What I have seen

I began my sojourn in Afghanistan with a healthy dose of language learning. The two official languages o f the country are Dari (also known as Persian, pretty much the same language as Farsi and Tajik), and Pashtun. There are tons of other languages spoken, but these are the main business ones. I lived in a predominantly Dari area, so I opted for this one. (It is also easier.) I wanted to help women and children, and since most women are illiterate, they would certainly not know English.

As I was learning, I was also researching the needs of the people. 25% of Afghan children do not reach the age of five. Stop and think about that for a moment. Many ask me why Afghans have so many children. Well, it is simple pragmatism. They need their children to grow up and care for them in their old age. They know that 1/4 of them won't survive even to five years old, so they have between 8-15 to make up the difference (that statistic doesn't include infant mortality, or those that die after age 5.) The maternal mortality rate for the country is around 30%. In some provinces, it is higher than in the entire history of the statistic. (This is, remember 2007, how is that even possible?). In our city there were tons of programs addressing the illnesses that lead to these unnecessary deaths. There are tons of birth/life-saving skills classes for women, and classes on diarrhea prevention and pneumonia treatment and prevention. So I wanted to do something different.

This is what I saw:

When I walked down the road to our office every morning, I would see children standing in knee deep sewer ditches playing with discarded hypodermic and IV needles. I would watch as children climbed on top of roofs to get their kites in the air, then, as children are prone to do, look away from their feet and step right off the roof. {A brief aside here...if you have not read The Kite Runner, but desire to know about Afghanistan, it is a must read, and the movie is coming out on December 15. But, it is extremely graphic, not for the young or faint of heart}. I saw children fall out of the trunks of taxis, and children everywhere with horrific scars from burns they had received. I interviewed women who had lost their babies to completely preventable accidents. I then started asking about first aid practices. For the most part, there are none. When there are, they do more harm than good. If a baby is burned, they are then covered in oil, or mud. if a baby is choking, the mother sticks her finger into the baby's throat and pushes the food right on down...right into their little lungs. The more I heard, the more fire was lit under me. I decided to take on this 25% statistic and it was like taking on the devil himself.

I hired a couple of really swift Afghan women. One was a widow with 6 children who had managed to survive and keep her family intact through the Taliban years, an extremely difficult task. The other was a woman who had married her first cousin (extremely common practice in Afghanistan). She also had six children, three of whom were deaf. I designed safety and first aid lesson plans and a wonderful generous group of people donated 4 resusci baby dolls and two resusci juniors, and we went into local schools to teach the teachers, then into homes to teach women. Have you ever watch the nature shows where the salmon are not just swimming against the current, but they have to actually swim up a waterfall? Well, that seems awfully easy now.

More to come...

Initial thoughts

I have often thought that I should start blogging about my experiences in Afghanistan. They are usually amazing, though sometimes almost unbelievable. I have lived there for a bit over two years and have seen more in that time than in my whole life put together. When you speak to an Afghan, they speak a language of brokenness. They will say, "she is a broken woman" in reference to a prostitute, "the streets are broken", in reference to the fact that there are not many intact roads in the country. This type of talk will go on for a few minutes, listing everything that is wrong, not working, or painful, and it will finally end with a deep sigh and the words, "Afghanistan is broken". I think this is partly what draws me to this place. It is a country broken by poverty and years of ethnic violence and war. Afghanistan is broken.
A few years ago, our local newspaper in the states had a section that was dedicated to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. After pages and pages of the pain and brokenness and hopelessness, the conclusion was that we could work for years and years and never make any headway.

I RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE.

Yes, there is severe poverty. I have sat with an eight month old baby in my arms who was the size of a newborn and watched as her life began to ebb away because her parents couldn't afford to feed her and their 7 other children. She had been brought to me too late to help. Yes, there is hopelessness. I have escorted a man to a clinic as a last ditch effort to save his life, which was ravaged by homelessness, heroin abuse, and an intractable case of TB. Yes, there is brokenness. The women that I counsel have seen so much trauma (husbands being murdered in front of them, children killed by landmines, personal rape and betrayal), that they cannot even cry anymore. When they tell their stories, stories so horrific that Stephen King would cringe, they tell them with completely detached expressions, as if they are recounting a history of white bread.

But there is hope. How do I know this? Well, I know because I have seen it. I see a people ravaged by pain, who continue to get up every morning, make breakfast, send their kids to school, go to work, and continue to breathe, even when bombs are falling. I have seen the hope in the eyes of the shopkeeper in my favorite fabric store in the bazaar. He says that he had been in a Taliban prison until US soldiers came in and freed him. He is now free to provide for his family. I see hope in the women who have taken the initiative to go to literacy classes to set an example of education for their young girls. I see hope in the young medical resident in the pediatric ward of the local hospital who genuinely cares for his patients and is trying his best to provide good medical care for them. I see hope in the new born babies' eyes as they enter the world. Death cannot have the victory!

I should also mention that I am a nurse. Yes, life in Afghanistan is hard, but it is the biggest blessing in my life, and it is a joy and a privilege to be able to help and serve these wonderful, loving, passionate, frustrating, smart, foolish, warring, and peace-loving people.