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Braving
Iraq for education’s sake
BY SALLY ACHARYA
The temperature in Baghdad was around 120 degrees, and from every
direction came a swirl of wood chips, hurled like projectiles by
the hot, violent wind. Carole O’Leary was crouched in an airport
hangar between two wooden crates, near a soldier who had spent the
previous night in a disconnected refrigerator to keep herself out
of the windstorm.
That was Baghdad International Airport in June 2003, where O’Leary,
School of International Service (SIS), and Mohamed Rahdi, CAS ‘87,
were on a pit stop between surveys of schools in southern and northern
Iraq. They were part of an AU team subcontracting on a grant from
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on a project
called Revitalization of Iraqi Schools/Stabilization of Education
(RISE).
 The
project’s broad mission was to help rebuild Iraq’s shattered
and neglected schools as its 4.2 million school children headed
back to the classroom, often clutching the only books available,
which still contain photos of Saddam Hussein and words of praise
for the fallen dictator. AU had been chosen to work under the Washington-based
development firm, Creative Associates International, that had been
awarded the USAID grant to help train educators in new methods and
to discover the condition of Iraq’s schools after a decade
of sanctions and 35 years of Baath Party rule.
For O’Leary and Rahdi, Iraq was familiar territory. Rahdi is
Iraqi. O’Leary, the AU project director, is an anthropologist
who specializes in Iraq and has spent considerable time in the country.
O’Leary entered Iraq from Kuwait in June with a security convoy
of former New Zealand Marines, traveling first to Basra.
 Gunshots
rang out every night, but the more immediate danger came from raw
sewage. Electricity was so uncertain that water couldn’t be
boiled, and bottled water had to be used, even for baths. On the
road, Iraqis begged not for dollars, but for clean bottled water.
Working quickly, the team supervised master trainers who had been
trained by AU earlier in Washington, and who then fanned out to
survey nearly all the schools of southern Iraq.
Within two weeks, it was time to head north. Baghdad was not yet
secure. That city would have to wait for the second phase of the
project, in September. So after the hot, blustery stop at the Baghdad
airport, the survey team got back on a propeller plane and headed
for an airstrip in Erbil.
 Shortly
afterwards, the team that included Rahdi and O’Leary was joined
by Mary Gray, math and statistics, CAS, whose own flight from Baghdad
had been stomach churning—not because of weather, but because
the pilot had to dip and pivot to evade gunfire.
In the course of the next hectic weeks, the AU team inventoried
nearly one-third of Iraq’s schools, working from Kirkuk to
the Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian borders. Using forms developed
at AU, 16 local data collectors—men and women, Muslims and
Christians, Kurds and Assyrians and Turkomans—fanned out across
the vast area, sometimes walking for miles into mountain villages.
O’Leary, Gray, and Rahdi would be nearby, meeting with regional
leaders and often observing data collectors at village schools.
If nobody showed up, the team members had no compunction about rousing
tardy principals or administrators from their beds.
 Most
areas were relatively secure, but Mosul on July 22—O’Leary’s
birthday—was an exception. Crowds of young men milled about
in the sweltering heat, angry because of lack of pay. The ministry
of education had been burned down and looted. “Our driver-
bodyguard was very nervous and wanted to get out,” O’Leary
says. “He just didn’t have a good feeling. None of us
did.” They drove back from Mosul to their guesthouse an hour
away in Erbil, and within a few hours a U.S. raid in Mosul killed
the sons of Saddam Hussein.
With the inventory of secondary schools completed, O’Leary
and Gray returned to the United States, where they would continue
to work with other team members, including Abdul Aziz Said, SIS,
the project’s principal investigator and key advisor to the
AU team.
Then the second Iraq-based phase of the project began. On a day
when Flavia Ramos was preparing to teach her regular Monday night
class, she got word that she and fellow education professor Sarah
Irvine Belson would be flying to Baghdad that September evening.
The trip had long been expected, though its date had been postponed
time and again. Now, instead of reviewing her lecture notes, she
was packing for a place that even her five-year-old daughter had
warned her would be dangerous.
Ramos is a petite Brazilian with a sweep of blonde hair who has
illustrated children’s books. When she opened her carry-on
luggage at the airport and drew out her military-issued helmet,
it was so out of character that people near her in line couldn’t
help but laugh, and she laughed along with them.
The professors’ accommodations in Baghdad turned out to be
decidedly more luxurious than O’Leary’s in the sewage-tainted
hotel in Basra. Thanks to a helpful lieutenant, they had arranged
to stay in a two-room trailer that not only had clean running water
and air conditioning, but also happened to be parked in the compound
of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace.
The once-private palace had become the busy headquarters of Iraq’s
provisional government, with substantial numbers of military personnel
and civilian aid workers. Belson had her picture snapped on Saddam’s
gaudy gilt throne, dwarfed by a mural-sized painting of missiles.
And in Saddam’s sparkling swimming pool, surrounded by date
trees, they took a celebratory dip.
But if their quarters were historic, they didn’t have much
time to enjoy them. The work was nonstop. “We had to be very
fast learners, very ready to hit the ground running,” Ramos
recalls.
Their work began with a series of focus groups with school administrators,
from assistant principals to superintendents. The isolation of Iraq
from the outside world has left educators feeling a deep need for
everything from technology to better training in content areas and,
in particular, knowledge of up-to-date and more student-centered
teaching methodologies.
“The logistical things were challenging, but the work itself
was fascinating—getting to be with Iraqis, hear their voices,
and just their openness to us,” Belson says. “I was really
overwhelmed with the degree they were welcome to hearing us. I have
to say personally I expected some hostility, but the reality is
they were just extremely receptive.”
The work of training teachers and administrators will continue under
a full-time staffer based in Iraq, with a manual currently being
developed by AU. In spite of the clear challenges, “There’s
a lot going on there that’s very positive,” Belson says.
“They’re still pushing forward, and even with all these
security concerns going on, they’re pulling things together,
and they will continue to work.”
In spite of the dangers, she was left with a feeling of warmth for
the Iraqi people. “Everyone has kind words for you. Even when
you go to the souk, they’ll hand you a date, and want to let
you know you’re welcome. They were one of most gracious people
I’ve ever met.”
Photos courtesy
of Mary Gray and Sarah Irvine Belson
From top: These girl students at a school in Erbil were given AU
pens by Mary Gray; Ministry of Education administrators share their
thoughts on the needs of Iraq’s schools; school supplies in
Northern Iraq; Sarah Irvine Belson, left, and Flavia Ramos, both
of the School of Education, pose by a Humvee while working in Baghdad.
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