Courtesy of Jaala A. Thibault

A few weeks ago, as I was sitting in the English department office at a university in Kabul, sipping coffee and talking to other professors about the end of my time in Afghanistan, I realized that Kabul had taught me patience. But it took a while to get here.

When I was younger, I had no patience. I wanted to get everything done right away; I wanted to see results immediately. I remember receiving the gift of “sea monkeys” (brine shrimp) one birthday, and when I found out that I had to wait weeks before I’d even be able to see them without a magnifying glass, I poured them down the drain without a second thought.

A few weeks later, when the friend who had bought me the sea monkeys asked how big they had gotten, I blushed and told her they were all gone. She proceeded to show me hers, which had, miracle of all miracles, turned into little furiously swimming shrimp! She told me, “If only you had more patience, you could have seen them grow!” I vowed that if ever again I was given a chance to watch something grow, I would try to have patience.

As I lived my life in Kabul, I couldn’t help remembering that lesson in patience I learned more than 20 years ago. This time though, I was not watching brine shrimp grow from microscopic to minuscule over the course of a few weeks; I am watching teachers grow over the course of years. And as teachers grow and learn, so do their students. And as students learn, so does the rest of society. But of course, this process is slow going.

More than a year and a half ago, I moved to Kabul with big plans. I would reform the education system by training the teachers. I would go to the universities and preach education for all. I would tell everyone that an educated society is a free society. I hoped all of the teachers that I would train could bring the message to the masses, and like a tidal wave, literacy would engulf the society.

Much to my dismay, there was no tidal wave. In fact, I ended up sitting in a cold office, drinking coffee and tea with the other professors in my department, talking about life, family, the singer Ahmad Zahir, America, the war and anything else that did not have to do with the business of actually training teachers. Sometimes if I was lucky, I was invited to talk to a class of teachers in training not about teaching methods, but about English grammar or Jennifer Lopez. Go figure.

Instead of teaching, I usually spent Fridays eating lunch with students. We would all sit on the floor around steaming piles of “kobli palaw” (rice), footlong nan bread, bowls of oily “kofta” (meatballs) and pyramids of fruit, beckoning us with their waxy brightness. We’d watch videos of their cousins’ weddings and laugh about the poor fashion choices of the attendees. I wondered to myself if I was really contributing at all to the education system in the country.

One afternoon, as I prepared to teach a lesson about Beyoncé to a class of would-be teachers, I voiced these concerns to my department head. I expected him to say, “Yes, you should leave; you’ve done nothing here but drink all of our coffee.” Contrary to what I expected him to say, though, he laughed and told me this proverb:

“Sabr talkh ast, liken bahr-e shireen darad.”

“Patience is bitter, but it has a sweet fruit.”

I didn’t understand what patience had to do with my concerns. I asked him to explain. He said that although I wasn’t doing so much teacher training, I was training the teachers in how to trust me, how to be my friend. He explained that in Afghan culture, relationships are paramount; nothing can be accomplished if you are considered a stranger to the people. He told me that although it might be frustrating, the way I was living life would make my job easier in the future. Basically, he was telling me to watch the brine shrimp grow.

So I watched them grow for more than a year, putting teaching second and socializing first. I drank all of the coffee and ate all of the food. I went to the weddings. I learned the language, and I listened to the music.

And by the end of my time in Kabul, both students and professors let me train them — and I found the sweetness at the heart of patience.



Jaala A. Thibault taught English and trained teachers at Kabul Education University in 2010 and 2011 as part of the English Language Fellows Program under the State Department. She now returns intermittently to Afghanistan as an English-language specialist (also with the State Department) to conduct teacher-training workshops. In the United States, she teaches English as a second Language at Santa Barbara City College.