From Missouri to Nangarhar

Video cred­it: AFAfghan

Mis­souri Agri­cul­ture Devel­op­ment Team has helped farm­ers in Kama dis­tricts and equipped some of them with advanced tools of farm­ing. They’ve also taught new approach­es of farm­ing and how to har­vest more healthy crops.

Pul-e-Jawan: A Regional Peace-building Team

Pul-e-Jawan, which lit­er­al­ly means “bridges of youth” in Dari, Urdu and Hin­di, is a group of region­al peace build­ing and active youth from Afghanistan, Pak­istan and India. In Sep­tem­ber 2011, Internews, Afghanistan took ini­tia­tive and invit­ed five cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists with an inter­est in peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion issues from each of the above coun­tries (a total of fif­teen peo­ple) to meet in Kabul.
The aim of Pul-e-Jawan is to pro­vide an exchange for the youth and to bridge any gaps and issues between the three coun­tries. When we met in Kab­ul back in Sep­tem­ber (I am a mem­ber of the team) we took part in a forum on secu­ri­ty and we met with pol­i­cy­mak­ers, NGO rep­re­sen­ta­tives, aca­d­e­mics, jour­nal­ists and oth­er senior experts in the field. There were five groups of three (in each group there was one Afghan, one pak­istani and one Indi­an) and each group worked to make pre­sen­ta­tions on an issue of their inter­est. One of the pre­sen­ta­tions that my team worked on was a com­par­i­son of state uni­ver­si­ties with pri­vate universities.

Video pre­sen­ta­tion:

For prepar­ing this pre­sen­ta­tion, our team vis­it­ed Kab­ul Uni­ver­si­ty and Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty of Afghanistan (AUAF) and we inter­view stu­dents from both uni­ver­si­ties. AUAF is a very expen­sive uni­ver­si­ty and not a lot of Afghans can afford going to there. After inter­view­ing, I asked a stu­dent there if the future lead­er­ship of Afghanistan will go to the sons and nephews of the cor­rupt com­man­ders and oth­er offi­cials or to them (those who are get­ting the best edu­ca­tion in Afghanistan). He answered, “excuse me!?”. My father is a com­man­der. I was kind of expect­ing that answer but I still want­ed to hear it from him. That was a Pul-e-Jawan experience. 🙂

In addi­tion to dis­cussing peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in the region, Pul-e-Jawan was a great net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for us. We worked eight hours every­day and spent most of the evenings going out and eat­ing Afghan foods in restau­rants of Kab­ul. One evening we all went to a restau­rant called “Sufi” and sang every­one took turn and sang a song in their own lan­guage. The rest of the group would try to sing along.
Pul-e-Jawan has a web­site and a Face­book page where we post and dis­cuss issues that are com­mon in the three countries.

Pul-e-Jawan web­site: http://pulejawan.com/
Face­book page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/254234317940298/

Support Afghan Female Boxers Fighting their Way to London Olympics

In the base­ment of once noto­ri­ous Ghazi Nation­al Olympic Sta­di­um of Afghanistan is where the Afghan nation­al team of female box­ers train tire­less­ly hard for the Olympics 2012 in London.
Once known as the sta­di­um of death the venue was used for hold­ing pub­lic exe­cu­tions and ston­ing under the bru­tal Tal­iban rule, 1996 to 2001. Under the Tal­iban women were com­plete­ly for­bid­den from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any sports, not even as spectators.
Refur­bished by the US gov­ern­ment, Ghazi Olympic Sta­di­um reopened in recent years and thou­sands of young ath­letes train here every­day, includ­ing Afghanistan’s nation­al female box­ers team. Beam­ing with hope, this group of 25 girls with a mis­sion, meet in this dark­ened train­ing club in the base­ment with cracked mir­rors, three times a week and run hard prac­tices to pre­pare for the upcom­ing 2012 Olympics. The team has been giv­en a chance to par­tic­i­pate in Olympic games in Lon­don. They real­ly have their work cut out for them.
Shab­nam, a 19-year-old box­er won gold medal in an inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion in Octo­ber 2011 in Tajik­istan. Her younger sis­ter also won silver.

In a coun­try where still a very insignif­i­cant num­ber of women are allowed by their fam­i­lies to par­tic­i­pate in sports and despite threats of kid­nap­ping and vio­lence, Shab­nam and her oth­er fel­low box­ers con­tin­ue to fight thi­er way to the Olympics 2012 in Lon­don. “We work for the future, because the past is lost”, says Moham­mad Shabir Shar­i­fi coach of the nation­al female box­ers team in an interview.
These box­ers are the bea­cons of hope for Afghanistan and their vic­to­ry means hope and encour­ag­ment to mil­lions of oth­er Afghan women. I admire their brav­ery and the noble love and sup­port these young women receive from their fam­i­lies and their coach in the pur­suit of their Olympic dreams. Their spir­its are high and with prac­tice and strong deter­mi­na­tion they will show the world that they too can be the con­tenders. The team that rep­re­sents Afghanistan in inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions has lit­tle sup­port from the gov­ern­ment ($1 a day per athlete).
Here is a peti­tion to the Afghan pres­i­dent, Hamid Karzai to give the Afghan wom­en’s box­ing team more pro­tec­tion and sup­port that they tru­ly deserve. Peti­tion to Hamid Karzai

That’s what I do

I was in Dara-e-Noor, a dis­trict far to the north of Jalal­abad city. My team mem­bers and I were there for a map­ping sur­vey for which talk­ing with a local res­i­dent helped us make bet­ter and more accu­rate maps for any giv­en area.

Here, we ran into Baghcha Gul. We were talk­ing about the vil­lage and names of the roads, pub­lic build­ings, etc. and my col­league, Akbar asked this ran­dom ques­tion: “How many chil­dren do you have?” “I have only one son”, Baghcha Gul answered.
Then Akbar asked again, “What do you do, Mama?”
He said, “that’s what I do.”
Akbar: What?
Baghcha Gul: Mak­ing babies.

Lat­er, we found out that the man had 10 chil­dren: Nine girls and one boy. Some peo­ple, espe­cial­ly in rur­al areas of Afghanistan , shy away talk­ing about female mem­bers of their family.

No, There Is only One God!

When I was tak­ing this pic­ture I raised my index and mid­dle fin­ger and part­ed them ask­ing the gen­tle­men to make peace ges­ture. The senior man in the back shout­ed, “No, there is only ONE God!” “There are not two Gods”, he added. I almost got into a big trou­ble. They prob­a­bly thought I was try­ing to con­vert them or some­thing. It was in my own city of Jalal­abad but these folks seemed alien. Some peo­ple in Jalal­abad know what the sign means.

Plucked from Garbage Scavenging, Sokha Becomes an Inspiring Girl Worldwide

“When my father died, I lost every­thing: my edu­ca­tion, my strug­gling spir­it and my parental love and even the love from my sib­lings because I had to go away and live with others,” she said.

If there is one les­son she’s learned, it’s that “you must nev­er give up hope,” she said. “You must strug­gle and strug­gle until one day you see success.”

Arti­cle on VOA Cam­bo­dia: Plucked From Garbage Scav­eng­ing, a Girl Makes Good

Team Work

Pho­to cred­it: Najib Bismil

Peo­ple in rur­al Afghanistan build their mud hous­es with thick and high walls, Qal­la. They usu­al­ly tie two or more lad­ders togeth­er to pass the mud to the mason.

The Irrepressible Pashtun Sense of Humor

Pash­tuns like to have a very loose sched­ule. We spend a lot of time trad­ing jokes with oth­er ‘com­rades’, espe­cial­ly if there is green tea and a nice lit­tle Hujra(guest room). No mat­ter how sad or trou­bled we are, we make fun of the mis­ery and laugh about it.

Inter­est­ing read in Dawn: The Irre­press­ible Sense of Humor of the Pashtoons

Part of the article:

‘Where is Com­rade Amin, our first Social­ist Leader?’
‘He’s dead, Comrade.’

‘And where, Com­rade Infor­ma­tion offi­cer is Com­rade Tari­ki, our sec­ond Social­ist Leader?’
‘He’s dead, too, Comrade.’

‘And our fra­ter­nal Russ­ian KGB Chief, Gen­er­al Vik­tor Paputin?’
‘Dead. But why are you ask­ing all these questions?’

‘Because, Com­rade, I do so enjoy hear­ing the answers.’