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July 16, 2010
I have completed the curriculum for the rest of the year. If you sponsor an older child in Kabul, she or he is going to enjoy a very demanding but I hope fun second semester to the school year. I am going with the topical approach to teaching English. Why not learn something while we learn the language? When I was in first grade, everything was divided into colors.GoldMeetra, Murcel, Sadaf, Nasrin, Nahida, Malalai, Malalai Butterfly, Sana 1) Natural landscapes of the world: Sahara desert, Mt. Everest, Olympic rainforest, Siberia, Amazon River, Tahiti 2) Animals of the world: condor, mountain goat, praying mantis, hippo, octopus, sperm whaleTurquoiseFarzana Nori, Khalida, Zainab, Leema, Parwana (Parwana moved up) 1) History of Afghanistan through its characters: Alexander the Great and Roxanna, Genghis Khan, Rabeha Balkhi, Malalai, Meena 2) Afghan Provinces: Badakhshan, Kandahar, Ghor, Heart, Balkh 3) The minorities of Afghanistan: Balochi, Aimak, Kuchi, Kohistani, PashaiGreenMursal (older), Shakeba, Hala, Sediqa, Farida, Neda1) Read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho 2) Spain, Morocco and the Sahara all the way to EgyptWhiteShagofa, Lida, Sahar, Manizha 1) Read The Pearl by John Steinbeck 2) Mexico 3) TypingBlackAli, Omid, Sorab, Dariush1) Places in the world: India- food, England- Stonehenge, Kenya- proverbs, China- folktales, Panama- canal, Antarctica- Shackleton, Cuba- tobacco, Greece- drama, Brazil- Amazon, Thailand- golden triangle 2) TypingPurple (This class meets 4 hours a week)Pashtana, Sitiza, Maria, Yasamin, Sosan (Sosan moved up) 1) Places in the world (same as Black)2) Read The Miracle Worker by William Gibson 3) Read The Giver by Lois Lowry 4) TypingAll the above advanced classes include full length and ten-minute films, work on the Internet, and most importantly (and most difficult) writing exercises.I have 55 other students, boys and girls who are advanced beginners. Their classes will be topical as above, but very simplified, including many games such as word Bingo, mixed words, mixed sentences, etc. I have volunteers teaching all the younger children for the rest of the year, so I can focus on my 87 students.I want to address another aspect to AFCECO that is essential to what makes this organization unique, and that is its staff. Here is a rough list of employees: - House Parents: 20
- Cooks: 11
- Bread makers: 2
- Guards: 22
- Security specialists: 2
- Drivers: 4
- House Managers: 10
- Accountants: 2
- Bookkeeper: 1
- Liaison with sponsors: 1
- Liaison with government: 1
- Total employees: 76
These are all Afghan nationals. They too reflect the country, just like the children. Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Nuristani. Some were refugees. Some are in university. Many are widows with children, who otherwise would be at the mercy of a violent household or be begging in the street along with the ten thousand other widows in Kabul. There are among our Afghan volunteers many students who otherwise would have nowhere to stay, nor afford their tuition. (By tuition, I mean $500.) This is a big family. There is not a hierarchy, only a common purpose. It is, in essence, the closest I've seen to a synthesis of all things East and West. Through the various empires that have at one time or another taken a seat in this rocky heart of Asia, just in the last hundred years Afghanistan has been privy to colonialism, communism, socialism, monarchy, fundamentalism, feudalism, democracy and anarchy. (It is honestly difficult for me to say which is the present power structure!) I cannot tell you how AFCECO operates under these condidtions. People here take care of one another, and they don't stab each other in the back, and they don't gossip. It isn't neat and tidy, but we like it that way.I will be off to Jalalabad tomorrow morning at 5am. It is 102 degrees f there. We will inspect the new orphanages, and I'm going to give some lessons. Then Mazar to scope out the possibility of the next orphanage opening there when we get the funding. Then Herat, to check in on the children at their orphanage. My first real journey into the "other" Afghanistan.I leave you with a link to a song I wrote last week about a wayfaring stranger and a freckle-faced Hazara girl. Given the story I told, it was a somber kind of mood. It is followed by another song I wrote many years ago that has somehow grown in meaning.
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