Back in Kabul - 10th October 2011

Sitting in my room looking out over the barbed wire to Kabul and cloudy grey skies. Evening rush hour chaos and din. It is great to be back.

I am here with Amy who is here from the States .We arrived here yesterday, tired and bedraggled after delayed flights, as dusk and drizzle descended on Kabul. Received a rapturous welcome from the Afghan drivers and guards and Gul Noor, the wonder cook , whom I have known for 10 years and who fed me up after my first food deprived visit to Afghanistan in 2002. Immediately whisked off by Jorgen, Olympia and Rafat, who all work for Swedish Committee and taken for a lavish buffet at the Serena Hotel. Built by the Aga Khan and now a 5 star hotel, the Serena lies behind blocks of concrete, massive iron doors, layer upon layer of security gates and checkpoints. A haven for expats in a city of fear, despite all its protective layers, it has been the target of several murderous attacks and rpg (rocket propelled grenade) attacks. It offers luxury and has a gym, swimming pool and countless other facilities. Some business men who come to Afghanistan never leave its walls, they arrive in Kabul, hold all their meetings in the Serena and then leave. (probably very sensible!)

Amy and I had meetings all morning. Heard about progress at SCA....women now sharing the same dining room as the men—though they still sit fairly separately....and the first group of female school consultants ever to go out of Kabul without being accompanied by male relatives went all the way to Karachi. This is a massive step forward and when I met the women, they seemed so happy to have had the opportunity and so unlike some of the many women you meet, who are too timid to speak to men or strangers.

On to the cricket camp

The MCC Foundation has sponsored us to hold the first ever cricket camp to train men and women to be professional coaches. There is not a single professional cricket coach in Afghanistan. After some massive organisational headaches and some interesting last minute panics, it all came together today. Ten teachers from all over Afghanistan, from schools where we have built MCC funded pitches, came to Kabul for the 3 day coaching. 14 men and women chosen by the Afghan Cricket Board also joined the camp.

Four coaches from Cricket 4Change UK came over to do the coaching. The weather messed up the first day! The rain had made the new cricket stadium ground too wet for play. So instead, they all met at the Afghan Cricket Board where they had theory lessons all morning and then went out on to the roof to practice their new skills.

We went to watch. It was a small moment of history. The first ever camp to train coaches and, as was pointed out, probably the first ever camp in any sport to create professional coaches in Afghanistan. An emotional moment!
The enthusiasm was remarkable and so heartening and they all got dressed into kit provided by the MCC . There were 3 women there, who I have met before and they are all part of the Afghanistan Women’s Team and one is the founder of female cricket in Afghanistan. They were so delighted to be part of the group of first ever pro coaches in Afghanistan.

The aim is for them all to pass ICC Level 1 coaching this time round and then to go onto Level 2 next year. The teachers will return to their communities able to teach their school children as well as the local people. It was a fantastic afternoon! Tomorrow they will be at the Stadium for another day of coaching and I will be heading up to the North of Afghanistan.

Good Friday; 22nd April 2011

We left at first light, with the moon still up over the mountains and said fond farewells to our hosts to start the beautiful journey back to Taloqan. We made it by 8am and met up with Gareth and Jane. They had done a remarkable 2 days of teaching the teachers and headmasters of the region and had a fascinating and fulfilling time. It was great to see them again and to hear about all they had achieved. We left Taloqan and drove straight to Faizabad to the centre for disabled children, where we were to stay and await the morning flight following day.

We had to eat in the bazaar, which was right beside the mosque. I would rather have gone without food as was still very nervous about what might happen in the US. The call to prayer took on a sinister tone for me now and I felt very foreign and very much a sitting target! But there is no denying Faizabad’s beauty and fascination and as we walked home through the bazaars, it began to work its magic and calm my nerves.

We lay outside on cushions as dusk fell and the electricity never materialised. We ate our supper under the stars on our last night in Afghanistan, with no news of the outside world, wondering whether or not the burning had just taken place. Slept on the floor again and with all 4 of us trying to sleep in a tiny room, not much of a night and lay awake for the now eerie calls to prayer.

I spent my last morning in the classroom of the disability centre with 5 deaf children and two blind boys and a child with Down’s Syndrome. We had such fun! They copied a poster made by children at the Arbour Vale Special Needs School in Slough. They each drew round their hands and coloured in the shapes, which I then cut out. They made a huge poster of a peacock with hand feathers. The determined looks on their faces and huge efforts at concentration as they used the glue stick and finished their work was incredibly touching and a reminder of how the simple things in life can often bring the most joy!





Just before we took off from Faizabad in the safety of the UN plane, I received a message that the Pastor had been locked up and a disaster averted. I could have happily killed him! I said my farewells at Kabul to Ollie , Gareth and Jane - the teaching workshops would continue in Kabul, but I had to be home for Easter day.



I had 4 hours to wait for my Dubai flight and still nearly managed to miss it. I sat beside a Hazara who is now living in Australia and had such a very poignant conversation. He had fled Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. Thousands of Hazaras were massacred and those that survived were denied jobs and beaten up when they ventured out on the streets. He had been given asylum in Australia and had just visited his mother and family for the first time in 11 years. As he flew away from Kabul, he knew that he might never get back to his homeland again. He could see that there was no possibility of return and no future there for his children. I know how strong the communities and family units are in Afghanistan and it is devastating that so many thousands of families have been torn apart by the war.

I landed at Heathrow at 6 am and was totally overjoyed at the surprise of 2 sons standing at the meeting point to collect me - so emotional. As soon as we got home, the whole family went to church on a sunny Easter morning. The sermon was based on the theme of Freedom from Fear. I sat there feeling free from fear for the first time in some days. I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling that I no longer had to be afraid and by the gratitude that I live in England, which for all its faults, offers me a safe place to bring up my children with freedom from fear. I reflected on all those people I had met, on the Hazara, on the lives of all those across the world who live in fear all the time. The blossom was out in the churchyard. I walked around my garden alone. So much sunshine and green and buttercups in solid yellow on the fields - everything so beautiful and so safe - so very very good to be back home.

21st April 2011

Rough night - eaten alive by bed bugs as I hadn’t left room in my suitcase for a sleeping bag! We set off early, driving through the ancient villages and hills alongside the river towards the Mian Shar valley and a village called Kimyan, where we are running a Community Based School. On arrival, we laid out rugs by the river and breakfasted on green tea, freshly baked naan and the most delicious fried trout which the women had cooked very early in the morning. Soon we were surrounded by a crowd of children who were walking to the school. The Governor of Worsaj came to greet us and thanked us for all our work. We had met him on our last visit and been very impressed by him.

The CBS is held in an old house and as we approached we were met by the symphonic sound of children chanting the alphabet. I love these schools. So simple, held in tiny rooms in the village, packed with kids who would have no education without this initiative. I am sure it is the way forward for achieving the goal of getting all children to school by 2020.

On to the main village of Mian Shah and the Asrafia Boys School, where we interviewed pupils in tents, filled with mosquitoes and dust where they study each day. The Bibi Zainab Girls School is next door which needs more classrooms and has no furniture, with all the girls sitting on the floor.
We drove back to Bibi Ayisha and spent the next few hours, seeing all the girls and visiting them in the science lab. It is remarkable how far things have come-these girls used to study outside. It really is a beautiful school with so much hope. Their twin school had made them hundreds of mini white boards, one for each pupil, and they all wrote messages on them in English for donors and pupils back home.

We raced on up the mountain to Tarusht and its village girls school. It is just the most beautiful village, full of cherry blossom and bright green fields of wheat, right up in the heights so that the views to all the other Worsaj valleys are magnificent.

We went through a door in a wall and there were hundreds of girls standing in line waiting for us. I was totally weighed down by garlands and presents by the time I reached the school at the top of the hill.

This is the next school on our list to build and we already have the funding, so they are all overjoyed. There are over 1000 girls and just a handful of classrooms which are in disrepair.

The good will at that school was overwhelming. We sat in the courtyard surrounded by all the teachers and children, giving and listening to speeches. The choir sang.

There was total exuberance and joy there and after the ceremony, we were completely mobbed as we walked to the headmasters house for lunch. Hundreds of women in burkhas came out to greet me and took my hand and dragged me in to a dusty courtyard and up some steps into a traditional mud bricked house.
I counted 44 of them squashed in to the room around me. Burkhas were discarded and suddenly those anonymous blue veiled ghosts, became beautiful, lively young women, full of curiosity about me and my life. I passed around photos of my children and never got them back. They just wouldn’t part with them. Copious amounts of rice and mutton were brought in and fresh yoghurt. The headmaster popped his head around the door every now and then with a huge smile, triggering the women to disappear under their sea of burkhas.

Saying goodbye was a whole village affair and I became lost in a mist of giggling blue women. Now under their burkhas, I could identify only a few through those imprisoning grids, their characters too large to be hidden away. Hugged and kissed, I retreated to my car and waved goodbye to these wonderful people, feeling totally overjoyed to have come to this place and so happy that we are building a school here.

Some of the villagers and the rest of our entourage-which always grows when we do these travels, decided that we should have a cup of tea up in the most beautiful area of the mountains. So we went with these men-school consultants, teachers, district education authorities and some, who to this day I am not sure I know who or why they were with us- up the rough track on a calm, clear evening towards the mighty snow ranges of the higher Hindu Kush. At last we stopped and climbed on to a plateau, where the rugs were laid out and we sat down to a panoramic view on the top of the world - so happy to be there.

Utterly beautiful and totally lost in time, the only sound was the hooves of the donkeys bearing their arduous loads back to the villages below. In the distant valleys you could see the ancient ploughs and brightly clad girls working in the fields. We walked and walked and it became more and more beautiful - it was so good to walk ….we are so well cared for here and get fed all day by such generous hosts. It was just lovely to stretch legs and walk in this stunning place.

On our way home, as dusk was falling and the villages were lit up by their hydroelectric bulbs, we spotted a school with no roof and classrooms demarcated in the dust outside this shell of a building. We decided to have a look as I said we had to put the school down on our list. I had noticed it earlier with so many children outside. We crossed a bridge on foot as the road was too narrow for our car. Climbed over the stone school wall and dropped down into its grounds. The whole building was falling down and the classrooms were open to the skies above and absolutely hazardous with broken beams and debris poised to fall into the classrooms below. As always happens, the headmaster magically appeared within seconds of our arrival and villagers turned up to tell us what had happened to the school. A local politician had promised to rebuild it prior to the elections ….but once elected, he had done nothing and because he had made a pledge to do it, no one else had helped. The irony was that the school in all its appalling decay, had been given the most spanking new, beautifully built latrine block by a German aid organisation. So here we were in classrooms with no ceilings and hundreds of children studying outside, with the best loos available to man …. nowhere to study, but luxurious loos!---pretty much sums up the haphazard aid in Afghanistan!

I am determined to build all these schools and to provide all the children in this region with safe schools and good teachers. It is a massive task but in a place like this in Afghanistan-where as many girls as boys come to school and thousands are being educated every year, it makes such great sense and we have to manage it some how.

With these thoughts swimming around my head, we arrived back at Tarusht late at night. The stars were so bright and the moon lit up the valleys and men in turbans were waiting for us in the square. They welcomed us in to their home and we sat in a huge long room on red carpets and soon about 20 male guests arrived. They were wonderful company and very light hearted and great fun to be with. But the sadness was that they told me how 80% of the men in the village end up going to Iran as illegal workers on construction sights, living in appalling conditions, in order to earn $1000 a year to send back to their families. There is so little work here other than farming and I hope that some time in the future we can help to develop some kind of job opportunities here.

We had yet another feast-which began with a speciality of massive plates of rice cooked in milk with salt and sugar, served with a huge trough in the middle of the rice which was filled up with oil!

A great delicacy, but as a starter on a well full tummy, a bit daunting. Copious plates of food followed, as always so incredibly generous.

Felt so happy with them all, but then received news from England that the US pastor who had been at the burning of the Qur’an which triggered the deaths of the UN workers, was planning to burn another copy on Good Friday. The Courts were trying to ban him but it looked as if he would go ahead. My guide told me that if he did, then the back lash would be far worse than the first time and that our lives as well as his would be in real danger. Today was Thursday and he was planning to go ahead next morning in the US. This meant we would be travelling to Taloqan City and would arrive during Friday prayers at the Mosque—just when the Mullahs would show their anger.

I went from such happiness to real deep fear in those few seconds. Ollie was great and we made a plan to leave at dawn and go straight to Faizabad and meet the teachers there, to return to Kabul if we could on the Saturday. In Faizabad we wouldn’t necessarily be safer than Taloqan, but at least it has a small runway which could offer possibility of rescue if things got really nasty. I really believed that if the pastor went ahead, we would be in the most horrible situation.

Sleeping that night was not easy. I had to climb a ladder into a small room where I slept on the floor and 4 of the family clambered on to cushions beside me. The downside to hydroelectric is that the mother wanted the bulb on all night! I got bitten again and was lying awake worrying away about the security situation. The irony was that if anything went wrong I knew I was in the safest place, and that once we left the next day, we would lose that security. But we had to get to the teachers and also had to try and get home.

20th April 2011

Wonderful to leave Taloqan and head off to the mountains of Worsaj. The familiar drive through the gentle hills of Taloqan and on to the wilder floodplains before Fakhar with the snow topped mountains of Worsaj growing ever nearer. Such a familiar route now and past schools which we have built- Ledgei and Wahdat, still there and in their beautiful surroundings serving the local communities.

The welcome we receive at Bibi Ayisha is legendary and today was no different with rows of children standing in lines, singing us a greeting and showering me with glitter and flowers and placing garlands over my head. I love seeing the guards –splendid old men who have more wrinkles added to the contours of their face at every visit and who greet me like family.

After breakfast of fresh trout from the river, wild rocket with fresh cucumbers and naan with carrot and plum jam, served with the most delicious green tea, we went to see the boys’ school. I had opened the school last year and again we received the most magnificent welcome with the whole school standing waiting for us with more flowers and garlands.

Qawunduz Village was next and a visit to the Khadeja Kubretal Girls School. I had visited last year and we were asked to build a school for the 750 girls, most of whom were studying outside. The Bonita Trust has funded the majority of the building and the donor who came to visit last year has funded the rest and part of another girls’ school further up the valley. It was incredibly emotional arriving to find all the village men out laying the foundations of the school and moving the village road so that classrooms could be built. This is their contribution to the project and I saw them all and thanked them and watched the first foundations of the school being laid.

All the girls had come out to thank us and there followed another procession with flowers and garlands and cheers and then I was asked to give a speech. The visit was made even more emotional as our donor is very unwell and I so wished he could have been here to see the beginnings of his school and the joy he has helped to bring to these children. We were not allowed to leave without another delicious meal and more green tea!

We continued on to Anoy School which is in deperate need of classrooms. From the ridge we could see 2 tents and a classroom outside and all the other classes being held in an old building with no roof and broken down walls. I know I could get funding for this school. The need is overwhelming. However a grim man arrived and told us in loud aggressive tones that we would have to buy the land if we want to build the school. The community told us that he is a corrupt politician and never owned the land but has a fake certificate of ownership. So they refuse to pay him for the land and these children will not get a school unless some other land can be found. So depressing.

To cheer things up I distributed the beanie hats knitted by the women of East Woodhay and soon hundreds of children were wearing brightly coloured hats. Wonderful sight! Well worth bringing them all this way!

Then on to a community based school in Viruf which is being funded by AC. We are funding 30 CBS in Worsaj for 600 children and without these schools the children would not receive an education because the nearest schools are too far away. They are run out of houses or the mosque by arrangement with the community and AC pays the teachers and for the stationery and teacher training. Fantastic to see the young children studying- some of them in their first year at school. Had great fun watching their classes.

Then mats were brought and laid out by the river under the shade of the purple blossoms of the pistachio trees. Tea was served with fresh almonds and raisins.

Lastly a visit to the teacher training centre where 50 women were having training in the fading light- the future teachers of Worsaj.

And now we are in a carpeted room in a home in the hills of Qawunduz. I am sitting on cushions with 12 men sitting smiling and watching me write. They are so hospitable and arrived with bags of fresh trout to cook for our dinner. It is so rare for foreigners to stay in villages these days and we are incredibly privileged. I feel very safe here. But I am afraid of Friday and just pray that the madman in the US is not planning to burn the Q again as we have been informed ...in which case we will leave here tomorrow and get to Faizabad.

19th April 2011

Very early start after very bad nights sleep, but a beautiful clear morning and the journey to Keshem was stunning , with the morning light on the mountains and hills and the clearest blue skies. Drove to Jari Shah Baba School, where we have built 2 classroom blocks and were greeted by the children and teachers standing at the gate. They came forward one by one and put garlands around our necks and gave us bunches of brightly coloured flowers and sang the Afghan song of welcome to us - so many familiar faces and wonderful to be back.



Gareth and Jane received a wonderful welcome and we went round the classrooms, chatting to the students. They asked us questions and told us about their lives and all the difficulties they face with getting a good education. Wherever we go we are told that the biggest problem is the standard of teaching.






They had prepared a feast for us, cooked by the students with the equipment Holt school bought for them last year. After this we did more interviews with the students for our film on Education, which will be shown to Parliamentarians in Estonia, Solvakia, Sweden, Uk, the European Parliament and in Afghanistan. The girls who came forward to be interviewed were amazing and one had been to Kabul last month to take part in our Video Conference with the European students. She has illiterate parents -her father is a bus driver and has been desperate for his children to have an education to better themselves and leave the life of poverty they lead. She wants to be a female police woman because she believes that if the country had a good police force, security would be much better. Brave girl! She had heard that we were coming and had stayed up all night to crochet a table mat for me. The head mistress gave me a beautiful scarf in pink with silver embroidery and the headmaster gave me antique silver pendant “for my daughter “ and an embroidered handkerchief for my son!

We said our goodbyes and then headed off to Mashad School where AC has funded classrooms which were completed when I visited last year. Then there were 2500 students, now there are 3000 and there are only 63 teachers. Again, we were greeted with flowers and garlands and a choir. Prefects kept the children in order by wielding sticks! Hundreds of girls came to see us and we walked around visiting the classes. Then more gifts were presented - this time Afghan clothes for us all.



To my horror, we were then invited by the local education manager back to a local house for lunch. We were already full up from the first lunch! We were welcomed in to an immaculate house and sat on the floor and served the most enormous amount of food, all beautifully presented-salads and local herbs, huge plates of rice, whole chickens, big lumps of mutton, soup, yoghurt and fruit. I had the worst possible place to sit, between the two Afghans who were responsible for the feast...they kept on and on filling my plate until I could have wept! I could hardly move to stand up. Fond farewells. Slept all the way home.

18th April 2011

From Kabul to Faizabad

Yesterday in Kabul full of very useful meetings and a wonderful evening with Leslie Knott, who made the film Out of the Ashes, Miles Amoore, journalist and Raees Ahmadzi, cricketer, joining us. But today we left Kabul and I was SO happy to get away. Boarded the UN flight for Faizabad and reflected that it was on a UN flight from Peshawar almost exactly 10 years ago to the day that I flew in to Afghanistan for the first time, landing in Faizabad.

At that time Afghanistan was in the grip of the Taliban who had just destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan and were fighting the Northern Alliance and causing misery across the country. I was terrified then, but at the same time,I remember the feeling of exhilaration as I landed and began my incredible journey to a clinic in the Panjshir. Back then there were no tarmac roads and few foreigners and we never knew from day to day where we would arrive at dusk or where we would stay. We relied on the hospitality of strangers and finally made it to the clinic, where I saw hundreds of women and children and heard the stories of their lives, which had neither joy nor hope. There were hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people living in refugee camps which stretched out as far as the eye could see and hospitals, bombed by the Taliban, operating out of shells of buildings on patients from the frontline. It is strange to look back on the ten years and seeing how that journey has changed my life.

The landing strip is the same and the approach as treacherous and beautiful, over the Hindu Kush and hairpinning down to the metal runway and an isolated Badakshan. It is uniquely beautiful, with vast lush hills and massive mountains and villages perched impossibly on to the steep shale strewn slopes. But the road has tarmac and we sped along past timeless scenes of donkeys with bright saddle bags, men in purple and green striped Badakshani coats and women clad in brilliant blue burkhas.


Arrived in Taloqan within a few hours and were greeted at the office by Mukhtar, whom I have known for years and the familiar faces of the guards. Splendid lunch and off to Sari Sang School, twinned to St Catherines. Deeply conservative area in a village hidden in the midst of adobe walls, narrow dusty lanes and fields where men followed the oxen ploughing as others had done centuries before. The girls were great and begged us to get them better teachers. But as with everything else in Afghanistan, it is fraught with complex issues and the headmaster has little power to hire and fire -so much is dependent still on the powers that be higher up and who they know and which teachers they favour. The girls spoke English, though it sounded as if they had learned the phrases off by heart. They loved the cards and letters from St Catherines and asked lots of questions about the girls in England.
And now about to sleep in my dorm of 4 – Sima, Olympia and Jane and we will head off at dawn for Keshem to visit Jari Shah Baba School.

15th April 2011

Kabul one year on. A fortress city with more fortifications.

I am here with two teachers, Jane, an English teacher from The Sholing Technology College, Southampton and Gareth, a History teacher from Eton, who are here to give teacher training, and with Ollie, who will be making a film for us.

After a security briefing from SCA (always enough to make one want to turn back and run home) we set out for Said Daoud Khan Girls School where we were running one of our girls cricket coaching camps. Miles Amoore, Sunday Times Correspondent, (who came to Afghanistan with me years back when he was on the Newbury weekly news desk) joined us fresh from Libya where he had been reporting, escorted by Gadaffi’s henchmen.

50 girls from 5 different ethnic groups, had come together from 5 schools across Kabul for a 2 day camp. Dressed in whites emblazoned with the Spirit of Cricket, Afghan Connection and AYCSO, they received coaching from 3 female and one male coach -all siblings from a wonderful cricketing family. The female coaches play for the Afghanistan Women’s Cricket Team.

Most girls were playing cricket for the first time, but a few had played before and one or two were magnificent and have been spotted for the Afghan team. One had been taught by her 3 brothers in the refugee camps of Pakistan. Judging by the strength the ball that whacked me off her bat, they taught her well! Another, called Diana, comes from a cricketing family too and all her siblings and both her parents play. A beautiful girl with green eyes and henna in her hair told me how she had her parents’ blessing to be at the camp but all her aunts and uncles were very against it and had criticised the family. She loves cricket and says she is very very angry that girls have so few opportunities and that “uneducated” people across Afghanistan make life so hard and restricted for women. Some spoke excellent English and loved talking to us about everything from cricket to hair dyes, their passion for romantic novels including Romeo and Juliet and their determination to have careers as engineers and doctors. They begged us to come back again and do another camp for them.

When people ask me, as they often do, why I continue to work in Afghanistan when there is such poor security and such a huge cloud lying over the future, I wish they could meet these girls. It is when I see them and listen to them and witness their determination and indomitable spirit despite all that they are up against, that I know that we cannot give up. Jane told me how her Nicaraguan daughter in law had told her that the one thing that gave her hope as a child during the worst years of civil war, were the teachers who came to Nicaragua and risked their lives to bring them education. It allowed her to become literate and made her feel that people outside of her country cared about her and she has never forgotten.

I think of the letter I received from a girl in Bibi Ayisha Girls School in remote Northern Afghanistan, saying that the best day of her life was the day I visited her school, which had no classrooms. Now she studies in a brand new school with 1100 other girls. She has hope. And as I look at Kabul one year on, with a cold drizzle falling from skies which hum with helicopters and sirens and feel slight despair at the lack of progress and the uneasy atmosphere of fear, I will keep those girls in the forefront of my mind and not give up!