The deposed Syrian president, Bashar-al-Assad, is known for his dictatorship, but in his early years as president he once praised Ewan and Valerie Crouch’s community service work with young people.
That was back in 2006, when Wakefield-based Ewan and Valerie headed to Syria for a two-year teaching stint in Damascus. It was not the first country where they took up teaching positions with Volunteer Service Abroad and wouldn’t be their last. They had taught in Zimbabwe and Malaysia, with Pakistan still in their future. Beforehand and in between, Ewan had teaching roles at Waimea College and Valerie at Nayland College.
A week before heading to Syria they had no plans to teach there, but a phone call one morning lured them over to teach in an international school and, just like that, they went, not knowing if they were going for a month or two years.
“We were there for two years; Syria is the most wonderful country because it is so full of history.”
Though, in his first week in Damascus, he looked out a school window to see a bomb exploding at the American Embassy and the school went into lockdown.
Despite that, he says Syria was safe, partly due to the secret police and Moslem rules. So safe, that Valerie would walk from their apartment to the school at midnight because it had far better internet.
The couple were at a fair one day with school students, running a stand promoting community service when al-Assad and his wife came along for a look.
“He spent time at the stall and came and told them later that he was impressed that these young people were being trained to volunteer.”
At that stage, Ewan says al-Assad was still reasonably respected as a leader, having returned from England where he was training as an ophthalmologist and raising hopes his leadership would differ from his father’s brutal rule.
Things were changing though, and just a few months after they left Syria for their next teaching post in Pakistan, the international school where they taught in Damascus was evacuated.
“We left in July and the school was closed in October. Teachers went to school one day and the intercom in the classes said ‘this school is in lockdown and you are no longer allowed to go back to your house’ and ‘we will pick you up and take you to Jordan’.”
Ewan says everyone they knew in Syria fled during al-Assad’s regime, escaping to Jordan or Lebanon as the country’s leadership became more rigid.
“It’s all about the army and what the army wants to do,” Ewan says. “They wanted their hands on the money at the international school.”
Now that al-Assad has been toppled by the rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, Ewan says there is again hope that Syria will find peace. But time will tell, he says.
“I think now, democracy may not be the answer. If you can get a benevolent leader who can look after his people, then that’s perhaps the way to go.
“But he has to work with the army and the army controls the country, really.”
Ewan says he has never seen wealth like he saw in Syria, while in Pakistan where they spent the next three years, 17 families controlled 70 per cent of the country’s wealth.
In Zimbabwe, Syria and Pakistan, they left countries that were “in a mess”.
“People have got no idea how well off we are in our own country.”
In Zimbabwe, their first teaching post back in 1989, they took their kids with them for two years.
Then in 2019 they returned with two of their grandchildren aged nine and 11. That time they couldn’t fly into Zimbabwe, so flew into Zambia, hired a vehicle and arranged petrol top-ups with people they knew, because by then it was impossible to buy fuel.
“We got to our old school and this whole community came out to see us! They were excited we had come back, and this young teacher came to us and said: ‘you taught us agriculture under a tree!’ There were classrooms back then, but you couldn’t get all the kids in the classrooms.”
Ewan says their joy has come from the children they have taught in difficult countries.
“We taught kids all over the world and they’re beautiful kids trying to change things.”
