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...