Street children as actors in a huge manipulated scenario of performance show with the Afghan music star - Farhad Darya
Af Sameer Azizi, projektleder i Afghanistan for GlobalEduSport
Today Majbrit and I went to a special event held mainly for the children of Aschiana. One of Afghanistan’s absolute music star - Farhad Darya - was going to gather more than 400 street working children for a day of joy and happiness. What a wonderful project!
We were excited to see what kind of event it will be and especially happy for the children as they finally will have a day off from collecting paper and plastic from the streets of Kabul, blessing everyone on the streets with “Spand”-cans or polishing shoes.
It all started with a lot of waiting - early morning we arrived to one of the Aschiana centres, where the children were gathered. I felt a special joy in their faces but at the same time they were nervous. “What if I am not allowed to go with them?”, they might have asked themselves. And it happened to one pure boy, who wasn’t on the list that the teachers of Aschiana checked every 2nd minute. The poor guy went back to the Aschiana centre meanwhile all his friends ran towards busses with a lot of colours and paintings.
Before this situation my ears got waken by a great sound of music from the Aschiana music team, where about 10-15 kids where sitting on the floor playing every kind of musical instruments. What a sense they had when they played and how did they master the instruments with their tiny dirty hands. They played several great songs - especially one about “let’s go and study, study from books, my pencil is beautiful….” - which I later found out was probably made by Farhad from his last “concert” with the children.
After great moments of music we decided to join the children so we took the beautiful busses too. While we were on the way to Radio & Television building, the driver stopped several times to pick up children from the streets who were a bit late - its shouldn’t be so odd, should it?
After more than 1 hour of waiting in the parking area of Radio & Television studios, the kids finally could be released from the busses. With discipline they made a very long line - standing 2 and 2 like soldiers ready to fight in a battle field. Then almost 1 hour was spent on checking the children before they were let inside the building - yes of course children are experts in hiding bombs in their bags of plastic and other garbage from the streets!
Inside we went and a lot of noises we heard - all teachers were directed to the upper lounge of the theatre hall. Then the chaos started for real - not enough seats for the children!!! The children were everywhere, it seemed impossible to the teachers to control them - where to start what to do?
After showing a movie with a mini-sized screen compared to the amount of people in the hall, the show seemed to be not going anywhere. No one could say what the next activity should be for the children who had already drunk their soda-cans and some of them immediately collected the cans as they were at work on the streets.
Suddenly a wave of children began to run towards the doors - “food, food” - we heard them say. Some of the teachers tried to smack them to go and sit again - but it was too good news to control, foooood!
Outside there was a big tent with many tables inside it. All teachers slowly realised that they were actually giving the children food now. So strict discipline again and lines of 2 children next to each other were made again. I noticed 2 remarkable points in that situation - 1. this generation of afghans will be a greater social problem for Afghanistan day by day. And 2. they are amazingly good at giving orders and responsibility to the one younger that them - the teachers told a younger teacher to watch out the kids, who told a even young to watch out who found a strong and powerful figure in one of the lines to take over the control. And in 1 sec they changed from a normal kid from the line to a powerful and harsh person who now had control over others.
After watching the children waiting to get some food in a long time and speaking with other organizations who had come from Herat, Bamiyaan and Qandahar, we all moved back to the theatre hall in hope to see Farhad Darya performing for the children.
All hopes about having a day especially for children and for their happiness were gone, when we realised that Farhad Darya was actually seeing the children as actors in a huge manipulated scenario of performance show. He saw the children as actors he directed, now laugh, now clap, now sing, now be quite I am talking… he even said: “listen children! There are times for fun and now its time for work, so work with me or it will be a long day”.
The purpose of this day wasn’t to make children happy and give them a special day with music, but to make a show out of it which was recorded by several cameras - yeah for DVD which will be sold in Europe and US in the nearly future, I guess. No doubt that the children also had fun, but being so ambitious and professional with more than 400 street working children from all Afghanistan was maybe too much Mr. Darya!
Anyway I don’t think that the children knew that they were actually profiting Darya, but why should they care? They enjoy every single thing they get for free and complaining will be the last thing in their lives.
I couldn’t sit there anymore so about 4 pm we left - hungry, tired and disappointed!
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