My Love for Afghanistan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone asked me why in the world I would want to go to Afghanistan? After all they said, it's nothing but a deserted, sandy place, where men oppress women. Here was my response: 

 

 

Well I suppose that might be the view of people who have never been there. But I’ve met people in the mountain villages who invite me to their homes and have their daughters stay home from school just to meet the foreigner and sing me a song. They offer you food, let your dogs in their house and then when you leave say, “come back to my village” as their daughter takes a picture with me before heading off to school. I’ve seen plateau gardens much like the Aztec and Mayans had on the hillsides and irrigation canals running snake like through their planting systems along a stream. Long dirt pathways and ladder bridges to cross where you meet women with their burqas off eating w/ their male family members under the apple trees and women singing and dancing and complementing my clothes, asking if I want to trade. Spending the night in the downstairs of a family's home w/ all the women and a ten year old boy who slept alongside his mother while the men slept upstairs and when I leave they give me their jewelry . I tried to decline but they insisted, then when it fell in the sand and I didn’t want them to think I threw it away I tried to tell them I lost it and they tried to give me more but I had to decline. I met a man who found me on the streets of Kandahar and helped me find a hotel only to have him invite me to his home the next day and his wife ask him “why did you take her to the hotel? you should have brought her here.” I’ve met curious young farmers who would watch me as I played in the stream w/ my dogs and when I asked where water was to drink and they pointed to the stream only i was concerned about drinking that they brought me a bottle full of water that clearly was not from the store, I hoped I wouldn’t get sick and my some miraculous blessing I didn’t. I met another elderly farmer w/ his foot amputated and a prosthetic who invited me for tea in the fields only my dogs kept stepping on his tomato plants so I had to sadly decline. I rode my bicycle home from school passing two boys riding on the same bike heading home from school in their school uniforms. For some reason I looked down and I noticed that both feet of the boy on the back of the bike were prosthetics. I found myself riding home one day w/ one boy racing me on his bicycle and the only reason I had to stop mid race was b/c there was a giant steel industrial trash can in front of me and if I gotten in his lane he might get hit by a car. I found myself walking home only for Afghan women holding infants to invite me in their house. I bought food from a shop made of mud and sticks where an old man sat curiously watching me as his 10 year old daughter sold me goods. I wondered if I would be able to teach her English, if there was somewhere I could have school. I met boys in an orphanage sponsored by an American ER doctor who would write down the English I taught them, one of them mimicking me saying “copy” when he finished until I was told I could no longer go back b/c the Taliban might attack the orphanage. I worked with women who never went to school until 4th grade when the Americans invaded and graduated when they were 24 from university only to send me emails after the Taliban take over saying they weren’t allowed to do anything, could I help? I met a Kuchi woman who was paralyzed w/ a urine bag in Afghanistan living in a house of mud and clay that I built for them that they were grateful for. I paid for her surgery b/c apparently the NGO’s have decided to forget about Afghan suffering all because of the state of female education. I paid for a tutor for a few months for the Kuchi children who didn't have a school and was told only boys could go and then I found out later on that girls were going too. I saw women in Kandahar walking around in pink and purple abayas and then wondered why I couldn’t do the same? Why did the Taliban suggest I need to wear dark colors when they weren’t? I met an Afghan woman married to a Talib in Helmand who asked me to take her son to America to go to school. I asked her Talib husband whether he would let his daughter go to school. He replied, “she will go to university if the Taliban leadership allows it” as his infant daughter bounced on his lap playing with his beard while he recited Quranic surahs. I met the Taliban in Helmand who upon me arriving to the ministry after it closed b/c I had gotten very sick in Kandahar decided to call the chief to come back to give me a permit rather than make me wait another day. When it turned out I needed another document from another office elsewhere he called his Taliban friend and told him to return to work, that my guide would drive there to get it. I met Talibs who stared out me curiously, even asking if they could come to America to see our historical sights like I saw theirs. I met Afghans both who worked with the Americans and those who fought against them curiously intermarried and eating under the same roof determined to bring their country together and make it successful. I saw hope. I met people whose hope would never die even in a pile of rubble and who despite how little they had would insist on giving me, an American, whatever they had. That is the Afghanistan I know and love, a place where you can get lost in the mountains and find yourself surrounded by dozens of friends you never knew you had willing to invite you into their home. That is why I love Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

 

Street children I bought a meal for. Later I bought them shoes.

Ainsley; a puppy I found on day on the way to school laying on the side of the road bleeding after being run over by a car.  I paid a taxi drive to rush her to Nowzad clinic who helped save her life and then I had to run off to school down different streets arriving late.