Network
Ian Pounds
Location:
Kabul, Afghanistan
Regions of interest: Asia
Skills: women's empowerment, teaching, construction, work with children
Volunteer Activity:
AFCECO January 01, 2009 - June 01, 2009
AFCECO June 01, 2010 - June 01, 2011
Stories by this Volunteer
28 July
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
July 28, 2011
The news you get is full of the war, gangster style assassinations, and perhaps even news of how Afghanistan has been tagged as the worst place in the world to be a mother (State of the World’s Mothers 2011 report, published bySave the Children). Meanwhile the children of AFCECO orphanages are thriving. This juxtaposition, which I do frequently, hopefully reinforces everyone's belief that this thing run by Andeisha is something that works, when all else fails.Two more days of exams, and then for the younger children Ramadan vacation time. After a short break the older children will start their programs again at the New Learning Center, as well as their sports programs. I will start up a new semester of Leadership Workshop, along with all my other humanities / language...
15 July
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
July 28, 2011
A new song, and anthem for AFCECO children I wrote this week:In The Heart of AsiaFrom the battlefield of MaiwandTo Ghorid’s Minaret of JamRabia Balkhi’s song of loveTo the Hindu Kush and far beyondDel ba del rah darat I speak to the open doorway, But I want every wall to hearLords of war I will not obeyYour blood for blood, your tear for tear Del ba del rah darat I’m the child of Afghanistan, Of a thousand wars and the night, The only one left to believe in this landAfter the darkness there is light I’ve seen it rain fire from the skyMore pain than snow on the hillThe dove that forgets how to flyAnd dogs that only know how to kill Don’t think there is no way to stop itAn orphan is...
8 July
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
July 08, 2011
“Life is long and death is short.” So reads the epitaph on a gravestone in Kittery Point, Maine. We understand this in respect to the way a week can be long, and a day.Here I am, very much alive six years beyond the life expectancy of the average Afghan man, seven beyond that of an Afghan woman. I may live another thirty years. How much does it affect a collective consciousness, this thing called life expectancy? I think of George B. Shaw’s play Back to Methuselah, in which his characters discover that the key to immortality is the abolishment of life expectancy. I wonder if longer lives are required, as Shaw’s play suggests, in order for individuals to develop wisdom enough to manage and lead our complex modern civilization. Certainly social...
24 June
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
June 24, 2011
It was Hala’s turn to address her parwarishga sisters and fellow students in Leadership Workshop. She had practiced her speech for some days previous to her presentation. Thus the words of Susan B. Anthony had filled the bus on our way to football practice the day before, over the Iranian pop music blaring from the radio, over the chatter of all the other girls excited once again to be on their way to the field.To them (women) this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich...
18 June
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
June 18, 2011
Future Leaders,It is hard for me to believe we are coming to the end of our second Leadership Workshop. It has been my honor to stand here, to build upon all we have learned together. Each class only happens once. Take advantage of what you have.We began this class talking about the power of words. We read a poem by Meena. The poem ends with these words:Along with you I’ve stepped up to the path of my nation,To break all these sufferings all these fetters of slavery,Oh compatriot, Oh brother, I’m not what I wasI’m the woman who has awokenI’ve found my path and will never return.It is my hope that at the end of every Leadership Workshop we too have “awoken” in some small way. We’ve learned that words...
27 May
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
May 27, 2011
Warning: It has been a few weeks and I’m thinking too much and I’m going to write a lot and I’m afraid it will be heavy on the editorial and opinion side and though I promise to include news about the children I can’t say how much or when in this expose I’ll get to it, so you can just skip it, or skip through if you are not inclined to hear lecturing volunteer excommunicated expatriated teacher voice mode.Additionally, though I have never mentioned this because it went without saying, I should say it now: everything I write here is completely independent of the views and opinions of AFCECO and any of the people associated with that organization.Here goes…I watched two documentaries this week, one about the Freedom Riders of...
14 May
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
May 13, 2011
I honestly cannot remember if I ever posted this. To be sure, here it is:Dear Volunteer (and for that matter anyone of thousands of westerners writing about Afghanistan),Once I get you, the long term volunteer settled in, I purposely do not look over your shoulder. Your classroom is yours. I merely check in to make sure you are doing ok, otherwise this experience is what you make of it. If I've already "vetted" you then you are good enough for me. The same is true about blog writing. It is your experience, as a volunteer, and you share it in your unique way. I do not in any way wish to censor a volunteer. That said, as a writer and as a westerner with my feet planted on the ground...
6 May
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
May 06, 2011
About half-way to the New School there is a man with one leg who stands with his crutches in the same spot on the same street every day. I see him only on my morning commute. He does not appear to be begging because it is a poor spot to be doing so. He looks at the people passing, the cars. I looked into his eyes once. He seems to be a gentle, kind man. Not angry or forlorn. He has a salt and pepper beard, very deep-set eyes. He wears typical village garb, a black and white shawl over his shoulder, a turban. Pashtun. I wonder of course how he lost his leg. Afghans are still suffering from the Soviet war, on top of the current duel war. (I...
22 April
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 21, 2011
In Leadership Workshop this week we discussed two forces that direct our lives, destiny (in which I include genetics, God’s design, environmental factors, dumb luck, what-have-you) and self-determination. We talked about the concept of a Personal Calling, and how we feel “alive”, so to speak, when those two forces seem to be working in balance with one another. This is not to be equated with happiness or contentment, per se, but to be a part of the struggle that is life in all its multiplicity. I asked the girls what percent of their lives they think is governed by these two forces. Five of them said 50 / 50. Others ranged around 25% destiny and 75% self-determination. None of the fourteen students gave destiny the upper hand. This is fairly...
15 April 2011
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 15, 2011
The second session of Leadership Workshop begins tomorrow. We are moving our classes into a new facility near to the orphanages in Khoshal Khan Meena. The house is beautiful, its grounds full of grape arbors, fruit trees and roses and sabza (grass). Here we will have all my language courses, fine art, ballet, music, computer and drama. We will host all our presentations, movie nights and conferences there. As you walk in you see a large library / resource room where students will work when they are not in class. The school is ready to be filled with students. Desks, conference tables, shelves, everything is in place. Jamshid and I brought the first two items to adorn the library. He brought a five-foot poster of Charlie Chaplin’s famous letter to...
8 April
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 08, 2011
What do we mean when we say the word orphan?UNICEF estimates that worldwide there are 210,000,000 orphans. What is more sobering is that according to government and private listings, 90% of children deemed as orphans actually have one or both parents living. It is impossible to confirm or deny these numbers, just as it would be perilous to account for the number of people killed in war. At the very least, these numbers suggest that the problem of being an orphan goes far beyond our traditional Oliver pickpocketting his way through the streets of 19th Century London. Though we can debate the meaning of the word, create new classifications or dispute causes and responsibilities, we can say with a fair amount of certainty that after China, India, the U.S. and Indonesia the...
1 April 2011
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 01, 2011
A brisk and cold breeze from the east washes away the clouds and their rain from the previous four days, and the mountains to the northwest stand clean, cloaked in winter white as sentries to a new year in Kabul, Afghanistan. It is Jumma, the streets are empty. Kabul River is running, albeit brown and strewn with litter. Everything is different, and everything is the same.I have sought adventure all my life. When I was a boy it was deep in the forest, most often alone, pretending I was Daniel Boone or a soldier on reconnaissance. Later it was testing mortality, jumping from bridges into shallow rivers, driving fast, seeking new ways to feel. This brought me to the brink of complete disaster before I was even 18 years old,...
4 January 2011
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
January 04, 2011
Imagine if you had never slept in a room by yourself, not in your entire life. The implication of this is one of many unexpected discoveries I have made since returning to the U.S. with “the girls” (as we all seem to have decided upon for reference). Placing them with their respective host families the first thing we noticed is the light on in the bedroom all night. The girls are, after all, orphans. They sleep in rooms full of bunk beds. They can sleep through noise and light with twenty other girls, but silence and alone? They already have experienced a multitude of phenomena that are hard to imagine encountering for the first time at the age of 16 let alone coming from the orphanages in Kabul. Flying on...
24 December
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
December 26, 2010
“How would you like to learn how to drive?”I had told the three girls many things about their journey through America, but it had not occurred to me this would be their first lesson. Pashtana, sitting beside me in the passenger seat registered the full meaning of my suggestion first. Her eyes widened the way they do every time she smiles. “Yes,” she answered simply with understated modesty, matter of factly. Then she turned in her seat and clarified for Sahar and Manizha in the back that their teacher had in fact meant what he said.“Here, Pashtana, take the wheel.”This is how I myself learned to drive, my older sister letting go of the wheel and suggesting I take hold of it before the car drove off the road. Pashtana...
6 December
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
December 05, 2010
This post rightfully is not a platform from which to proselytize. I must almost always keep to the story of AFCECO and the children and my direct experience, but while the children have been taking their final exams, and while I prepare for the journey home to America with three of my students in tote, I have time to read and to think, and I must anticipate the scores of questions I will be fielding as I move about my country once again drumming up support for AFCECO and sharing my perspective on Afghanistan and its people and this war. So please bear with me and forgive my indulgence as I try to formulate some of my broader, philosophical opinions as regards the opinions expressed by experts in American newspapers....
25 November
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
November 24, 2010
Dear Friend,It is Thanksgiving Day here, but not there. I will not be eating and drinking, but in a way observing. There is a birthday party for some of the girls at Mehan this afternoon.You exclaimed how much you are looking forward to spending this holiday in your cabin away from the city. Before Afghanistan I spent my life living in the woods. Over the years I built three cabins, one in Washington, one in Alaska and one in Vermont. I listened to the wind and the rain, the song of whales, and watched eagles mating high in the air, as they tumbled with talons locked in a freefall toward the ocean. I sometimes think I could have stayed in any one of those cabins forever, but relationships, weariness, wanderlust...
19 November
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
November 18, 2010
Writer Rebecca Solnit gives a lecture about darkness, or less metaphorically the unknown, using Virginia Woolf as a touchstone for the discussion. In it she proposes a reexamination of hope. Most people I presume regard hope as having something to look forward to. But Ms. Solnit suggests that the opposite is true, that authentic hope comes when we embrace the unknown future and accept that it is unknowable and that it will in the end reveal itself regardless. This may seem absurd or insignificant, but the more I sit with it I see far reaching implications. There is nothing new about “inhabiting the void”, mystics have been talking this way forever, but to call it hope?Watching a favorite team the Skins play football, I see they are down 45 to...
5 November
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
November 05, 2010 | 1 comment
There is a song in my head this morning, one that has no name, no words, no tune. It is all songs, it is mathematical, it is inside my ear, it is what comes before nothing. It is that mid-autumn sort of thing, a day off from living, hazy, sun morning low in the sky, nothing to do. I behold because I cannot merely look or stare, the asters in the courtyard of my safety here in the center of the continuous perhaps never ending denouement of a five-part tragedy in a thirty-years war, vigorous yellow rich blooms I could eat, hundreds, and I perceive after all, life, the same life that is born and re-born when an orphan girl whose blood can trace a thin unimaginable line all the way to Ghengis...
29 October
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
October 29, 2010
I remember my father reading to me in bed, books about the Civil War, about the history of invention and exploration. He read novels to me as well, often about families struggling to keep together in colonial times, pioneer times, adults and children having to learn from one another to survive. I remember my father’s heart, the simultaneous softness and itchiness of his sweater. Often he was still in his work clothes, a white shirt, a tie, a pullover v-neck vest, slacks and thin black socks. I remember what I think every child lucky enough to have had this experience remembers, the heartbeat and anticipation I felt radiating from my father, what we might call the joy of the reader. His fingers could not wait to turn the page, and...
22 October
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
October 22, 2010
There is on occasion a moment when the universe shows itself to be a meeting point between science and magic, and that is when I dial a number of someone I have not spoken to for some time, a whim, and I discover that very person is at that very moment dialing me. Such was the case this week when I pressed the button on my mobile’s directory for Ramazan Bashardost.“Salaam Alekum, Mister Bashardost!”“Salaam Alekum, khoobastee…”“Je suis tre bien, comment allez-vous?” I was unabashedly and falsely showing off.“Bien, merci.”“Congratulations, Mister Bashardost, I see it is official that you have won your seat in Parliament again, with real votes!”“Thank you very much.”“Do you wish to visit the students of leadership class?”“Why not?”It is this why not he always says that puts a smile...
7 October / 15 October
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
October 14, 2010
7 OctoberRain and thunder came rolling through yesterday. The sweater has come down from the shelf. Summer has been expelled.I am teaching the boys the story of Ernest Shackleton, possibly the greatest success story to spring from failure. My three “keys” to good leadership seem to hold up here, but when you get down to it, leadership must be rooted in the ability to embrace failure, to wrap your arms around it and kiss it on the cheek. What I am talking about is not playing victim, not defeatist, I’m talking about what you do after looking failure in the eyes with open heart, after pressing enough to know that failure is resolved, she has made her decision, there are things in this world you cannot and maybe even should...
24 September
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
September 24, 2010
Last night I sat on the rooftop and watched the first full moon of autumn rise higher and higher above a jagged mountain. I watched the lights of mud homes twinkling, many of them halfway up the side of the mountain; an impossible life, it seems, to haul water up and down every day. At 9:00 pm the city was quiet, so quiet I could hear crickets down by the trickling Kabul River, a singular catfight several blocks away, a man shutting down the metal door of his shop on Puli–surkh (Red Bridge). Summer came to its closure as that moon rose and I felt time as I have only felt in moments of my life, the time I stood behind bars, a scared and stupid sixteen year old, or...
September 17th
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
September 17, 2010
Election tomorrow. The city has shut down once again. There are hundreds upon hundreds of posters littering every street. A strange democracy, over 2,500 candidates (405 of them women) are running to fill 249 parliamentary seats. It is conceivable a candidate with one percent of the vote can win a seat. I saw Bashardost the other day, campaigning among the people. He has upgraded his little black, red and green Fiat sized car to a miniature black, red and green pickup truck, do to campaign needs. I will be going to visit him in his tent where he lives, to invite him to teach one of the leadership classes to the girls. Nowhere will you see a poster or advertisement of Bashardost. He goes to the people and let’s them...
September 10th
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
September 09, 2010
Eid begins no sooner than the moment the Mullah sees the new moon. That day is today. Three days of festivities commence that resemble Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas all wrapped into a three-day celebration. Try to imagine a month of fasting, no water, no food between 4am and 7pm, praying five times a day (which is quite involved. See entry on 27 June, 2009, 4pm) and then imagine how you might celebrate the end of it.This week I began teaching the “leadership academy” as we like to call it. 16 of our grade 9 – 12 girls meet in our new resource room three days a week for two hours. This is thanks to the grant Andeisha received. The room is completely outfitted, 9 computers hooked up to the Internet,...
September 3rd
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
September 03, 2010
Yesterday I had the top older boys in class, Omid, Dariush, Farid Gul and Ali. They took a quiz on proverbs from Kenya and the history of the Panama Canal. All four of them got 100% correct. There has been a shift in their attentiveness to their studies. The exam was not particularly easy. There were fifteen proverbs of which I gave the opening line in English that they had to finish from an extensive list of possible endings. For the history section a one-page essay had 15 words missing they had to fill in correctly. I have gotten their comprehension skills where I want them to be; now it is time to graduate them to composition. The degree to which these boys have developed cannot be underestimated. They are...
August 27
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
August 27, 2010
If there is any indication at all that the girls (and the one boy, Sorab) did a great job in their debut of the Afghan version of Prometheus (Un)Bound (in Dari) it would have to be the fact that after seeing the show all the boys have asked to join drama. Maria was fabulous as the heroine (Prometheus for our purposes was a woman). She captured the character’s transitions from trickster to humanitarian to destroyed dreamer to wise fool and finally the defiant and prevailing peaceful warrior in the battle for freedom. Sahar played Zeus, and did a fine job as the overstuffed, overconfident king of the gods. The chorus played up their role well; with their masked faces outlined by black scarves wrapped about their heads they transfixed the audience that I...
August 11
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
August 13, 2010
Ramadan begins.I made my way to Mehan, even though it is a holiday. Several girls would be gone to practice Roza (fasting) with family members in Kabul. I arrived at the orphanage just as the house mother Nasifa set up a chair to begin cutting hair. The girls would be transformed into tomboys today. For the most part they were good sports. Only one, Gulalai from Nuristan was unhappy with her cut. She hid herself in the bathroom and wailed for thirty minutes. This ritual is a practicality for seventy girls who get to wash hair twice a week. After greeting everyone I proceeded to teach my three beginner classes. My heart was not quite into it. Students were missing and I didn’t want to get too far ahead of...
July 30
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
July 30, 2010
Earlier this summer I met a twenty-six year old volunteer from Italy who had come to work for an NGO in Kabul. She left me with a parting gift today, a Penguin edition of Swift’s satire, Gulliver’s Travels. Simultaneously I happened to read a senior thesis written by a student from a prestigious New England college who had interviewed me last winter when I was touring America giving talks and raising money for AFCECO. As far as I can tell both women had had bad experiences volunteering abroad, involving a falling out with the host organization, cultural clashes, confused feelings of shame while being indignant over what they saw as unjustifiable misrepresentation and mishandling by the NGO, as well as a lack of guidance. I may be jumping to conclusions, but...
July 23
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
July 24, 2010
Winding along the edge of a cliff that plummets a thousand feet, I gave a silent prayer of thanks to the Chinese company that built the road from Kabul to Jalalabad, for doing the impossible and doing it well. I also prayed that now was not the time for one of the frequent rockslides to whisk away hapless travelers. Jamshid pushed an old cassette tape into the dashboard. “I used to listen to this a long time ago,” he said, “when I was in school in the refugee camp.” This is all that I knew ahead of my first road trip in Afghanistan: we would go to Jalalabad, which is at the foot of Taliban country, to visit our two orphanages there. It would take about 2 ½ hours to...
July 16
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
July 16, 2010
I have completed the curriculum for the rest of the year. If you sponsor an older child in Kabul, she or he is going to enjoy a very demanding but I hope fun second semester to the school year. I am going with the topical approach to teaching English. Why not learn something while we learn the language? When I was in first grade, everything was divided into colors.GoldMeetra, Murcel, Sadaf, Nasrin, Nahida, Malalai, Malalai Butterfly, Sana1) Natural landscapes of the world: Sahara desert, Mt. Everest, Olympic rainforest, Siberia, Amazon River, Tahiti2) Animals of the world: condor, mountain goat, praying mantis, hippo, octopus, sperm whaleTurquoiseFarzana Nori, Khalida, Zainab, Leema, Parwana (Parwana moved up)1) History of Afghanistan through its...
July 9
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
July 08, 2010
On the morning of January 9th, 2001, two men forcibly entered a small mud-bricked home near the village of Yakawlang, Afghanistan only to find a black haired, black eyed, freckle-faced, five-year old Hazara girl alone in the room stoking a heater. The girl looked at the men’s faces, then at their Kalashnikov rifles that already dripped beads of melting frost onto the floor. “Where is your father?” one of them asked, without introduction.The girl was stunned. She didn’t know what to say. The men dressed like Taliban, their guns were Taliban, but they looked different. She glanced again at their faces. They were not Pashtun. They were from somewhere else; they spoke Dari, but poorly, and their noses were strange, and their beards, and beneath the dirt their skin was...
July 2nd
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
July 02, 2010
“To live in the hearts we leave behind is to never die.”This is a quote attached anonymously to a video commemorating the life of Carl Sagan. The video was brought to my attention this morning by a man who sponsors a child at Sitara I. Sometimes I just like Nasruddin Hodha the foolish Mullah of Persian folklore, arrive on Friday with a blank mind. Seeing where that quote takes my thoughts, I trust somehow this page will be filled.From what I can gather this is actually a quote by Thomas Campbell, not Sagan. I doubt Sagan would ever have concerned himself seriously with the immortality of an individual soul. He was interested in the future of the planet. But the quote and the man nevertheless are now entwined, as thousands of people...
June 25
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
June 24, 2010
Bashardost, his given name, means lover of humanity. Ramazan of course refers to the month of fasting, a month of sacrifice. As people die in this war (for NATO and ISAF soldiers and Marines the worst month in the war’s nine year history, for civilians the worst year), and as oil slowly suffocates the life out of the Gulf, it is a lie if I say I particularly love humanity, and as I see the only sacrifice being made is by average people, not the ones in power, not the ones with the money and hands on the wheel, I grow tired of caring. There do not seem to be any alternatives to capitalism, as all other systems equally succumb to the same and sometimes even more brutal arrangement. I...
June 18
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
June 18, 2010
I listen to music that brings me back, as particular tunes always will, to a time in my life, a specific event, or even a conversation or singular human act. In times gone by it would only have been a concert, listening to a stereo in my bedroom or driving down the highway in a car. As music became more mobile it began to attach to moments such as sitting in the forest betwixt three great grandmother trees, a Sitka spruce, a yellow cedar, a hemlock, or walking through Times Square late afternoon on a Friday in early March, the light hitting one sliver of sidewalk, people huddled for warmth in a sudden brisk wind. Time and the River, what I listen to as I type these words, brings me to...
11 June
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
June 11, 2010
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…I am back with my students. I look at the sign Omid made for me on Teacher’s Day, and though it is overstated it nevertheless fills me with purpose and a tablespoon of pride: “The children future to Ian-jan hand”. The fact he neglected to insert the possessive forms for the noun and proper noun lends a dollop of shame to the accolade; I have lapsed in my great responsibility.On Saturday (following the Jirga), Mehan was abuzz upon my arrival. Normalcy and human contact come as a great relief to all. The girls do not much care for days with too much time on their hands. They do not remain idle. I found my classroom had been immaculately...
June 4
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
June 04, 2010
I have not seen the children for three days. The “peace” Jurga is in town, along with ten thousand extra troops. Rocket attacks, suicide bombers arrived on the first day. Yesterday, quiet. Today, who knows. The entire city is shut down. Nobody goes out. This is normal protocol. It is strange to think of developing a sensibility toward attacks the way I would toward rush hour. Don’t go around town between 8am and 10am (when most attacks for some reason occur). Don’t drive alongside any convoy of any kind. Don’t linger in one place too long. So many of the western workers in town are pumped with restrictions and fear. In many respects this has to do with the cost of kidnapping or death to any organization or government. With...
May 28
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
May 28, 2010
“Feedom is love; teacher is book.”Monday morning, instead of bringing me to Sitara II for classes Jamshid and Andeisha first needed to be dropped off at Mehan orphanage for a meeting. When we arrived I knew something was up. The porch and courtyard were empty. I wanted to retrieve some materials I’d left in my classroom, so I climbed the steps and removed my flip-flops. The doors to the orphanage were closed. This almost never happens. The latch was a little stuck, so I swung the doors open a little briskly and entered under the momentum of my push. The high ceiling of the orphanage was suddenly filled with rose petals, red and pink and white, floating down upon my head, and in front of me sixty or so of...
May 21
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
May 21, 2010
The students of American University of Kabul are part of a slim percentage of the young Afghan population (53% of Afghans are 18 and under) who are by any standard in their country affluent. They pride themselves in going "western", wear jeans and oil their hair. They invited a rock ‘n roll pick-up band made up of staff members from the U.S. Embassy to play at their “fun day” charity event last Saturday. They are predominantly business majors, some of them already successful business owners who are merely trying to increase their net worth. There are many people in this country who look at them with distaste. Capitalism is just another ideology that has had its decade-long invasion, albeit in the form of aide and security and war industries. Just...
14 May
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
May 14, 2010
I understand it has been a rainy spring in my native New England, a very rainy spring in Italy, and here in Kabul there have been floods to the north and even the usually trickling Kabul River has been replenished. Every three days a thunderstorm has rolled through the city, laying down for a while the incessant dust. This is in great contrast to a year ago when I first arrived and never saw rain at all. A year ago, now, is a lifetime ago. Preparing the 15 children for their performance tomorrow has sent flashes through my mind of Julie Andrews teaching the Von Trapps how to sing. The orphans are particularly amused with learning the scale, “do-re-me, re-me-fa, me-fa-so…” It is the only way I know of to train...
May 7
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
May 08, 2010
There were moments when I was between the ages of 3 and 14 that the political world crept into my life. These were incidents that appeared and would then be stored away as dreams are stored away. The television, black and white, rabbit eared, flickering, had something to do with how these events were understood. Assassinations, mostly, but also images from war far away, and rocks being thrown in streets, and banners. I marched in Memorial Day parades, blowing my silver trumpet, but soon a new kind of marching entered my lexicon, this in direct contradiction to the first. Ever since those days I have not been big on parades or protests. Both, for different reasons, seemed to distort reality in harmful ways. Only once did I join the fray...
April 30
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 30, 2010
Last night the full moon was like a great naked Daliesque eye watching Kabul with a kind of amazed curiosity. It was of course the negative of an eye, the pupil being white and the whites black. The iris, though, was an olive green washing into a periphery of russet-gold, a haloed iris that sometimes I’ve seen in my own when I dare to look, when I'm in a certain mood. What this moon-eye saw was a carpet of twinkling lights draped across silhouetted valleys and mountainsides like fallen stars, a city of how many human spirits it is impossible to know, just as it is impossible to gather the dead and their numbers. Some say 3.6 million. Some 5. These numbers stead for both categories. It was such a...
April 23
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 23, 2010
Kabul is mars. It is a great gaping mouth. Its tonsils are clay, its tongue is imbued with polyps, and its teeth are brown, chiseled, not made to crush but to gnaw. Even so, five times every twenty-four hours it sings a most reverential, haunting, beautiful song, like that I once said in this journal of certain creatures in the sea, only here the trajectory is not the depths but the heavens. Kabul is a strange human concoction whereby history has been swept from the surface and buried beneath layers of dust and humanity like Sisyphus scraping together once again the act of being alive. There are reminders here and there, like wounds never stitched, a wall, a castle, a fountain, a tomb. But these are so faded as to...
April 16
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 16, 2010
16 April The seeds that my sister-in-law gave me to bring for the children to sow are now sprouting in the garden of Mehan orphanage. Though I lobbied hard for the tomatoes and cucumbers, the children prefer the flowers, so this summer we will enjoy a dazzling display of nasturtium and daisies and calendula and violets. I step out of the old white Toyota wagon into the courtyard, my cittern in hand, my satchel full of lessons and lyrics and markers strapped to my shoulder, and I put my right hand over my heart. The guards greet me first. They are from small villages, they have seen horrors, family members murdered, and still they smile. “Salam, sobakhail.” They give me a look that is at once caring and inquisitive. Who is...
9 April
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 09, 2010
9 AprilI wrap my new black and white scarf over my head and step out from my little classroom, onto the rooftop of the guesthouse where I now live. It is a clear, crisp spring morning. There is still snow in the mountains to the west. It is Juma, things are khomush, quiet. This is a residential neighborhood, full of large houses, opulent by standards. There are trees here; all young but for one tall pine that survived the thirty years of strife Kabul has endured. Many members of parliament live here among others who have done well for themselves in the “great game” that is the struggle for the future of Afghanistan. Since the Nineteenth Century this game has gone on, maybe even since the time of the silk road,...
2 April
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
April 02, 2010
2 AprilI am a lover of stories. I see a man with half his arm missing, pointing the accusatory stub of what remains at the river of Toyotas pushing their way against him through Khoti Sani, Kabul, and I see a story. The man for whom I can honestly use the word “ancient” in deference to the marks on his face and his cane and the bend in his back, even though he may be my age, he too conjures up a story. And the children everywhere, the ones that are homeless selling what they find in the dumpster, wiping windows, reaching empty hands. I was always drawn to the destitute and the innocent. Brought up in comfort, my most affecting childhood memories are the dramas that pierced my imagination. ...
26 March
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
March 29, 2010
I sat down with Shogofa this week, and beside her Madina, and I asked them to take turns reading from a small book on astronomy. Their English came back to them in stops and starts, until I could sense they were starting once again to think in another language. The first word that tripped them was constellation. “Ahhh,” I said, sweeping my hand across the sky. “Sitara!” And we learned the first thing every one of us learns the first time we examine the night sky. “Big Dipper…”The two girls smiled and nodded. There is nothing I’ve seen in the world that compares to a child suddenly comprehending some heretofore unimagined reality. What is so threatening about education? Why this backlash...
20-21 March
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
March 29, 2010
Naruz, Afghan New Year is not associated with Islamic tradition, but goes back 3,000 years. It was once celebrated in England, and has roots in almost every culture in every part of the world. It is, after all, spring equinox. Where better to begin? It is fitting no matter how fast a plane can fly, getting to Afghanistan is grueling. This time I thought to make things better by avoiding India and entering through Dubai. Not any better, especially hauling around an eighty-pound duffel, a fifty-pound piece of luggage, a twenty-pound satchel and a thirty-pound instrument. (I know these things because each airline was keenly interested in charging extra). As I made my way from New Hampshire to Washington to Italy to...
15 March
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
March 29, 2010
I am where I’ve dreamed from various movies I’ve seen, sitting in an outdoor café, cobblestone street across from the Academia di Bella Arte in Milano, Italy, surrounded by bohemian artists, smoking cigarettes, and the lilting, bouncing language that loves to end words with an “o” and pronounce “c” as if it were “ch”. I sip a cappuccino and wonder where my interest in travel dissipated. Certainly not from a sense of boredom, nor for lack of interest in architecture, history, sunshine or cuisine. I have sold my home away, so I cannot be pining for roots, either. I feel more alive and hopeful than perhaps I’ve ever felt, even as I approach that all-foreboding half-century mark. It must be love. But what is this love? Romance is about as...
Journal from 2009: The First Six Months in Kabul
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
March 29, 2010
Many of you followed my story about my stay at Mehan from April to September 2009, posted on Omprakash's old Message Board. With the old Message Board gone, I have reposted the journal in its entirety as a PDF for interested readers.Please see the Classroom Resources page for the full text.
11 March
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
March 22, 2010
The new year approaches in Afghanistan. I am about to board a plane with a one-way ticket in hand. Before I go I feel I must describe the events of last evening at the Kennedy Center in Washinton, D.C.Six women were honored with a Vital Voices award before a gathering that included dignitaries, ambassadors, businesswomen and celebrities. High profile folks included Hillary Clinton, Melinda Gates, Nicholas Kristof, Sally Field, Reese Witherspoon, and Brian Williams. The awardees are extraordinary women from Brazil, Bahrain, Pakistan, America, Kenya and Afghanistan. Go to this web site to learn about each of these inspirational game changers in the world.http://vitalvoices.org/awards2010The young woman from Afghanistan is none other than Andeisha Farid, founder and Director of AFCECO orphanages. Many times during the evening I tried to remember where...
18 February
AFCECO, by Ian Pounds
March 22, 2010
Wistfulness fills my heart as I write this letter. Last October 3rd I began a very long and very winding tour around this country, speaking to thousands of folks about the lessons I learned from the children of Mehan and Sitara orphanages and the Afghans who direct them. This was something I had not planned. In fact, upon my return from Kabul I had no plan at all. The speaking tour seemed to take on a life of its own. You are the people who made it happen. Sixth graders to a room full of octogenarians, Democrats to Independents to Republicans, rich people and poor, you showed me what is universal about our identity as Americans. We are not, by and large, who they say we are in the news....
