class, taught by a truly dedicated lady named Farzana. Farzana has offered up her house as the classroom, as a safe alternative to being at Ministry of Education-sanctioned schools. It's an all-female class of about 30 students, though the students range in age from 8 to over 40. The younger girls come here because their parents won't let them go to the Ministry schools--I think because of tradition, mostly, in that women in Afghanistan don't seem to be allowed to leave the house much at all. (Roughly 90% of the people I see on the street here in Kabul are men, and that's in the capital metropolis. About half of the other 10% that are women are fully covered in the head-to-toe, powder-blue burqa. It's another striking contrast to Western society.) So, coming to a neighbor's house for a literacy course offers a reasonable compromise.

For the older women in the class, Trust in Education is providing them with their first chance to learn to read and write. Given the deep gender inequalities that have existed here, as well as the general historical turbulence in Afghanistan over the past generation, these ladies simply never learned these skills before. For this reason, they seem much hungrier than the younger girls to learn whatever they can. I'll never forget the intense looks in their eyes, dead-set on watching Farzana's mouth move as she taught them basic literacy. It was as if Farzana was finally unveiling some long-kept secret to these women. One of these ladies had lost both of her legs to a land mine years ago; she read us poem about how overjoyed she is that she is now able to take part in a class like this. To say I was floored doesn't really capture the feeling.

We then moved on to Tangi Saidan, a fairly large village further south out of town. The shops of south Kabul city started to peter out as we drove into the countryside, through bone-dry hills and lush green river valleys. We came to a girls' school after about a half hour, where we talked with the headmaster, a forward-thinking and considerate guy. All the girls at this school are fortunate to be coming of age after the fall of the Taliban government, which forbid females from being educated at all. We went into a few classrooms and asked what they're learning about; one was an art class, and they did a kind of free-draw session for us as we introduced ourselves and took pictures for the organization back home.

The malik of Tangi Saidan--like the chief of a tribe, or a local governor--came and met us as we measured out where the headmaster would like a wall around his girls' school (a $16,000 estimate, he explains... Hmmm, did we mention we're an NGO?). The malik took us to his farm, which was richly cultivated and a dramatic contrast to the brown rocky mountains that surround this valley. He showed us where he could use a new retaining wall, to protect his crops from mudslides and the overflowing of a nearby canal. After we discussed figures and measurements, he suddenly clambered up a tree and started kicking branches left and right. Below him, four of his (many) children held out a wide sheet to catch the berries he was shaking off these branches from above. We knew them as mulberries, but the locals called them "toot." He took us back to the main house on his grand estate, where we ate the berries and talked about life in the village. (This is where I got that picture of the grandfather and his grandkids...guys over 70 here get this amazing artistic license to dress like kings. This should be universal.)

The pace was so nice and slow out here, just 5 miles away from chaotic, bustling Kabul. The air was pristine, and we could hear the river rushing by as we walked from place to place. Just two days ago I got a chance to visit the village of Lalander, another place where our organization has programs, but much further out than Tangi Saidan. The landscape there was even more dramatic, with higher jagged peaks, and abundant vegetation along the rivers between them. Maiwand and I spent the whole day there, visiting classes in the morning and discussing river-related development projects with locals in the afternoon. Turns out they need a dam across their river to benefit the village and protect against floods. We told them to make us an estimate, and we'll look into it.

For pictures of just the Lalander trip, check out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattve/sets/72157606075432965/

Also, Asma sent me this link to a great feature article on Kabul. It has some hard information on this place, and some great insight through pictures. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/weekinreview/06hicks.html?ex=1216008000&en=fbb058ee500f382b&ei=5070&emc=eta1