September 14, 2003 - PCOL Exclusive: Glimpses of Afghanistan: A Country Director looks back on the 1960's (Part 1)

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Glimpses of Afghanistan: A Country Director looks back on the 1960's (Part 1)





Alternative transportation across the Khyber Pass for the Blass family in 1960's Afghanistan where Walter Blass was Peace Corps Country Director.


Read and comment on this exclusive story written for "Peace Corps Online" by Walter Blass about his tenure as Peace Corps Country Director in Afghanistan in the 1960's. This is Part 1 of a two part series. Read the story at:

Glimpses of Afghanistan: A Country Director looks back on the 1960's (Part 1)*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



Glimpses of Afghanistan: A Country Director looks back on the 1960's (Part 1)

by Walter P. Blass

"Hey, c'mon ,Mr. Blass, you see the Interior Minister all the time at these cocktail parties you go to at the Embassy. Ask him why we can't go to Nuristan. It's a fascinating place: there are still blue-eyed blond people who are direct descendants of the Greeks who came with Alexander the Great. And it's supposed to be absolutely gorgeous country. Twist his arm, or something" Three of the volunteers intercepted me as I got out of the much-beaten up blue Peace Corps jeep in front of our second story office. They were hydrologists who were just back from yet another grueling time installing stream gauges in some far off river so that downstream residents could be warned of possible floods in the spring.

A few days later I did run across the Interior Minister at just such a party. "Excellency," I started, " several of our male volunteers are telling me your Ministry refused them permission to go to Nuristan. It is said to be one of the hidden treasures of your country. Could you possibly waive the prohibition?" A quiet, American-educated man, quite portly and a few years older than my tender 36 years, his eyes twinkling, replied: " I don't think you'd like the outcome; when I send my people in there, they come back feet first, dead. Those Nuristanis have never accepted the sovereignty of the Royal Government. I wouldn't want to see that happen to your PCV's."

- - - - -

Having an Afghan woman as a secretary in the Peace Corps Office was quite a statement, I thought. She was very competent, spoke and wrote good English, could interface wonderfully with the bureaucracy that seemed so well developed in such a developing country, and she knew a lot of the PCVs. The one thing that stuck in her craw, though, was James Michener's book about Afghanistan Caravans (Random House, 1963) "Lies, all lies," she would tell me at every chance that seemed relevant. Then one day, there was a story in the Kabul Times that a woman had been stoned to death in Ghazni, 'the woman taken in adultery'.. I asked the couple who worked in Ghazni if the story was true and they confirmed it. "It's depressing all right, but typical of their mind set." The next day, I showed my secretary the article. "Ah, just rumors," she replied. "Well, the two volunteers who work there confirmed the story to me yesterday, and besides, do you know what? It's the same town that Michener described on page 94 in Caravans where he put a similar incident. Fiction, indeed!"

- - - - -

The Termination conference for Group VIII was almost over. The person from PC/W had one more question: "What positive thing have you learned while you were here?" Alex Von Wetter spoke up. He was a handsome six-footer with wavy blond hair, blue eyes and more evidence of his White Russian ancestry. He and his roommate lived on the hillside above the Kabul River with people so poor, they had to buy their water from a water boy who carried buckets on his shoulders. "You don't know these people until you've slept with them side by side in a tent, trying to stay warm by sheer body heat in the winter. They are wonderful hosts, hospitable to the point of sharing everything they own. This business of shaking hands on and on and on, that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's just an expression of the real warmth in which they hold a stranger, a friend, a comrade. We're not like that. We say " Oh, sure, come on by some time" but most times we never carry through. They do!"

- - - - -

The Ambassador, Robert Neumann, asked me if I would deliver a truck full of chairs and desks which the Embassy was donating to a school in Nangarhar Province. He even suggested that I take my wife along since it would send a signal about the status of women in America. The Peace Corps driver took the 2½ ton truck filled with the to-be-delivered-furniture and my wife and me on the bench seat in front and drove past Sarobi down the Gorge Road. But my wife Janice asked the driver if he could please stop for a few minutes. He courteously agreed and she disappeared over the side of the road. Five minutes later, she returned looking more relaxed. We continued on the journey. " Does he understand English," she asked. "Not well enough to understand a story, if that's what you have in mind." "You're always telling me that you're never alone in this country," she continued softly. "I went down by the stream far away from anyone who was traveling on the road, and no sooner had I gotten there than some shepherd boy across the stream starts to shout from half a mile away and wave his arm in greeting. I was embarrassed, but then I just started to laugh. He could certainly do me no harm, and if I gave that kid a thrill, well that was his lucky day!" She still tells that story today, and we have a couple of photographs as I gave my speech. Needless to say, more people were looking at her, with all her clothes on, than were looking at me. Only the Kuchis (nomads) went around that village with their faces uncovered, and seeing the wife of the Rais-i-piz-cor (chief of the peace corps) without a chadoor was probably just as important to them as the desks and chairs.



Walter Blass delivers chairs and desks for Tegori schools given by Ambassador Robert Neumann on behalf of the U.S. Government.

- - - - -

It was 2 AM when the phone rang. The Marine Guard at the Embassy asked " Mr. Blass, have you given permission for someone to drive the Peace Corps green Travelall tonight?" "No," I replied." What makes you ask?" "One of our men saw the vehicle being driven around by a young man with a whole bunch of Afghans squatting on the seats in the back, so he reported it." I thanked the sergeant, and knew immediately what happened. I usually left the keys to the vehicle I happened to be driving that day on the mantel above the fireplace in the house the Embassy had rented for my family. It was next to the phone so if there was an emergency, it would be easy to find the keys. Obviously, Bakhteri, our servant's 19-year old nephew had decided to treat his buddies to a little joy ride. In the morning, I called his uncle aside and explained what I thought had happened and asked if he would stick around when I confronted Bakhteri. He shook his head painfully, and within a few minutes the two of them were serving breakfast to the children and me. I asked Bakhteri if he had been driving the Travelall. "No, Sahib." "Let's go out and see," I suggested and we all trooped out to the street. On the seats, there were heavy footprints of dust where his friends had squatted. "Well," I asked, " Do Americans squat on the seats or only Afghans?" Bakhteri's face turned purple. Anwar, his uncle took the cue and led him away by the scruff of the neck. The matter would get settled, the Afghan way.

- - - - -

I had been in-country only for a few days when I held my first staff meeting in the rather spare Peace Corps Office. The windows were open, it was mid-June, and I opened with what I thought were fairly commonplace remarks. In the wink of an eye, the room emptied. Everyone but me rushed out and gathered in the middle of the street. I was stunned. What had I said? I leaned out of the window and asked "What happened?" My entire staff, grinning from ear to ear, motioned me to come down and join them. Once I got to the street, they asked me " Didn't you feel the earthquake?" I said 'No.'. They laughed some more. "You will!" and indeed I did. The shocks occurred almost weekly. The really serious earthquakes that hit Tashkent and Dushanbe (then part of the Soviet Union) demolished them with 6.0 and 7.3 Richter quakes, but Kabul just had these 'minor' temblors. Early one morning in our second year in Kabul, I woke up, annoyed at my wife. "Stop scratching, you woke me up." "I'm wasn't scratching, Walter. It's just another earthquake, look at the lamp swaying above our bed. Get the kids up, and out into the garden. MOVE IT", she yelled as the shaking got worse.

- - - - -

"Can you come to the dedication of our book on Internal Medicine," Dr. Joe Mamlin asked me. He was the Senior Resident in Internal Medicine at Indianapolis General Hospital when he decided he wanted to join the Peace Corps, along with his nurse wife Sarah, and their three children. A brilliant teacher, the medical students adored him in Jalalabad where he and five other U.S. doctors taught in a medical school focused around modern medicine, but without fancy, expensive, hard-to-maintain equipment. He had worked for the better part of his two year stint writing a textbook on Internal Medicine with his senior students in Pushtu, the first ever such text. He'd also arranged with a local press to have it printed and he wanted to make a presentation of a copy of the book. Attached is the picture of that event. Would it surprise you to know that following the coup of 1973 and the Russian invasion of 1979, each one of these doctors in the picture ended up in Indianapolis for post-docs and safety? They all passed their ECFMG (medical exams for foreign physicians) and they still trade teasing with their former teacher when they get together for dinner in an Afghan restaurant.



Dr. Joe Mamlin (far left) presents the first Internal Medicine Textbook ever published in Pushtu with his co-authors to Walter Blass (far right) Director/PC-Afghanistan 1967

- - - - -

Another Embassy party, another evening spent trying to balance a plate of goodies and a glass of wine in the left hand, so I could shake hands with my right. The Interior Minister walked up to me. "Ah, Mr. Blass., how good to see you. Do you know Mary and Bill? Suzie and Tom? Anne-Marie and John?" The twinkling eyes had turned cynical. I could guess what he was up to. "Mr. Blass, I know your volunteers have just come from America where shacking up is OK, like burning bras, and wearing only bikinis at the beach. But this is Afghanistan. Most of our women still wear the chadoor." He paused, for effect. "Don't you think it might be possible for us to find a half way point, 'kinda' between the chadoor and cohabitation? " The lecture was over. He'd made his point. And I was stuck, trying to figure out in mid-1967, with 225 volunteers, roughly 50-50 men and women, only 50 or so married, as anti-authority as only that generation could be, how I was going to convey that message without engendering a revolt that would echo all the way back to Washington.

- - - - -

The security chief at Kabul airport was popularly known as "the Silver Fox." He had the mien of a traditional Pushtu warrior, but with a military uniform and a pencil mustache. He was not a person to be trifled with, but he could also be remarkably friendly. One day he called me in the office. "There's a young woman here who's just come in on the flight from Teheran with an American passport, but no visa. She claims she knows your wife and is carrying a calling card of yours. Do you know her?" I recalled that my wife had met just such a woman on a week's trip around the Greek islands a few weeks before. "Would you like us to come to the airport to identify her?" "No, no, that won't be necessary. Your calling card is just as good as a visa! I'll just stamp one in on her passport."

- - - - -

The same young woman spent a month with us, delighted my children since she was a grade schoolteacher back home, and made for some wonderful company for my wife. Eventually, she decided it was time to move on, specifically to Bangkok. But first she needed an exit visa. She went to the consular section of the Foreign Office, waited in line and spoke to the official in charge. He looked her over and suggested that she come to his house to pick up the visa. She was much too worldly to fall for that story. So she came back to our house and related what had happened. I was not surprised: Afghan men frequently regarded American women as easy marks, especially when they were somewhat overweight. But after traveling in Europe and the Near East for six months our friend wasn't having any part of that routine. I dropped a hint to the Foreign Minister the next day or so, and he insisted that I give him her passport. Within the working day, she had her exit visa.

- - - - -

It was my successor's first day on the job. I was still cleaning out my stuff from the office when the youngest of the current crop of volunteers burst into the office. " Some Afghan boy just tried to rape me," she cried. My successor picked up the phone and started to dial. Both the Regional Director who happened to be in town and who had been the Director before me and I cautioned him to wait, to interview the young woman at leisure, to inquire of others about the alleged facts, but he was not one to delay asserting his new authority. He called the police, gave them the facts and asked to be informed of the arrest of the perpetrator. Three days later, our old friend, the Silver Fox, now Chief of Police, called back. "Ah , Mr. Peace Corps, I have looked into the matter. It seems that your young lady has a visitor, a male Peace Corps Volunteer, who comes each day around 5 PM, but leaves in the morning before dawn. The neighboring Afghan, whom she charges with rape, figured that this was a woman of easy virtue who had one customer, and that he could also use her services. My dear Sir, if your volunteers behave in a way that suggests a house of ill repute, there's nothing I can do to stop the neighbors from having such an impression. I'm afraid this matter is something for you to solve, not the Police."

- - - - -

My children were real explorers. They would climb on to the corrugated roof and walk across to look at other people's courtyards. I'm sure they learned this from the local children who did it all the time. "Do you know our neighbor has four wives?" they reported one evening. "How do you know that," I asked. "We saw these four women in one yard with at least 12 children, many of them the same age. They have to be his wives. Besides he's very rich, and the Koran says that you have to treat your wives equally." My daughter, now 11 was picking up lots of Afghan culture, it seemed.

- - - - -

I had taken the children and my wife for a Christmas shopping trip to Pakistan in the Travelall, but at the border I was not permitted to take it into Pakistan, though twice previously there had been no problem. We started looking for alternate transportation and the best I could find was a 1½-ton stake truck, and the kids just thought it was a blast to go across the border al fresco. We managed to get to Peshawar, do our shopping and get back. We piled our purchases into the Travelall and set out for Kabul. Within an hour we ran out of gas, our parking lot attendant having decided that this was too good an opportunity to pass up. We stood by the side of the road trying to stop a passing car who possibly had a jerry can of gasoline. A car, laden down almost to the point of the chassis touching the road sped by. The car was filled with brand-new Michelin tires, still in their unique yellow wrapping. As the driver passed us at 70 mph, he lowered the window and yelled "Smuglaar, Smuglaar" as if to explain why he would not stop to help us. Despite our dilemma, the whole family was in stitches.



Alternative transportation across the Khyber Pass for the Blass family in 1960's.

- - - - -

"100 Afs, no more, " my wife insisted. "200 Afs for two of the Istalif statues, no less, Memsahib," the merchant insisted. More tea, more bargaining, more tea. They went at it all afternoon with patience, with graciousness, but with a stubbornness that I quite recognized in my Maine-born wife. Finally, she took out a 100 Af banknote. Knowing that most of the paper currency was scotch-taped together anyhow, she neatly tore up the bill, and very properly handed the merchant one half in his right hand, the other half into his left hand, counting as though each was worth 100 Afs. The Merchant roared with laughter. He was so tickled at her ability to bargain with humor and understanding of the local sensibilities, that he gave her the two statues and asked her to come back again.

- - - - -

"Wow, where did you get those guns, Major?" The visiting Air Force general couldn't keep his hands off the 1848 Enfield rifle on the mantelpiece of the Air Attaché. " Original, eh? Captured from the British, I guess," he added. "Would you like one to take home, General, " our savvy attaché asked. "Well, you can't ship these things, can you?" "That won't be necessary," replied our man. "I'll have one of these for you in the morning!"

As the general got on his military aircraft the next day, he beamed with pleasure. Once the plane was off the ground, the major, his wife, and the rest of the office burst into laughter. Of course, the original rifle wasn't the genuine thing anyway, and the piece which the general took with him had been made that night, 'weathered' by the stones in the fast-moving Kabul river so that it would look 100 years old. The Afghan gun makers were experts at turning out these fakes and the tourists were equally expert in passing them off back home as unquestionably 'genuine'.

- - - - -

"You paid what for one of these wooden statues?" The other wives were appalled at the exorbitant price the new wife had paid for one of these 'genuine' animistic statues that the Nuristanis buried with their dead. Self-assured, the new wife remonstrated. "So what's $20 dollars for a piece of Afghan culture that dates back before Alexander the Great? Back in San Francisco, they'll just turn green with envy at my trophy!"

- - - - -

The first in-country training program was over. We had followed the procedures indicated by PC/W and I had acted as the Selection Officer, obviously combining the role of arbiter with that of Country Director. That did not please me, specifically because it left me as judge and jury over the fate of the trainees, but worse as both messenger of the bad news and executioner. I was not happy in that role and told Washington so. Specifically in the case of one trainee, it became very difficult. He was an enthusiastic beginner, but as the six weeks in-country continued, he became less and less of a team player. He refused to attend language classes, he was bored with the idea of teaching, and he spent much of his time playing chess with Afghans, with whom he got along famously provided they spoke English. By the time he was deselected, he had no regrets, indeed boasted to his fellows that Uncle Sam had graciously paid his way to Afghanistan, and now he was going to have some fun and stick around, rather than go home like the others who had not made it to volunteer status. As I told him the bad news, he was not chagrined at all: "I'll just get a job here, that's all, and stay as long as I like." "No, you won't," I told him. " You can't get a job with any U.S. government entity because that's not why we paid for you to come here, and I doubt that any Afghan will hire you without asking me." "You'll see, I'll make it," he concluded. I made a handful of telephone calls to AID, the Embassy, the Asia Foundation, and the few other American entities that might hire him. That following Saturday morning I called him in and threatened to tear up his airplane ticket if he was not on the flight back to Teheran and on to the U.S. the next morning. Then I composed a cable to PC/W informing them of what I had done and sent it over to the Embassy for transmission. Arch Blood, the Chargé called me before signing off: "Can you do that, tear up his ticket?" "Yes, Sir," I replied. "As far as I am concerned, he is supposed to return to the U.S. if he is not accepted as a Volunteer." Mr. Blood signed the cable and we waited. That evening there was a party which my wife and I went to, and the deselected trainee went up to her and told her: "I'm going to stick a knife in your husband's ribs. He's trying to railroad me out of the country!" But in the morning I got a call from one of my staff members who had gone out to the airport with the ticket that the young man had boarded the plane and flown home. That suited me just fine, especially after Monday when I received a 10-page cable from Washington outlining the exact procedures and rights of the deselected trainees to be followed. The matter was moot, and I never did have to repeat the experience.

- - - - -

"Mommy, you have to lengthen my dresses," my 11-year old daughter said. " Why, you look just fine in the ones you have," was my wife's reply. "You have to, Mommy, you just have to!" My wife smelled a bigger issue and eventually teased out the real story behind the request. Tall as she was, my daughter looked as though she had passed puberty and the local kids started pelting her with pebbles, reminding her that were she an Afghan, she should only go out in a Chaderi. My daughter was not going to do any such thing, but she realized that if she was going to continue riding her bicycle wherever she wanted, she had to appear more 'modest', hence the request for the lengthened dresses.

- - - - -

Given the lack of formal entertainment in Kabul, shopping in the bazaar was clearly one of the remaining joys, and finding something valuable at a low price, a great prize. Pricing seemed somewhat peculiar, I found. The larger the container, the higher the price. Hence a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes would command the equivalent of $ 5 or $10, but a 10 oz. jar of excellent Iranian caviar might go for 50 cents. You had to be careful, however. Buying alcohol on the bazaar was very tricky: the local merchants had clearly found a way of draining some gin out of the Beefeater's brand bottles and substituting water. But, if you bought Greek Ouzo, you were safe, since any addition of water would immediately cloud the entire contents of the bottle, much to the surprise of the merchant who would adulterate the contents.

- - - - -

The endemic diseases in Afghanistan were a constant threat to the health of the volunteers and staff. All of us eventually fell prey to amebiasis, and some to more virulent diseases such as hepatitis, giardia and bacillary dysentery." Just living in this country, is like playing Russian Roulette with your health," the doctor told the volunteers in their orientation. Because I had been forewarned about these problems, and anticipating possible accidents as well, I made it a point to ask the Interior Ministry which controlled the police and its separate telephone network to make their network available when any volunteer was in serious medical distress. That resulted in a late-night telephone call once when a group of vaccinators reported from somewhere southwest of Bost, one of the most isolated towns in the desert of the Helmand Valley, that one of the female volunteers was throwing up blood as well as running constant bloody diarrhea together with a great deal of pain. I asked the operator to patch in our doctor to the call, and he proceeded to ask the volunteer on the phone for a full history of the woman's illness. Almost immediately, he prescribed a mixture of salt and sugar in water that had been boiled for 20 minutes and assured the caller that the illness would be over by morning. She was highly dubious of the facility with which he disposed of the problem, and told him so. He replied with good nature that it was surely bacillary, and that the woman's system would eliminate the bacteria within 24 hours of the start of the disease. "Call me in the morning, if I'm wrong," he said, adding" but I don't think you'll need to!" Eventually we learned that his diagnostic skills turned out to be just right.

- - - - -

One of the scariest aspects of life in Afghanistan was driving in the dilapidated taxis that cruised the major towns or cities. Not only did the vehicles look as though they were held together by string and chewing gum, but the drivers usually disregarded red lights, failed to put on headlights at night unless meeting an on-coming vehicle, and refused to turn on the bright beams when his speed caused him to overshoot his lights on the major country highways. There was the danger not only of running into camels on the road, but people as well, who found the warm macadam a good place to sleep at night. Nonetheless, all of our volunteers used them. They had asked for permission to drive AID or Afghan Ministry vehicles, but I refused. "Apart from the notion that as Peace Corps volunteers you should not be entitled to do anything more than your counterpart," I said, "but if ever you had an accident, hurt an Afghan, the blame would surely rest with you, and you might well be lynched for the result." That's exactly what happened in Turkey where I learned that Americans, including 10,000 military and their spouses drove and consequently had accidents. Fortunately, nothing ever happened while I was the director, but one of my successors did allow the volunteers to drive, and he found it necessary to write two letters to anguished parents whose Volunteer children had died in automobile accidents.

- - - - -

My predecessor grew up in Iran as a missionary brat and spoke fluent Farsi, as well as French. He had little difficulty communicating with the Afghan brass or common people. Indeed he had worked out a wonderful arrangement which benefited both Volunteers and Afghanistan. The first year of the volunteer's service (s)he would do exactly what (s)he had been hired to do, teach, do hydrological studies, nurse, or whatever. But in the second year, volunteers could shop around for any job they liked, provided an Afghan government official was willing to take responsibility for them. As result we had a woman teaching weaving in Herat, using patterns dating back to Mogul times; a volunteer teaching prisoners how to cut and polish marble and alabaster, not to mention semi-precious stones like Lapis Lazuli; a commercial artist, a confirmed Goldwaterite, designing and painting an advertisement for Aeroflot, the Soviet airline on the side of a building in Kabul. Only the Governor who wanted a secretary for her extra-curricular possibilities was disappointed.

- - - - -

"Don't eat melon, no tomatoes, no salads, no grapes…" The list seemed endless. If it did not come from a tree, you could not eat it raw, and then only after washing it in water that had permanganate dissolved in it. The best advice was to boil everything! That left my children with their typical attitude toward spinach: "I won't eat it!" One day, as we were shown around Jalalabad, someone suggested we pass by the AID Demonstration Farm. We drove up and the prototypical American farmer who ran it showed us around, then filled the children's arms with lettuce, melons, beans, green peppers, all the things they couldn't have from the bazaar, because this had been cultivated with water from deep wells where it was carefully tested every day. It really made their day! Unfortunately, we never did go back!

- - - - -

"Mrs. Blass, I'd like to ask you a personal question," the Minister of Agriculture said. " Your husband strikes me as a very intelligent person, but when I speak German with him, he sounds just like a 5-year old child!" My wife exploded with laughter. "I can explain that very easily, Excellency. You see, he was born in Germany but left before he ever went to school, so the only German he knows is what he learned up to the age of 5." The irony of this situation was that knowing three European languages (German, French and English) allowed me to speak to any generation of government official in Afghanistan. Those who had done their higher education before World War I spoke German, those between the Wars had gone to France (like the King, Zahir Shah),and those younger ones who went to university after WW II had come to England or America. So, my handicap turned out to be surprisingly useful, even if it offended the Agriculture Minister's refined ear for proper 'hoch Deutsch'.

- - - - -

I was furious. The Los Angeles Times had printed an article by their roving correspondent in Afghanistan that stated that many principals of the schools our volunteers taught in were selling the free textbooks which the government provided. He also pointed out the pressure the PCVs were under to go along with 'social promotion' for well-placed students, to wink at cheating, and otherwise just to go along with the existing mores in Afghan schools. Since the American Ambassador came from Los Angeles, I showed him my letter to the Editor and asked for his approval. "Walter, let it go," was his advice. "How many people do you think will actually read that article, compared to what the paper will do with your letter? They'll use your letter only to crucify you, since you made an issue of their reporting. Forget it, and just roll with the punch." He calmed me down, and I learned a valuable lesson.

- - - - -

Every Fourth of July, the Ambassador held a big outdoor party at his residence. Many Afghan officials were invited, occasionally also PCVs to help chat with the guests and typical American food and drink was served. That included mint juleps, Manhattan's and other drinks from the bar. Since most Afghans never had an alcoholic drink at home, they tended to be injudicious in their consumption, and some needed to be assisted. For a country that was 99.99% Muslim, the holiday seems to have served as an exception to the Koran's injunction against drink.

- - - - -

One of our volunteers was Jewish and he really wanted to go to a Passover Seder that Spring. To his surprise, by asking around judiciously, he discovered a family in Mazar-I-Sharif who were indeed going to celebrate that Jewish holiday. When I asked him about it, he told me that many Afghans claim they are descended from the Jewish Diaspora and that some still celebrate the holy days. This particular family had a Muslim name, wore typical Afghan clothing, but kept their true religious affiliation a secret. Needless to say, he was one happy volunteer that year!

- - - - -

My wife was eager to help Afghanistan in some way but she was not going to play number 2 to me in the Peace Corps. She found a ready need for her services as an English teacher in the specialized High School for married girls, of whom there was a godly number since many marriages were arranged when the girl was only 14. They were eager learners and the topics that Janice got into ranged all over. One day she mentioned that she had three children. The girls were dumbstruck with unbelief. "Impossible," they said, "you're not old enough!" Like LBJ, she lifted up her shirt and showed them her stretch marks. "But you don't look that old in your face," they replied. Sadly, their observation had a lot of truth to it. Most Afghan women had not only all the endemic diseases, but typically one pregnancy after the other, perhaps 9 or 12. The result was that they looked like hags at age 40.

- - - - -

Another volunteer was a musicologist and gave a demonstration one evening of the ways in which Afghan music from the days of the Moguls four hundred years earlier had been taken to India and was now being beamed back to Afghanistan from All-India Radio with almost no one the wiser. It was one more illustration how our volunteers turned their specialized energies to the material at hand and helped everyone, Afghans and Americans to understand this culture better.

- - - - -

It started out as a very ordinary Sunday afternoon. After lunch, we took the kids over to the International Club which had swimming pool. As we walked in, I happened to glance at the pool and saw a little girl face up, 'blowing bubbles soft and fine.' The verse from the popular song "Clementine" ran through my head and I looked more closely. The kid could not have been two years old and obviously was not doing this voluntarily. So I kicked off my shoes, jumped in the pool and dragged her out. I started to give her artificial respiration and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of people, each of whom told me to do something different. Fortunately, within a minute or so, the child revived, spit up what water remained in her lungs, and her father gratefully took her into his arms and rushed her off to the hospital. We later learned that she was just fine. Emotionally, however, the impact came later as I discovered that I had saved a German child. Her father threw quite a large party for me in gratitude and gave me a lapis lazuli ring he had made himself. For all the things I accomplished in Afghanistan, none eventually had the importance for me that this event did: God had saved me from the Holocaust and now I had saved one of his creatures, and a German child at that. I was even, I no longer needed to feel guilty for my survival.

- - - - -

We kept getting letters from the States, worrying about our safety. This in 1967 and 1968 when there were violent race riots in Washington, New York and Los Angeles. Our usual reply was that the only noise at night in Kabul was the faint sound of a jet flying overhead at 39,000 ft and the occasional donkey braying. Whose safety was in jeopardy, we asked? Indeed, we came home in early 1968 to the assassination of Martin Luther King in April and that of Robert Kennedy in August as well as the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. The shock was all the more destabilizing because it occurred right here, at home.

- - - - -

Part 2 of this story will be published next month.






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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Afghanistan; Country Directors - Afghanistan; History

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By Aziz K. Budri (adsl-69-154-78-244.dsl.rcsntx.swbell.net - 69.154.78.244) on Monday, October 16, 2006 - 9:32 pm: Edit Post

MY NAME IS AZIZUDDIN (AZIZ) K. BUDRI. I GRADUATED FROM HABIBIA HIGH SCHOOL IN 1969. I SPENT A YEAR '68-'69 AS AN AFS STUDENT IN IOWA FALLS, IOWA. I AM LOOKING FOR MY ENGLISH TEACHER AND FRIEND ROBERT MOYNIHAN AND MARTIN COMMERCK. BOTH PEACE CORPS TEACHERS IN KABUL, AFGHANISTAN.
PLEASE E-MAIL OR CALL ME AT (817) 994-8387.

THEY ARE MY LONG LOST FRIENDS. I WOULD BE MUCH OBLIGED.

By Betsy Noorzay (adsl-69-235-91-30.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net - 69.235.91.30) on Monday, August 06, 2007 - 2:57 am: Edit Post

I'd like to get in contact with Ann and Lou Mitchell-Lou Mitchell was Peace Corps head whle I lived in Kabul from March 65 --Dec.1975.

I'd also like to get in touch with the Guyers, who followed the Mitchells or came before them. I don't recall but I think the name was DAve Guer--they had 3 sons, one was in a play I directed at the American International School. His name was Stephen. Betsy Noorzay


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