My Trip to Khanott
On December 26, 2008, my parents, my sister Sophia, and I departed for the Khanote village from Karachi, a large port city of 18 million people. During the three-hour trip, we traveled through the rural areas of Pakistan’s Sindh region and passed by many mosques, small villages, and intricately decorated trucks hauling hay and building supplies. A teacher from the Khanote School and representatives from Indus Resource Center led our car to the school. Indus Resource Center (IRC, http://www.irc-pakistan.com/) is a “civil society organization aimed at empowering … the marginalized communities of rural Sindh in Pakistan.” The IRC founded and supports our Partner Classroom, and the American organization Ibtida (meaning “a beginning,” http://ibtidausa.org/ibtida/) sponsors and supports the school. I first learned about GLI chapters through a family friend, Dr. Nuzhat Ahmad, who works for Ibtida.
The teacher, IRC representatives, my family, and I arrived at the village around noontime. A sign saying “IRC-HOL (House of Learning) Elementary School of Khanote” stood over the entrance to the school, and colorful murals and the shouts of children greeted us as we walked into the schoolyard. The girls had painted images of the students and diagrams of scientific processes that they had learned about in class on the school walls, and a swing-set and slides are set up in the schoolyard. A sign saying “Welcome Madame Natasha” was placed above the doorway of one of the classrooms. The principal and fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Farzana Buriro, welcomed us and led us into the second and third grade classroom.
As soon as we entered, the twenty girls, wearing blue and white shalwar-kameez uniforms, enthusiastically greeted us with “Assalamo-laikum” (may peace be upon you) and sang songs about how glad they were to meet “Madame Natasha” (my mother) and my family. Some boys attend the Khanote School, but most of them are in the kindergarten and first grade class because there are no other schools for their age group. There are only two boys in the second and third grade classes. After the class sang for a few minutes, Mrs. Buriro asked the students to read aloud from the book they were using in class. I am only familiar with colloquial Urdu (Pakistan’s national language) so I had a little trouble understanding the excerpts that the students read aloud, but my parents translated the words I did not know and the teacher applauded the students’ skills.
We moved to the fourth and fifth grade classrooms next, and I recognized many of the fifth grade students from the scrapbook that the Khanote School sent us earlier in 2008. A few students introduced themselves, and the class sang a few songs, and one beautiful song about education and the organization Ibtida:
“Ibtida, Ibtida, our beginning, your beginning, everyone’s beginning, Ibtida, Ibtida
There is no task that does not have a beginning
Ibtida, Ibtida, our beginning, your beginning, everyone’s beginning, Ibtida, Ibtida
Now is the beginning of the beginning,
From here on, there will be many new beginnings
Ibtida, Ibtida, our beginning, your beginning, everyone’s beginning, Ibtida, Ibtida”
After the group song, a girl named Tabasum, known as the class’s most talented artist, sang a solo. Another student very impressively recited a two-minute-long speech she had memorized about the importance of education. In the speech, she said that heaven lies at the feet of our parents, that teachers are very important because they shape our characters, and that respect is essential for our lives.
I then presented the class the Baldwin School GLI chapter’s Cultural Exchange Project. I showed the students our scrapbook, containing photos of our GLI chapter’s members, the Baldwin School, and wintertime in Pennsylvania. As I flipped through the pages, one of the class’ more talkative students named Rabia commented that the Baldwin girls are all very pretty. I distributed the decorated introductory letters that our chapter had written earlier in the year, and gave one to each student. My mother had translated the English messages in the cards to Urdu, except for Baldwin student Samantha Sisler’s card, which I had forgotten to give to my mom. However, the Khanote School student who received this card impressed us all and read the English message aloud in its entirety, with a little help from her teacher. I passed out the friendship bracelets made of both string and beads that our chapter had made together, and each girl placed one on her wrist to join her bangles.
The coed kindergarten and first grade class, containing the most boys in the school due to the lack of a school for younger boys in Khanote village, also sang a few songs for us during our visit. The class’ teacher handed me a collection of small poetry books. The young students had colored in the pictures of flowers in the booklets, and we appreciated the effort that the young boys and girls had made to make our visit even more special. Next, we moved on to a small building separate from the rest of the school that housed the sixth grade. The Baldwin chapter had also communicated with this class the previous school year, and many of the girls in the class were included in the Khanote School’s Cultural Exchange scrapbook.
The more mature sixth grade girls were very interesting to speak with. They had been the first students to attend the Khanote School, and the teacher told us that the girls want to continue their education at a university, but they want to stay with the same group of students and maybe even build a university in the Khanote village. One girl revealed her political awareness when she commented that my sister Sophia resembles the late Benazir Bhutto’s daughter. Another girl made a special point of asking us whether we performed our namaaz (Muslim daily prayer). Once she had asked this question, some girls groaned and one told us that she is always asking the class about their namaaz, to which my mother replied that religion and whether or not one performs their prayer is a private matter. After our conversation with the students, I observed the walls of the classroom. The classrooms of the younger grades are adorned with student artwork of animals and family members, as well as teaching aid posters that display English and Urdu words and scientific diagrams, such as labeled depictions of the human brain and heart. The sixth grade classroom also had these posters on its walls, and also a world map. I showed the class where Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the Baldwin School is located on the map, while also pointing to the location of the Khanote village in Pakistan. The girls expressed interest in one day going to America or to Canada. Even though the girls of Baldwin and the girls of Khanote are thousands and thousands of miles away from each other, we are all students, striving to gain more knowledge of the world we live in, trying to shape our futures and discover our paths in life.
I showed the sixth grade class the Baldwin GLI chapter’s scrapbook in the same way that I showed the fourth and fifth grade classes, and gave the girls beaded friendship bracelets. The unofficial student leader of the sixth grade class, Bilquis, and another student showed Sophia and me the school’s one Dell computer. Posters describing how a computer works using electronic signals and displaying images of the basic Windows program icons hang above this computer. Even though the computer does not have Internet access, the students have learned how to use the basic Windows programs, including Paint, Windows Media Player, and My Computer, and how to type. The school also has a cardboard computer for the girls to practice their typing skills and perhaps prepare for a technological job in the future. Bilquis showed us the artwork that the students have made using the Paint program, and her friend demonstrated her knowledge of the computer program by creating a picture right in front of us.
We concluded our visit to the sixth grade class when Bilquis presented us with a book of letters and poetry that the girls had written.
Translation of the first page of the book:
“Madame, we have never seen you. This is a dream that we hope will be fulfilled on December 26. But what we do know of you is your kindness and generosity. We are so looking forward to seeing you and are awaiting this time eagerly.
“You are doing so much for our school and this is a very good deed. We know you will be excited to see your school. All the students are saying, “Madame Natasha is coming to the school. She will be like this, she will be like that.” They are in fact having bets about what you will be like. We have your photograph. Tomorrow we will find out whether our image of you is correct or not, and we will find out who will win the bet. We are hoping that you will like our school.”
After visiting the sixth grade, the fourth and fifth grade put on a special play for us, using an open area in the schoolyard as the stage. As we sipped some very sweet tea, we watched the students’ very interesting and funny play that contrasted an uneducated family with an educated family to demonstrate the importance of attending school. During the production, the younger students wandered out of their classrooms and peeked through the windows to watch, and a group of young boys came into the schoolyard and lingered at the entrance, watching the play and giggling. In the play, the vain and cruel mother of the uneducated family kept her children from attending school, and continually beat her daughter. The talented fifth grade actress who played the ignorant mother pantomimed gazing at herself in the mirror throughout the whole play; however, she did not pantomime when beating the actress who played her daughter, and hit the girl rather violently at times! Nevertheless, we all laughed and greatly enjoyed the play, and I was very impressed by the girls’ acting talent.
Afterwards, my family and I sat with the fifth grade class to talk with them about their everyday lives, ambitions, likes, and dislikes. Almost every girl said that she wants to be either a teacher or a doctor when she grows up, and one outlying student said she wants to be a policewoman, which elicited some giggles from the class. Most girls have at least four children in their families, and usually, the parents are farmers with some fathers working in the big, nearby cities of Hyderabad or Jamshoro. Common favorite foods among the students are chicken (murgi in Urdu) and okra, and the girls’ favorite colors are usually pink, green, or red. The fifth grade girls enjoy learning English in school, and some students’ families have buffalos, goats, and cows. The students told us about a recent trip they took to Karachi, where they greatly enjoyed visiting the mausoleum of Mohammed Ali Jinnah (Quaid-e-Azam, the founder of Pakistan). I asked the class if there was anything they would change about the Khanote School, or if there was anything that they wish their school could have. The girls shook their heads, and stated that their school is perfect.
What has struck me the most about my trip to the Khanote School is the general happiness of the students. The girls are so confident in themselves and enthusiastic about learning. They seem so glad to just be in school. Their school might not have the best facilities, and their lives involve much more labor than the average American child their age, but I did not observe any discontent after spending a few hours at the Khanote School. That is not to say that there are no problems in the village. After our trip, we sat down with the IRC-representatives and the principal and a teacher from the school. A teacher told us that one of the fourth grade students was absent because very recently, her parents married her off. I knew that child marriage is an issue in the area, but it is very different to meet the girls of the Khanote School’s fourth grade class and to know that one of them is already a bride. The school representatives expressed fear that by educating the girls of the village, the teachers give them a hope for a career and for a different future than they previously imagined, and then, due to the uncontrollable choices of their parents, the girls are suddenly married and their dreams are crushed. Such a situation is a tragedy, yet even if a girl cannot follow her ambitions of further education and of a career, she will most likely send her daughters to school in the future, and thus contribute to breaking the cycle of poverty and unequal opportunity for women.
The same afternoon of our trip, we also visited another Ibtida school, located in the neighboring village of Habib Morr, fifteen minutes away. The environment of the Habib Morr School was drastically different from the Khanote School. Several months ago, the man who owned the Habib Morr School’s land had started building the school, but ran out of money. The school stood half-completed for months, until the IRC finally collected enough funds to build the Habib Morr School. Once the building was finished, the landlord then demanded for the IRC to give him additional money. The IRC refused, and consequently, the landlord locked up the school so no boys or girls could attend. The school building was completed, but was an empty shell with no teachers or students inside. Finally, due to community pressure, the school opened its doors very recently.
When we visited, I noticed that the Habib Morr students were more subdued than the Khanote School girls. The highest-level class was third grade, and a few older, ten- to twelve-year-old children were in the first grade class. The teachers were very young and one was wearing the apparel of a recent bride. The walls of the classroom were mostly bare except for a few posters. The completely coed classes sang songs and read aloud for us. One girl wrote, “This is my school” on the chalkboard in the local language of Sindhi, in the national language of Urdu, and in English. I asked the boys of the third grade what they would like to be when they grow up, and every boy responded with doctor, soldier, or policeman. When we introduced ourselves to the second grade class and said we were from America, the most talkative boy in class told the teacher that the class doesn’t know where America is. While our visit to the Habib Morr provided a more disheartening view on the status of education in rural Pakistan, I am confident that the school will improve. The school is brand new, and the now-thriving Khanote School probably began similarly. This is only the beginning – the Ibtida.
Written by Nadia Tareen, the President of the Girls Learn International chapter at the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, PA. She is currently compiling a video of her trip to the Khanote School.
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