An Afghan Girl Ambition to Work for UN/NGO

When I was a little girl, I used to wake up every morning to watch my father getting ready for his work. He was an English translator in Red Cross and mostly was on travel. I loved the fact that he was so neat, organize and professional. He loved to be always in black suit, white shirt and a beautiful black tie. He was picked up by a white land cruiser with a Red Cross sign and a nice flog right in front of it. My father used to drop me to school every day and I loved the fact to use and get a ride on his car, not that I was interested at school. There was a morning when I waked up and realized, my father was already gone. I was extremely disappointed and continuously crying. I said to mom, 'why dad went with out seeing and dropping me to school'. Mom with a beautiful smile said, 'he had a meeting to attend and went to be there to prepare for his presentation'. I still remember, like last night dream to what I said to mom, I said, 'dad seems to be really proud of his car, tell him that one day I will grow up and will have such a car coming to pick me up and that day I would not give him a left'. Mom laughed and said, ok do so, but now stop crying and go to school. Years, months, weeks and days passed by, and I happened to be in grade 12. Our house was close to UNHCR and MSF office, and every morning when I was going to school, I used to see MSF and UNHCR land cruisers with the white and red flogs hanging. Glance of those cars was just a meal of mind and motivation engine to me. That was making me to work hard and get close to my destination. Grade 12 was a busy year, because I had to prepare for my entrance exam for university. I used to wake up at 6am and leave home at 6.30. I started my day with private Mathematic class, then school, after school, directly to English language course for 2 hours, and then to computer class for another 2 hours. I totally had no break, and by the time I went home, I totally was exhausted and had my breakfast, lunch and dinner all together. Every evening I was studying till late to review the day lessons. I was totally full and had a lot of energy to spend. Sometimes when I look back, I really feel proud of myself, I was so strong and energetic covering all at one day with out any break.We had MSF office in our neighborhood. People working there seem to know my father. One day they asked my father to find a Dari teacher for one of MSF expatriate. I still remember the day when my father came with the proposal of Dari Teacher. He said Tahera would you like to be a  teacher, I said, “dad you know what I want to be, then why you are asking this, beside I am extremely busy with my finals, I don’t want to be a teacher”. My father said, OK decision is yours, but there is a guy I know and he is looking for someone to teach a French girl in MSF, Dari, its only one hour every day at her lunch time. I said what? NGO! Of course I am going to go and do it. I accepted the offer because I knew it would be a good opportunity to know the NGO’s culture and environment and then I can make my way to where I want to be. I was happy teaching Katherine (French girl) Dari and we had nice one hour every day. One day Katherine asked me if I am interested to be her assistant as full time employee. I said I would love to be so and accepted the job offer with all my heart. This was where my career with NGO/UN started.

I believe every child has the right to dream and make an ambition. Unfortunately, the situation in Afghanistan took this right from our children. Probably I was one of the luckiest children in Afghanistan, who had family support and motivation to achieve what I wanted to achieve. But unluckily, today in Afghanistan, most of our children are the family earners, or they are with their widow mothers on street and begging for money. The other side of awful fact is that children on street are victimized by drugs, criticism, child obvious, murder, or poverty forces them into smuggling ( please see further down the video about children into smuggling). They don’t get a chance to dream, or go to school, or to be what they want to be. If you walk down on street and stop a child to ask, "what do you want to be in the future?" they all would say, a doctor, engineer, teacher, minister, but non of them would say murderer, killer, drug trafficker, not because they don’t know what they are, but because they don’t want to be so, but they are drawn  there and they get into a point where coming back for there is so damn hard. To look deeper into Afghan children life please click the link Children life in Afghanistan!