Pankisi Valley

We were driving up the main road in the village, Davis on my lap so we could carry an extra passenger, when I whispered in her ear, “What you are experiencing now is very special.”

“Why?”

“For so many reasons.”

“Tell me one.”

“Okay, I’ll try. . . .

Jeremy mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he had arranged to take us out to see a project in the Pankisi Valley. We only told the girls that Saturday morning.

“What will we do there?” they asked.

“We’ll visit English classes. You’ll help teach English.”

Big smiles.  After days and days of playing school after school, Lucy nearly always insisting to be the teacher, they suddenly became shy about the idea of really teaching.   I think they knew I was joking but that didn’t stop them from packing a white board and markers in their backpacks to take along. When I suggested they work on their lesson plans though they just laughed.

You’d never know it, driving across the small bridge on an unassuming rural road in northeast Georgia, that you had just entered a secluded territory of Chechen Muslims. From the road the village looks like any other village throughout Georgia. But as we were standing outside the Roddy Scott Foundation building an English class let out and a group of young girls in head scarves walked hand in hand towards us. They eagerly introduced themselves with names one would not hear elsewhere in Georgia: Farida, Rumina. Yes, this is someplace new.

And yet it wasn’t entirely. After making introductions, Lia, the organization’s Director, led us up an external, crumbling staircase and opened a classroom door, heated warm with a wood stove. Students immediately stood to attention from their desks where they sat in pairs. They looked wide-eyed at Jeremy and I and our three little girls in tow. Our three little girls looked wide-eyed back.

This tiny classroom, students filling up every seat, felt like old times teaching in Zestaponi. Jeremy and I immediately switched to special (slow) English; we could have been leading our youth club again. This time though it was our eight year old daughter stepping forward to answer the students’ questions.

The students walk, some of them a long way, down to one of two buildings at either end of town on Saturdays and and twice a week after school to study English.  Some take computer courses and write articles for the Pankisi Times, a student driven newspaper. They write thoughtfully about hobbies and pets, grandparents and weddings.

And it’s not just their eager faces and the fact that they squeeze in two or three to small desks that is touching. It’s also that these kids have parents at home, likely working the fields, caring for animals, who want their children to be here, who helped them get here. They all know English is part of a path to success, a tool to communication and understanding that they will need in this world.

 Our girls didn’t understand why we were so pleased to be there in Pankisi on a Saturday, speaking special English, leaning across a desk to read a story written by Zhamilya about her cat. We pointed out the mosques. We discussed the head scarves. They looked and asked questions and followed the cows down the road.

But like the parents of those bright eyed students, we believe that for our three girls being here is a part of their future success, of living a good life in a complicated time. We hope that seeing this place and having these conversations will lead to compassion and understanding. We know they will need that in this world.

So Davis, here is why this is special. What you saw, very few people get to see. Very few people get to see the smiles of these children, the looks in their eyes. They don’t get to see them walking a long way to practice their English or the way they approach us with extended hands.  They don’t get to see that there are differences and yet they are all just children.