If These Hills Could Talk

The hills are alive in Sulaymaniyah… Sing it with me!

Hills of Kurdistan

Last week, we got to drive west through the beautiful hills of central Kurdistan. If someone had blindfolded me, took me to these hills, took the blindfold off and asked me where I thought we was, I would say something like Ireland or something… certainly NOT in the Middle East. The drive was amazing. Thanks to all of the April showers that have been falling here, the wild flowers are in full bloom. Bright red poppies speckled the hillsides along with other flowers of every spring color you can imagine.

Brian and Yellow Flowers

Driving through what was once ancient Mesopotamia, I couldn’t help but think about the events this soil has carried. These hills create the ground that is considered to be the cradle of civilization. The water that flows off of them flow into the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. The history that these hills have supported is overwhelming… and the story is far from over.

Our road trip took us to the town of Shoresh. We visited a site that is being built as a large community center for the population of Shoresh and its surrounding communities. When we arrived we were greeted warmly by the staff who are building the community center and they welcomed us into a traditional Kurdish dining space where we feasted on a delicious meal with all the Middle East flavor we could hope for.

Kurdish Dining Room

Examining the plates

Reclining Pre-Feast

The wonderful thing about the way we were seated on the ground is that when we got full we simply reclined back and got dangerously close to slipping into a post-feast coma. We have learned quickly that every meal is followed by a glass of tea. It is very similar to the tea we drank in Sudan – black tea with a solid inch of sugar in it. With that kind of help , we can quickly say goodbye to post-lunch drowsiness!

Pouring the Tea

Tea

After our meal, we learned more about the town of Shoresh and why the community center is being built there. During Saddam Hussein’s reign, any men suspected of being involved in or supporting the Kurdish army – the Peshmerga – were taken and systematically killed. So basically males between the ages of 15 and 50 were killed, leaving thousands upon thousands of widows and orphans. The Iraqi regime then proceeded to gather the widows and orphans from all over the region and bring them to a new area, or a “collective”, and told that if they even attempted to go back to their homes they would also be killed. Without any infrastructure to speak of in these areas, Kurdish women from different tribes and areas were forced to fight for survival and start over. Shoresh was one of these collective areas. As is always the case in any conflict, it is the women and children who are the most vulnerable and Shoresh has been no exception. The people in this area still have very little health care and have had almost no education. Along with that there is a large population of elderly women who have no children or family left  to take care of them. The community center we visited will have a hospital inside its facilities, classrooms for a variety of education opportunities and trainings, a sports center for youth and a conference room for larger meetings and trainings.

Shoresh

We went onto the roof of the community center and looked out over Shoresh. It was a heavy experience looking out over a town that established itself under the conditions it did. It is still hard for me to comprehend humanity’s capacity for division, hate and cruelty. And if these hills, that have carried, absorbed and observed so much, could say something about the patterns of humanity, what would they say. What advice would they give?

I lift my eyes to the Hills. Where does my help come from?

Education Projects 101

Being a teacher must be hard.  I remember my teachers and I realize now how much many of them must have wanted me to just disappear forever from their classrooms.  I wasn’t the best behaved little boy, and I definitely had a streak of behavior issues.  Beyond dealing with behavior stuff it must be hard to be confident in what you are teaching at times if you yourself were not the best student.  Teaching is an art, and I don’t think someone needs to be brilliant with the subject…they just need to be able to converse, dialogue, display, and nurture effectively.  But if teaching is hard in America, can you even imagine what teaching in a rural area of a neglected corner of Sudan must be like?  Here is a school in Hamesh Koreb:

Hamesh Koreb School

Hamesh Koreb Playground and Soccer Pitch. Inviting, isn't it?

In some of the assessing and questioning we have done we have found that most teachers in the communities we work in only have an 8th grade education and virtually no formal training for their work.  Furthermore, their classrooms are up to 5o kids, all of whom are hungry and/or thirsty since there is no food or water near the school, and there is no supportive PTA or parent teacher meetings because the parents are uninvolved and typically don’t care because they don’t understand the real value of education for             their children. In order to address the dire water situation in the schools my organization built this for the main school in the large, regionally influential town of Hamesh Koreb:

Hamesh Koreb Boy's School Water Yard

But water is only part of the solution in Hamesh Koreb.  It keeps the boys from having to walk a long distance from school and helps increase sanitary practices (latrine use, hand washing, etc.), but the kids still go hungry, and their teachers still don’t have much of a grasp on a positive pedagogical approach.

To solve the food issue we are starting to work with the UN’s World Food Programme to (hopefully) start school feeding at the school for all 1000 boys in attendance .  Food will be prepared at the school to encourage attendance and reduce dropout.  Additionally the focus of increasing community acceptance for education is a very important aspect of the project.  Most people don’t see the value of a non-Koranic education for their children and they hesitate in allowing their children to be gone half the day when they could be herding goats/camels or working at home with their mothers.  The general acceptance of education is the only way to boost boy’s education but it is also very important, in some ways more important (if you ask me), to foster this acceptance in order to increase community support of girl’s education (of which there is currently close to none).  So, food is coming…that takes care of water and food…now what about parent involvement?

We have been forming loose Parent Teacher Associations within several villages, including Hamesh Koreb.  The basic purpose is to give an introductory training to some interested parents on what the school provides, who the teachers are, and why it matters.  It is a long road to 100% acceptance, but some parents have begun caring a little bit more and seeing why their child benefits from attendance.

Finally, we come to the teachers.  How to help them?  Well, we organized a 10 day teacher training that pulled 40 teachers from across the locality, from various towns and villages, plopped them in Hamesh Koreb, and worked with the Kassala State Ministry of Education to provide a training that covered pedagogy and focused on a couple of important subjects as well.

SP's Banner for our Training

Me Congratulating People

The teachers were at first skeptical of what we would be providing and wanted incentives, payment, etc. to attend something that would take so much of their time — put yourself in their shoes; would you go somewhere for 10 days away from family and friends and crops and jobs in order to get a certification in something you haven’t heard of?  Once the training was over they were all very anxious to express their thanks to all of us and we even had the media (picture to right) there to capture everything that happened.

One of the best parts of the training was that the Ministry of Education told us that they didn’t realize how great the need for education support and training in Hamesh Koreb was.  Additionally, the told us that this was the FIRST time they had performed these types of trainings in the community instead of having the community travel to them!  The seemed to like the idea and may be open to doing this type of thing with other teachers and organizations in the Future.

So, thats my story on education in Hamesh Koreb.  It isn’t easy, and there are many obstacles to overcome, but in the last 3 months we have given them what they have never had in the school in the form of a water system, PTA trainings, and Teacher’s trainings…simple things that have a lot of promise.

A picture like this makes all the effort and struggle worth it.