The Gaza Strip

It’s cold outside, but the fire and the blankets they got from a humanitarian NGO keep Waseem Alkelani and his family warm. Or as warm as possible when sleeping in a tent in the middle of winter, with nothing more than some rugs and thin mattresses on the ground.

When his four kids have fallen asleep, Alkelani, an English lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza, takes his phone out and starts recording an audio lecture he’ll upload to the teaching platform for his students. He’d do it during the day, except then he’s running around trying to secure the basic survival needs for his family.

Power outages

This is what life looked like for Alkelani for a year and a half, after the war started and he and his family had fled their home. And it still looks much the same today, except he’s exchanged the tent in a refugee camp for his house in northern Gaza, the only one still standing in a neighbourhood of rubble.

He keeps teaching from there, but it’s no less difficult than from a tent. ‘Just now, to do this interview, I had to ask my thirteen-year-old daughter to take my place and make the fire outside so we could cook’, he says.  

Every day, when he’s not trying to fetch food or water, he has to walk almost a kilometre to a solar panel station and pay one dollar to charge his phone. ‘There’s no electricity because of power outages.’ Yet he still uploads lectures and assignments when possible, and even talks to his students, usually in the evening. 

Scholasticide

‘When the war started, universities suspended teaching, hoping we’d be able to continue in a week or two’, Alkelani says. But things only got worse. 

Who’s going to fetch the water if we’re all grieving?

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, by September 2024 more than 80 percent of the nineteen universities in Gaza had been destroyed by the Israeli forces and more than a hundred educational staff had been killed, something a United Nations report referred to as ‘scholasticide’. None of the buildings at the Islamic University were spared, either. The university is the oldest one in the Strip.

‘Everything is down, the campuses are completely destroyed. Many of my students and colleagues were killed’, Alkelani says, his voice trembling. ‘At first, we were sad. But now, there’s no time to grieve. Who’s going to fetch the water if we’re all grieving?’

Message

A few months into the war, the university decided to start teaching online again. But they had no funds left to pay the lecturers. ‘So they asked teachers from Gaza and beyond to volunteer.’

Many professors from the Arab world answered the call. ‘In Gaza, though, most staff members couldn’t do it.’ But Alkelani decided he would, because teaching is not only his job, it’s his passion. ‘Education, to me, is a form of resistance. It’s like a message that we won’t let this war steal our minds, or our future.’

Though his energy and morale are low, he’s trying his best. And so are his students. ‘Some watch classes from shelters or tents on borrowed phones’, he says. Others even contact him personally, asking to delay online exams so they can borrow a laptop or a phone from someone.

‘Their spirit surprises me the most’, he says. ‘Every day, they wake up hoping this madness ends and they can continue their studies properly. They deserve to live like students all over the world. And we deserve to teach like regular teachers, because we’re human beings too.’ 

Sudan

For El-Sadig Ezza, that April morning in 2023 was supposed to be the start of just another busy day at the University of Khartoum. The English professor was preparing to meet some of his students when his sons called him to break the news: he couldn’t go to the university, because civil war had started.

‘The army headquarters are just next to the campus, so most of the war happened there’, he says. ‘From the other side of the Blue Nile, we could see smoke rising and flames engulfing the area because of the heavy weaponry.’ 

As he’d find out later on, some of his colleagues found themselves trapped in the university while the war was unfolding around them. ‘They were stuck for four or five days. Their options were either to stay and starve, or to move out and get killed by the bullets.’

Eventually, they did make it out of the building and to the other side of Khartoum, but Ezza still remembers how shaken they were. ‘It was a tough experience.’ 

Alone

As education was put on hold and all his neighbours fled Khartoum, the English professor was left alone in his house for three months, with no electricity or internet service.

Many can’t afford a smartphone to teach or join classes

‘There were times when I didn’t see a living human for days’, he recalls. ‘Nobody thought about education, it was all about safety’. Since then, Ezza has relocated to four different villages, before moving to Port Sudan and, finally, Saudi Arabia. 

It was in the first village, while living with host families, that he started teaching again, from the only smartphone that didn’t get confiscated by the authorities. ‘Because of the weak internet connection, I would get out of the village, find a place on the ground and do the online lectures from there.’ 

Graduate

When the power outages were too long, he’d make sure all the class material was uploaded to the teaching platform. ‘I just thought about my students. Most of them spent a long time in university because of the political unrest, and I wanted them to graduate.’

However, not everyone managed to continue their education. ‘We didn’t get any support from the university’, Ezza explains. ‘Many teachers and students can’t afford a smartphone to teach or join classes.’ And there’s also the practical education element missing.

‘We have minimal infrastructure for higher education now’, says Ezza. ‘Some campuses at our university were completely destroyed.’ Not even six months into the war, more than a hundred universities in Sudan had been damaged or vandalised. ‘We need funds to rebuild, but we can’t do it on our own.’ 

Until then, lecturers will continue to teach how they can. ‘Because we have to help young people start their lives.’

Ukraine

The first and only time she heard an air-raid siren while at university, Sofiia Drozhzhina, a psychology student at the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, was almost finished with her data analysis exam. She didn’t panic, though. The exam was tough enough already. 

Instead, she took her things and, just like everyone else, continued writing in the bomb shelter. Or rather, the damp, cold basement where some wooden benches and tables had been set up. ‘It wasn’t comfortable, but still, we managed.’

She says it calmly, like it’s nothing out of the ordinary. And three years into the war, it isn’t: air-raid sirens are the new normal. 

Every day 

‘At first, it felt like I was in a cinema, watching a World War II movie’, says Oksana Dovgopolova, history and philosophy professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. But now, she too has adjusted. ‘When it happens, which is almost every day, we just continue our class from the bomb shelter.’ 

While the shelters at the University of Odesa, where she worked until recently, were meant to hide in only, the ones in Kyiv have screens, toilets and even an internet connection. ‘Sometimes we stay there even after the siren is over. It’s very convenient’, says Dovgopolova. That only happens when the university has its offline classes, though, one week per month. 

Since the outbreak of the war in 2022, one in five Ukrainian universities has been damaged or destroyed and most education has moved online. This wasn’t without its challenges, since power outages would happen daily, especially in the first two years of the war.

I couldn’t even attend their funeral, because I had important exams

‘Some teachers would go to “points of invincibility” to do their classes’, says Dovgopolova. Such places, like post offices, had generators for electricity and a Starlink satellite internet connection. She herself never had to use one, but she always knew where to find them. ‘Each of us had a plan A, B and C. We knew where to run to if it was necessary.’

Blanket 

In Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in western Ukraine, the electricity blackouts looked quite different. Sofia Tokariuk, a psychology student at the Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, still remembers her two must-haves when going to classes: a blanket and a candle.

‘We had three or four blackouts almost every day last year’, she says. In winter, she’d keep her coat and scarf on in class to keep warm, and throw on the blanket too. For evening classes, she’d light a candle or use a lantern. ‘We just moved on, got used to it. The atmosphere was actually quite nice.’

Emotional toll

It wasn’t these things that made it hard for her to continue her studies. Rather, it was the emotional toll of the war, like when she found out just a day before her exams that three of her friends had died at the front lines.

‘I couldn’t even attend their funerals, because I had important exams the same day’, she says. ‘I didn’t tell anyone about it. I turned myself on auto mode, did the exams, and went straight home.’

Future

Even so, for both students, continuing their studies is a way to stay sane. ‘It keeps me going. It’s like gathering the pieces of a puzzle, which makes you focus on something other than the war’, Drozhzhina explains. It allows them to think about the future.

‘Education is an instrument of resistance, particularly because you prepare yourself for the future’, Dovgopolova thinks. That’s also why the war in Ukraine gave birth to new forms of education, like the programme she helped create at her university: History studies and public memory.

‘Commemoration was the business of a small group before. But now, many Ukrainian people want to understand how to keep the public memory alive’, she says. ‘Every country at war develops its own language of memory. That’s what Ukraine is doing now, and it’s all about resilience’. 

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