After the disappointment of not going to Africa, one of the things that sustained me was the idea that I was still going to teach some of the most impoverished kids in the world.

Dan Coulcher (who was my co-volunteer for the year) and I flew into Islamabad in September 1991, and after a couple of days in Islamabad we headed to the ancient and chaotic city of Peshawar in Pakistan’s North-West Province. To say it was a culture shock would be putting it lightly.

The school, however, was not located in the city but in a new, half-finished suburb, called Hayatabad. It sat beneath the looming Khyber Mountains and on one side was bordered by the vast and impoverished Afghan refugee camp of Kacha Gari.

The school, the Frontier Academy, was also half-built, a collection of one story red brick buildings surrounding a rough scrabble of grass. Given the fact that it was very much a work in progress and that its facilities at the time were incredibly basic compared to what I knew back in Britain, I could be forgiven for thinking initially that the schools’ enthusiastic and wonderful kids were from poor backgrounds.

However that impression soon began to crumble. First off, our headmaster and the founder of the school, Gohar Zaman, was retiring from his previous school to run this one and when we went to his retirement party at that other school we were stunned to discover that it was the elite secondary school in Peshawar. Now this shouldn’t be seen as a knock on Gohar Zaman - after all I had been fortunate to go to a private school in England myself. The point was that my 18 year old idealistic self didn’t want to teach the sons of privilege.

“Well maybe the students at our school are different?” I said to a skeptical Dan. Dan thought that highly unlikely and when he quizzed the students about their backgrounds a lot of them, especially the boys who boarded, said they were from the families of tribal chiefs in the tribal areas. Shit!

Our work schedule was pretty brutal going from approximately 6:30am in the morning to 8pm at night, six days a week, and perhaps that along with the lingering cultural shock allowed me to keep my head buried in the sand … but then Gohar took us on a trip up the Khyber Pass.

Unfortunately this is not something most Westerners can do anymore, (it was even hard to do at the time), but it is incredible drive, as you wind your way up through these arid mountains, the mountains pushing in on you ever more the higher you go. On the peaks above are old British forts and down desolate ravines, fortified tribal compounds.

And then, the mountains fall away, and you find yourself on a plateau. As you and your police escort (yes, we had one!) race down the road you pass these vast mud-walled compounds, perhaps six in total, and then you come across the piece-de-resistance, a compound double the size of any of them, with walls made from exquisite brick, and with guard towers every 50 yards or so. As we came up to its large and extravagant gates, Gohar turned in his seat and said “we are going to visit one of our student’s parents” and after a brief search by the four AK-47 wielding guards we roared inside. We might as well have entered Shangri La.

In contrast to the barren mountains outside, here was a compound the size of multiple football fields, with marble villas, deep blue swimming pools, rose gardens, verdant lawns high end cars, air conditioned cattle courts, and sumptuous rooms with gold swords hanging on the walls, mahogany dining room tables, and fine rugs at every turn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql6nFU2LXgQ&feature=relmfu

In essence it was a self contained, luxury compound and the reason as I would soon discover was because it was owned by Ayub Afridi who it was claimed was the biggest drug lord in Pakistan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haji_Ayub_Afridi

Now I have no way knowing if the charges against Ayub are true or not - the only point is that when you are an 18 year old idealist the idea that you are teaching the sons of one of the richest drug lords in the world is soul crushing …

Dan and I complained to Project Trust but there was nothing they could do … all they said was that if we truly wanted to come home we could. I was faced with the awful prospect of returning home a failure - once more I couldn’t contemplate that.

So Dan and I went in search of a job working with Afghan refugees and we found one with International Rescue Committee teaching adult refugees English in the afternoon. And then with a boldness I’m still amazed we possessed at such a young age, we went to Gohar and told him that from now on we’d need the afternoons off. He was appalled at the prospect but it was our condition of staying and he reluctantly agreed.

Finally I was set to embark on the type of work I’d dreamed of doing … it would be one of the most exhilarating and exhausting periods of my life.