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So, today I was reading Three Cups of Tea. It’s about this guy from MN who is building schools for girls in Pakistan. The children don’t have teachers five days a week. They have to share with a neighboring town because the government didn’t have enough money to pay for each of these towns to have their own teacher. I’m speaking of one teacher. Not, 100 something like cities in the US have at their disposal. Despite the fact that the kids didn’t have a teacher, they still went to class. The teacher left lesson plans for them to follow and homework for them to hand in. Yet, these kids didn’t have paper or pens. They were sitting on the Himalayan Mountains. Can you imagine teaching yourself that young? Would you have? Or would you have bolted and played in the sand box? Can you imagine that happening in the US or EU? I don’t’ think the kids in my fourth grade class, no offense if any of you are reading this blog, would have sat patiently and practiced lessons without a teacher there to guide you. This gentleman’s project is so noble. It’s so inspirational. It reminds me of why I am here in the thicket, in the bush. I am not so scared to be an English teacher now, realize that there is a need and even though I have no training, I know English. And Taiba doesn’t have one. I wish if I could work for him when I get back from Mauritania if he would want me. I guess development work is where I’m headed. There’s no backing down now.

I always thought that I would go into environmental public policy but perhaps I need to rethink this perhaps I can work on developmental projects for some charity foundation. I wouldn’t make a lot of money, but I would make a difference. I could change people’s lives. I had a friend in my Development class at Gustavus who wanted to build a school in Africa. She was just going to go and do it. That’s so cool! There was a little girl who came up to Ashley, a English Education volunteer in Aleg, today and told her that she wanted Ashley to teach her because she didn’t go to school. Is it not mandatory here? How much trouble would a nine year old be in if they didn’t go to school in the US? Here we are on the second day of class and I am sure that many of the teachers have not made it back from Nouakchott they are not back home from Nouakchott. Let me repeat that one more time, they are not back from Nouakchott. Teachers tardy? I haven’t gotten this worked up in a while.

Normally, I complain about killing whales for research and how unjust that there are oil spills in California that kill hundreds of fish, or that humans place land mines in bays under water that could explode, altering the ecosystem, or how India is damming up their rivers, or China is displacing millions without giving them compensation, or how the cornfields of Minnesota are contributing to the dead zone outside of New Orleans. I use to have conversations about how unjust we are to the environment. But now, now, I think that we are being unjust to innocent children in underdeveloped countries who do not have teachers to teach them basic arithmetic and writing. Seriously people, we are lazy. And something needs to be done. How were altering ecosystems and running out of water and not realizing how this is all affecting the next generations?

Some people might think that it’s not as important as the US economy. Or that it’s not as important as the 2008 presidential election that’ll be happening a few weeks from now. Or it’s not as important as withdrawing troops from Iraq and stopping the war. We all play our part in the grand scheme of things.

Yet, there are villages that don’t have schools. They don’t have text books. They don’t have notebooks and pens to write with. They can’t record grades. They practice in the sand, with sticks and pray that they get a photographic memory so that they do well. They practice their lessons in 100 degree heat in the dessert or in the snow, in the mountains. They have outside classrooms. How often did we complain at Delano High School when the heat wouldn’t turn on when there was snow outside or when the air conditioning didn’t turn on when it was over 90 degree’s? What pathetic complaints. These kids actually have things to worry about. We were clueless at that age, but not now.

You know those stories our grandparents use to tell us about the olden day’s when they had to walk up hill, both ways, bare foot to school in the dead of winter. Their extreme hardship they use to say. These children live that every day in the 21^st century. These children deserve better. These children deserve better. Let me repeat that one more time to get my point across. These children deserve better. They are children taking the faults of adults. That’s not their burden to carry. Let’s fix it. We’ve forgotten them

~ by avalambrecht on October 25, 2008.