KARACHI: Some in the noisy group of teenagers had just returned from the United States after completing one year of high school there under the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Programme while the rest were about to leave to do the same.

All had to be repeatedly reminded to calm down and be seated which they would do, too, but only for a little while before getting excited and becoming loud again as they exchanged notes with one another at the welcoming of the 35 from Sindh who had just returned home at hotel here on Wednesday.

Mohammad Muneeb Kamal while sharing his experience of spending a year in Alaska said that he had heard that there was a bear on the runway which he thought was rather cool. “But when I told my host mother about it, she wasn’t very impressed as bears were common in Alaska,” he said.

The boy said that in Alaska no roads led to anywhere and they had to fly to even get groceries. “And when we rode a sled, I realised that no one controlled the sled. It stops when it wants to,” he laughed while showing a small video clip of his bumpy experience with several photographs of himself against waterfalls, taking a dip in cold lakes, etc.

In his high school there were only 11 students and the moment he joined school he was part of the volleyball team which was short of a boy. His arrival completed the state school team. The 25 presentations he made to create a better understanding of the Pakistani culture gave him confidence and the 200 hours of community service, which he did there made him a better person.

Aqsa Khalil, another exchange student, who was placed with a family in California, said that the hosts who take the students in are very brave people. “You enter their home as a complete stranger but they care for you like they do for their own family,” she said.

“The presentations I made at school helped me overcome my fear of speaking and I also happened to fulfil a lifelong dream of visiting Disneyland,” she said. “It wasn’t a year in my life that I spent in the US but a lifetime spent in a year.”

Farah S. Kamal, executive director of iEARN, while speaking about the US-funded programme said that the students going to the US to spend a year there were little ambassadors. “Starting in 2003 and with our 12th batch ready to depart now, I feel I am growing younger with each passing year,” she laughed.

Welcoming the students who had returned and wishing good luck to the ones departing, US consul general Michael Dodman said that growing up he had not had the experience of being an exchange student himself though he had the pleasure of meeting several exchange students in his school in Buffalo, New York. “Maybe you don’t see yourself as diplomats but you have done a lot by explaining about your country and culture to the people in the US. As a kid growing up even I benefited from the exchange students that I met in my school in order to appreciate other cultures and values,” he said.

The youth exchange programme provides scholarships to secondary school students between the ages of 15 and 17 from over 40 countries to study at American high schools and live with American host families for up to one academic year. For the year 2013-2014, the YES programme provided scholarships to 108 high school students from Pakistan, including Gawadar, Sahiwal, Khairpur, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2014