A group of girls jump rope at their home near the Vanqala School in rural Tajikistan.
physical, cognitive, and emotional strength.”
Unstructured, child-directed play is especially important. Kenneth R. Ginsburg, for
the American Academy of Pediatrics, writes:
“Undirected play allows children to learn
how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate,
to resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills. When play is allowed to be childdriven, children practice decision-making
skills, move at their own pace, discover their
own areas of interest, and ultimately engage
fully in the passions they wish to pursue.”
Play is an escape from social conditioning
and training. It allows children the unfettered
freedom to roam, invent, fail, and adapt, all
on their own terms and with no particular
timeline.
Nowhere is this more important than conflict zones.
WAR GAMES
When concerned with eking out a living,
scrounging enough food and money together to support a large family, and surviving in a
country that is plagued by seemingly endless
violence, play hardly seems like a priority.
Yet, for children in conflict areas and war
FALL 2015
zones particularly, learning to share, negotiate, and resolve issues peacefully can be the
difference between life and death or a dark
future and a bright one.
School playgrounds become refuges from
the violence that surrounds children raised
amongst bombs and bullets.
“The school is the only secure place
for playing,” says Wakil Karimi, CAIAfghanistan country director. “Kids are
afraid of landmines or violence outside of
school.”
The people of Lalandar know this all too
well. Located on a thoroughfare used variably by Soviets, Afghan guerrilla warriors,
“Play is often talked
about as if it were a relief
from serious learning.
But for children, play
is serious learning.”
– Mr. Rogers
and the Taliban, hundreds, if not thousands,
of landmines were buried in and around the
town.
Today, white Vs painted on rocks mark
the place where mines were buried and removed. From a distance, some hillsides
appear to be pieces of abstract art, a sort of
grisly herringbone pattern etched in white
paint.
Posters meant to help children identify
and avoid mines are plastered on the local
school’s walls and in 2006 a walkway was
constructed from the town to the school. The
concrete path is a memorial to Gul Marjan, a
young boy who died when he was just 14 after stepping on a landmine. In his excitement
to attend the new village school, he herded
his goats to a vantage point on a nearby hill to
get a look at the school construction. Adults
said they heard an explosion and rushed outside to find Gul Marjan very badly hurt. He
died of his wounds several hours later.
In 2013 alone, landmines were responsible for 1,050 deaths in Afghanistan —
nearly half of them were children. Many
more deaths and injuries undoubtedly go
unreported.
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