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April 21, 2011
In Leadership Workshop this week we discussed two forces that direct our lives, destiny (in which I include genetics, God’s design, environmental factors, dumb luck, what-have-you) and self-determination. We talked about the concept of a Personal Calling, and how we feel “alive”, so to speak, when those two forces seem to be working in balance with one another. This is not to be equated with happiness or contentment, per se, but to be a part of the struggle that is life in all its multiplicity. I asked the girls what percent of their lives they think is governed by these two forces. Five of them said 50 / 50. Others ranged around 25% destiny and 75% self-determination. None of the fourteen students gave destiny the upper hand. This is fairly dramatic, given the society they come from where girls are still considered exactly half the value of boys and lives for most girls are determined well before they even have a dream of their own. We went on to discuss Realism and Idealism, Materialism and Dualism. Most of the girls are very pragmatic, leaning well toward Realism, but when it came to discussing if there is a division between thought and the material world, the stepping-stone toward the concept of the soul, they land on the side of Dualism. There are a number of reasons I begin this year’s workshop with philosophical discourse. In their minds has blossomed the notion they can and will be leaders of one sort or another in Afghan society, to think of adding stages to their lives between little girl and old woman, as Maria once discussed when reviewing Shakespeare. I cannot stress deeply enough the unique and vital commitment they and a whole swath of young Afghans from 14 to 34 years of age have made toward making a better future not for themselves so much, but for their people. I hope to nurture the strength of their own developing convictions, as well as to reinforce the understanding that the more they strengthen themselves, the more they can help. Another reason for all this philosophy is to get them thinking about how to judge events as well as individual actions, how not to be swept up into propagandistic black and white discourse too easily. Notions of revolution come quickly in this part of the world. From Zahir Shaw to Daud and the Saur revolution to the Soviet puppets, then the Jahadis to Taliban to the present decade drawing closer to more rebellion, it is hard to conceive there is anything else in the world besides revolution. Now with the uprising in Egypt, its relative non-violent overthrow of a dynasty, and various other more bloody revolutions going on in North Africa and the Middle East, it seems a good time to really investigate people power, its successes and failures, the factors that lead up to it and the potential fallout. The class has begun reading Animal Farm. Major has given his famous speech and then passed away. The Animals have taken the farm. Napoleon is “handling” the milk stores, and so we have our foiler on the inside. Simultaneously we are viewing a documentary stage by stage, discussing it along the way as it walks us through the French Revolution. When Internet is up the girls will do progress reports on the happenings in Egypt and Libya and compare the two. The first quiz went fairly well. Ten students ranged from 85% to 100%, four failed. I have to give those four some extra support because their English skills are not even with the other ten. This is a difficult class, no doubt about it. It is not a language class, per se. I have them do some assignments in work groups to facilitate supporting one another rather than just competing. They have extremely full schedules, with football or karate three days a week, school in the mornings, and for some a medical class as well. Some teach literacy to staff, some do chores for AFCECO, and then there is running their hostel. (We don’t call the older girls’ and boys’ homes orphanages.) I monitor their temperaments, and they tell me how they feel most of the time. They are excited, energetic, ambitious, and otherwise up for the challenges set before them. Days have many hours here, they don’t get filled with filler, and somehow everything is connected to everything else, rather than a compartmentalized, fragmented and solitary experience. This has to do, I think, with the home-school atmosphere, the six or so adults who support them every day who are simply a part of their family, not officials or teachers, and of course they have one another every step of the way, in each environment. I wondered about our experiment, how Sahar, Manizha and Pashtana would do returning to the orphanage, school and the very different life here where they are not the center of the universe. I worried a little, would they become morose, jaded, defeated, or conversely over confident, superior, or would they simply be confused and frozen in time? Nothing of the kind. They are thriving, enthusiastic, and even more determined than ever. Even though Pashtana and Sahar know they are not competing for a spot to go to America, they are 100% engaged with Leadership Workshop and both aced their first quiz. Manizha, though thrust into a kind of nether land not knowing her immediate future, faced it all bravely. Now she is doing vital work for AFCECO, and filling those shoes like a full member of staff. She is also going to attend Kardan Institute, beginning in May. She will study law. On top of everything she spends time with me almost every day reading a book together. All three are competing fearlessly and with great determination in football. What has come is maturity, but more than anything a level of confidence based more on personal experience than on faith. I have not begun my language classes yet, but I believe we will be fully up and running at the “Pink House” by May 1st. I miss all my students terribly and cannot wait to begin. I will be teaching exclusively in the new center. No more the mobile education bus, like a house calling doctor travelling with his computer, his cittern, his books and markers and extension cord. Every year is new, and a part of me is nostalgic as I venture forth just as I was nostalgic for living inside Mehan, for the open floor, no seats or desks, only the brand new three foot white board, just the teacher, the marker and the student. Now I am nostalgic for visiting each orphanage and setting up class, for seeing all the staff twice or three times a week, seeing how each orphanage garden grows. But with the new school I can be more thorough, more efficient, and my classes more effective. Here, there really is no time wasted. I think of time a lot. This more than anything may be the key issue as to why the West frequently bungles its efforts in the East. The things we want to do quickly might do well to be approached gradually, patiently, persistently and the things that need and can be done immediately we foul up with delays, obstacles, scrambled priorities or plain disinterest. If we look at certain successful efforts in Afghanistan, we see that investment in people was immediately implemented, in basements, in courtyards, secretly or under cover of some other activity. Why wait? Let’s get a teacher in a room with students, no matter if they are all cross-legged on the floor with a scrap piece of paper and a blunt pencil. Eventually will come the chair, the table, the computer, the projector, the building, the grounds, the bus. By the time those other things are in place there will be teachersto utilize them. Right now we have at least five of the orphans teaching literacy to the widows who help keep the orphanages afloat. The shared value, the reciprocity is extraordinary. This could never happen if AFCECO waited around to build a school first. And as we have seen from recent news events, for a variety of reasons building schools does not necessarily translate into education being carried through. This is not some unique concept in history, we only need look at the American story, specifically the rights of certain minorities to gain access to education. I’m an amateur about history, but I can’t imagine building a hundred schools for slaves in the south in 1866 would have guaranteed their full enrollment. Slaves were legally denied the foundation of European education--the knowledge to read and write. Nonetheless, thousands of slaves acquired those skills, usually through voluntary or unintentional help from their young masters and mistresses as they were learning their lessons. (Urban slaves like Frederick Douglass sometimes bribed their white playmates or coworkers to teach them.) Literate slaves then tried to pass on their knowledge to others. This is not to say building schools is a pointless or frivolous objective. I merely wish to illuminate a different concept of time frames and priorities and expectations, what can be done prudently and steadfastly, what can be done immediately and getting on with both simultaneously. Perhaps this is why I begin by discussing the dance between destiny and self-determination. Certainly there must be the sacrificial attempt to break walls down, rather than wait for them to erode. Hence we come to great acts of protest, defiance and even revolution. Looking closely at any of a wide variety of such acts through history seems worthwhile. I wonder sometimes if revolution is more the result of destiny than self-determination, or perhaps though it is spawned from one, it is then consumed by the other. Soon I myself will be utterly consumed with teaching five or six classes a day six days a week and you won’t have to muddle through my opinions. I will have only to report about the children and the gifts they bring to every interaction.
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