Chakhcharan is a province north-east of Herat. I was tasked to do a 4 days hygiene and sanitation promotion training for trainers as a capacity building project for the Chakhcharan Department of Women’s Affairs. Chakhcharan is supposed to be a city but due to it’s remoteness it is neglected by the central government and ignored by most NGO’s. This city feels like a small town in the middle of nowhere. One thing it does have is electricity from 7:30 pm to 11 pm.
On day one, me and my colleagues visited the bazaar in search for bottled drinking water. Within seconds our presence have attracted a crowd of bearded and turbaned men and boys. They unabashedly crowded around us, stared and watched our every move. If this happened in Herat I would have freaked out but out here and confident that Fazl Ahmad was with us, I was relaxed and used the situation as an opportunity to take pictures. The camera with a picture viewer is a great charismatic instrument. Men were pushing and smiling to have their pictures taken. One moment they were giggling and smiling asking us to take their photo, the next moment their faces are devoid of expression. As soon as you raise the camera their expressions turns flat! Check out Afghan Portrait Album.
From day two to day five, Bibi (our women’s project manager) and I worked with 12 women on the hygiene and sanitation promotion module that I developed. Spending four days with these women was a great experience for me not only as a trainer but as a woman myself. As I watch them interact and discuss, whatever concepts I had that made me think I was separate and different from them dissolved. I felt one with them. Despite our different culture and perceived reality, their sharing in our activities revealed that we have the same hopes and fears, we hurt from the same pain, we love our husbands and family the same way, we laugh at the same jokes and we hug each other with the same warmth and generosity.
I am currently putting together a hygiene and sanitation promotion strategy for men so on the last day of my week in Chakhcharan we went out one afternoon so I can take pictures to put into it. I took pictures of unkept wells, unprotected springs, a stream slash public toilet and a river. Like the first day, I again generated so much attention. At one point I was in a ditch taking pictures of a stream with rubbish and feces around it. I requested Fazl Ahmad to ask one of the 50 boys (they were just coming out from school) to pretend to be drinking from this stream so I can take a picture of it. I know I was attracting so much curiosity and attention (what’s a foreigner doing in a ditch anyway?!) but I didn’t realize that I stopped motorcycles, trucks, cars and bicycles. So much so that Bibi said it blocked the road! She was wondering whether I had fallen down because of all the attention directed towards the ditch. She said it was unfortunate that she didn’t have her camera because it would have been one hilarious photo to show Paul!
It was a fun and productive week. Not bad for a neglected and ignored city in the middle of nowhere. In closing, did you notice the I love Jesus scarf? I was shocked when I saw it displayed in one of the stores in Chagcharan. I wonder what the store owner is thinking? I wonder if anybody who can read english has ever pointed it out to him. Better yet, I wonder if any afghan woman would buy that scarf!
