Posted by Dina Fesler on December 11th 2009 in NEED Magazine, Organizations, Photo Essays

If I thought the past two weeks have been busy, they’ve been nothing compared to the past two days of running around getting the last video footage for our project before we leave. It’s been a wild carnival ride as Habibi, our driver, whizzes us all over Kabul in his little Toyota while Najib lines up appointments on his cell phone as fast as I can think of things to put on the list, which includes interviewing a bank and a radio station, attending a girls basketball game and a conference for disabled land mine victims, taking three more kids to the hospital and attending a wedding. Somehow Najib stays calm and collected throughout all this. I guess praying five times a day really helps him stay centered. Maybe I should try that, too.

Yesterday, of all the things Najib managed to line up for us, the only one he was having trouble arranging was an invitation to an Afghan wedding. As I already mentioned, Najib is a master networker who seems to know half of Afghanistan so I could tell it was bugging him that this wasn’t coming together. Every day when I asked him if we scored a wedding invite he’d quietly say “not yet.” Unexpectedly, while we were at the International Disabled Persons Day conference (Afghanistan works especially hard to take care of the many victims of the landmines laid during the wars. Would you believe that of the ten million land mines buried in Afghanistan, more than 3 million are still active?), Najib overheard a manager in the hall talking about a wedding that would be held there the next day.

So in a last-chance-Hail-Mary-pass effort, today we showed up on the doorstep of this wedding where Najib somehow convinced the parents of the bride to let us crash. He explained that we are making a film to teach American students about Afghan culture and that they would be doing a great thing to help children of the world unite. I’m telling you, the guy has a gift.

At Afghan weddings there are actually two parties in separate rooms for men and women. Kelly and Najib went to the guys party and I went solo into the gals party to schmooze my way through hundreds of women dolled up in their glitziest gowns (like an explosion in a sequin factory), tons of jewelry and even more makeup. It was amazing to be in the middle of this wild celebration with Afghan music blaring, women dancing and shimmying and gyrating all over the dance floor, confetti flying and children chasing one another around the room just like at an American wedding.

Of course, I was getting plenty of strange looks from the guests with no way of explaining why in the world I was there, so my strategy was to smile as much as possible, say tashakur (”thank you,” the only Dari word I know) to every woman I saw, and fawn over their children.

I sat at a table in the back to keep a low profile but, with tremendous hospitality, the mother of the bride brought me to the front table to hang with her friends. After a lot of dancing they served a huge meal of lamb and rice and naan, and finally, the bride and groom slowly entered the room and went up on the stage while bursts of confetti rained down from overhead.

Because Najib thinks of absolutely everything, he ran to a nearby store, bought gifts and had them specially wrapped so I had something to take on stage to present to the bride and groom. Despite being very surprised to discover a strange foreigner at their wedding, they were incredibly gracious. Afghan hospitality!

While I pack my luggage to fly back home, I can’t stop thinking about how much the Afghans amaze and impress me. Two weeks ago when we first landed I imagined a depressed, war-torn country, bullets and rockets flying by every street corner, and I would have considered myself lucky to get out with my life. What I discovered was completely different. Yes, it is a depressed, war-torn country, but it is filled with the most passionate and loving people I have ever met. People who truly care about and look out for one another. Even though every day is a struggle for them as they rebuild their country (again), they do it with class and dignity. Even though they haven’t managed to catch a break in over 30 years, they refuse to let the world get them down. They have shown me what endurance is, because no matter how many roadblocks get thrown in their way, they find a way to keep on going. They are deeply religious people, but not in a way that others need to fear. They are not bitter and they don’t hold grudges against those who have wronged them in the past. They are survivors.

Afghanistan remains a dangerous place, but it was hard to worry about death in a place that makes me feel so alive.

This will be my last post from Kabul as we are leaving in just a few hours, but I will continue to post updates about the children being served by the Helmand Children’s Medical Fund on the NEED blog. Thanks for hanging in with me on this crazy adventure. Thanks also to all of you who opened your hearts (and wallets) to help children in the IDP camp get the medical help that they need. You have made a difference in the lives of these children, and when their families realize where this money is coming from they are overwhelmed by this outpouring of love from some American civilians. These people now know who Americans really are, and instead of being afraid of us (and us of them), some seeds of peace have been planted. I think that is a beautiful beginning.

HCMF Donations at War Kids Relief Children’s Culture Connection

Wow, it’s been just over a week that we started our little HCMF fund and I am blown away at how it continues to significantly change the lives of IDP families as it gains momentum. Yesterday we weren’t able to bring any new cases to the hospital because we had some follow-up to do with a few current patients. Wasim brought the little boy with the eye problem to another specialist, and the two girls in the hospital suffering from malnutrition and bone disorders (Sahebo and Fatima) were discharged. With medication, their malnourishment should be under control, but they will need extensive physical therapy so we took them to get registered at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) hospital. ICRC is a Kabul facility famous for working with thousands of amputees injured by land mines planted during both the Russian invasion and the civil war (1980-90s). Since Najib and Wasim worked there as medics, both have lots of peeps on the inside. ICRC will provide physical therapy for the girls on a weekly basis, and will also give each a wheelchair. It won’t be easy to wheel them through the mud in the camp, but it’s a start.

We went back to the camp to pay Rahim’s mother a visit because CNN wanted to meet her for its news piece. It has been over a week since she has seen her son and she was eager to learn how he was doing. There wasn’t a dry eye in the mud hut when Rahim’s mom watched the video of him in the hospital on the CNN laptop. Despite her tears she was happy that he is getting stronger and is going to live. She said thank you to me a million times but I told her she shouldn’t thank me. I am a mother and it’s our job to look out for one another. She’ll pay it forward someday, too.

Even though we are doing our best to help the kids in the IDP camp with their medical needs, I can’t stop thinking about why this situation is as bad as it is. Every day I get emails from people who are shocked that nobody is doing more to help these folks out. Where are the big NGOs? With all the aid money pouring into Afghanistan, why is this little health tent so underfunded? Being the busy-bodies that we are, we returned to the local health tent directors to do our own investigation into this matter.

It turns out that the whole IDP issue is a sticky situation. Because these people really shouldn’t be there (they should be back in the provinces where they came from), the Ministry of Repatriation doesn’t want to make life too comfortable for them here in Kabul. It wants them to go back to their homes (or what’s left of their homes) the instant that the bombing and fighting stop in Helmand Province so that Kabul doesn’t have to absorb this massive influx of people. These people would like to go home as well, but unfortunately, nobody knows when that will happen so they continue to linger in the camps. I could tell that the director wasn’t too comfortable answering my queries (he’s caught the middle of this political web), but he admitted that “the government doesn’t encourage donors/NGOs to support the IDP camps.” NGOs have to keep their political standing in order to continue their work in Afghanistan, and it wouldn’t be in their best interest to make a huge stink about this IDP crisis. The result is thousands of innocent people who everyone basically wishes didn’t exist.

Sometimes I wonder if I am being a bit dramatic about all this, but then I go back and look at some of those photos of the camp and the way these innocent people are living and I get all upset. These aren’t just “poor people” we are talking about. They are people who are stuck in this camp as a direct result of the war effort. It’s unfair that they are invisible simply because they are inconvenient.

Back to our film project, we also visited a madrassa. It was a great experience not only because it was one of the most beautiful buildings I have even seen, but because I learned that the term “madrassa” is not synonymous with “terrorist training camp” as the media had led me to believe. It is actually a religious-based school where law, sociology, philosophy and other subjects are taught in addition to religion. Like Notre Dame for Muslims. Some of the college students who attend school there were very happy to speak on camera to students in the US for our project. Nearly every group of students we have spoken with on this trip has the same message for the American kids: please help us.

We also visited the National Mine Museum, which was eye-opening for me. It was so creepy to see the many forms of weapons that have been used to tear apart this country. When we were looking at a display of missiles, Najib said, “Those make just a terrible noise.” Kelly and I realized that this man we spend every day with has seen war with his own eyes to the point where he knows what sounds these bombs, mines and missile make. It was chilling.

Later in the car I asked Najib a few questions about his life during the civil war in the 90s, the darkest and bloodiest time in Afghan history. For the record, the Afghan civil war started when the mujahidin fighters, to whom the US had given billions of dollars of weapons to fight the Russians for us, fell into a massive power struggle after the Russians left. Helping the Afghans defend themselves seemed like a good idea at the time, until you consider that these fighters were also militant extremists, including Bin Laden. And these same weapons were used to kill thousands of innocent people caught in the crossfire of the ensuing power struggle, many of whom Najib knew, loved and treated as a medic.

The US has a bit of a fingerprint left on this situation.

Najib told us candidly what it is like to watch missiles fly by your head, see people blown in half right in the middle of the street and watch just about everything around you get destroyed. As we drove along we passed a bombed out/shot up movie theater and he told us about how he used to enjoy going there. It’s almost like if the World Trade Center aftermath never got cleaned up and New Yorkers were forced to walk by the wreckage every day for 20 years. Imagine the trauma that people would experience every single day seeing that. Najib is only 39 years old and has seen war, not as a soldier, but as a guy trying to get to work in the morning and get home at night to his family.

Kelly and I talk a lot about most how Americans have no clue what war really is. We know that we don’t.

HCMF Donations at War Kids Relief Children’s Culture Connection

Posted by Dina Fesler on December 7th 2009 in NEED Magazine, Organizations, Photo Essays

One of the founders of NEED, Kelly Kinnunen, is working on a video documentary project in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is travelling with Dina Fesler of the nonprofit Children’s Culture Connection. Among other places, they have been visiting Charahee Qambar, an IDP camp where people are living in desperate conditions with very little aid. Dina emailed an update about what they are doing and we wanted to share it with you.

After all the excitement with the media on Friday (from CBS and CNN in Kabul to the front page of the Star Tribune in Minnesota), we got back to business on our filming project.

Saturday morning started with an hour and a half meeting with Mr. P.M. Akram, the chief director of the Afghanistan National Independent Commission for Peace and Reconciliation. I honestly don’t know how Najib manages to know every single person in Afghanistan. Established five years ago, this organization works to bring opposition parties into the peace-building process. So far it has convinced more than 8,000 Taliban and insurgents to disarm and work for peace, and have nearly 7,000 more ready to join. Part of the way they do this is by establishing relations with the tribal elders in all regions of Afghanistan. Unlike the US, Afghanistan is tribal, which means that ideas don’t always work when forced from the top down. These Peace and Reconciliation folks understand that each community needs to be brought into the fold individually. Mr. P.M. Akram said that they are in support of the US troop surge as long as Afghan forces are trained to take over. Like the former Taliban I met the other day, he said that the real problem is coming from Pakistan, and he hopes that foreigners will help them develop economically in order to strengthen their country. Some days I feel like Ann Curry.

What I liked best about Mr. Akram is that he is a former Minister of Education and believes that helping children understand peace-building is vital. I told him he was a guy after my own heart and that since Children’s Culture Connection has the same mission, he can count us in if there’s anything we can do to help out. He said he appreciated this and would give thought to some possibilities before we meet again. Stay tuned for this!

Next I attended a meeting with the school directors, teachers, community elders and four students from the Khost school who came to Kabul for the day to discuss the vocational training program that American students are co-investing in in an effort to help them communicate with one another. This was a monumental meeting because Khost, seven hours away by car, is a very conservative community and heavily influenced by Taliban. Santwana, director of Partnership for the Education of Children in Afghanistan, said that it took five years to get the community elders on board with this. Baby steps. We discussed the importance of education as well as economic security for their children. Having this much contact with westerners is completely unprecedented but it turns out they loved it!

Following the meeting we asked the kids from Khost to record a video message for the kids in Cannon Falls middle and high school who are participating in the pilot project. Again, this level of contact is completely unprecedented. It was really cute and at first they were nervous. As they talked about their lives and what they appreciate about Afghan culture and society, everyone loosened up. It was so cool to see these neo-conservative elders laughing and smiling at how proud the kids were to share their culture. Look out world peace, here we come!

By the time that was over, it was late. We met Wasim at the hospital to visit baby Rahim and the other kids. That day he had brought in a little boy who was blind in one eye and had serious infections in both eyes. The doctors gave him some medicine to take over the next four days. If there isn’t improvement he will likely need surgery.

Wasim also brought in a 15-day-old baby and a three-year-old toddler who both suffered from severe pneumonia. The hospital wanted to admit the baby but the mother was unable to stay with him because she needed to get back to her children in the camp. Wasim will try to find someone else at the camp who can watch her kids because the baby really needs to be admitted to the hospital. I am sure Wasim will find a way.

Meanwhile, baby Rahim and the other patients are doing better every day, and I brought them some toys to cheer them up. My daughters always give me some of their toys to share with kids when I travel.

Children’s Culture Connection Partnership for the Education of Children in Afghanistan War Kids Relief (Donations can be made to this project through War Kids Relief. Please indicate HCMF in the PayPal memo.)

The HCMF momentum is growing, and we not only took two more children in for medical treatment, but both CBS and CNN news tagged along with us for the fun! I’ll admit it makes things a bit more hectic slogging through the muddy camp with an entourage, but I am happy that they want to help us get the word out, not only on the relief effort, but the reality of the situation for people in these camps as well. I am hoping that by seeing this story that someone or some organization with more power than me can get involved to make a more substantial, enduring difference for these people.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to go back to the camp for awhile because the security situation has become too dangerous. One of the sad realities in Afghanistan these days is that kidnapping is big business for a lot of people. It’s not always Taliban related, and many opportunists will kidnap foreigners simply because we are worth money. Hopefully somebody would miss me enough to cough up a little cash.

Yesterday at the camp, the guides noticed some creepy guys circling the area, and they even saw some of the camp elders telling them to leave us alone because we were good people who were here to help their children. My fears of danger were overshadowed by knowing that in only a few days we have built a real relationship. That’s amazing. But even though the camp elders have our backs, we have become too predictable, so Wasim transport the kids on his own now. He’s the real talent on this part of the team anyway as Kelly and I alone would never be able to coordinate this in a million years. Wasim assesses the kids to determine the greatest need, convinces their parents to trust us, ensures safe transportation to and from the hospital and handles all the admission paperwork, bill paying, negotiations and more.

Afghanistan can be difficult to navigate in many ways. Both Wasim and Najib must call on lots of personal and professional favors, and understand the ways of the Afghan people and systems to get all this done. They are real superheroes if you ask me. As for the rest of the team, Kelly is creating magic with the video and making sure that this powerful story gets told, his wife Stephanie (who also runs NEED magazine) is handling our PR back home, and I am just trying to keep the energy and momentum growing in my own little way.

We are a small but mighty team!

One of the children we took in is a 15-year-old girl who has a similar situation to Sahebo (the girl we brought in the day before), including malnutrition and a serious problem with her bones that will require many specialists and extensive physical therapy. Apparently, both these girls had existing problems with their bones, but living in the cold, damp camp environment exacerbated it to the point that they are now unable to walk. Although these medical bills will be higher for their inpatient stay, the hospital promised that it is committed to their ongoing rehabilitation treatments as long as necessary at no cost. That’s wonderful news! We also brought in a 6-month-old baby boy who has had complications from pneumonia and required more substantial medicines. Luckily, he didn’t need to be admitted and could go home that same day.

After the kids were checked in safe and sound, and the news crews finally left, we visited Kabul’s famous Chicken Street to film the local culture. It’s a cool shopping area that sells lots of beautiful Afghan arts and crafts, lapis stones and jewelry (something Afghanistan is famous for), traditional clothing and lots of fabulous Afghan rugs. I don’t recall see any chickens. Najib told me that a long time ago the area primarily sold chickens with many restaurants serving their famous chicken soup. Who would have guessed that Afghanistan is famous for chicken soup?

Either way, I was in shopping heaven and pretty much wanted to buy everything in sight, but managed to restrain myself. Business first.

Stay tuned for the next adventure.

Children’s Culture Connection War Kids Relief (Donations can be made to this project through War Kids Relief. Please indicate HCMF in the PayPal memo.)

Posted by Dina Fesler on December 4th 2009 in NEED Magazine, Organizations, Photo Essays

Posted by Dina Fesler on December 3rd 2009 in NEED Magazine, Organizations, Photo Essays

One of the founders of NEED, Kelly Kinnunen, is working on a video documentary project in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is travelling with Dina Fesler of the nonprofit Children’s Culture Connection. Among other places, they have been visiting Charahee Qambar, an IDP camp where people are living in desperate conditions with very little aid. Dina emailed an update about what they are doing and we wanted to share it with you.

First of all, the good news is that baby Rahim is recovering nicely and, inshallah (God willing, as they say), on his way to a full recovery. Of course, the bad news is what we all know he has to look forward to once he leaves the hospital. That part breaks my heart. This whole scene has opened a window for me to the realities faced by victims of war.

Yesterday morning we returned to the camp, where Wusim was finishing up his medical assessments of the children there. We saw so many more tragic cases of children who need serious medical attention, but we were most surprised when we stumbled upon an actual health tent operating at the camp. The word “clinic” would be an overstatement as it’s basically a small tent stocked with simple medicines such as painkillers. Although we were relieved to find out that at least something was serving the 5,000 people in the camp, it’s like having a high school nurse’s office on hand for an entire city.

Najib talked to the people running the health tent to learn more. Apparently it is run by a local organization that is funded by a Dutch NGO, and they will be there for 10 months (May 2009 to March 2010), at which point nobody knows what will happen next. Najib likes answers so he immediately contacted the director of the organization here in Kabul and told them we need to meet right away. I just love how Najib operates. The guy is seriously cool.

A couple hours later we met the directors of the health tent operation, who are good and hardworking people facing a major lack of support. They have to refer any patient whose case is more serious than a cold to the hospital. The problem is that people who are living in a pile of mud usually don’t have the money to pay for a taxi ride to the hospital, let alone treatment once they get there. The health tent does treat pneumonia but living conditions in the camp make it impossible for residents to get better. So the kids take the meds, which keep them from dying of pneumonia, and try to live with it.

The directors are overwhelmed considering that the camp has grown from 70 families to over 800 families in only two years. They told us that their written proposals for more funding have been turned down. We explained the story of baby Rahim and how we are trying to raise money to personally take as many kids to the hospital as need it and they responded by saying they were so happy and grateful that we could help.

So happy and grateful? It blows my mind. So many countries and NGOs have become involved during the eight years of this war. How is it possible that these war victims are so overlooked that the only organization serving them says they are glad that we are there to help? We aren’t a medical team; we’re just a few people who stumbled upon a dying baby by accident.

Donations are starting to come in (go to www.warkidsrelief.org/donate and earmark HCMF in the memo), and we will begin bringing more kids to the hospital as early as tomorrow. The girl in the photo at right will be among the first we bring. At this point, I am just hopeful that we can keep as many kids alive as possible until this “distress signal” I’m sending is seen by those who can help in more long-term ways. These people deserve so much more.

After the meeting, it was back to business to work on our film project. First, we visited a school and met a few hundred of the most adorable children ever. We asked each one to tell us what they liked most about school and what they wanted to be when they grew up. Interestingly, whether they were boys or girls, they all wanted to be doctors, engineers, airline pilots and teachers. I think there might have been a journalist and a couple police officers as well. I love how these kids think big. Every one of them wants to reach for the sky.

We also visited a local TV station where we watched a live taping of “Ask the Mullah,” a call-in show where you can get good advice on life and religion. Najib let me use his cell phone to call in and ask a question. For the record, my question was whether you had to be wealthy to go to the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. He replied that if you have the means, do it. If not, don’t sweat it. Or something to that effect.

I’ll have more to report soon!

HCMF Donations at War Kids Relief Children’s Culture Connection

Posted by Ari Edes on December 1st 2009 in Interviews, NEED Magazine, Organizations

Online journalism has the potential to make an almost instantaneous connection among audience, journalist and subject anywhere in the world. PBS Frontline’s series “iWitness” makes excellent use of webcam interviews to transport viewers to far-flung places and tell stories about global art, politics and social change. Recently it covered Kiva’s microloans in Ayacucho, Peru, to see how Kiva has evolved in the three years since Frontline produced a documentary about the organization.

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I caught up with Joe Rubin, the video journalist who produces and hosts iWitness, to learn more about the program.

NEED: You use webcam to do short interviews with people in the field—whether they’re journalists, activists, or others who can give firsthand accounts [of global issues]. Why does iWitness choose this approach?

iWitness: I specialized in doing foreign journalism, and going back a few years, using relatively inexpensive, small format production equipment, so we could spend more time in the field and didn’t need an expensive director of photography and a sound crew the whole time. I’ve always been interested in using technology to tell stories. About a year and a half ago, I was talking with someone over Skype and I realized that this is a great way to access people in different parts of the world and not only is it inexpensive, it’s free. That was interesting to me and interesting to people at Frontline, so we pursued it and we created this show format around it.

NEED: You can reach a lot more people.

iWitness: It’s ranged from everyone from reporters for Frontline in the field, to the mayor of Tbilisi, Georgia, to activists, human rights workers, the whole spectrum.

NEED: Why is this kind of storytelling important?

iWitness: This offers a sort of immediacy which you sometimes lose when you’re spending weeks and months telling the story. There’s something good about that, and I also think there’s a kind of intimacy to it that reminds me of radio in that when you have a crew somewhere, it creates a barrier [that] can make people more nervous. [With webcam] it’s almost like you’re in the room with someone.

It’s sort of a new frontier, which is crazy sometimes because you’re totally reliant on this connection which, in some places, can be spotty. It’s also about the digital divide between countries that have internet and those that don’t have internet. Frankly, if people in Burma could be webcamming their experiences and have total freedom to do that—or in Iran—I think that would be potentially detrimental to those regimes.

NEED: I can imagine that viewers might want to get involved in some way after they hear about a story. Have you heard of any impact that Frontline’s coverage has had on Kiva?

iWitness: I think I mentioned in the interview about Kiva that we did one of the first major stories on Kiva. At the time they had done something like 500 thousand dollars in loans. It had such a huge impact that they actually crashed their system because all these PBS viewers wanted to give money. It was like a crash course in getting up to speed, and I think it was two days or so before they were up and running. We’re adding to the conversation; sometimes when you put something on the web you don’t know exactly what impact it’s having.

NEED: That’s an amazing anecdote of how it inspired so many people to get involved with Kiva. Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers about iWitness?

iWitness: They should probably know, because we don’t promote it very much, that we won The Webby for the best news and politics video series on the web this year. And we’re developing a new tool where people can both webcam in their questions for upcoming interviews, and reach out to us. … We want to make this a very interactive and dynamic way to communicate with people. … They might be in a place like Iran designing a solar-powered project that we might be interested in. It’s both a way to connect with people in crisis situations but also with people who are creating solutions, like Kiva. We try to straddle that line of being in hotspots like Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, and dealing with solutions as well.

Kiva