October in Afghanistan

Last week I took a trip to the Panjshir Valley with the Kabul CSSP Team. We took our own vehicle and driver and followed up through some of the most beautiful country I have seen in Afghanistan, following the Salang River for a time and then turning a hard right, traveling East through small villages and clusters of wooden merchant and vendor displays on up to Panjshir.

We met with the Commander of the men's prison there and also with the US military PRT Commander. Both men expressed their struggles and challenges and also described successes in their own respective areas of responsibility. The CSSP Team (Corrections System Support Program) was actively involved in developing support for the prison commander, as well as communicating about collaboration with the PRT Major.

We then drove down to Parwan and I was able to tour the Parwan Women's Prison for the first time. The female quarters are composed of essentially three small, dark, tightly occupied rooms, with women and children occupying the rooms. I had invited Laura Bradford, a Dental Hygienist from Caldwell, Idaho, who is working with James Rolfe, DDS in Kabul, to join us. Laura brought toothbrushes and toothpaste for each of the female inmates and children and discussed oral hygiene and the importance of brushing the teeth twice daily after meals. I was not sure how much of the discussion was getting through to the ladies, but they seemed willing to cooperate with us on some level.

I would love to see some visible improvements to this location over the coming year or two. The women's facility is in severe need of a general painting of the interior of each room, exterior of buildings and perimeter walls. There is space outside for a small garden and sitting area, but a couple of trees would need to be planted.

We delivered some personal care items: soap, lotion, toothbrushes, toothpaste, some small soft toys and notebooks and pens for the children and young women. There is an empty room that could be cleaned up and organized into a new small reading room library with tables and chairs for literacy, vocational training and sewing for the women and school for the children. I hope to return to this place again. There are hygiene kits and school bags coming to CSSP in a couple of months and some of these items will be delivered here.

Kabul Women's Prison visit

The past few days I have been visiting at the Kabul Women's and Children's Prison, which is located in an area near an almond orchard. This facility is now operated under the direction of the Ministry of Justice by the Director General of Central Prisons. The Corrections System Support Program, a State Department program, has worked to develop relationships with the prison staff and key personnel to assist with training and mentoring. This young fellow is about 12-13 years old, although he does not know his age because Afghans do not celebrate birthdays or know their exact ages. He lives in the Kabul prison with his mother and brothers and sisters, and because he has learned his lessons well, he has been invited to be the teacher for the small kidergarten class of about 14 boys and girls. Today they are learning literacy skills through a humorous story.

There are pictures on the walls created by the children and the classroom is bright and colorful. There is plenty of light and two infants are playing or resting in the same room in their cribs, watching everything going on. Nearby is a room that is on a secure enclosed balcony outside looking over the compound and out here is where the smallest children play and gather. When we arrived they gathered around us and we sat and played with them for awhile. They expected me to have a lesson or something for them, so in addition to handing out cookies and juice, and dropping off two large boxes of supplies from Lakeshore Learning Store in Ahwatukee, Arizona and Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Gilbert, Arizona, I decided to teach them an American song. So we all sang the 'If you're happy and you know it clap your hands' song which they seemed to enjoy and learned very quickly.

The AWEC Afghan Women's Education Center in Kabul is providing a literacy teacher for the women and older girls, a vocational and sewing instructor, and a computer trainer. We had planned to come and meet with the Women's Prison Commander and his staff and offer to provide an additional teacher or other instructor as needed, however the Prison Commander has requested a doctor be provided instead, stating that at the present time, when one of the female inmates is ill, they are required to put her in a taxi and take her to the Rabia Balkhe women's hospital or another hospital, and wait for her to been seen. So we have arranged to hire a female physician who lives in Kabul and has her own small private practice. She was educated at Kabul Medical School and has training from the Manitoba Medical University in HIV/AIDS treatment. She will begin immediately and will work two days a week for about 5 hours each day. There has been an urgent need for both a doctor and a dentist to work at this location for some time. We are now working on arranging for a dentist to work here as well, and hope to obtain funding to allow for a dental office inside the Women's Prison, so that dental care can be provided on a regular basis.

I was very impressed with the Kabul Women's Prison commander. He seemed to genuinely care about the female inmates and their children, and had several suggestions for small improvements that could be made which would be meaningful to the women. We have set up a new book corner and I purchased several locked wooden cabinets with glass case fronts where books in English and Dari are now being stored. At a meeting we held with the Commander, two of his female block lieutenants, two language assistants and the Gender Specialist Beth Presson, who works for CSSP Corrections System Support Program, the discussion eventually turned to the prison guards and staff. They wanted me to know that they appreciated all the good things that were being done for the female inmates and their children, but wanted to mention the struggles being experienced by the prison guards, cooks, security, laundry workers, cleaners, etc.

It was explained to me that the salary for most prison workers was somewhere between $90 per month up to $140 per month, and a handful of cleaners made $40 a month. This wage is far below a living wage, as it costs a minimum of $75 a month for rent, and it costs $49 a month to purchase food for a family of 6. With the increased cost of fuel and food over the past year, many of the prison staff (mostly women who are single parents) are struggling.

I told them that this year I was only prepared to offer the one new employee to be hired at this time, and we had all agreed that we were going to plan to hire the doctor, who was willing to begin working immediately. There is already a full time nurse with a small medical clinic on the premises and they will now share this space.

I did acknowledge that there was obviously an urgent need for some solutions to these difficulties, but at the present time it was impossible for me and our small organization to address them. I promised I would seek to find financial support on some level, and mentioned to them that more than once in the past as I have been introduced to a problem or a need while working in Afghanistan, often the solution does present itself in the due coure of time, so we can be hopeful about this.

We estimated that if each one of the 90 employees who worked at the Kabul Women's Prison was to receive a one time salary increase of $50 per month, this would dramatically improve conditions for each family, bringing them for poverty to middle class, and would go a long ways toward improved morale, nutrtion and family health, and a general sense of well being. I figure $50 per month x 90 employees = $4,500 a month x 12 months = $54,000 per year. Throw in an extra $100 as a bonus during Ramadan $100 x 90 = $9,000 and the grand total needed per year is $63,000.

This may seem like alot of money to middle class or upper middle class Americans, but there are people in the world who throw away that much money on silliness every day. For some multi-millionaires, this amount of money is just one less jet trip to Beverly Hills to get the eyebrows plucked, so we are seeking a generous annual donor for this life saving sponsorship is anyone out there has a rich uncle.

Kabul Teeming With Life

The combination of sweeping, beautiful landscapes, cities jam packed with yellow taxis, and NGO vehicles, boys on carts with donkeys, people who waunder in and out of traffic without fear, the ubiquitous blue burkhas seen with children in clusters of two or three, followng behind a lone bearded man who leads them along, are just a few of the images that come rushing back at me as I arrive in Kabul again for the first time in 8 months.






I am in Afghanistan for six weeks and have lots to do. Since traveling her on one annual humanitarian trip with a small group of kind, like-minded individuals from the US and Australia, each return increases my love for the people here and the sorrow at their difficulties. I have experienced the inherent joy and amazement that comes from spending time with a group of human beings who are in virtually every observable way, completely different from me as any group of people can be. And yet as I visit and work with them, with my drivers, their families, the students and teachers, merchants in the shops, people on the streets, women in the women's prisons, I am astonished at the universal nature of human connection and human frailty I observe. I have been pleasantly surpised at the similarities, which are not immediately apparent to the casual observer. One must come to understand the circumstances to be able to know a little of the story.



Once I am able to communicate with Afghans through my interpeter, we often laugh at the same things, find similar circumstances amusing or tragic, are exhausted and exasperated by the same kinds of human behaviors and life here seems to encompass a great resiliance I want to learn about.



Yesterday as I was driving to visit the Baghe Badam Kabul Women's Prison, my driver told the story of how is 12 year old daughter had been warned by a Taliban man in their village not to go to school. She disregarded his warnings and eventually after several more warnings, he attacked her with a stick and he broke her leg and she had to be taken to the hospital. Fortunately she received good quality medical care and is healed now, attendng sschool in an anonymous setting, determined at 13 years old to continue to learn and understand the world she lives in. This kind of courage coming from a preteen is hard to fathom when you live in a world where most 12-13 year olds spend most of their time text messaging to one another in a safe, refrigerator filled environment.







As we arrived at the women's prison, I was given a tour of the new facility and because I am a woman and am working with children in Afghanistan, I was allowed to enter the gate into the compound. Forgetting the rules of the road here I gestured to my driver to follow me into the gate but he was stopped by men and women who explained that because he was not coming to visit as a male relative, he could not pass but must wait in the shade until I returned.

The Kabul Women's Prison has 119 female inmates and 57 children, and a large staff of male and female prison officials, guards, cooks, housekeepers and others who keep the place operating. We met with the Commander, who introduced us to the block commanders who work closely with the female inmates. Our plan has been to offer one new teacher or other professional to the site in order to support their existing programs.

The Afghan Women's Educational Center in Kabul is actively involved her and provides a literacy teacher, vocational and sewing instructor and computer trainer. The Commander asked if rather than hiring another teacher, would be consider hiring a physician to come to the prison on a regular basis. We are working on developing this now. In fact, I have to go right now because I am meeting a candidate this morning for an interview.

Will upload photos and more info later.

Diana