6 Months In Kabul: Kochis HA Drop

Problog

Hello and welcome to my blog. It is a blog about an Air Force Physician that was reluctantly deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan for 6 months.

I have to admit, I did not exactly volunteer for the deployment, and I was a little anxious about how it would all turn out. I ended up making the best of it, and surprisingly, I actually had a pleasant, life changing, experience.

I decided to keep the blog up and running because I kept on hearing, "Why is it that you only hear the bad news coming from Iraq and Afghanistan." I figured that I was helping spread a positive message about what we are doing over. Even more important, I wanted to continue to spread the word about the plight of the Afghan people, 99.9% of which are the most incredibly friendly people that you will ever meet. The title picture is a great example of that. I have never encountered such genuinely warm and friendly people. It was so strange to see so many people with so little material objects, yet at the same time, filled with so much of the joy that comes with close family ties, abundant friends, and a close knit community. We could definetly learn a lot from them.

You may notice, as you read the blog in its entirety, my arc. I shift from focusing on myself and my personal comforts, to shifting my focus on the Afghan cause. It is very easy to get distracted by the hustle of daily life and the comforts that the U.S. provides. It is really a challenge to awake from that coma and to start to care and think about the welfare of other people unrelated to you. I think it really took me about 4 or 5 months before I really opened my eyes and became personally affected by what I was experiencing. I hope I was able to recreate it.

I have tried to keep the blog squeaky clean so as to not offend anyone (or get me in trouble-I am still in the military). Even though I am a political junky with very strong personal opinions I have been steadfast in keeping this site free of any politics. I was called to do a job and I tried to do it to the best of my ability regardless of my political stance.

I recreated the blog to read more like a book, or should I say blook (get used to the corniness it only gets worse from here) just to make it an easier read. I have removed some names and pictures just to keep it more anonymous. I hope that it helps in making it less about me and more about the cause.

Lastly, in the spirit of the blog, I decided to include the Chipin Widget that I used to raise money for Nazia. If I get any additional money I will send the funds to The Women of Hope Project and someone over in Kabul will discretely give it to her (unless I hear otherwise). You can also contribute directly to the Women of Hope Project website. They are a wonderful cause. If you enjoy this blog then feel free to contribute. I am sure that once you read her story you will be very moved.

So kick back. Get ready to hopefully laugh and definitely cry.
If you like what you read then post a comment. I will be continuously editing this site in an attempt to improve it. Who knows maybe one day it will become a book!

Enjoy. Thanks for reading.

-Shazdoc

Friday, May 2, 2008

Kochis HA Drop

"Make your life a mission - not an intermission."
-Arnold Glasgow

Today we accomplished a lot. I will only comment on part of the day because I don't want to discuss ongoing projects for security reasons. I asked the interpreters to hand out the gifts that people sent from back home. I did not go with them for security reasons. The interpreters were able to film the whole thing so fortunately I was able to view it.

I have been hesitant to incorporate donations from home with the previous Humanitarian Assistance (HA) mission's donations because I did not want them to get lost in the shuffle. I consider this to be the first official Shazdoc HA drop. All of the donations came exclusively from readers of this site. The supplies were delivered to a group of people called Kochis (pronounced coochies). They are tribal nomads.

Take a look at the background. You can see the tents that they live in. They all live very hard lives. It gets really cold at night and I am sure that those flimsy tents do not provide a lot of warmth. I am sure that they do not get a lot of food and have a way to bathe either.

I gave out a ton of school supplies, toys, candy, and cloths- socks, hats, scarfs. The video that the interpreters filmed is 8 minutes long and would take too long to upload to my site. I would be more then happy to send it to anyone who would like to have a copy. You just need Quicktime loaded onto your computer to view it. It is an .mov file.

The other really neat thing that happened when I got back is I got a package from Q100, a radio station in Atlanta. They did a letter drive for deployed troops. They were able to gather 500,000 letters. I received a big stack of them and I am going to work on getting them out to people.

I am not sure if you can appreciate it from the picture, but I probably received 1000 letters from school children. Wow. I will have to add this one to the Shazdoc Spotlight on Afghanistan Community Service website.

Keep the donations coming. I want Shazdoc HA drop #2 to be bigger and better than #1.

Thanks for reading.