Morocco RPCV Sarah Chayes continues work in Afghanistan
Journalist turns to Afghan aid
By S.L. Wykes
Mercury News
After a Peace Corps assignment in Morocco, and a master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, Sarah Chayes needed a break. With only the promise of freelance work, she took off for Paris thinking, "I never want to hear another word of Arabic," she said.
Eight years later, Chayes has reported from many of the world's hot spots -- Kosovo, Algeria, Lebanon, Serbia, Bosnia and Afghanistan. And now she's stepped away from the studied objectivity the profession demands to become a player in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
On Monday, Chayes, visiting the United States as she occasionally does, will give a talk at Stanford University to describe her work, and the reality of a place too often covered in less than two minutes on the television news.
She was saying goodbye to the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai when he asked if she would stay. "I was putting on my coat and it was like a flash," Chayes said during a telephone interview from New York. "It's not as if I hadn't been toying with the idea, but I'm not a doctor, I'm not an engineer, and I didn't want to be anybody's P.R. officer."
With Karzai's request in front of her, she quit her job with National Public Radio and went to work for Afghans for a Civil Society, an organization working to rebuild the country and to build new relationships with the outside world.
Chayes concentrated much of her effort in one village, negotiating and maneuvering through the complicated system of traditional political and social structure.
Her new project is building a dairy cooperative, but her goal is to encourage grass-roots development that in turn will foster political change. With the dairy cooperative, "we're working them back to collective decision making, to have meetings with member farmers, to think about ways to invest, to think and plan ahead," she said. Success will mean an economic alternative to growing opium poppies.
Still, far from academics or American employers, Chayes stops to observe, "Here I am this city girl and suddenly I find my colleagues are very serious livestock men!"
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED
Chayes speaks at 7 p.m. in the Oak Lounge of Stanford's Tressider Student Union, near White Plaza. Admission is free. On Wednesday, Chayes will be at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, 595 Market St., 2nd floor. A 4:45 p.m. reception will precede the 5:15 p.m. program. Admission is free for Commonwealth Club members, $12 for non-members, $3 for students.
