Sylvia's Journal

Today was a day of inspiration. Chris and I had lunch in the women’s lunch room. We talked about organizing a children’s day and compared notes on the kind of games one would make available to kids on a day like that. As it turns out Afghans have something similar to apple bobbing, sack races and what we call in Dutch ‘koek happen’ (eating cookies dangling from a string with hands tied in the back). Chris knows of similar games in Australia. Funny how these things appear to be universal. How did that happen?

A new and long awaited staff member arrived today, Sally from Australia. She will be in charge of writing up our stories – something that we are not very good at, either because of poor English writing skills or because we have no time.

After work I went to the house of someone who worked in our predecessor project that ended in 2006 – but the house still carries his name. Now it’s the headquarters of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA). From now on I will be teaching there on Thursdays, after my work day is over. Today was my first class.

My class follows Axel’s class. Two of his students are in both of our classes – a family affair. His class is large (12, boys and girls) will focus on English writing; mine, with only four girls today, will focus on English conversation. The late class is a little problematic for some girls because it gets dark early now but I cannot come earlier.

I started my class asking each girl to explain their name, both their family name and their given name; who gave it to them, what did the name mean. I learned something about Islamic history and Persian in the process. We talked about naming as an expression of vision, of a parent for a child. This led to a conversation about inspiration and aspiration: who inspires them and what they aspire to be. I am humbled by these girls who have not had an easy life – large families, little money and endless moving, from Afghanistan to Iran, then to Pakistan and back to Afghanistan.

Their homework for next week is to draw their vision and, before showing up in class, show their drawings to people who inspire them and can help them articulate their vision more, make them more compelling. One girl who wants to be president of Afghanistan said that people will laugh at her vision. I advised her to only show it to people who are supportive of her aspirations (two mothers, two sisters, a father) because those are the only people who really count.

On our way home I realized that this is one of the joys of working here – not anywhere else to be found: the opportunity to encourage young women who will help Afghanistan pull itself out of its mess to pursue their visions.