Airmen donate school to Afghans

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Orville F. Desjarlais Jr.
  • Air Force Print News
BAGRAM, Afghanistan --  In a valley, children sat in groups of 20 outdoors to learn. They are minuscule compared to the majestic mountains that surround them. One teacher, wearing a mix of traditional Afghani clothes and a Salvation Army dress coat, used his bicycle to prop up a chalkboard to teach writing. Another leaned his board against a mud wall so he could instruct students on how to add fractions. The children’s dusty little shoes, for those fortunate to have them, lined one side of a tarp so as not to get it dirty.

Nature provides the school -- the sky is the ceiling, tarp on packed dirt is the floor, a nearby stream provides drinking water and its fair share of dysentery. A little farther away, a ditch is the restroom. Two mud walls are the school’s loosely defined boundaries.

Nature also cancels school. Sharp winds kick up so much dust, they all must go home. The area becomes a mud pit when the least amount of rain falls, and winter cancels school until spring, during which time the children do nothing.

On Oct. 19, the Air Force delivered a school to Sortekle Village near the base here. To the Air Force, it was not much, just an old eight-section tent. But to the school’s principal, that tent was his future school. He has plans to divide that tent into two so boys and girls can be educated separately.

Since this village’s liberation from the Taliban in 2001, teaching girls is still quite new. Of eight classes taught in the open field, one was for girls, who appeared to be between 6 and 8 years old. Every so often, one would jump up from her studies and bound across a nearby field for a break. Since some of the girls’ clothes are the color of raspberries or blueberries on steroids, they stand out in the dusty, burnt sienna backdrop that is their country.

Lt. Col. Rick Johnson, the 455th Expeditionary Operations Group deputy commander, is deployed here from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. He said visiting the village was a humbling experience.

“Until this, I didn’t realize how good Americans have it,” he said. “No matter where you are in the world, a young kid’s smile is a young kid’s smile. I felt proud about what we did. It’s good to see why we’re here. Sure, we’re here to capture terrorists and to fight, but we’re also here to help the people of Afghanistan.”

Although Afghanistan is seven-and-a-half hours ahead of America’s East Coast, it is about 100 years behind the times. There is no electricity and no running water. The average family income is $250 a year. Adults on average can expect to live to the age of 43.

To the children, war is all they know. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 and was forced out in 10 years by anti-Communist forces supplied and trained by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other nations. However, fighting continued among warring factions, spawning today’s Taliban, which was able to capture most of the country. That is, until America and 90 other nations stepped in Oct. 7, 2001, following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Twenty-four years of war have taken its toll on this nation that is about the size of Texas. Nearly every man is armed. When base volunteers traveled to the village, they had to be escorted by Air Force Office of Special Investigations agents and armed security forces. Village people gave thumbs-up signs to the passing convoy. But, some could not because of land mines.

“I go to shake hands, and sometimes there’s nothing but a stub,” said an OSI agent deployed from Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. (For security reasons, his name is not being released.) He said it is normal to see men walking around with weapons.

“It’s a way of life here,” the agent said. “But you get used to it after awhile.”

It is not uncommon to see security-forces airmen armed with M-16s talking with armed Afghan men who work in a guard shack near the school -- all this taking place while surrounded by children. But it must be done because Afghanistan is a very treacherous place.

The volunteer airmen would have helped erect the tent had it not been so dangerous. But, not all terrorists have been caught.

December will mark the two-year anniversary of the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. What remains will be widespread poverty, very little infrastructure, land mines that maim -- and hope. It may be a second-hand tent today in the little village of Sortekle, but it may turn into a hardened structure in a couple years, and maybe even a real school in a decade. After all, that too, is what Operation Enduring Freedom is all about -- helping the Afghan people help themselves.