IT was one of the usual days when I visited Jinnah School No 9, one out of a series of 10 schools established by a local NGO in Balochistan that provides socio-economic services to address the root causes of the exploitation of children, and advocates resolving impenetrable issues regarding gender sensitivity.
It was in a class of this school that I found Shafiqa, a bit more introvert and a quite child compared to the rest of her class fellows. On my request, Rahima, the class teacher, excused Shafiqa from class for a while as I wanted to have a chat with this shy girl. She was timid and unwilling to tell me about herself. Fortunately, Rahima came to my rescue and finally I managed to have a conversation with the little girl.
“How old are you,” I asked her.
“I am 9...no, 10,” she said, not sounding too sure about her age.
“According to the school records, she is 9,” Rahima told me.
“My mother’s name is Khawer. My father’s name is Ali Shah, but he is dead,” she added innocently and openly, without knowing the meaning of death.
When I asked her about the exact events and circumstances in which her father died, she didn’t know much.
“I have four sisters, all my sisters and my mother are in Afghanistan,” she told me.
Shafiqa lives with her uncle, besides his six children, in a two-room mud house. So how did she come here?
“I came here with my uncle,” she informed me. Her uncle is a fruit vendor and hardly earns Rs30 daily, equal to almost half a US Dollar. Shafiqa has to weave carpets to contribute to the meagre resources of her uncle’s family. She told me that she does not feel happy when she has to go for carpet weaving in factories. The environment and working conditions are unhygienic and harsh.
“Do you like coming to school,” I asked her.
She smiled for the first time since the beginning of our conversation and said, “Yes.”
These schools are established on a non-formal education model devised by the Organization for Social Development striving for the protection of children’s rights in Balochistan, for working/ street children in one of the largest urban Afghan refugee settlement in the area of Hazara Town near Quetta. The settlement was established after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Most of the households are female-headed as a result of the male casualties during the Afghan war and the subsequent ongoing civil war.
Shafiqa was nostalgic about her family back in Afghanistan. She said she missed her mother and sisters, but cannot help it as her uncle has been kind enough to bring her here, lessening some of the economic burden on her family and the constant danger to her life in a war and chaos-stricken country. Shafiqa also wants her family to come here as “life is safe and better here.”
Most of the children in these schools are involved in carpet weaving, an indigenous industry of this area where poverty is rampant. Their employers have been motivated with the help of massive sensitization and community mobilization to lessen the number of hours these children spend in the centres. This has resulted in reduction of at least three-and-a-half hours in their working time. Children are taken on joy visits to different parks. Fun fairs and international days are celebrated in these schools. Educational movies and programmes are also shown in the classrooms to these children using TV and VCR.
“What do you want to be when you are grown up,” I asked Shafiqa.
She paused for a while, and then answered simply and innocently, “I want to be a doctor!”
IT was one of the usual days when I visited Jinnah School No 9, one out of a series of 10 schools established by a local NGO in Balochistan that provides socio-economic services to address the root causes of the exploitation of children, and advocates resolving impenetrable issues regarding gender sensitivity.
