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Yulia Uryadova

My name is Yulia Uryadova and I am from Uzbekistan. In 1991, my country gained independence from the Soviet Union, and the same year foreigners started coming to the country.

I remember the first Americans who came to my town. It was shocking for my friends and me because America sounded like Mars or Venus. But those Americans have contributed to my life greatly. They stimulated my interest in English language and in other cultures.

Those first Americans started the Andijon Development Center in my region. The director of the center was my first English teacher. I thought of the director and other Americans as brave people who came to an unknown country with a bad economy where they had to work with the few resources available. But what they had was a huge desire to contribute to this world, to make changes in it.

At the Andijon Development Center, I learned English and how to use computers. Through it, I made my first trip to the U.S.A. In May 1999, the center announced a competition for English teachers of the Andijon region. Six winners, including me, came to Houston for a month of training. When we arrived in Houston, our sponsor, Bill Koops of Millennium Relief and Development Services, was waiting for us at the airport with flowers. I couldn’t believe I was in America. It was like a fairy tale.

During our stay in Houston, each of us lived with different families to learn more about American culture. I fell in love with my host families. I was lucky to meet such wonderful, caring and loving people.

I wanted to know everything about Americans: how they live, how they dress, what they eat, where they work, how they go shopping. I was stunned that strangers on the street smile and say “hi” to you. I wish people smiled at each other in my country. I realized that going to church is an important part of my friends’ lives. I attended church services with them every Sunday. I liked those services, listening to wise words of ministers, meeting new people.

I loved Houston’s museums and exhibitions. A trip to NASA was very memorable. My biggest impression came from the IMAX Theater. I've never seen something like that in my life before. You sit in front of the huge screen and feel like you’re in the middle of the film. At classes Millennium organized for us, we improved our English, developed better critical thinking skills and learned innovative teaching methods.

Three years have passed since my first trip to Houston. When I returned home, I taught and conducted seminars for the Peace Corps, the Open Society Institute and Central Asian Free Exchange.

In 2001, I won a Soros Foundation two-year grant to attend the University of Arkansas as a visiting research scholar. When I’m back home, I will miss many things, but most of all I will miss friends I have made here. I will always hold a special place in my heart for all those wonderful people I met in Houston. Teachers from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Jordan as well as Palestinians have participated in our International Teachers Program.

Where the village school once stood, children find a void.

As we drove north, the desert shimmered as though it stretched to the edge of the earth: sand, scrub and then the void. Actually, Uzbekistan was out there somewhere.

Leaving the office on the north side of Mazaar-i-Sharif, we traveled a half-mile on paved road, then began the hour-and-a-half rattle along the dirt track. We covered 15 miles. For scenery, there were the hulks of Russian armored personnel carriers, relics from two wars back.

The Russians gave up and pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989 after the mujahadeen killed thousands of their soldiers over a decade. Some Afghans fled the country during that time, others during the fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Now they’re flowing back in, bound for outposts like Kharabad.

About 300 families live here. Another 100 to 200 would like to return from Pakistan, Muhammad Usman estimates. The head elder of the village, he explains simply, “The Taliban are gone and foreigners are enforcing peace and security.”

Water is more difficult. Wells that extend to 150 feet produce some, but that is saved for the scorching summers. Sometimes, canals bring water intended for irrigation from the mountains to the south. Families dip into it for bathing and even drinking, often without boiling or treating it. Despite the hardships, many are returning. The United Nations estimates 400,000 Afghans will come home this year. When one refugee center began registering those who wished to repatriate, 65,000 signed up in the first week. (Pakistan wants the refugees gone as well, and its newest, biggest friend has made commitments.)

When water flows in the canals and the meager rainfall arrives on schedule, farmers coax wheat from fields around the village that look as though they would produce nothing but salt. Even in good years, the hardscrabble ground doesn’t generate enough to provide work for the majority who don’t own land. They scrape out an existence by making carpets.

Rob Graves, who heads the Mazaar office of the Central Asian Free Exchange, our affiliate in the region, shows me the pieces that remain of the local school, razed in the early ‘80s by the mujahadeen. Because Russians promoted education and dictated what was taught in the areas they controlled, the peasant soldiers of the mujahadeen decreed that “schools are for infidels.”

For many who own no land, carpet-making offers survival.

In an ancient landscape seared by contradictions, this one rings out: The last people who tried to educate them also tried to kill them and steal their country.

The village elders today are favorably disposed toward the foreigners who drove the Taliban from among them. Graves and his fellow workers, who began operations in the area by distributing wheat seed and fertilizer, have begun an education initiative. The first step is to build schools in this and other villages in the district.

Elders we interviewed on my visit expressed unqualified support for this work, including the education of girls, banned under the Taliban.

“Doctors, engineers, administrators, nurses – they don’t go to war like the factions that have been running our country,” says one of them. “Let the children go to school so they will do something constructive.”