A ‘tear’ of hope: The girl who would put the education dept to shame
by SAMEER MANDHRO
Aansoo Kolhi’s school is just a three-walled room that used to be a cattle pen, but its doors are open to boys and girls of all ages, including those who are physically and mentally impaired. PHOTO/The Express Tribune
At a time when thousands of able-bodied students are out of school across Sindh and hundreds of schools are serving as guesthouse for the influential, one physically impaired girl stands out as a beacon of hope, having converted her cattle pen into a school that has become overcrowded with students within a few months.
This young girl, Aansoo Kohli, has become a symbol of pride for her small village in Umerkot. Her school, the Kombho Mal Girls Primary School, imparts education to young boys and girls, even those who are physically and mentally impaired.
What Aansoo lacks in terms of resources, she more than makes up through her strong conviction and equally kind heart. When Neelam, a 25-year-old girl suffering from polio, landed on her doorstep, she not only gifted her a tricycle, but also enrolled her into the school. Neelam now proudly says she can read and write all the English alphabets.
“I intended to go to school but my legs did not support me,” said Neelam. “Madam Aansoo is educating me,” she added, saying that she had joined the school around 15 days ago. “The cycle she gave me has also given me the freedom to roam around the village.”
Armed with a small slate and chalks, Aansoo sits at the head of the three-walled room that acts as school. The students surround her chair; most of them sitting outside under the scorching sun as the small room cannot fit all of them.
These students are mostly from the Kohli community, negating the myth that children in these areas do not wish to get an education. Four of them, Roop Chand, Pehlaj, Neelam and Jamna, are from another village located around three kilometres away from this school. “We all travel to and from the school together,” said Pehlaj. “There is no school near our village and I want to learn with these children.” They do not have enough writing material, slates or even books. Even without these resources, these children have by now started reciting and writing complete sentences in both Sindhi and English.
Express Tribune for more
In Pakistan, A Self-Styled Teacher Holds Class For 150 In A Cowshed
by PHILIP REEVES
Every day, shortly after breakfast, more than 150 noisy and eager-eyed kids, coated in dust from top to toe, troop into a mud cowshed in a sun-baked village among the cotton fields of southern Pakistan. The shed is no larger than the average American garage; the boys and girls squeeze together, knee-to-knee, on the dirt floor.
Words scrawled on a wooden plank hanging outside proudly proclaim this hovel to be a “school,” although the pupils have no tables, chairs, shelves, maps or wall charts — let alone laptops, water coolers or lunch boxes.
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The kids in Aansoo’s cattle shed are from Pakistan’s Hindu community — a marginalized, sometimes victimized, minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation. Their village has for centuries subsisted on the tiny income produced by picking cotton and green chilies for feudal landlords.
The mass exodus of Hindus to India — 50 miles to the east — during the 1947 partition of the Subcontinent seems to have passed by this remote community.
NPR for more
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