LIFE
LESSONS:
PLAY AND INNOCENCE
IN TIME OF WAR
BY HANNAH WHITE
A
small group of girls huddle around
a pile of pebbles on the ground.
Their rubber shoes squeak as they
shift position, one girl’s hands poised over the
stones. They are playing chakore, as the game
is called in the local Burushaski language.
With the tip of her tongue sticking out,
the epitome of concentration, the first player tosses a pebble into the air. Quickly she
grabs a stone from the pile on the ground
and catches the pebble she’s tossed before it
hits the dirt.
She exhales deeply. Her nimble fingers
flutter in excited expectation as she shifts her
feet, inhales, and throws the stone again. This
time she swipes two stones from the pile.
The ritual is repeated again and again —
three pebbles, four pebbles, five pebbles —
until eventually her small hands slip and she
isn’t able to grab the flying pebble in time.
Her turn is over.
The little girl next to her moves into position, readying herself to beat the leader’s
score.
Sitting in the dust, scarves falling around
their shoulders, worries forgotten, the girls
could be anywhere — Europe, the U.S., or
Africa — playing a friendly game of jacks, as
we call it.
This particular game is being played in the
Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan.
They do not use a rubber ball and metal
game pieces to play as children in the U.S.
might. Instead they use what is available to
them, stones.
2 | JOURNEY OF HOPE
TOYS AND TANKS
At home, legacies of former empires
serve as substitute playground equipment.
Abandoned long ago, T62 tanks, rusting and
gutted, become forts and hideouts for the
children in the former Soviet Republics and
reminders of the decade-long Soviet-Afghan
war. Options for games are usually much better at school, though still sparse.
Few schools in the regions where Central
Asia Institute (CAI) works have surplus income to purchase toys or playground equipment. Occasionally, if they are lucky, they can
scrimp together enough money to buy a few
dolls for the young children and balls for the
older kids.
Volleyball, badminton, cricket, and soccer
are favorites in all three countries served by
CAI. In some places girls enjoy card games
with cards made out of old notebook paper,
and in Azad Kashmir students like to play the
board game Ludo, known to us as Parcheesi.
At one school in Tajikistan, there are two
old Soviet-era slides. On their breaks, the
320 students jostle for their turn, coming up
with creative ways to shoot down the worn
metal surfaces.
In Hushe, Pakistan the colorfully painted
primary school boasts some modest equipment, and several CAI-supported schools
have volleyball and badminton nets.
“Most of the games are same as I played
with my friends,” said Dilshad Baig, CAI
women’s development program director in
Pakistan. “But we were not allowed to play
the games played by boys, like cricket, or play
with boys at football and volleyball.”
That’s not usually the case these days.
You’ll frequently see girls spiking a volleyball
over a tattered net or tossing the cricket ball
from a makeshift pitch. And the girls hurry to
school in the morning, just as quickly as the
boys, hoping to squeeze in a little playtime
before class.
While they don’t have reces ̰