Afghan exchange student addresses Marblehead Rotarians

MARBLEHEAD – A 22-year-old Afghanistan woman showed Marblehead Rotarians that strong parents can make a difference, regardless of war.Shogofa Amini, an exchange student from the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, plans to return to her country to teach women about their rights, after she completes a year of study at Salem State University.The 22 year old said during a heart-felt talk Thursday at the Boston Yacht Club she will return to her country “during a difficult, dangerous period” because she wants to make a difference.Afghanistan is a beautiful country that has been at war for the past three decades, first the unsuccessful Soviet invasion, then in 1989 a civil war between ethnic groups and now the United States’ attempt to drive out the Taliban.Amini is the youngest, and according to her, the shyest of five children in an educated family. Her father worked for the provisional government and now runs a gas station.Her mother, who died in 2008, was the principal of a girls’ high school until the Taliban seized control of Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998.”She was the best mother in the world,” Amini said, as a slide showed her mother’s face on a screen beside her. “She didn’t just give us an education, she prepared us for life.”When the Taliban attacked Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998, Amini’s parents sent all five children to Kabul on foot, “a short but dangerous trip.”As a child, Amini had her first lesson in repression when a Taliban soldier looked at her suspiciously and demanded to know why she wasn’t wearing a burka, a traditional Muslim women’s head scarf.One of her older brothers made excuses for her and made sure she wore one on the rest of the trip, uncomfortable though it was.Two months later the children returned to a Taliban-controlled Mazar-e-Sharif that looked to Amini like “the Land of the Dead,” a place where no birds sang and no music was allowed, even at weddings.Boys went to school to study Islam. Girls stayed at home and learned to be housewives.Amini hid books under her burka when she went to the home of the woman who was secretly teaching her English.One day, almost discovered by the Taliban, she had to give those lessons up.After Sept. 11, 2001, the Taliban fled the country and both boys and girls could return to secular schools.Eventually Robert McNulty and his program, Applied Ethics, helped her to qualify for the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA) exchange program and she came to Marblehead for a year to live with Paul and Claire Crosby.One of her lasting impressions of her country is the sight of homeless girls begging in the street.”That makes me sad and it makes me strong, I want to come back and do something to help them,” she said.She read a poem she had written for the online Afghan Women’s Writing Project.”I am from a long line of women who have walked alone,” she wrote, recalling how her mother told her to find her way in life.When she asked for questions one Rotarian offered a comment: “Your mother would be very proud of you.” The others applauded.