- Friedrich Nietzsche
What is amazing about Afghan women is that they are still standing after all they’ve seen and experienced. With a life expectancy of 44 years, life is short and harsh. Yet, despite the daily hardships of grinding poverty and insecurity, they have a resiliency of spirit that inspires me every day.
We are now halfway through Ramadan, which began this year on August 11 and ends on September 10 with the festival of Eid ul-Fitr. If you are like me and grew up as a non-Muslim American with virtually no exposure to Islam, chances are you may be unfamiliar with this important religious faith tradition.
From the ARZU STUDIO HOPE staff…
Today is Women’s Equality Day – commemorating the passing of the 19th Amendment in the United States as well as the continued efforts to bring full equality for women worldwide.
I recently read an interesting report by Booz & Company called ” The Importance of Frugal Engineering.” It cites the development process of the Tata Nano car as a case study to illustrate the imperative of this approach in designing products for the developing world. To me, the idea of “frugal” can and should be extended to the larger platform of international development. This is the vision of sustainable community development that is very different from the standard approach taken today.
The murder of the ten International Assistance Mission volunteers on the final leg of their three-week medical mission to bring eye care to remote rural villages in Northeastern Afghanistan is an act so brutal and baseless as to be inexplicable. It will undoubtedly have repercussions across the international aid community, which delivers so many critical services to the most vulnerable Afghans.
It’s been a week since WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of stolen classified military documents to the world. As analysts, reporters and a myriad of government agencies and the military comb through this deluge of information, it’s somewhat miraculous that more real damage wasn’t done. But in trying to reading to follow the debates, I admit I’m more than a bit confused about the legalities surrounding all this.
Given our national obsession with bottled water over tap, I somehow think that the answer for most of us would be a resounding “no.” But for billions of people, the question is not particularly relevant. They simply have no other alternatives and it makes them sick, literally.
Compared to the deserts of Southern Afghanistan, Bamyan is like a green oasis surrounded by spectacular mountains in every direction. The summer climate there is like Aspen, Colorado—almost perfect. The fields are green with crops and entire families, men, women and children, are out working together to take advantage of the idyllic, but short, growing season. Come mid-November, when the ground freezes and the snowfall starts, many mountain villages will simply be inaccessible. But for now at least, those dark, cold days seem a long way off.
Washington’s trial balloon of “reintegrating” the Taliban raises red flags for those of us working to help Afghan women keep their seat at the table in the “new Afghanistan.” We’re worried that women will get traded away when the final deal gets cut, and we know this would be a disastrous mistake.
When I read about colossal development missteps, like the $104 million sewage system in Falluja, Iraq, funded for five years but never finished, that we’re walking away from, I can hear my mother’s voice reciting the litany of common sense truisms that I now try to drum into my children’s brains:
It’s quality, not quantity that counts.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Good things come in small packages.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better.
(I’m sure you can add to the list.)
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