Presenting to the Trauma-Aware Schooling Conference

On the 15th of August 2021, when the Taliban took over my country Afghanistan, my 11 family members, including six months old Asilla and I, were evacuated to Australia to start our new life in peace. We started our new life with the help of the Australian government.

Like everyone, I dreamed of getting the proper education in a suitable place. It is straightforward to imagine but hard to put yourself into our shoes and feel how it looks. In Afghanistan, before the terrorists, those inhuman beings (the Taliban), before the insecurities, I had a pretty good life; my Abay (mum) and Atay (my dad) had said I had a bright future because I was one of the top students, the captain of my school in a quite competitive environment among 9000 students. I used to teach English when I turned 15 and worked with an American organization for better education of Afghan women and girls in need. I was very confident and optimistic. However, it was quite a different story when I officially entered Australia’s educational environment for the first time.

I remember a case manager had trouble finding a school for me because I was already 18 years old. Also, there was no particular service for students, or maybe I wasn’t aware, so I had to search and find a school for myself and my siblings. I called five and had more than seven inquiries about getting admission, but without any result. I was rejected, and the only answer I got was, “you are 18; you might be harmful to the other students underage” or they told me that I was rude and insulted them with my language. Was I? I don’t know because I thought I knew English a bit, as I studied that for two years and passed the TOEFL IBT test with a 95. I was lucky enough to find a school where I was accepted. But the challenges were more than what I expected.

When I say challenges, it depends on the flexibility and personality of the person and how she sees the challenges. But what I call challenges are an everyday problem for every newly arrived student, especially those who came from a third-world country where their hometown and birthplace have been the ground of war for years. You don’t understand what challenges mean until you live their daily challenges. It is quite an excellent routine. Haa?

Every day when a newly arrived student wakes up, the first thing that comes to her is, “Am I home?”, or “I don’t want to go to school today.” She has four reasons to explain herself – she had night shift work because the money she receives is not enough to pay the bills, and her family called from Afghanistan to request cash as they are starving from hunger. At school, she has no friends to talk to because she doesn’t understand their language or the topic they were talking about. She couldn’t finish her assignments because the war in her birthplace took her friend’s life, and she could not focus. She is not what she used to be in her previous life, nor does she receive any respect. Everything is upside down in her life. Every day is stressful, even every second. But despite all, she needs to get up; she has a dream to fight for.

To look at the routine of someone who left everything behind and started her academic life in a different place, technically, the gaps can be seen as a language problem, the most critical problem above all though is the cultural shock, as well as the differences in the educational system as the third world country systems are not even comparable to the first world — and having family and financial issues. But the most complex problem is not being heard, not being understood.