Afghanistan Update

Where I will not be this summer.

I didn't get ANY of the three fellowships I applied for, so it looks like I will not be heading to Kabul this summer after all...

I could not possibly express how disappointed I am. I was really looking forward to this experience, not to mention the fact that my degree depended on pulling off this project. It was going to be an amazing project, too! And I was really looking forward to living with and mentoring the Afghan students, as well as telling their stories.

Now I guess I'll have to come up with some stupid thesis topic and do that instead. Which I have absolutely no interest in, and therefore no motivation to do it. Basically, I'm putting off graduating by a semester for nothing now, without this project.

Also there goes my "experience living and working in a developing country" that I was hoping to leverage into a job next fall.

Although as long as I've got this platform, I'm going to use it to vent. I'm waiting to hear back about one of the fellowships I applied for; I had emailed the woman in charge to ask when we would find out about it and she responded that all applicants would be notified by the week of 3/12. That's today. So I assumed that I would be notified Friday, and subsequently spent all day in front of my computer, staring at my inbox, willing that email to show up.

It didn't.

So I assumed that it instead meant that I would find out today. Inbox-watching resumes.

Still no email.

So apparently "by the week of" means "anytime during that week, and quite possibly after it," because that's just the way my luck goes.

Grrrrrr!

I NEED to find out if I received this fellowship because I can't officially make a call on whether this trip will happen until I know if I can pay for it, which I won't know until I find out about this fellowship.

And I desperately need to start knocking out all the small little details like buying plane tickets as soon as possible, but I can't do that until I've officially accepted the volunteer position with the NGO in Kabul, which I can' t do until I know if I'll actually be there for certain.

So I'm going slightly insane at the moment. I hate having everything up in the air like this. I'm not an impulsive person. I hate surprises. I'm a planner. I stay sane by planning out every detail so there are no surprises. However, until I know WTF is going to happen in my future, I can't plan anything and it is making me crazy.

It's bad enough that I'll be returning from Afghanistan in September with no home, no job, and no money. That is already keeping me up nights. I don't need all this extra tension too.

Readjustment

I've been on Tumblr for several months now, and most of the other tumblrs I follow are related to Afghanistan, as that is where my interest lies. Most are aid workers, journalists, Afghan-Americans, etc., but I did stumble upon the tumblrs of a couple of soldiers who are serving in Afghanistan that were interesting and unusual enough to add to my follow list. One of them I basically started following purely because of the relationship he has with his fiancee, as shown through their respective tumblrs. They're completely adorable and I pretty much love them just for that.

Anyway, the guy, Justin, just got back from Afghanistan a couple weeks ago, and judging by his recent entries is having a tough time readjusting. Reading these posts makes my heart go out to him, and his fiancee, because that must be an incredibly difficult experience. He's mentioned having nightmares several times, and I know from personal experience how horrific nightmares can be.

I can't possibly understand exactly what he's going through now, because his realm of experience of being in Afghanistan as part of the military is completely different from anything I've ever known, but I do recognize some of the symptoms he's mentioned.

Everyone's heard of culture shock, and it definitely does happen. I've experienced it myself. However, what everyone fails to tell you is that reverse culture shock is much more traumatic and difficult to deal with. Readjusting to the familiar can be much harder than adjusting to the different.

I've experienced this twice; first when I returned from my semester studying abroad in Denmark, and then again last year when I returned from my short trip to Afghanistan. It was much worse the second time.

Upon returning from Denmark, the biggest problem I had was that being able to understand everything being said around me was a shock. My system couldn't handle it. I'd just spent four months in a foreign country, where a foreign language is spoken and hearing an American speaking English was significant enough that you would turn around and look if you did hear one. Other than that, and a few other small differences, there wasn't much of a problem. Denmark wasn't really all that different from the U.S., comparatively.

However, returning from Afghanistan was much, much harder. It's odd, really. The visit was relatively uneventful, no traumatic events, major catastrophes, or even terribly emotional aspects. Completely unlike what I imagine Justin's experience in Afghanistan was and a fraction of the length. Yet I had a hell of a time readjusting to my life here.

I kept getting angry -- completely, irrationally, over-the-top angry -- over the smallest little things. Things that I barely even would have noticed before, yet now I would completely blow my stack over. This happened constantly, pretty much every day for the next five months or so. I was argumentative, bitchy, rage-filled, moody, impatient, rude -- all sorts of things that usually don't apply to me (well, to be honest I can be bitchy and/or moody sometimes, but not usually to this extent).

I started having trouble at work and then getting in trouble at work. My boss spoke to me several times, but I just couldn't seem to control it. I was working as a caterer and kitchen worker at the time, which was not good because a large part of my job was dealing with customers. Bad job to have when you can't keep a lid on your temper.

Once I realized what was going on -- it's surprising how difficult to even realize at the time that this sort of behavior is abnormal, usually I don't recognize culture shock or depression or whatever until after it's over -- I started analyzing what was going on and why.

I realized that after my trip to Kabul, seeing how people's lives have been torn apart by war, how starvation is a daily threat, how those people have nothing yet manage to live their lives, it was difficult to come back and care about whether the lemonade pitcher was full for the guests at an anniversary party or if they had ran out of appetizers or had enough napkins. I had seem people live in shipping containers, tents made out of leftover tarps scavenged from the garbage with no heat, no electricity, barely enough food to survive, nothing. Where heaps of garbage line the streets, where kids beg for food to feed their families, where refugees from Kandahar and Helmand try to eke out a miserable existence in IDP camps outside the city. Sorrow and misery seemed to be everywhere. Then after all that I came back to this land of excess and overindulgence and it infuriated me.

It all just seemed so unimportant, and I couldn't make myself care. I was desperate to get back to Afghanistan, where things seemed to make sense, where I could make a difference and do something to help.

Eventually, however, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to return to Afghanistan. I was leaving for grad school at the end of the summer, so moving abroad clearly wasn't an option.

Gradually the fits of rage faded and then stopped completely. I went back to my usual laid-back self and life returned mostly to normal.

For me, the readjustment period was short yet brutally difficult. I'm afraid that for Justin it will last much longer, maybe even the rest of his life, and is undoubtedly much worse than it was for me.

Ancient Reflections

Traveler's Paradise

Or it would be if it weren't for that pesky little war...

Scholarship Essay

So...I filled out my FAFSA and submitted it today, which then led me to search out scholarships in a vain attempt to assuage my ever increasing debt from student loans. Unfortunately, even though I have no money I don't qualify for very many scholarships. About the only one I could find was from some random company of business consultants.

I'm not actually sure it applies to me, either, due to the rather vague description which reads:

"The A&F Scholarships are available to all high school juniors and seniors as well as all students currently registered in any accredited post secondary institution."

I presume that includes graduate students?

Well, I plan to enter anyway. All that it requires is an essay, written to answer this question:

"What have you done outside of the classroom that demonstrates qualities sought after by universities or other educational facilities? Of these, which means the most to you?"

My answer? Keep reading to find out. And please, let me know what you think!

The girls stared shyly at us, sneaking peeks whenever they thought we weren't looking. Our tour guide explained who we were and why we were there, then started asking questions of the class. When he asked what each girl wanted to be when she grew up, the answers surprised me. Most answered that they wanted to be a teacher, and many specified that they wanted to teach English. Other common responses were journalists and lawyers, and one particularly ambitious student even answered, “a politician.” The most remarkable part of these answers was that they were coming from young girls in Afghanistan, who for the first time were able to dream about having a life of their own choosing, instead of one chosen for them by their families.

In March of 2010 I spent ten unforgettable days in Kabul, Afghanistan as part of an educational trip to explore issues facing women there. As part of that trip we visited a school for girls run by an Afghan non-profit organization. There are 120 students at that particular school, with a long waiting list of parents who want an education for their daughters. Contrary to the opinion held by most people, Afghan parents want their children, including their daughters, to have every opportunity -- just like all parents the world over.

The main reason why I chose to go on this trip to a war zone was to see the other side of the story, to find situations like this. I knew there had to be more to the country than the war that is currently being waged there, and I wanted to see it firsthand. Everything I found in Kabul confirmed this belief. The Afghan people are the friendliest, most welcoming and gracious hosts anyone could imagine.

When I decided that I wanted to travel to Afghanistan, it was only after taking into account all of the risks associated with such a trip. Of course, it didn't help that there were two suicide attacks in Kabul a mere two days before we were supposed to fly out of the U.S. Making that decision, balancing the possible risks with the possible benefits, was quite possibly the most difficult choice I've ever had to make, but in the end I decided that the benefits definitely outweighed the risks.

Once I made the decision to go, then came all the details. And there were a LOT of details. I had to get multiple vaccinations, harangue the organization I was traveling with until they supplied me with all the necessary information needed to make all these arrangements, apply for a visa from the Afghan embassy in Washington, D.C., book my flights, including the flight from Dubai to Kabul that had to be booked separately from the rest of the itinerary, convince my family that this was the right decision and reassure them that I probably wasn't going to die, buy appropriate clothes and travel accessories, find travel insurance that would cover travel to a war zone, and ultimately provide for every contingency I could think of. Getting all of these done in less than a month was an almost Herculean task that required great persistence and efficiency on my part while sucking up all of my spare time.

However, once I stepped foot outside the airport in Kabul and actually saw the city and started to meet people, all of the effort and hard work it had taken to get there faded from my mind, as well as any residual fear of what might happen. I felt like I had come home. I adjusted to the different culture and strange city surprisingly quickly. If I experienced culture shock, it was mild enough not to leave a lasting impression. Before I went on this trip I had toyed with the idea of going into a career in aid and development work but wasn't really sure if it was a good fit for me. After visiting Afghanistan, I knew without a doubt that that was what I wanted to do. I love traveling, and I have no trouble adapting to new situations and cultures, not to mention extremely different living conditions from what I'm used to.

Every day in Kabul was crammed full of meetings with people, from women's rights activists to Members of Parliament to the director of a reconciliation organization that works to convince Taliban members to leave the Taliban and come over to the government. I took copious amounts of notes and tried to learn as much as I could. However, the most important lesson I learned in Afghanistan was that the more I learned, the less I understood. Afghan culture is complex and rooted in thousands of years of tradition. No outsider will understand it easily, or maybe even completely. There will be no easy solution to the situation there. But that doesn't mean that we should stop trying.

Photos from my trip to Afghanistan, March 1-10, 2010

Chai and Smiles

When I think of my trip to Afghanistan last year, these are the two lasting impressions that come to mind. Everywhere we went we were greeted with welcoming smiles, invited to sit down and warm ourselves by the stove, and had endless cups of chai (tea) pressed on us. Afghan culture is famous for its' hospitality, and with every visit we made it became more abundantly clear just how well deserved that reputation is. Afghanistan is a beautiful country, and the people are the friendliest, most gracious hosts I've ever had the good fortune to visit.

Before I left for Kabul, all my impressions of Afghanistan came from the news, and all of them were negative. Most news coming out of Afghanistan is about the ongoing war or terror attacks, such as the double bombings of a guesthouse and hotel two days before I was due to leave for Afghanistan (ultimately one person signed up for the trip ended up canceling after news of this attack reached us).

I'll admit, this bombing coming so soon before I was to leave and targeting a guesthouse very similar to the one I would be staying at in Kabul did cause me to stop and reconsider my options, but eventually I decided that what I stood to gain outweighed any possible risk. I left home and headed to Kabul as scheduled; now looking back I am more convinced than ever that I made the right decision.

I met up with the rest of my group in Dubai, and we finally arrived in Kabul after more than two grueling days of nonstop travel. There were twelve of us in all, ranging in age from 25 to 77 and in careers from botany to law. We had all come to Kabul for different reasons, but once there we were united by the unique experience of being strangers in a strange land.

Our welcome to this peculiar new world came when we stepped off the plane to go through customs and all the women donned headscarves before we even caught a glimpse of the city we would call home for the next ten days.

That headscarf quickly became the bane of my existence, as I quickly proved incapable of keeping it on. There is an art to it that Muslim women must spend their entire lives perfecting. I spent the first few days constantly rearranging it, pulling it back up as it slipped off, trying different ways of draping it, and eventually just holding it up. About halfway through the trip, however, I started to figure out some of the tricks to keeping the scarf up over my head, as well as a better way of wearing it. And by the time I left I had become so accustomed to wearing a headscarf that I would catch myself starting to slip it over my head every time I headed outside for several weeks after returning home.

Most Westerners see headscarves as a symbol of the oppression of women, forced on them by a heavily patriarchal conservative Muslim culture, but I think that there is much more to the issue than simply this. It might be naïve of me, but one thing I noticed is that in Kabul at least, a headscarf has many practical applications. There were times that I was actually grateful to have it on—and it also wasn't uncommon to see men on the street wearing a scarf draped around their head as well. Part of the reason for this is because Kabul is infamously dusty and polluted, and often both men and women on the street would be walking with their scarf held over their nose and mouth. By the time we left, the dust was getting to me and I unconsciously found myself doing this as well.

Learning the unfamiliar art of the headscarf would be just the first of many new and unusual experiences waiting for me in this vibrant and chaotic city, and each served as a reminder to me that other ways of living are merely different, not necessarily better or worse.

Swans

Eyes

Colors of Kabul: Blue and Red

Colors of Kabul

Meeting With the Taliban Over Chai

The Burqa and the Butcher's Shop

The Kite Flyer

Afghan Girl

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

Just a few days ago one of my coworkers asked me how I decided what I wanted to do when I grew up, as that is a question she is currently pondering. Since both of us are 25, it could be argued that we are already grown up and therefore the question is moot, but I don't feel grown up and I certainly haven't started a career so I think there is still some growing up to be done.

Well, that question started me thinking.

I feel like I'm living up to my destiny as a youngest child, preparing to live a fly-by-night existence once I finish school, always moving and changing, never staying put. I have so many interests and so many things I want to do during my life that I can't decide on a single career path. I could clearly see myself moving from country to country, city to city, job to job during my life, never settling anywhere permanently until forced to by old age or exhaustion.

To be perfectly honest, spending the rest of my life consigned to the suburbs with a husband, a white picket fence, and 2.5 kids sounds like eternal purgatory. Even considering the prospect of it makes me shudder with revulsion. Yes, I realize that that is most people's projected and expected future, but I can't handle it. I need to travel, to experience new things and meet new people, to accomplish something and feel like I've made a difference.

Ergo, my hope to carve out a career in the never-boring, ever-complicated world of humanitarian relief. In short, I want to be an aid worker.

I met a Canadian woman in Kabul who has been working for various NGOs in the microfinance field for ten years, and during those ten years has lived in 22 countries.

I love it!

I love to travel, and even more I love to get to know a place and a people, which you usually can't do unless you live there.

I will admit, based on my obsession with HGTV and especially the show "House Hunters," not to mention the burnout that affects everybody in my chosen field at some point, eventually I will feel the need to build a nest complete with my own permanent home. Eventually, I hope to stock that home with one-of-a-kind items I have picked up in various places rather than average items found in every chain store and therefore every home across the country.

I've never wanted to be like everybody else. My life will be MY life. Different. Exciting. Unlike every one I know.

Barred

Half-Extinguished Thoughts

   And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
 With many recognitions dim and faint,
 And somewhat of a sad perplexity,                          
 The picture of the mind revives again:
 While here I stand, not only with the sense
 Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
 That in this moment there is life and food
 For future years.

             --William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

FYI, these photos were taken at Darul Aman Palace on the southern outskirts of Kabul, which is near where this suicide attack took place. The convoy apparently was on the road leading to the palace and the attack occurred at approximately the same time of morning we were there more than than two months before.

It just makes you think.