The Orchards (Part 2)

The trip to the orchard was a beautiful, but brisk, walk in the woods. Carrie Lou and my brother Josh will remember me saying a few years ago we'd be taking a "brisk walk in the woods" as I took them to hike Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. I don't know they've ever forgiven me for telling them that and then leading them on a trek up the toughest trail to the peak. But this to the orchard trip was truly brisk, brisk as when you have too many bushes and trees and small knolls around for people that don't like you to hide in.

There were beautiful trees and plants along the way, some bright purple flowers in the fields of golden wheat and white barked trees that reminded me of birch. The grasses were a pale green and tall as they swayed in the breeze that day. Everything about the trails to the orchards put my mind in a different place.

Gone was the hard pounding of pavement or the pinch of small rocks that are on the FOBs. Gone too was the smell of diesel fumes from every direction and the constant din of rumbling generator engines. We didn't pass one single port-a-potty and the wretched smell because the contractors wait too long to clean them. And the air was clearer as there weren't any vehicles around kicking up the dust into the air. We even crossed an old wooden bridge over a creek, each end having a large, elm-like tree that seemed to stand guard. It was a genuinely different environment than I have yet experienced here.

When we arrived at the orchard, things didn't seem all that bad. There were some trees that had some obvious problems (lack of water, lack of nutrients, etc) and some apples that had spots, but for the most part the crop looked good on the trees that had apples. It was the fact that many of the trees had no apples at all that was the greatest concern. We talked amongst ourselves and our experts did some assessments of the trees and the crop. As we were doing this, another group of students appeared as they were curious what we were doing.

I wasn't all that much help assessing the trees and the crop, so I took some time to talk to this new group of students. My interpreter and I asked them if they were skipping school, if they lived near by, and who was in what grade. The boys were laughing, at ease around soldiers and happy to talk about things on that sunny day.

I was curious about their school life and what they thought about being in school. Their classes, the school itself and their teachers are obviously different here in Afghanistan. Everyone I asked told me their favorite class was Islam and their second favorite class was Pashto (the native language in this part of Afghanistan). It was curious that they all had the same answer and while I was interested in pursuing that further to see if they were conditioned to answer the question that way by their teachers, another comment took me down a different path.

One small boy said his favorite class was Islam and his second favorite Pashto as had all the other boys, and in the same, metronomic way. But he had a larger than life smile when he told me his third favorite subject was computers. I asked him what about computers interested him and he said, "Everything!" He went to talk for about five minutes about all that he had learned, the typing on the keyboard, clicking the mouse, changing the pictures, even writing a letter. He was so excited, wanting to tell me everything and, I think, impress me with all he had learned. I was excited to see him happy and asked him if he thought he would continue to learn more about computers. He replied, "I will learn everything!"

Some of the other boys started talking about their experience with computers, but none were as excited as the first boy. It was clear he had found his calling in his mind and he was, at what seemed to be 12 or 14, ready to go to college and just study computers all day long. I asked some of the boys what they thought they would do once they finished school. Some said go back to the farms, some said go into government, but the excited boy told me he was ready to go to the United States to learn more.

I asked him to tell me why he wanted to go to the United States and he replied, "No one can teach me here." That was a curious reply so I mentioned that the university in Kabul had many programs that he could study but before the interpreter finished telling him what I was saying, his head was shaking no. He told us that he knew there was no future for him in Afghanistan, and his parents wanted him to leave and study and be successful because they felt Afghanistan was going to go back to war after the Americans left. That was a very disheartening thing to hear.

Many of the other boys chimed in and had similar comments that they felt there really wasn't a future, most of them wanted to leave Afghanistan as soon as they could. Even the ones who said they wanted to farm after school said they wanted to go to Pakistan or Iran where there was always plenty of water and food and jobs. I didn't have the heart to tell them some of the hardships of what they'd experience being foreign workers in another country.

I left the boys and said thank you and told them I would visit again if I could. As I hiked back with the others, I couldn't help but think about sustainability and what the boys were saying. If you are training students to use computers, what good will that do them if there are no computers for them to use? If you are training them to be teachers, what good will that do them if there are no schools? What do we need to do to create sustainability so that a small boy can dream and actually realize his dream in his own country?

If the students at this age have already given up and feel their only opportunities are in other countries, Afghanistan is in for an even rougher future than I had thought. Winning hearts and minds is one thing, winning the hearts and minds of Afghanistan's future has to be one of our priorities.