8

Bone Weary, Burned Out, but Blessed

DASHT-E QALEH—My first four months in Afghanistan flew by in a blur of nonstop activity. Near the end of 2000, if someone had asked me at the time how I was feeling, I would have said, “Hey, I’m too busy to burn out.” Still, there were moments when I felt completely overwhelmed by the enormity of what needed to be done.

The work fulfilled my longing to be useful, but it was always with me. I have since realized that people don’t burn out doing something they don’t like; they more likely burn out doing what they’re passionate to accomplish. Our passion consumes us. I was finally putting my passion into action, but the need was far greater than my best efforts could meet. I found myself bone weary in every possible way.

My journal entries during these weeks catalog a growing impatience and exhaustion. On November 17, I noted the following events of the day:

Ate some bread, tea, and milk. Balanced our accounts and paid all our weekly bills. Since it was raining and Juma [Friday], our supposed day off, I decided to stay home. Really getting frustrated with all the delays of this distribution. A four-day job may take four weeks. But there is grace. Thankfully, we put a wood stove in our room and bathroom today. Waiting for the trucks of wheat to come, so found some more quiet time. Lord, my heart is longing to do some development work, because this relief work is draining and demanding. May your mercy, O God, sustain me!

Certain built-in frustrations come with the work. As much as I enjoy learning foreign languages, I certainly don’t mind speaking English. Those early months in Afghanistan gave me very few opportunities for face-to-face, easy conversations. Even the simplest discussion with the national staff required a lot of energy and concentration on my part.

SPEAK OR SERVE

I also understood and fully accepted the limitations imposed on me as a Christian relief worker in a Muslim country. However, the day-to-day lack of interaction about my faith was exasperating. I had come to teach, to start an educational institute, to be a communicator, but instead I was overwhelmed by the tyranny of the urgent needs around me. I found it hard to keep my mouth shut when what I wanted to do was run down the streets shouting about the goodness and grace of God.

I knew that my efforts in Afghanistan had real value, for our presence and programs were saving lives. But, in reality, I felt the situation was almost completely out of control. Because of my frantic schedule, I rarely had time to speak about my beliefs. Actually, I became a service-oriented workaholic and it showed. In fact, it was wearing me out.

Afghans seemed to ask about my faith in moments when I felt least worthy to talk about it. And sometimes I was so tired that I lacked the sensitivity to see that some were sincerely seeking.Then when I was primed and ready to tell the world the good news of the gospel, no one asked. Many times I felt I wasn’t doing all I could to communicate the love of God.

SPIRITUAL ENCOUNTERS

Although I remember these months as a dry and difficult time, my journal notes remind me that there were always unusual interactions. Ramadan, or Ramazan, the month when all Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, included numerous spiritual encounters. In 2000, Ramazan began on November 27. I observed the fast along with our national staff, which raised both eyebrows and questions. Since that Muslim season promotes spiritual seeking and religious rituals, many people expressed curiosity about my faith.

One night in Nowabad, I was invited to dinner with our neighbors. They wanted to express their gratitude for my efforts with a gift of hospitality. Reciprocity lies behind many social interactions in the Asian world. My side of the balance far outweighed theirs, in the eyes of many people in Dasht-e Qaleh.They assumed I personally provided most of what we distributed. I could not explain to them that, in terms of material possessions, many of them owned more than I did. They felt compelled to serve me out of a sense of debt. I didn’t want to be an added burden in their struggle to survive, but I realized their gesture had more to do with their dignity than my comfort.

I went to dinner that night with my good friend Engineer Massoud and one of our project managers, whom I called Ali Khan. He’s a likable, jolly, old fellow who knows some English. That evening, when it was appropriate to break the daily fast, we walked to Saed Akbar’s house. Twelve of us had been invited for the occasion. Most of the guests were village elders, either from the IDP community or the local population of Nowabad.

First we dedicated the feast by intoning the customary Bismillah, Arabic for “in the name of God.” Then we began to eat the delicious assortment of foods placed on the cloth that was spread on the carpeted floor. Among the delicacies were several versions of the famous Afghan pilaf—a rice dish that contains diced carrots and raisins. Lamb and beef kabobs, sizzling their mouthwatering aromas, rested atop the edible mounds. Bread and hot tea accompanied the meal. After the main course we had fruit, almonds, and pistachios. Eating in Afghanistan requires reaching across the table. This was a typical meal of genuine Central Asian kindness and gracious hospitality.

Finally someone asked, as if on cue, “Mr. John, why are you fasting?”

I briefly explained how followers of Jesus Christ also practice fasting as a spiritual discipline. That led to a number of comments around the dinner cloth about the purposes of fasting.

As the interest in that subject waned, another man asked, “Mr. John, who is Jesus Christ?”

My mouth dropped, but I was able to respond in a mixture of broken Uzbek and Dari, deeply honored by their curiosity. Stumped at times, I even used some English, which Ali Khan graciously translated. My brief audience was attentive and respectful. When I finished, they nodded thoughtfully, and the discussion moved on to other matters.

Afterwards, Ali remarked, “Mr. John, you told them the whole story!”

I wondered how that evening affected those men.

Just prior to Christmas, John Caleb, my teammate, joined two of our key local staff and me for a meeting with the main commander of Rostaq. The commander’s deputy and the mayor also attended. Normally, such a gathering required the host to serve hot tea and sweets to his guests. We declined, along with our Muslim fellow guests, because we were all still keeping Ramazan.

The commander was obviously surprised but also quite pleased.

Foreigners seldom know about or observe their local customs.

He, also being a respected religious elder, began quoting from the Koran about Ramazan. Then he added a number of comments about Jesus Christ that he had read in his Muslim holy book. Now it was my turn to be surprised and pleased.

He turned to me and asked, “Mr. John, do you believe Jesus Christ is alive?”

I looked down to see where I dropped my heart. I replied, “Albata,” which means “of course” in both Uzbek and Dari.

The commander looked at me calmly, expecting me to continue. He wanted the long version. Again I fumbled with language, bouncing back and forth from Uzbek and Dari. Because of the season, I briefly described the significance of Christmas. Having read his holy book I used the areas of common ground to build a bridge for communication. But I tried to make crystal clear the “reason for the season.”

As I struggled to communicate without offending, I noticed that our two local staff men and the mayor were not interested in our religious dialogue. One of our Afghan staff member’s faces took on an embarrassed shade of crimson. It was as if he was afraid someone would think he shared the same feelings about the Messiah as Mr. John.

I have found that fear is the main obstacle that keeps Easterners and Asians from seriously considering the teachings of Christ. It still amazes me that millions of people are held captive to various religious systems simply out of fear. I also fear God, but I wonder at times if it is the same flavor of fear. Our conversation about spiritual matters that day ended as someone politely reminded us that we had work to do.

CHRISTMAS

By the time Christmas 2000 rolled around, I had been working every day for four months, and knew I needed rest. I had arrived in the country with one bag and a one-week itinerary. This was the first opportunity I’d had to take a breather and travel back to our central field office in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. We were also scheduled to spend time with our staff and leadership in Dushanbe, since we with Shelter for Life needed to consider ways to expand and better serve the Afghan people. I looked forward to the change of pace and scenery.

Caleb and I arranged our plans to travel from Rostaq to Tajikistan via Feyzabad for Christmas. But winter tossed a thick blanket on our plans.At first, the possibility of spending the holidays snowbound in Afghanistan frustrated me. I felt a little homesick. The heavy snows meant that I had a whiter Christmas in Central Asia than most people back in Coats, North Carolina, or many other places in my own country. We even thought the weather might keep us from the annual meetings in Tajikistan in early January.

Since we had a television, VCR, and a generator at the Shelter for Life office, we decided to watch some movies. Like the old Christmas song with a twist, “The weather outside is frightful, but our wood-stove fire is so delightful, and since to Dushanbe we cannot go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.” We seized the opportunity and watched the film Jesus, which portrays the life of Christ from the Gospel according to Saint Luke. The English soundtrack gave me the longest dose of my own language that I had heard in months.

Two other events made our Christmas holidays even more special. During the autumn, our Rostaq office sponsored some beginning English classes, taught by one of our local staff in a little classroom we had built. They met every day, and Christmas was no exception. The instructor invited us to visit as his guest English teachers. As a result, we had the privilege of telling the story of Jesus the Messiah.

The following day we set out for Feyzabad in hopes of catching a flight to Dushanbe. Thanks to our skillful and determined driver, we arrived safely through the snow some six hours later. Soon we would be gathering again. This time we viewed the Jesus film in Dari. It was my language lesson for the day. Four Afghan friends joined three of us Americans for the evening. I realized during those hours that I was celebrating Christmas at its finest. No tree, no presents, no lights—simply companionship and conversation about Jesus the Messiah.

WINTER WONDERLAND

ESHKASHEM—At this time, there were only three ways to leave northeast Afghanistan. The UN maintained an occasional flight in and out of Feyzabad. And two border crossings still offered access to Tajikistan, if they were open. Our obvious choice for travel was the Ay Khanom border, just a few miles from my house in Dasht-e Qaleh. But it was closed because the Taliban bombed it every day in hopes of cutting off General Massoud’s pipeline of military resources. The other border was in a remote area south and east of Feyzabad at Eshkashem.

Two of my friends from Shelter for Life, Seth and Caleb, and I waited in Feyzabad for a UN plane. But the weather prevented any flights to or from the country. Once we realized we could be stuck for the rest of the holidays, I began to relax. Feyzabad became an oasis in the desert of exhaustion. I didn’t have many responsibilities there, so I could rest, practice the language, and visit with friends.

A week after Christmas, the UN made it official: The next flight to Dushanbe would be “whenever weather permitted.” By then no planes had flown for two weeks. If the weather continued to leave us grounded, we would miss the annual planning meetings and most of the R&R we had planned in Tajikistan. So we called our regional director in Dushanbe to chat about our dilemma. He encouraged us to try for the “unknown border” at Eshkashem. No one from our agency had ever been within miles of it.

The road from Feyzabad to the Eshkashem border passes through scenic and unforgettable terrain. We headed toward the great Vakhan Valley that forms the panhandle of northeast Afghanistan, which stretches through towering peaks to touch the western frontier lands of China. The road wound between snowcapped mountains and breathtaking drop-offs. We retraced the steps of countless caravans and armies that had followed the Silk Road for millennia. In spite of the frigid temperatures, we stopped occasionally to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation.

Before we set out, we hired Bobojon, a driver from another nongovernment organization. He had just taken some of his international staff to this same border, and we wanted to take advantage of his familiarity with the terrain. Bobojon proved to be an added value when we arrived at the border at three o’clock in the afternoon, after they had already closed it. In other circumstances, we would have been stranded and chilly in our vehicle overnight. Instead, our driver became our tour guide.

He took us to the home of Baz Mohammed up in the snow-filled hills of Eshkashem. Baz became our host. Hospitality is the rule in Afghan culture. We ate kabali pilov, some bread, and drank a lot of hot tea. Baz assured us he felt honored to have three Afghan-looking Americans stay with him.

When he showed us to our room, we discovered that its most remarkable feature was the lack of panes in the windows. We had a roof over our heads, but the temperature inside the room was about the same as the temperature outside. For a bathroom we had the great outdoors, where frostbite awaited the daring. We fired up a small wood stove to take the chill off the room and huddled under the pile of blankets Baz provided. We thanked God for his protection and asked his blessing on the home of Baz Mohammed, who had given us a warm welcome on a frigid night.

In the morning, we carefully refilled the radiator we had drained the night before. It’s just one of those added chores in a land with no supply of antifreeze. Baz added some boiling water to the radiator to help thaw the oil. Then we gathered for prayer around the green Russian Jeep, asking the Lord to bless us with enough battery power to start the engine. It cleared its throat several times, then ran with the familiar chug of the previous day.

Breakfast at the Baz Mohammed inn consisted mostly of drinking shir-choy (milk-tea, with a pinch of salt and sugar) from a soup bowl. The name sounds a little like “sheer joy,” but the taste is something else. This is a traditional drink in some areas of Afghanistan. Our driver Bobojon has since told many people about our adventure in great detail. As he tells it, his most memorable moment was drinking shir-choy with three Afghan-looking Americans, who were trying the drink for the first time. We had stumbled onto an important cultural rite of passage. Some countryside Afghans like to say, “You’re really one of us if you drink shir-choy.”

We finally arrived at the border late in the morning. We fortunately picked up the chief Afghan official on the way. Otherwise, we would have waited even longer. He walks three miles every day from town to the border, if he wants to work in the freezing cold. He unlocked the gate and wished us well.

TROUBLE IN TAJIKISTAN

TAJIKISTAN—The welcome we got on the Tajik side of no-man’s-land was less than enthusiastic.They weren’t expecting three scruffy Americans. One of them (me) greeted them in Russian, switched to broken Tajik (which they call really good Dari), and even occasionally threw in an Uzbek word when appropriate. When they asked for our papers, they were in for another surprise. One of us (me again) did not have an NGO (nongovernment organization) identification card, because I came for only a week and then stayed for four months. Another of the guys with me was carrying an expired identification card. We were so obviously suspicious that they were convinced we should probably be kept out of their country. Our initial explanations made no impression whatsoever on the guardians of the border.

We called the regional office in Dushanbe via Codan radio and asked for some advice. Our regional director told us that he had spoken with a Tajik general, who had given us verbal permission to enter Tajikistan. Since this culture operates on a chain of command system, we talked to the border guards as if we really knew General Jalil. Name dropping helped, but the gate remained closed.

All three of us were worn out from the cold, the wind, and the headache of arguing. We knew they had us just where they wanted us. Three infuriated Americans at the border, held up and helpless in the hands of Russian/Tajik soldiers. Their enjoyment over our predicament was obvious and for me was one of the hardest experiences of my life. Looking back, I realize that it revealed just how little energy and good attitude I had left to share. We were frustrated and felt that they were taking advantage of us. I’m definitely not proud of my attitude and actions that day.

When they finally were ready to let us cross, some five hours later, they decided to check everything that we had, and I mean everything.

One of the soldiers said rather sarcastically, “We have to do all of this at our KGB checkpoint offices. ”

I looked at the shabby, windowless, heatless metal container they used for an office, angered by the senseless delays. I distinctly remember thinking in North Carolinian style, Man, this is no office.You don’t even have a pen that writes.You’re using my pen (his had frozen) to write my name on a scrap piece of paper and look through my stuff, as if I’m some kind of prisoner.

Then, instead of thinking before speaking, I muttered under my breath, “If I were reacting as a sinner, I would blow up your office.”

They checked through everything the three of us had. It took about an hour. Then they called the main Russian general. He showed up decked out in uniform with a stern, strong look and asked the same set of questions we had already answered at least three times. Speaking through a Tajik soldier as his translator (thankfully this guy understood my broken Dari), his final question was, “Sir, why did you say you would blow up our office?”

I was speechless at first. How did he know I said such a thing? I had mumbled those words in English. None of the soldiers had given any indication they understood my mother tongue. All I could do was apologize profusely. I assured him that I hadn’t meant those words and that I had no means or authority to carry out such a foolish statement. He apparently understood my shame and accepted my regrets, because he shook my hand and said we could go across the border.

Once we passed through the border gate, another surprise awaited us. There is no town on the Tajik side. The closest village is four miles away, and we were now on foot. We hitched a ride into town from a man at the border, who also agreed to take us to Khorugh for a price. That was the closest city from which we thought we could get a flight on Tajik Air into Dushanbe. Instead of heading north, however, the driver went the opposite direction and straight to the local KGB office.

At the time, this was extremely frustrating because of everything we had already been through at the border. Later, it turned out to be a fortuitous event, because I ended up sleeping in the very same KGB office nine months later. We checked in with the KGB and explained once more why we had come into the country. I made sure not to make any comments under my breath about blowing things up. After the usual round of endless questions and surprises at what they considered to be my expert linguistic skills, we were on our way to Khorugh. By this time it was afternoon.

Before long we encountered more aggravations. Our route included frequent checkpoints. It almost made my blood boil when we were stopped and searched at every one of them. When we finally arrived in Khorugh, we had no idea where to stay. We told the driver to take us to a hotel. We found only one, which I remember as the “drunk” hotel. The lobby chairs and couches held nothing but badly inebriated people. The lady and man who appeared to run the place didn’t even have enough strength to greet us. So we decided to try elsewhere.

Our driver then remembered that an NGO in town had a guest house. We eventually found the office of FOCUS, a relief and development NGO that is connected with the Agha Khan Foundation.They were surprised to see three bearded Americans at such an hour, but they graciously agreed to house us for the night.

Before our driver left, he inquired about our hunger. He offered to feed us. In all the commotion, we hadn’t eaten anything since our shir-choy for breakfast. He took us to the house of some relatives for a candlelight experience, since the electricity had gone out in town. This is a common occurrence in many areas of the former Soviet Union. We sat in a ten-story, Communist-era, block apartment and nearly froze to death while the cook struggled to prepare food for us in a dark and powerless kitchen.

Finally, amidst warm Tajik hospitality, dinner was served. It was delicious, though I can’t report what we ate. I couldn’t identify the components of the meal in the dimness of the candlelight. Afterward, our driver took us back to the guest house, where we got some much-needed rest. We all slept in one room, taking advantage of the meager heat the three of us produced.

Our morning in Khorugh began with an unexpected hearty breakfast of eggs, toast, fruit, cheese, and Russian sausage. After thanking our hosts, we packed and proceeded by foot to the bazaar. Our plan was to rent some local transport that would take us all the way to Dushanbe. The snow had again ruled out any chances of a Tajik Air flight. We would have to take the long way home. At the car area of the market I negotiated a ride for one hundred dollars in an old green military-looking Russian Jeep. Little did we know that we were in for the ride of our lives.

ANGEL IN DISGUISE

DUSHANBE—Our journey to Dushanbe turned into a twenty-seven-hour, nonstop marathon. The way was again replete with checkpoints. This time Caleb, along with our new friend Rahim, did the negotiating honors. We picked up Rahim, who was going to Dushanbe for a company meeting. In Central Asia, there is always room for one more when traveling. I gave up all communication duties and sat in the very back of the Jeep, sandwiched between seats and luggage.

Rahim turned out to be an angel in disguise. At a few checkpoints, the guns and the smell of vodka made us wonder about the intent of those manning the post. Rahim became our wise spokesman; he could speak as a genuine cultural insider. Thankfully, we didn’t get shot or robbed. A few times we gave some candy or food to guards, or the driver shared his cigarettes. Our gifts and gestures of peace probably saved our lives and possessions on more than one occasion.

Our story could be as long and tiresome as the trip. At times we barely made it through the snow. The mountain driving in Tajikistan shares many hair-raising similarities with the driving in Afghanistan. Some of our only pit stops were when the car broke down, and we still don’t know how our driver managed to make repairs in the dark. But we finally reached Dushanbe at eleven o’clock the next morning and stumbled into the apartment I had supposedly left for just a few days four months earlier. How refreshing it was to take a hot shower and then lay down for some uninterrupted rest.

Seeing friends and coworkers in Tajikistan refreshed me emotionally too. Our annual meetings were enjoyable. We were able to pray, reminisce, plan, strategize, and look to the future with a sense of hope.

During our discussions, our regional director informed us that our vision for our role in Afghanistan was expanding. We made some plans to start an educational institute, a community health program, and various reconstruction projects that would help the Afghans rebuild their infrastructure. The results of this extremely long and exhausting trip turned out to be exactly what I needed. I returned to Feyzabad in early February 2001 refreshed and eager to resume my duties inside Afghanistan.

SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS

NOWABAD—The success of our Host Family Project kept me busy during much of the early part of the year and well into the summer. Gradually, as people settled into substantial housing, my concerns turned elsewhere. We still had a full schedule of distributions, but I wanted to give more attention to development projects.

One day in April of 2001, I received a visit from two men who were a part of the IDP commission in the Rostaq area. In each area, several men were designated as the shura leaders or elders for the displaced community. These two men were teachers from Khvajeh Ghar. They wanted me to help them start an educational program for the boys and girls of the refugee population. They had my enthusiastic support almost instantly, of course.

As a teacher, I believe strongly in education. I also enjoy how much I always learn while I’m teaching. But how do we provide education for wandering, displaced refugees? I had no experience with this problem. I told the two men that, if they were willing to organize the school, I would help provide the funds, the rent, the place, the materials, and the support. I told them to survey the IDP families, register the students (girls and boys), and develop a list of those willing and qualified to teach, both men and women.

These men returned in only a few days with startling results. They had a list of over eight hundred elementary-aged students, about half girls, half boys. They had also identified twenty-eight teachers, including twelve women, who could staff the school. I was ecstatic!

I looked up from their lists and said, “We have to find a place.”

One of them handed me another list. “Here are some places we think might be available for such a school.”

I couldn’t help but smile. These two men were way ahead of me. One of the places on their list turned out to be ideal. We negotiated an arrangement with the owner for just one hundred dollars rent for the entire school year, with the added stipulations that we would dig a well and build two latrines. The temporary wooden-bamboo, hut-type classrooms we planned to build would remain with the property. He was pleased, and we were in the education business.

I hired Akbar, our carpenter friend, and told him to train IDPs to help him build four large, wooden-bamboo structures that would protect the students and teachers from the sun but would allow plenty of air for coolness. Later we divided these into eight classrooms.

The property already had four rooms (one would be a teachers’ office).We got a mason busy on the well and some of our construction supervisors to build the latrines. We hired some local men to make chalkboards. I called some other agencies to provide textbooks, and within a week we had all the components for a full-blown school under construction or slated for delivery. The first day of class in May 2001 brought out more than eight hundred fifty students. We then started a school in Desht-e Qaleh for another eight hundred displaced children.

It was exciting to see both boys and girls learning. Their presence represented much-needed hope for the future. It was also a way of restoring dignity to the teachers. They were now working, using their skills to help serve their own people. The women, in particular, were so grateful that we provided work for them and education for their children, including their daughters. The full impact of what we were doing in Afghanistan didn’t really hit me until months later.

WORK FOR WHEAT

ROSTAQ—The road from Rostaq to Dasht-e Qaleh gave me my original crash course in Afghan travel. I never forgot the experience. I traveled that road so frequently I could instinctively brace myself for its every bump. I gradually made it my mission to find a way to improve the popcorn-popping ride it offered.

The Host Family Project had often demonstrated the value of labor. In spite of the massive amounts of free aid that we distributed during my early months in Dasht-e Qaleh, I found people eager to work.When we proposed the Host Family Project, we gave homeowners the incentive of improvements to their houses in exchange for their willingness to host IDPs. But we also insisted that both the homeowners and the IDPs help with building the extra rooms, latrines, and doing repairs.To ensure this, we offered wheat in lieu of cash payments for their labor. The enthusiastic response told us we had hit on an effective principle. Other subprojects, like the manufacturing of tin wood stoves and sandalees, further demonstrated the principle of dignity through work. We hired skilled men, who instructed both homeowners and IDPs in the production of these items. In the process, some of these learners discovered they had skills that could translate into provision for their families.

People in places like Afghanistan know that there are many things better than money. If a wealthy man is starving, but there is no food to buy, his money doesn’t taste very good. In providing hard goods or food in exchange for labor, we applied a principle of bartering that predates money. Sometimes it’s the only workable choice.

One of the bone-jarring ruts on the Rostaq-to-Dasht-e Qaleh road finally got my attention. I suddenly realized I was driving on top of a big enough project to occupy thousands of men for months. I decided right then and there to propose the use of our work-for-wheat arrangement for a large-scale project. Fifty kilometers of handmade road didn’t equate to the Pyramids, but it was certainly a worthy challenge.

Actually, the Rostaq-to-Dasht-e Qaleh road probably already carried traffic when the Egyptians were busy building their amazing monuments. Countless hooves of camels, horses, and herds wore out paths that wooden wheels and rubber tires had then followed through the centuries. Unfortunately, the hard-packed clay that easily supports animal traffic becomes a slick, impassable surface for cars and trucks when wet. Where one horse easily passes, a multi-horsepower vehicle sits helpless, wheels spinning furiously.

We made a careful study of that stretch of road. The roadbed could support heavy vehicles, but we needed to add gravel to the surface to increase traction in all kinds of weather. The road also needed widening in places. Wherever we noted outcroppings of stone along the road, we marked them. We also identified stretches with inclines or clay surfaces that needed extra traction treatment. Then we at Shelter for Life approached Tearfund-UK with the concept and our need for cash to implement it. They gladly and eagerly agreed to supply the funds. And the USAID wheat we needed for payment to the laborers would come from our contractual agreement with World Food Programme.

Work on the road began in earnest during the spring of 2001. We busied crews digging out the large rocks and breaking them up with mauls. No steam shovels or earth-moving equipment were used here—just good, old-fashioned manpower. Loads of hand-crushed stone was transported on heavy-duty stretchers by pairs of workers or donkeys and dumped at the designated locations. Slowly the improvements began to take shape. And it continues even today.

This project was designed to employ at least eight thousand workers. Payment in wheat will eventually benefit almost fifty thousand family members with food. The work has restored dignity and self-respect to these men, who have been able to work with their hands to provide for their families. They have gained a sense of belonging, self-worth, and pride as they have helped improve the quality of life for their families and thousands of others.

A TOUCH OF FREEDOM

UNITED STATES—By the time July arrived, I was ready for another break outside the country. Our work was shifting steadily toward a greater emphasis on long-term development, even though the situation in the war with the Taliban showed no signs of changing. It even appeared that I might be able to invest a significant amount of my time in educational projects that showed promise. But I needed a short rest, and I knew I could only get that outside the country.

At the advice of Shelter for Life, I flew all the way back to the U.S., arriving home in time for the Fourth of July. My visit quickly turned into a working holiday, with meetings at the OFDA and USAID offices in Washington D.C. The buildings in and around D.C. were overwhelming compared to my mud house in Dasht-e Qaleh. My homeland seemed invincible and untouchable.

The meetings in Washington went well. It was nice to be able to report to our main donor (the U.S. government) about our activities and use of their funds. I enjoyed presenting our work and trying to educate and inspire those who controlled the purse strings. Officials who watched the slide shows and heard the stories of success promised their continued support.

During that time, I was staying with my grandmother, who lives in northern Virginia. I found myself continually amazed by the beauty and bounty of our country. Time spent with family and friends refreshed me.The festivities surrounding the Fourth of July repeatedly drove home for me the priceless heritage I have been given. I had just arrived from a war-torn nation that was struggling with the despair of a raging civil war, to enjoy all the benefits and responsibilities of genuine liberty. I was overwhelmed and humbled, joyous and grateful.

Within days I realized that one of the ways I most enjoy celebrating my freedom involves reaching out to help those less fortunate than I am, in the hope that they might find the same kind of freedom. While serving in Afghanistan, I had already learned the important lesson that America is not the only place that should be called “the home of the brave.” Now I prepared for my return to Afghanistan with a renewed sense of purpose, believing that America is also not the only place that should be the “land of the free.”