Gathering Strength:. Peggy Kelsey
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I was slowly getting my feet on the ground and developing my shooting technique. After a week, RAWA still hadn’t gotten back in touch with me to visit their projects. Making other contacts to find interview subjects was going slowly, in part due to erratic phone service. I only had two weeks left and I felt devastated.
Had I come halfway around the world, and accepted the financial support of my friends, only to do something mediocre? I cried. I prayed. I meditated. Within thirty minutes RAWA called. I got through to other groups who were happy to introduce me to interview subjects. The idea for my signature shooting technique came to me, allowing me to get natural images, slices of the moment. I learned that getting a visa extension and changing my flight would be easy.
Before I left Texas I’d feared I wouldn’t find anyone willing to talk with me and be photographed. The opposite turned out to be true; many women were eager to share their experiences and didn’t mind having their pictures taken. I began to see that especially for uneducated, impoverished women, having a Westerner come all the way to Afghanistan to listen to them and acknowledge their pain and difficulties could be empowering, affirming, and healing.
The powerful need to tell one’s story was brought home shortly before I left the country. I had just completed two interviews at a literacy and tailoring school. As I was leaving our interview room, I saw fifteen women sitting against the wall, each waiting patiently, hoping to be heard. Unfortunately, I was unable to stay longer.
The visa extension allowed me to visit Taloqan, a city of 64,000 people located 150 miles north of Kabul. The director of an aid agency had invited me to stay in the agency’s spacious compound on the edge of town. After breakfast the morning after I arrived, I set off alone looking for interesting pictures. But as soon as I slipped out the gate, the guard7 came running after me, saying that I must have an escort in case I got lost. Well, Taloqan is a small town and I have a good sense of direction. But I understood that when staying with Afghans, whether an organization or a private family, they assumed responsibility for me and it would be rude, impolitic, and – who knows – possibly dangerous to go wandering alone. So as I walked the guard trailed behind, and I must admit I felt secure having someone watch my back while my eyes were glued to the viewfinder.
The modern areas of this provincial capital had two-story buildings filled with shops selling gadgets from China and Pakistan. Private cars and taxis shared the road with brightly-decorated horse-drawn taxis, donkey carts, men or kids on donkeys, hand-carts, and pedestrians.
But the vegetable market with its rows of rickety wooden carts filled with fruits and vegetables and the outdoor grain market seemed right out of a Rudyard Kipling novel. I only felt discomfort there, a place of no women. Watching grain being weighed and sold, it was easy to imagine that I was observing life centuries ago. The use of plastic grain bags rather than hemp sacks was the only apparent anachronism. Although I only peered in from the road, I could see the merchants’ brows furrowing and eyes narrowing, as if telling me that I didn’t belong in this male enclave. So we moved on.
Returning to Texas six weeks later, I created a photo exhibit that included a short biography and an excerpt from each woman’s interview to hang beside her portrait. Slide show presentations to civic groups, churches, and universities soon followed, enabling me to share the women’s stories as well as my own perspective on what I had seen.
The process of carrying out the Afghan Women’s Project changed me in profound ways. I’d become more confident, developed strategies for dealing with my personal shortcomings, found information and resources to help me define my mission and purpose, and learned to craft statements to solidify my vision. I wanted to share what I’d learned, so I began giving workshops to encourage and help others with their creative endeavors.
A few years later I began to feel Afghanistan calling me to return. This time, in 2010, I entered the country on a tour with Global Exchange8 so I could gain access to women I might not have met otherwise. These dedicated leaders showed me a side of Afghanistan that seldom made mainstream news.
When the Global Exchange tour ended, I stayed with the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA). Here I met a wide range of delightful young people, all of them seriously dedicated to helping rebuild their country. They lifted me out of the discouraged mindset I’d developed from focusing on political and military developments.
Afghan youth, like people everywhere, run the gamut from selfish to idealistic. But the SOLA students and others inspired me with the possibility that through their hard work and dedication, their nation may one day enjoy competent leadership and relative justice. It won’t happen before the next election; it will likely take until these youths are middle-aged and current leaders have retired or died. But if these young people stay true to their dreams, then I believe their hopes might just be realized.
In the seven years since my last visit, Kabul had changed. In 2003, I felt safe walking for miles along city streets. In 2010, I was warned not to walk anywhere. In 2003, I’d hailed taxis off the street. In 2010, I was told to use only certain vetted taxi companies that would pick me up at my door in unmarked cars. Traffic in 2010 was heavier and slower, the air even more polluted, and the city an armed camp.
Guards in towers above fortress-like walls looked down on traffic and pedestrians. Sandbags lined the street-side walls of important buildings. Blast-proof fifteen-foot molded concrete barriers along the streets protected ministries. Short barriers protruded into roads, forcing drivers to weave slowly around them. Afghan National Police with loaded AK-47s were everywhere. Female guards patted me down and searched my bags anytime I entered a public building. A few times every week I’d see a convoy of Allied military vehicles, but I never saw those soldiers walking around. I was surprised by how quickly I got used to such an armed environment.
One highlight of my trip was a visit to Bamyan. After Kabul, I was in heaven there in the central highlands. I walked miles every day through crisp clean air to interview women or get internet access at the university. There were few taxis. I hired a guide to tour the caves in the Buddha-cliff9 and learned that they were all hand-dug. Bright remnants of beautiful frescos have survived over two thousand years in some of these caves. I saw one soldier, a UN guard, the entire nine days I was there.
Bamyan is a small city in the Afghan central highlands, also called the Hazarajat; or the place of Hazaras. Bamyam is also the name of the province. The Hazaras are mostly Shia Muslims, while the rest of Afghanistan’s population is mostly Sunni. Bamyan City is home to more than 61,000 people and lies about 150 miles (241 km) north of Kabul. In 2010, a journey on the more secure of the two routes from the capital took about eight hours. Now, on a newly-paved road, travel time has been cut in half. Tourism has and will continue to aid in bringing resources to Bamyan and tourists to nearby Band-e Amir National Park.
The city’s mile-long bazaar meanders alongside the Bamyan River. Small shops, kabob stands, and a few two-story hotels flank the street. Between the rear of the shops and the river containment wall, rows of vendors sell vegetables amid makeshift stalls full of cheap Chinese goods.
Beyond the bazaar, the road crosses the Bamyan River at an angle and intersects a branch of the famed Silk Road.10 A line of cliffs parallels the road as it heads east toward Kabul and west, in front of Bamyan Hospital, to the Buddha grottoes, and then out of town towards magnificent Band-e Amir.
A mixture of ruins, mud brick houses, and a few cement buildings lies in the triangle formed by the bazaar and river, the Buddha wall, and a connecting road. A midwife training center, where I interviewed Kobra (found in the Women's Health Workers chapter), is located there. A wall of inhabited caves stretches well beyond the World Heritage "Buddha section" in both directions. Suburbs containing government offices and modern housing continue to spring up around the edges of the city. Now that Bamyan has electricity