She’s a Long Way
from Home
Roya Mohammadi ’10 of Afghanistan is not only
the first in her family to attend college but the first in her tribe to do
so as well. |
Twenty-year-old Roya Mohammadi ’10 has come a
long way to attend Smith, both literally and figuratively. For a young Afghan woman
living in Kabul, freedom and choices are very limited, and finding a way to leave
home, family and community was difficult.
Fortunately, with help from her fiancé, who
championed her cause with her family, Mohammadi found that her determination to pursue
an international education proved stronger than the limitations facing her. In 2004
she enrolled in the Armand Hammer United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico,
a two-year, pre-university residential school for international students, and while
she was there she had a chance to visit the Smith campus. “I really loved it,” she
says, “and I heard a lot of good things about it from my classmates at United
World College. So I decided to apply.”
One of six children, Mohammadi is not only the first
in her family to attend college, but the first in her tribe to do so as well. “My
family didn’t want me to go to the U.S., but my fiancé is a really good
man and he convinced them to let me come. The only way they would agree to it is
if I got engaged; my family thought if I got engaged it would be possible for me
to leave the country.”
During the years of the Taliban regime, women were
not allowed to study or work. Mohammadi briefly attended an underground school until
that became too dangerous and expensive; she then took a risk and began teaching
Persian and the Koran to children inside her home in order to raise money for her
education and her family. When the Taliban fell, Mohammadi was one of the first women
who dared to teach outside of the home. Eventually she was awarded a scholarship
to the United World College in New Mexico.
Mohammadi is interested in studying economics and international
relations while at Smith. “I would like to run my own company someday,” she
says. “I really want this future. Things in Afghanistan are very different
than in the U.S. It’s really hard to be there, to be a woman there. I really
wish when I return to Afghanistan that the situation will be different, but I don’t
know.” |
