Christiane Amanpour, and her CNN team selected PARSA as one of the agencies to follow in Afghanistan for a documentary they are filming. Yasin and I traveled with them last week to our office/home in Chagcharran and they interviewed and filmed children in our programs as well as citizen’s of Chagcharran. Needless to say it was quite an experience for us to live and work for them for that short but very intense amount of time. First, they are all unpretentious, fascinated by their work, and they were a professional team that works flawlessly together. Christiane is even more authentic and engaged in person than in her work that we see on TV and I had admired her greatly before I met her. They lived with us under difficult circumstances, and always watched out that they were not a burden to us and praised the accommodations and meals even though both were very primitive. They have lived fascinating lives all over the world and it was an education for me to watch them as they interviewed Afghan people to develop their story, and to listen to them as they analyzed their experience to place it in the context of what we as an international community need to do to help Afghanistan. I am not going to say much more than that as I don’t want to ruin the documentary.
One evening, the crew was preparing to do a live shot back to the US and the power went out 7 minutes before they were going live. We pulled Yasin out of the shower and somehow figured out in 3 minutes flat to get electricity to the equipment that was transmitting and the lights. Everyone was calm and just did what it took to get the generator hooked up and Christiane in front of the camera. When the lights went up and Christiane spoke I watched Yasin watch her....out on our porch in Chagcharran, speaking to the rest of the world. He said to me”She got it. She understands. She is being our voice now.” And that is our highest compliment to Christiane, Andrew, Leon and Tod. Thank you all for coming such a long way from home to see for yourselves the situation here- and to give us a voice.
