Sylvia's Journal

Axel’s doctor was not happy with his regression as measured by a little blow tube that indicates lung capacity. It has gone down rather than up. He came home with more pills and we are giving it a few more days before deciding whether he should leave Afghanistan ahead of me. It is possible that the dust stirred up by the tiling and painting may actually have made things worse. So we keep hoping for the best.

In the meantime he keeps coaching SOLA kids as they struggle to fill in complex and lengthy application forms for American schools. W. stayed for 5 hours with us, yesterday afternoon, through dinner and into the evening, diligently working on his application to a school in the US that had explicitly asked for Afghan boys, not girls. The essay had to be cut down from 800 to 500 words and then there are all these difficult questions that no one has ever asked them, such as ‘why do you choose this school over all the others.’ Afghan kids don’t usually make choices about schools. If they were honest they’d say, ‘because Mr. Ted told me to apply at your school.’

Or, ‘how can you contribute to the school community?’ Afghan kids have no idea about this thing called ‘school community.’ Or even better, ‘tell us what you do in your summer vacation?’ Here summer vacations are in winter (from December till March). There are no tennis camps. Afghan kids have to earn money or get sent to ‘centers,’ places to accelerate learning. That is how Z skipped a few grades.

And then there was the question some creative application form designer had cooked up: ‘what piece of music would serve as the soundtrack to a movie about your life?’ It requires tremendous mental gymnastics for Afghan teenagers to understand this idea; even the concept of a soundtrack needed explanation. I was surprised that the kids didn’t select the Titanic song which remains wildly popular (there even used to be a special haircut here called ‘The Titanic’). But Z picked an Afghan singer and included the Dari text in her answer.

W. had to describe his role in his family dynamics (huh?), an optional question but he answered it anyways: ‘my parents want me to get a quality education so I can later help the family.’ Family therapists would call him a ‘family savior’ or something like that – a lot of responsibility resting on his skinny teenage shoulders.

We have decided that W. has what it takes to succeed and will go far. We happily opened our house to him and fed him a meal appropriate for a growing teenage boy. We did kick him out when it was my bedtime. He had to walk the 30 minutes or so it takes him to get back to his house, fending with roaming dogs along the way. Since we have no transport of our own we couldn’t give him a ride. We were relieved when we received his sms that he had arrived home safely in spite of the dogs.