The time of our lives

If there is one thing I didnt expect to become the highlight of my Fulbright experience in Tajikistan, it would be becoming the coach and adult chaperone of 16 Tajik high schoolers at Asia Youth Debate Forum at Lake Issykul, Kyrgyzstan.  We spent two glorious, sunny weeks in April plunging into the finer details of digital freedom (not once did we plunge into the pristinely blue but freezing cold lake!)

In fact, I remember insisting on my Fulbright application that I wanted to explore Tajik handicrafts and small businesses.  Although I did dabble in some work with jewelry makers and gem polishers, I would say the heart of my 10-month teaching and research experience is debate. 

Looking back over my blog posts, I can trace how debate evolved from a popular teaching exercise into my primary way to sustain conversations and develop critical thinking with all stretches of Tajik youth.  

But without a doubt, the last two weeks have been the pinnacle of success for my debaters and for me personally as a teacher.

Tajik Delegation

I should start off right here by saying the Tajik delegation was wildly successful.  Out of about 160 debaters, a Tajik kid was best speaker, and in the second week of tournament the winning team had 2 Tajiks.  But even without victories (as cliche as it sounds) we won in so many ways....

Win # 1:
http://ayf.idebate.org/news-articles/students-vietnam-and-tajikistan-win-asia-mixed-teams-tournament <<Here are the details of the winning team.  However, the real backstory is that kids from Dushanbe (the capital city) and the Pamirs (Eastern, mountainous semi-autonomous region) were having some troubles getting along...

The two on the far right are from Tajikistan.  That's the girl in the white shirt from Dushanbe and the boy to her left in the white shirt and gray sport coat.  How fly are they.

It wasn't a serious political or deep-seated dislike (historically their respective regions clashed in the civil war, and each belongs to different ethnic/linguistic groups).  But debaters from both cities came with their "cliques" and so they were not getting along at all.  In fact, the Pamiri group aligned with the debaters from Palestine and by day 4 there was some bad talking between the Pamiri coalition and the Dushanbe kids (who found friendship in many Kyrgyz volunteers).  I had no idea how to resolve the adolescent mess and it made me so sad to see the same kinds of problems and tensions from home injecting themselves into the debate prism of respect.  However, by the second week, another trainer and I had sneakily (read: not sneakily at all) gotten kids from both sides onto the same debate teams for the "mixed country track" tournament.  And it was one of these mixed group (which had the strongest speaker from Dushanbe and the Pamirs  and one Vietnamese debater) that won the whole tournament...!  They put predilections aside, because ultimately, victory is sweet.  Im just glad they won together. 

This GIANT statue of a nomadic Kyrgyz
woman/goddess overlooked the Lake.

Inside a replica Kyrgyz yurt

Win # 2:  Some of these kids hadn't flown in a plane before going to Kyrgyzstan.  I think they all got that taste of freedom that everyone needs at that age.  Of course, I felt pretty old being the responsible adult and watching those high school experiences unfold for them.  But there's nothing better than being out and in-charge for the first time no matter where you are from. =)

Win # 3:  It was in Issykul, 8 AM Kyrgyz time, amongst kids and coaches from all over the world including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Central Asia and others, when I found out about the Boston bombings.  I don't know about you all, but this news hit me hard.  I never usually internalize news, even when I want to; but for some reason the idea of Boston and MIT being attacked was a little too close to home.  I was gripped with homesickness and unwarranted worry, but there was literally no one I could complain to or legitimately grieve with (even very briefly) about the tragedy.  The evening before, I had been talking over dinner to a coach from northern Pakistan about American drone strikes in her town, and I had shaken my head in sympathy when this bright-eyed peace activist and debate coach told me about young boys she saved from entering the fold of Taliban.  So when I got a call from my dad about the bombings, I initially thought I was still in a dream carrying over from the night before.  After watching Russian news for 60 mins hoping for some kind of story (our internet was disconnected) I ended up going late to breakfast before the debate rounds started.  I had to tell the first person I saw about the bombings to keep from looking sad all day.   That person happened to be a Palestinian living in Israel.   That person happened to deal with friends caught in demonstrations and bombings far more frequently than I ever did.   But that person still worried alongside me since she had a friend at MIT in Boston.  I sat down to breakfast hoping when the investigators found a perpetrator, that he or she wouldn't be Arab...   So what's the "win" in this episode?  It's just that I realized every youth and trainer at the Forum cared deeply about their country, but also humanity.  Even the 16-year-olds chowing down before their debate, the loud ones who worried about their clothes and girlfriends and winning the golden trophy, these teenagers were here because some organization (albeit somewhere in London) hoped one day these smart, Asian teenagers will become the voices of moderation and real democracy for the world.  It was a win because I was in a bubble of solution-minded people who agreed to deal with the hypocrisy and tough issues.  I was in a bubble of contented people...although technically we were debating global problems for two weeks...

Kyrgyz, Pakistani, Thai folks & me

A mixed Tajik team debating another mixed Tajik team.
There were so many of us...small country, big presence. 

Now Im faced with the withdrawal and the mixed emotions of being ready to start another chapter but still wanting to be in Tajikistan to encourage debate on a bigger scale.  I have to start thinking about sustainability, the future, and long-term gains for those who were involved.   

As for myself, I don't have specific plans to continue debate in my next location.  Yet if out of the blue I ever got the chance to coach or debate, or work with youth in this capacity again, I know it would be really, really hard to say no.

~AA