Afghan woman gives college entry exam with baby on lap
KABUL:With three children under the age of five and a husband who could neither read nor write, 25-year-old Jahantap Ahmadi dreamed of going to college. Her high school degree was enough to become a teacher at the only elementary school in her village in central Afghanistan in an open field — but she wanted more.
On March 15, cheered on by her husband, Jahantap set out for the Daikundi provincial capital of Nili to take the university entrance exam.
She walked until her feet were blistered and bruised and then sat for 10 hours with her infant daughter, Khezran, cradled on her lap in a rickety bus over rugged rocky roads. Once in Nili, she took the exam and scored a respectable 152 out of a possible 200.
But it was a picture of Jahantap posted on Facebook, sitting cross-legged on the classroom floor, her two-month-old baby asleep on her lap as she took the exam, that made the dream of going to college come true. A teacher in Nili who was moved by Jahantap’s determination to get an education posted pictures on Facebook. In Afghanistan, where women still struggle for even the most basic of rights, it went viral.
“My brother who was working in Kabul called me and said ‘I saw your picture in Facebook,’“she said in an interview in Kabul where she is now enrolled at a private university. “I wanted to get my education, so I could help my village, change my village. I want to help my society. But first I wanted it for my children, so one day they could be educated.”