Time Warp

I've been to Mexico, Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Jodan, China, Korea and I think in all these wanderings I've seen some places that felt like I'd travelled backwards in time. Nothing compares to these remote regions of Afghanistan. How far back in time? Pick a date -- any date. There are truly places that are lost to time.

Remote valleys bordered by combinations of steep cliffs, talus slopes and scree hills. It's late Summer and amazingly there's lots of water. It's as if the land is so hard it rejects hydration. Through the harsh landscapes water runs to irrigating the few strips of flat arable land. Here, where poppies are not the norm, wheat, barley and potatoes are staples. Amazingly, on the steep slopes I occasionally see sprigs of wheat -- so thinly separated and far apart that even when ready to harvest it's barely discernable.

Every part of the environment is used. Every person works hard. There is no such thing as garbage. When talking to one of the shura leaders I commented on how beautiful the landscape was and he said, "You should see how green the mountains are in April". They were stark rock as I saw them so I asked what he meant. He replied, "The children have already picked all the grass so they aren't green anymore". He wasn't kidding. While we were travelling around we'd see persons of all ages up on the steep slopes -- and I could see the piles of bundled grasses and bushes. I'd see children, adults and old men lugging the bundled grass down goat paths to be piled as fuel for winter. On top of the adobe walls of homes buffalo chips (Donkey-dung pies?) were stacked so high it looked like the owner was trying to fuild a new story on the house.

The one metal tool I saw repetitively used was the sickle . Men and women squatting in the field and cutting wheat one handful at a time. Ultimately it would all be laid out to be worked by a team of donkeys working a circular pattern to separate the wheat from the stalks. There's no shortage of wind here so even in the valleys they can throw the grain and stalks high into the wind together allowing the wind to blow the lighter chaff away and the heavier grains to fall to the slowly growing pile below. How far back in time does this go?

We drove for hours each day past this scene over and over again. It evokes images of biblical symbols -- the threshing of wheat to separate chaff on the threshing floor of the temple. Mount Moriah, the scene of Abraham's test of sacrificing Isaac, was ultimately to become the location of Solomon's temple and the temple is surely the finest symbol foretold to sift the good fruit from bad. Timeless symbols in a timeless place.

Alan gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon on MP3 and I listened to quite a bit as we rode along each day. As I listened to chapters after the Nephites transitioned from Kings to Judges I was amazed and how much corruption and war occurred in just a few short years as the new form of government evolved. Brutality was common. Life was not sacred to the wicked; greed was a value. This doesn't seem to have changed much either. To make the government more basic here, families would have to be dissolved and anarchy ensue. Here, each family designates a family member to represent the family in the Shura, or council. Patriarchal. The councils meet to decide pretty much everything. Family, clan and tribe means everything. Loyalty doesn't travel further than one can see. Again, how long has this been going on.

It makes me wonder if elsewhere the pattern is the same but the scenery and technology is all that has changed.

Bamian Provincial Hospital and Bandemeir Lake

Jules tells me I had better get to writing some stories to go with all these pictures so here we go....
I'm sure I've mentioned in other posts that beyond my regular duties I do what I can to be involved in medical development projects. Two weeks ago I went with a team to a remote area high in the mountains to visit hospitals and clinics. We taught -- this is the big difference from past projects -- we taught doctors, mid-wives, nurses, lab techs. We taught about delivering babies, taking care of infants, diagnosing malaria and hepatitis, treatment of skin diseases and all kinds of things. It was a fascinating week. We got a lot of great things done. We learned a lot -- already we've adjusted our plan and will have our first centralized teaching progams starting soon -- as opposed to us bouncing around on the roughest roads I've seen for 5-8 hours every day and travelling all over the staff will come to us in a central location. And we had a great time! This first picture is a picture of me standing at Bandemeir lake -- it's a lot like Havasupai actually. Crystal clear blue water that you can see down about 20 feet. Limestone walls and travertine pools -- the whole lake is actually a travertine pool. This place will someday be a great travel destination for tourists if sercurity persists. For now there were a couple of tents nearby providing meals....one was even labeled as a hotel! Lots of day visitors were enjoying the sights. We were just passing through and stopped to take a look.
Now, down below are all pictures taken in the largest hospital in the Bamian Province -- the provincial hospital of course. While it is crowded, the facility needs much improvement, the results produced are not what they can be -- this is a huge improvement over what existed here just a few short years ago. The first hosptial photo is the post-partum ward. Six beds and cramped. Mothers and babies in the beds together. The second hospital photo is the operation room -- actually that's the room in the far back where you can see the actual table. The third hospital photo I took of the labor and delivery stats hanging on the wall in the hallway. You'll note the high number of deaths with delivery every month -- this is something we can directly work on. And consider this -- deaths with birth at home are much higher. At least now there's a hospital that does deliveries and they even have a female OB/GYN. Deliveries at a hospital have a much better chance than at home here. The roughest stat in Afghanistan has to be the combined risk of death to the mother at delivery and the phenomenal birthrate of 6.8 children per woman here. This gives every woman a 33% chance of death over the course of their lifetime. There's lots of work to be done.

people at Waras Clinic

More Waras Clinic Pics

I know there are a lot of pictures here -- but pictures just don't capture the place. These pics below are just some great terrain shots. We drove over a lot of mountain passes and through valleys. Beautiful and rugged. The picture of three poeple walking up a trail -- that is of the hills behind the New Zealand Defense forces base. We call it the Kiwi-base. They call it PT hill. Most all of the run or walk up and down it every day for exercise. It's nearly a 1000 ft. over 1.25 miles. I was sucking wind just walking -- at the base it's 8000 ft. No running for me. The last pictures are of myself and Eric Garges our preventive med doc. One just in front of a sign outside a clinic and the other has a basic Afghan version of "Just say no to drugs!"

Teaching at the Waras Clinic

This was my favorite hospital to visit. The primary purpose of our trip was to train the doctors, nurses, midwives and other hospital staff. This is an area that is completely inaccessable for the entire Winter. It's at about 9000 ft. elevation so the snowfall is heavy, temps are sub-zero for weeks on end and when Spring arrives torrential runoff makes travel impossible. These staff are out there on their own. We had a neonatologist to teach about premature children, delivery emergencies, etc. We had a Navy corpsman to assist in training in the lab. We had a preventive medicine doctor to assist in diagnosing and prevention of infectious diseases and we had two family practice docs. Dr. Hayes taught about burn treatment and I taught about skin cancer/conditions and about EKG's. This first picture has the three docs with myelf, my interpreter and a New Zealand Soldier. We all just sat down on the floor and talked. I'm pretty sure this was their bedroom. At any rate, these three were pretty sharp and things went well. It was a pleasure getting to know them and they were easy to teach. The tough part was sorting out what to teach them so we just got to talking about patients, presentations, conditions, etc. and found our way. The second picture is the same group. The third picture was a shot of the waiting area outside one of the clinics -- it was just the cooler, shady side of the building and all the mothers and their babies were gathered there. After training we always had some humanitarian aid to hand out and provided medications and supplies to the hospital.