AnAidWorker

“How are you?” a sweet voice startled me. No one was more surprised than me to hear a English phrase in around here. I tuned around and looked at the origin of the voice. A Afari young girl was standing behind me with two jerry cans in each hand, smiling ear to ear, waiting for my answer. It took me few seconds to recover and finally I could reply. She walked up to me, put the cans down and introduced herself, “My name is Fatema.” I had to wait and organized my thought for a second to reply to her comments.

I met Fatema, at a water point in Mubaye, a large village on the tip of Teru District of Afar Region. It took us all day a long search on a car to get to this village over few mountains and long drive on a dried up riverbed. Most of the people in the village are struggling to survive the long drought in the area resulted in massive death of livestock and loss of life. In this desolate, desert land surrounded by mountains and plagued with hunger, disease and death, finding a girl speaking English is nothing but amazing.

Fatema, filled her jerry can, signalled me to wait and disappeared. She returned in few minutes with a book and few of her friends. While we were sitting down by the well, Fatema and her friends went through each picture on the book and recited in chorus the name of the animals, birds and objects, table, cat, goats and camel. They counted up to ten in English and then in Afari. They even taught me how to greet people in Afari.

Through an interpreter, I learned that Fatema is a third grade student of an roving alternative school funded by a local NGO, Afar Pastoralist Development Association (APDA). The school is designed to provide instruction for pastoralist children. I was so engrossed by this children that I set off to see the School.

After 20 minutes drive through the desert, we reached a rocky hill sticking out with few huts scattered around. The school is nothing but a small structure created by stacking rocks on top of each other. As I waited, children of all ages slowly started to gather around the school. I saw a man and a children walking toward the school carrying a black board. All of a sudden, sudden wind blew with all strengths and almost toppled the man with the black board. Twilling dust covered the area and I lost the sight of him few minutes. He appeared again with child and put the black board inside the schoolroom.

Mohammed Ali has been a teacher for this community for past 3 years for Non Formal Education programme. He was selected by the community and trained by APDA. Now he travels with the community wherever they go and try to teach the student. “As pastoralist moves from place to place for water and grazing for their livestock, their children can not be taught in regular schools. Whenever they find a water point they stop and I set up my School,” he explained, “ I teach the children to read and write in English, Amaharic and Afari. I also teach them basic Mathematics”

The teacher signalled the students to enter the school. After the student settled down, he started his lesson. I stood by the walkway and watched the classroom. The dust storm razed outside. My eyes moved on each face of the children and found desire for learning in the midst of adversity, determination in the heart of distress. My eyes stopped on Fatema’s face. She gave a bright and reassuring smile. Right then I knew that no matter how her life turns out in feature, nothing even the this dust storm with all its strength could not take way her joy of learning from her for rest of her life.