– 7300 Days/20 Years Later in Kabul…

by | Dec 9, 2022

This newsletter was sent out by email on December 8, 2022…

7,300 Days of Montessori in Afghanistan

Children do not count the passage of time by years. They live by the day. That’s why it seems more appropriate to count how many DAYS of Montessori education MEPO has been offering to children in Afghanistan.

7,300 days translates into 20 years!

It was 20 years ago this fall that the House of Flowers Montessori Orphanage opened its doors in the Kolola Pushta neighborhood in Kabul. Young orphaned children were welcomed into the warm and safe home environment of the House of Flowers. Boys and girls, Pushto speakers and Dari speakers, Hazara and Tajik and Uzbek ethnicities, all came together under one roof, a ‘mini-Afghanistan,’ as teacher Razia put it just the other day. The children of the House of Flowers not only learned how to live together; they also showed adults how it can be done.

In recent nostalgic conversations with some who grew up in the House of Flowers, we heard their memories of feeling calm and relaxed, of playing in the yard with friends, of proudly selling handmade things in their little shop, of feeling free, and of still being close with each other and the staff 20 years later. They also spoke of learning that people are simply people, and how important it is to respect others no matter their beliefs or cultures. This realization, as well as their own peaceful lives, is their contribution to Afghan society today.

Today such work is more important than ever. The House of Flowers closed its doors in 2020, but the work certainly did not end. Shifting to the Garden of Flowers Montessori Preschool in 2020, younger children from destitute families have been thriving in the peace-giving Montessori environment ever since, up to this very day.

Today we honor those committed adults In Afghanistan who have been with us over these 20 years: Fatima, Nik Mohammad, Razia, Fahim, and Nasrat and Abdul Waheed at HEWAD. We also honor the children who grew up in the House and are now living adult lives of integrity today with their own families, their own children, and their jobs in society.

And of course, none of it would have been possible without the hundreds of generous people around the world, those committed people of heart who, through their donations of time, money and supplies, took seriously their sense of responsibility towards others on the earth.
In the top picture from 2008, Farooq and Hayat were about 8 years old, hanging out together at the House of Flowers. Below them, in pictures taken this year, are Farooq sitting with his own two children, and Hayat’s baby son. Both Farooq and Hayat are now living and working in Iran. 
It was 20 years ago that the picture on the left was taken, showing sisters Nadia, Razia and Shukria (from left to right) in the early days of the House of Flowers in 2002.
On the right, they are all grown up! Nadia is on the left, Razia in the center, and Shukria is on the right with her two children, Omar and Aisha.
Razia is now a teacher at the Garden of Flowers, and Nadia is currently also helping out there. Shukria is planning to leave for Iran soon with her family. It will be the first time the sisters will be apart. 
An Honest Update About Life in Kabul These Days
We talk often about the great dedication and energy of our staff at the Garden of Flowers. Every week we meet on Whatsapp video; they laugh and joke and smile, telling us about their joyful days with the children.

But sometimes they share other things about their lives as well. We know that as soon as the staff walks out the doors of the GoF into the streets of Kabul, they come face to face with the harsh social reality. Afghanistan comes only in the global news when something extreme happens, and news of the Taliban has faded into the background of the world story these days. But for those living there, it’s a daily burden.

People have adjusted to a degree, as people always do. But life under the Taliban continues to be more and more dire. The people live under a shroud of chronic fear. Our staff worry about street bombs, and have stopped conducting seminars for mothers out of  the risks for gatherings of women.

The suppression of women is accelerating in other ways as well. Perhaps out of their fear of women’s strength and power with the nearby uprisings in Iran, the Taliban have closed women’s public baths, where women could gather and talk. Our teacher Fatima was quite distressed when she told us this, explaining that many poor women do not have access to indoor plumbing or warm water for bathing. Women are also now prohibited from going to city parks, another place where they could gather and talk.  These new restrictions are on top of the well-known prohibition on girls’ education past age 12.

The long-term implications for the society continue to sink in. Afghanistan is facing the prospect of a generation of uneducated, isolated, and suppressed women, combined with the psychological impacts of a society living in fear: Last week the  staff told us that as they were walking to work, they saw the Taliban building execution facilities in the streets. We simply cannot imagine what that must feel like. But we can imagine what seeing such things does to the human mind, existing in an atmosphere crafted by men who rule with nothing but fear.

For this reason, our work with children is more critical than ever, because this situation raises the questions that reflect our work back to us: What kind of childhoods did these Taliban men have? How were they treated as children? 
These questions can elicit a certain level of compassion, along with an attempt to understand and of course ideally prevent it from happening again.

But more importantly right now, this situation cannot be ignored. For the non-Taliban men in the society it is a harsh and heart-breaking situation, but it is the women who are increasingly facing the brunt of the Taliban’s warped views and policies, in which women are seen as as lesser humans who must not be allowed to participate in the society or live normal lives. What is happening to women in Afghanistan is truly a crime against humanity.

While we hold out hopes that Afghan society and its women (and men) will continue to resist and find ways to get rid of such backwards rulers, we feel there must be more the world can do. The sanctions have served their purpose of international isolation, but as a friend with the UN in Kabul recently told us, “The Taliban don’t care much about international community.” Ideology is incredibly difficult to counter, to say the least.

So we continue to do the work of opening minds in a small corner of Kabul, and putting our faith in the strength of good people. 
Some of the Garden of Flowers Montessori Preschool children in Kabul today – the next generation.