The Small Stuff in Afghanistan

Asalaamu Alaykum! Peace on you! It’s Friday, Holy Day. The weekend looks different here (it’s Thursday-Friday instead of Saturday-Sunday.)

I am thoroughly enjoying this trip. I’m daily impressed by how meaningful the small experiences are and what a privilege it is to be here, even if it has turned out different than I thought!

I’m getting more medical exposure than I ever bargained for. No blood and guts, but it turns out that with two doctors around I’m ending up in places like Afshar hospital, going on rounds with the residents!

They said by the end of the day they’d have me applying for medical school, but unfortunately, the main impression I took away with me was that it’s a bad idea to lock your knees while standing in a small, un-air conditioned hospital room, wrapped in a headscarf, with fifteen other people when you haven’t had anything to eat or drink recently.

Actually I managed to rally myself after a short time with my head between my knees in a welcoming hallway chair. There were some rather sick folks. I felt for them, because it’s hard to be sick no matter what, but if you have no hope in life, it’s desperate. I wished that I could talk to them more, but there really wasn’t opportunity for that.

An exciting thing I’ve had the chance to be part of is a student network that a local guy has started here. They host discussion groups at universities and at their base, which has been newly refurbished and painted to be a nice hang-out area for students off campus to freely discuss their ideas and thoughts. It’s an excellent environment.

Dr. Dilip, whom I’ve been traveling around with some, has presented a talk on Holistic Health/Leadership to four different groups now, and I’ve been at every discussion. So we’re joking that I could give the talk now if I need to!

I’ve been privileged in those discussions in some smaller discussions to get a picture of what the students think, and a little bit of what their lives are like. These are the future leaders of Afghanistan! So this is a good work, giving them stimulation to seek out what a good leader is like.

Yesterday we visited two of Morning Star’s clinics in rural areas outside of Kabul. I had been to Tangi Saidan before, but the drive to Lalander, just another fifteen minutes beyond it, took my breath away.

We whirled down a pretty decent dirt road through a narrow valley. A green stream ran through groves of fruit trees, and people in the fields cut shining heaps of hay. Ancient mud brick compounds with hidden private courtyards clustered near the road, and the steep mountains, nothing more than piles of crushed, stubborn rock, rose high on either side. Pictures don’t do justice, especially since I could only take them from the car as we jolted through the valley.

The clinics provide midwifery and basic care for the people all through the valley. The infant mortality rate is extremely high here, and sometimes the women don’t want to come to the clinic for cultural reasons. The midwife is often able to go with them.

Through these services and visits, the workers have a chance to develop relationships with the village elders, these great old fellows with their turbans, prolific beards, and traditional clothes.

So many of these folks just want to be able to live their simple, peaceful lives in the valley without fear. I long for them to be free from fear on every level.