Education in Afghanistan is often life-threatening. But the Ofarin association not only gives hope to the country’s children
Afghanistan? A haunted corner of the world, abandoned by all good spirits? If you think so, you should go to Kalatscha, poor district in the southeast of Kabul, where the houses are getting smaller, three-, two-, one-story, and the concrete runway is lined with street vendors and mountains of watermelons, should follow a small, smelly moat to an inconspicuous corner house with doors made of rusty sheet metal: the Omar ben-e-Khtab mosque.
Anyone who believes Afghanistan has been abandoned by all good spirits may not believe their own eyes when entering the house of God. In the large classroom lined with prayer rugs, there is a docile murmur. Several classes are taught in parallel, each with its own blackboard, separated from each other only by long wooden troughs that are reminiscent of cattle troughs. They are the shoe depots for dozens of boys and girls who learn to read and write while crouching on the carpets. Four classes on the ground floor. On the floor above, under the mosque dome, another six. This house of Allah is also a house of the alphabet.
Next to the blackboards are the good spirits of the house. The teachers, with a worksheet in one hand and a piece of chalk in the other, are hardly older than some of the students.
The class in the middle of the mosque, between all the wooden troughs, gets to know Alef mad today, the 21st letter in the curriculum. This means that she has almost mastered half the Dari alphabet. The teacher lets the chalk wander over the blackboard until there is a word that begins with Aleph mad: “Amusesch”.
Ten-year-old Sadaf, at the very front, almost at the teacher’s feet, writes it a few times in her notebook, making letters and words her own with pencil strokes.
“What is Amusesch?”
Sadaf looks up with wide eyes. “That you learn Aleph mad!” She replies. “This is Amusesch!”
What about the other letters? And with arithmetic?
“Yes,” she says, “that too is Amusesch!”
Amusesch means education. Amusesch is what everything revolves around here. In addition to writing and reading courses, the children and young people in the mosque also receive Koran and math lessons.
A moment later, laughter wafts in through the windows. The alley in front of the mosque is lined with children with rucksacks. Waiting. As soon as the first school shift ends this morning, there will be a flying change. More shifts follow in the afternoon. Hundreds of them are taught here in flying, temporary pop-up classrooms whenever the place of worship is not needed for prayer.
The mosque in Kalacha is an unlikely place. A small oasis sent by heaven, in the middle of an educational desert. More than half of the Afghan population, the official figure is 57 percent, are illiterate. Not even one in three women can read or write.
Amusesch is what Afghanistan, a country rich in shortages, possibly needs more than anything else. A country that, after two decades of international military action, is one of the poorhouses in the world. A country worn down by chaos, eaten away by corruption. Shattered by tribal rivalries that can be difficult to keep track of – 14 ethnic groups are officially recognized by the constitution. Just as many terrorist groups are active in the country, according to the US foreign intelligence service, from the Taliban to al-Qaeda to the so-called Islamic State.
Schooling is compulsory, but what does that mean in a country like Afghanistan? An estimated three to four million children are absent from school. There are enough reasons. Away from the cities, many have to help their parents with cattle and field work. Conservative circles have reservations about godless secular schools. In the case of the daughters, the way to school is often considered too dangerous. State educational institutions have a reputation for being a waste of time, with overworked teachers and overcrowded classes of 70 children or more. There are school leavers who cannot read properly even after twelve years.
And then there is fear. There are repeated attacks on schools. One of the most devastating happened a few weeks ago in the Dascht-e Bartschi district of Kabul, where more than 80 people, mostly schoolgirls between the ages of eleven and 15, died. In rural regions, where the Taliban are back in control, hundreds of schools have been closed under threat of violence in recent years.
For radical Islamists, education is a threat. Because education opens up new opportunities. Knowledge is power. It is not without reason that the Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012, named books and pens as the most important weapons against poverty and terrorism.
“A child, a teacher, a pen and a book can change the world,” said Yousafzai in a speech to the United Nations. “Education is the solution.”
There are many short stories to be told in the Kalacha mosque about the leaps in education that are possible between just two generations, the new worlds that open up as a result. Stories like that of Sayed Sharif Sadat, 24. His parents once heard: If you really want to learn something, you have to go to this mosque. He says: “Everything I have learned, I have learned here.” Today he is studying law and politics.
Sadat is currently writing his thesis, in which he compares the defense rights of Afghanistan and other countries. His father won’t read it. He can’t read. He’s 65, around, not sure how, and still works in construction. The son also works there from early morning to late afternoon, this is how he finances his studies. Then, from 5 to 8 p.m., he goes to university.
How do pens and books change the world, even if at first glance it appears to be the same? You can’t imagine a better picture than this: when Sayed Sharif Sadat and his father as the Eisenbieger team on a skyscraper shell, eleven floors above Kabul, defy the gusts of wind and together drive steel struts skyward for another floor.
For the father it is the bread job.
For the son it’s a student job.
He can imagine starting a career as a judge after graduating from university.
Another story is that of 20-year-old Asma Sultani. The young woman, the daughter of illiterate people, whose university entrance exam was so good that she decided without further ado to study medicine instead of economics, was once a student at the mosque and later a teacher. In the meantime she is, that is her student job, responsible for the training and further education of the teachers. On the morning when little Sadaf met “Alef mad” and “Amusesch”, she scurried back and forth between the school classes – black headscarf, mint green dress, alert eyes.
Over the years, pedagogical talents matured in the mosque, homegrown people who were gradually able to take over the lessons – most of them women. In the oasis of Kalacha you can not only see how education bears fruit after years. It is also an example of successful grassroots emancipation. In the beginning it was a matter of course that only the Lords of Creation taught here. Today 28 of the 37 classes are taught by women.
The seeds for all of this were planted around two decades ago by a man whom they all call “Doctor Peter” in English: Peter Schwittek, 81, a doctor of math from distant Germany, who has been close to Afghanistan for almost half a century connected is. In the 1970s he taught as a lecturer at the University of Kabul, later he switched to development aid and for a time headed the Kabul office of several Caritas country organizations. He heads a small club, his name is Ofarin, which in Dari means something like “Prima” or “Just right”.
Ofarin not only started school lessons in the Kalacha mosque. If you add up all Ofarin classes in Kabul, in the Punjshir and Logar provinces, then there are more than 3000 students who are currently receiving free basic training in reading, writing and arithmetic: 90 minutes a day – short, concentrated, structured so that there is still time for work or for completing compulsory schooling. More than 200 teachers work for Ofarin, all from Afghanistan, many of whom are Ofarin alumni themselves. The total number of those who have completed the school program is in the tens of thousands.
Peter Schwittek and his wife Anne Marie, 78, qualified psychologist, have had two homes for a long time, living alternately in Kabul and in the Franconian wine village of Randersacker.
Here: get donations. For a country that has already driven so many aid organizations into despair.
There: spend donations. So that they achieve as much and as many as possible.
Both: a challenge.
When the Schwitteks returned to Kabul at the end of June, after one and a half years of corona exile, freshly vaccinated, they were first in the dark. Power failure. Peter Schwittek – practical Mecki stubble hairstyle, Afghan man’s robe, sandals – shrugs his shoulders: “It is said that the Taliban blew up a few electricity pylons.” Over the decades he has acquired a good level of calmness when it comes to things that cannot be changed.
Doctor Peter is less relaxed about everything relating to Ofarin lessons, i.e. things that can be changed and improved. On his first class visits after returning home, he utters a few rebukes – for example, when a teacher falls into a teaching pattern that he considers a waste of time: first write a new word on the blackboard, then one after the other ask students to come up front to have them read aloud. Six times. Seven times. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He then asks sternly. “This is boring. The children don’t learn anything like that! “
Schwittek will be downright indignant, as far as his sober mathematician can do, when he talks about the enormous sums that foreign governments and organizations have sunk in Afghanistan’s state school system in recent years, as he sees it. “The money is being tipped over,” he says. “And it is not looked at: what happens to it? You don’t go to schools. Probably because you suspect what’s going on. “
The Schindowal district is located on a steep mountain on the edge of Kabul’s old town. Above, on the treeless summit, a forest of antenna towers grows. Below, up to halfway up, flat roof houses crowd side by side, next to each other, on top of each other. From a distance, it looks as if someone has carelessly stacked tons of colorful shoeboxes on the dusty slope.
There is silence on the steep slope, no car can come up here. Only now and then a rooster crows. A rhythmic clacking and knocking can be heard from some houses. Women who crack almonds. Your reward is the nutshells. This can be used to fire up the stove and cook for the family.
In one of the hillside houses made of tree trunks, bricks and mud, shoes are stacked behind the front door. A whole bunch, far too many for such a small house, even by Afghan standards. The secret of the shoe collection is waiting behind a curtain in the next room: crouching on a large carpet, close to each other, almost two dozen women, their eyes directed at the teacher. The pink-washed room, high above the Kabul plateau, is another flying Ofarin classroom. When looking out the window, you could actually think that it was flying.
Teacher Arezu Abdali, who is standing on the blackboard with a worn worksheet, is also a native. What the 18-year-old teaches, she once learned herself in Ofarin classes. “Bol”, says Abdali now aloud, “wings”. Shortly afterwards: Bulbul. Nightingale. A little dictation. Today women are learning their fifth letter. They are complete beginners, even if many of them already have both feet on family life, taking care of the household and children. The age range of the female students ranges from 16 to mid-40s. None of them attended the state school.
Why laboriously learn something, without which life has worked so far? “I want to be able to help my children with their schoolwork,” says one of the older people. Another, 45 years old, a light brown headscarf, happy eyes: “I want to be able to read the signs from doctors’ offices. And the invitations for weddings! “
Teacher Abdali works on a voluntary basis. Not the only one in Shindowal. There are 23 official Ofarin school classes up here – and four more for whom there is actually no money. The teachers teach anyway. You know all too well what reading and writing mean, have seen for yourself how liberating it is to be able to decipher all these signs.
As teachers, they are valued and respected throughout the district. From a corner of the pink classroom, the maternal grandfather looks down from a portrait at Arezu Abdali. Opposite: the paternal grandfather. In this house, the men were always in charge. Today she, the teacher, daughter of a casual worker, is the pride of the family.
The fact that Ofarin was also active in Shindowal is due to a citizens’ initiative founded by residents of the district. “We wanted to improve people’s living conditions,” says Sayed Aman Allah Rezaie, head of the initiative. “It was about very basic things: stairs. Water. Electricity. Education. ”They turned to the Red Cross about the fountains. Ofarin was approached for education. One had heard a lot of good things from below, from the city. That was 15 years ago.
To thank the Schwitteks for their commitment, the citizens’ initiative invited to a small mosque at the foot of the mountain. The imam is there, and many teachers from the district have also come. Speeches are made, the mood is cheerful. Until suddenly a man enters the mosque, white shirt, grim look. Troubled silence. Whispering. It is said that he is from the secret police.
“Why didn’t anyone in the neighborhood report the foreign visit?” He grunts. He’s on the phone frantically.
A few minutes, then the situation eases, as quickly as it wavered. The undercover police officer is only upset because the citizens’ initiative has taken an unnecessary risk: “The event should have been registered so that we can ensure the safety of the foreigners!”
Not an easy thing to do with security in Afghanistan. Schools and foreign institutions are particularly at risk. From this point of view, Ofarin has two goals in common. In 2017, Misereor stepped down as a sponsor and partner because the situation in the country became too sensitive for those responsible – Ofarin had to close classes, the teachers have been receiving emergency wages since then, the Schwitteks work on a voluntary basis.
Watchdog and security guard, day and night, are just as much a part of the Ofarin headquarters security concept as are two large-caliber hunting rifles. For the visits of the school classes and the payment of their wages, they trust Ofarin in shrewd companions that are safer than any armored vehicle – because they are invisible. “Rust arbor” is what Peter Schwittek calls the small fleet of old Toyotas that are just as dented as the thousands upon thousands of others on the streets of Kabul. Inconspicuousness, this is the best life insurance in this country.
The classrooms that pop up temporarily in mosques and private houses, distributed over Kabul and the provincial villages, are also a security advantage, believes office manager Hussein Chavari: “I think our schools are low profile. Compared to the huge state schools, the children are in better hands here. “
July 1st, a sunny Thursday afternoon, the last working day of the Afghan week. Peter Schwittek sits with his laptop on the balcony of the Ofarin office building, happily pushing the wireless computer mouse over his round tummy – his very personal mousepad. He has just sent out the monthly newsletter with which he keeps supporters of the association up to date. Chef Aziz is already bringing a latte, as always at 2 p.m. sharp. A light wind is blowing. Birds chirp. Again and again they are drowned out by the roar of large military helicopters.
It will be found out the next morning that the US armed forces are preparing for their final move. On the night of July 2, they left Bagram Air Force Base, their headquarters in Afghanistan. So hastily, so clandestinely, that their bewildered allies from the Afghan army only found out about it hours later.
What now? What about ofarin? “Well, they haven’t supported us with our lessons either,” says Schwittek the next day, “the ones sitting in the helicopter.” He laughs.
But what if, as many fear, the Taliban will also conquer the country’s remaining districts and larger cities in the coming months?
Should it come to that, Schwittek believes that Ofarin could still continue. In principle, he considers the program to be Taliban-compatible. An assessment based on the fact that the mosque schools began in 1998. At the time when the Taliban ruled. Even more: to Schwittek’s astonishment, the idea for it was brought to him by a mullah – an anecdote that he likes to tell and often tells.
The bottom line is that the Taliban are less of a headache for Peter Schwittek than the paralyzing feeling that could now take hold in Germany: it’s no good with Afghanistan. Is forsaken by all good spirits anyway. The Schwitteks’ greatest concern is the impending donation drought.
Then, says Anne Marie Schwittek, it was at least a sustainable aid project: “If I build a school building and it breaks, it’s gone. But what the students have learned they can do. ”Her husband sees the same thing. “What remains,” says Doctor Peter, “is what’s in the head.”
