LAHJ, Yemen: Crammed under a tattered tent on rough wooden benches, Yemeni children are learning Arabic grammar — lucky to receive an education at all in a country hammered by years of war.
The children, some without shoes or textbooks, were born into a divided state where fighting has destroyed nearly 3,000 schools. Those that remain are plagued by power cuts and a lack of running water. Al-Ribat Al-Gharbi school near Aden, in Yemen’s government-controlled south, is a typical case, with frequent power outages, no water supply, and a shortage of trained teachers.
Next to the crowded tent, teacher Suad Saleh is doing her best with another large group of kids in a cheap temporary building.
“Each class has more than 105 or 110 students,” she said.
“With this overcrowding, most of them can neither read nor write,” she said.
