By Dawn Lloyd

 
Editor’s Note: Dawn Lloyd is a guest columnist that spends most of the year in Kabul, Afghanistan. Throughout the term, she’ll be sharing her experiences living in Kabul with Ethos. Any opinions she expresses are solely hers and are not necessarily held by the editorial staff.
Her other entries can be found here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7
I grew up the daughter of two parents with college degrees, and never questioned that I, also, would go to college. I didn’t dislike school, but I certainly didn’t value it, either. After all, everyone had to go to school whether they wanted to or not. Although I had a vague remote awareness that education wasn’t a standard part of life in other places in the world, I never comprehended how fortunate I was. Even a few weeks before I first came to Afghanistan, when I happened to mention it to a stranger who’d asked about my job, and she praised me for helping to educate women, I shrugged it off without really understanding the impact that those actions would have.
In retrospect, I am ashamed of those feelings and of all the things I took for granted in America.
I’m not ashamed of having the things we have. I feel exceptionally fortunate, but not guilty, for all the comforts and privileges I grew up with. What I feel ashamed of is having taken them for granted without realizing how much some of the rest of the world would sacrifice to have those same opportunities.
The second month I was in Afghanistan, one of my students came into my office to talk to me. Through the course of the conversation, he told me why he had been struggling that semester. His mother and his aunt, who lived with him in the standard manner in which Afghans share houses with their extended families, taught at a school for girls. Two weeks before school started, they had been attacked because they taught girls. His aunt had been shot in the head, and they tried to kill his mother before she ran. As the oldest male in the family, my nineteen year old student had to identify the body and reach through what was left of her head and brains to retrieve a hairpin, a family heirloom. His mother, after taking the standard three days off for mourning, returned to her job fully aware of the risks that she may be attacked again. My student not only mourned for his aunt, but also spent every day worrying that they would again try to kill his mother. She didn’t quit her job, though. In her mind, educating girls was worth the risk.
One of my female students was the sixth daughter in a family of all girls. Her family, like many others, fled to Pakistan as refugees. In Pakistan, the girls had the opportunity to be educated. Although it wasn’t the cultural norm, her father was emphatic that his daughters would be educated. His family criticized him. “Your daughters won’t grow up to be proper women,” they said. “They will have their own opinions and won’t be submissive to their husbands. No one will want to marry them. They’ll be a disgrace to your family.” Her father stood up to them, and all of his daughters went to school. My student was, indeed, an excellent critical thinker and willing to challenge the traditions and status quo that her relatives had been so concerned she would uphold.
Some years ago, when she was twelve, another of my students was going to be married so her family would get the dowry money and have one less mouth to feed. Another family stepped in and paid her family to have her join their family. She did, and was welcomed as a daughter, not as a wife. They assured she had the opportunity to be educated, and she now advocates and writes for human and women’s rights in Afghanistan.
One day, when I was asking my students how old they were when they started working, one of the girls (now in her early twenties) said that about ten years ago, she had been working for an non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on teaching women how to remove landmines in their villages and fields. I was shocked and puzzled how such a young girl could be employed by an NGO, and how she would be allowed to travel around the country alone. “No one else could do it. Men wouldn’t be allowed to teach women, and an adult woman couldn’t have done it without suspicion” she explained. That same NGO helped her gain an education, and now she’s studying in university with the intention of continuing to teach women how to help repair their country.
When I think back over my own life, and how this place has changed me, I find myself humbled beyond words at how much these girls, and their families, have risked, sacrificed, and accomplished to attend college. An education, and the freedom and equality to gain it, should never be taken for granted.
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I recently saw a ted.com video that sums up the situation well, with a young Afghan woman telling her story of struggling to go to school during the Taliban regime. It is both amazing and inspirational, and I would encourage everyone to go watch it.
About the author: Dawn Lloyd is an American who got bored and set out to find adventure. Four continents later, she’s settled in Kabul where she teaches English at the American University of Afghanistan. She is Editor in Chief for The Colored Lens magazine and writes speculative fiction, a list of which can be found on her personal site.