SHINGAL, Iraq — Saadi Kheri has had to ride a horse to get to school for four years, but he considers himself one of the lucky few. Of the 30 children of schooling age in Zerwa, a village located at the foothill of Mount Shingal (known as Sinjar in Arabic), only ten are able to attend school.
“It takes me 20-30 minutes riding a horse to [get to] school in Zorava village,” said Saadi of the eight-kilometer journey he takes because Zerwa does not have its own educational facility.
In eleven villages north of Shingal, there are 800 children in need of a school, according to Nuyasir Haji Salih, the head of the Shingal Education directorate. Only 18 of the 91 schools of Kurdish-language instruction located in Shingal prior to ISIS tearing through the area have opened this year.
“We are asking for a school to be built for us,” said Izzat Alias, one of the 150 students from Shorka village, located near Sinune town, who has to hitchhike to school. “We stand on the road every day, the cars don’t always pick all of us up and we are always late.”
There were nearly one thousand teachers educating in Kurdish prior to 2014, according to the education directorate. Of this number, only 80 have returned to Shingal to work in 18 different schools.
Reporting by Tahsin Qasim
Translation by Sarkawt Mohammed
