Kids of Kabul by Deborah Ellis

14

    Libraries save lives.
    They saved my life as a teenager growing up in Paris, Ontario, giving me a glimpse of something big and glorious to reach for.
    They save the lives of people around the world by giving us examples of how great we humans can be. They fill our heads with new ideas and information, and they reassure us that, whatever mud we are wading through in our present lives, there is the possibility of something better.
    Chilsitoon is an impoverished neighborhood in Kabul. The Afghan Women’s Resource Centre has built a community center there, with a small gym where women can exercise in safety, classrooms for handicrafts, literacy, human-rights education and small-business training.
    And a library.
    Sigrullah is on the Chilsitoon children’s committee.
    My father is a carpenter. He works in a furniture shop, making frames for beds, tables, things like that, when he is well. Right now he is sick so he is not working. I work as a tailor’s helper. It brings in some money and so our family eats. I am learning to be a proper tailor so that I can earn even more money. But that is not really the kind of work I want to do.
    I really want to be an electrical engineer because there are not a lot of people in Afghanistan who can do that kind of work. It would be easy to find a good job. I would like to bring electricity to all of Afghanistan because when people have electric lights, it is good for their eyes to study at night. Most people work all day and the only time they can sit with a book is at night. So they need electric lights.
    I might also be a doctor because Afghanistan needs doctors. A lot of kids here want to be teachers because to be a teacher is holy work.
    I am a member of the Chilsitoon children’s committee. The people who run this center told everyone they were looking for children to do this job. I thought it would be a good thing to do, so I applied and I was chosen. It’s a volunteer job. We don’t get paid.
    This is a very poor area of Kabul so people have a lot of problems. People come here from all parts of Afghanistan because Kabul is the capital city. They think it will be very nice, very safe, with good jobs. I am from Parwan province. Another committee member is from Paktia. We come from all over.
    In this committee we learn about children’s rights and human rights. We learn about what the law says people should and should not do. We talk about what rights parents have and what people should do for their country.
    Children in this area have a lot of problems. It is our job to find out what the problems are and to see if we can fix them. We talk to the children who come here for courses and ask them, “How is your life? Are you happy? Are you being well treated?” We also ask children these questions when we meet them in the neighborhood outside the center.
    They have a lot of problems because they are poor. Their parents get upset and hit them, or there is no food in the house, or they want to come to courses in the center and their parents won’t allow it. We will hear about a girl who is being forced to marry someone she doesn’t want to. These are big problems, bigger than we can solve.
    But we can talk to children about their rights and the law and sometimes we can explain things to their parents. We discuss things with the adults who run the center and they can sometimes talk to the parents and help them out with food or find out what’s making them angry.
    It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does. They go to the local mullahs and say, “Too many parents are hitting their children in this neighborhood. Can you preach about that in the mosque?” And the mullahs will talk about how Islam is a religion of peace and that children should be protected.
    We try to keep the neighborhood clean. We go door to door and tell people not to throw their garbage into the streets because that brings rats and flies and those things are not good for children.
    I would like all the