From an outsider's perspective-By Cheryl Campbell

Cheryl Campbell is a physiotherapist from New Zealand who has been volunteering and living at PARSA...in her own words-

"I have been in Kabul with PARSA for some 6 weeks, and still cannot get enough of the place. It is just so fascinating.
The people I work with, for “fierce, implacable, ruthless, savage, brutal” Afghanis as they're commonly described in the texts, are unerringly nice.
They each have a compelling story.
They tell me things like that they cannot marry the person they love because their family is unaccepting of their choice.
That they met the person they were arranged to marry at their own engagement party when, some hours into the celebration they had to sit down next to their betrothed and 'meet' them by looking at them in a mirror.
About their growing up as one of twelve children in this, one of the poorest countries in the world. 
About their having multiple wives and the burden / responsibility that that entails.
About the trials in getting a bride’s family to accept the price you have offered in marrying her – not so low that you offend their honour.
One day a group of women discussed with me the current dilemma of one of themselves. The woman has talked twice more by telephone now to a man she met briefly at a public exhibition. She is wondering if she should "marry with him". Her family are liberal and educated, so she gets to choose (or at least help choose) who she might want to marry. 
I suggested she go for tea and cake with the guy first, before rushing headlong in. I said I'd be her companion. (Helpfully I don't speak Dari, so they could have a whole lot of private conversation). They all gasped and said no! that just wouldn't do. They have their values, you know. so there is no question of her fraternising with him as boyfriend/girlfriend. It is all or nothing... fiance or marriage-prospect reject.
It can seem a pretty desolate place when you get into the detail. Remarkably though, the spirit of the people beams out of each of them. They're unfailingly courteous and cheerful.

In the beginning days of my stay, I went to a grand event for the promotion of women’s rights at which President Karzai spoke. Amongst other horrors he told how a 4 month old baby was recently sold to a 70 year old man as a wife, and how he has stepped in to try to prevent this type of thing which is reasonably prevalent in the remote, poorest areas.
The officials had seized on me as a horoji (foreigner) and had me sit with the ambassadors and ministers of the cabinet. I was wearing a coat made from a blanket that some aid organisation had given to PARSA and that the sewing women had thought could be satisfactorily re-constructed into an actual garment. I had thought that quite hilarious of them. I didn't know that I would be on telly with all the UN and government officials or I may not have chosen to look quite so bohemian. 
The security was staggering. I went with 3 afghani women from here. we had to pass by four checkpoints where we got sniffed by bomb-sniffing dogs, frisked by women, our bags searched by soldiers. There were snipers on the rooftops all around us and helicopters hovering above.
Luckily, I didn't look too progressive or threatening in my blanket-coat and they let me in. 

Here in the compound the predominant noises are muezzin (call to prayer), occasional helicopter rangers overhead and the police academy at target practice in the next door compound. 

The broken people of the insane asylum are variously pacing patches of earth or gently rocking back and forth under a tree, for it is a fair-weather day in Kabul.
The dirty children play in the dirt, and the one-legged men lean on their crutches and look forlornly on.
Five or six tents of kuchi people (nomads) and all their animals are living for the spring season on the hills behind the compound, and shepherd their flocks of sheep and goats daily out to grazing grounds on the city's fringes. or rubbish dumps.




I spent a week in Bamiyan province a week or so back. PARSA headed out there to work towards opening a new school in the region. We hiked way up to a remote village in the mountains from the 4WD track-end. It snowed. we squatted on earthern floors of mud houses in negotiations with headmen, and potential teachers. Eventually the headmen agreed to our starting schools in their two (neighbouring) villages. Though in one village the girls won't attend because of a lack of a female teacher...


The Bamiyan army soldiers whom I met and sat down with for some earl grey tea and solid homeland reminiscences, said that someone was mutilated by a mine just last week in one of the old tourist sites (the city of sighs, which is so-named because Genghis Khan and his marauding hordes made a vengence attack on the city back in history with the objective of killing every living thing there, sparing none). It is a fortress town built on a hillock - all ruins now and very melancholy.

We hiked up to a different impressive fort city built onto a cliffside promontory down the valley a little. I found a human skeleton. There were mine warnings all around it too (rocks painted red), and we came upon mine-esque bits of wire and bits of shiny metal at one particular point so had to skirt a long way around to get safely up to the site.

On the 10 hour trip back to Kabul, on an unpaved surface that shouldn't really qualify as a 'road' it's so rutty and scored, we passed huge long convoys of de-mining vehicles. the de-miners were out on the hillsides next to the road de-mining at various points. (It's never prudent to stray too far from the road verge on a toilet stop).
I hope the de-miners get to those tourist sites before tourists come back in numbers...

A few weeks ago I travelled up north to Mazar-i-Sharif. I went as a guest with an afghani organisation in kabul whom I had visited when first I arrived in the country. They work to provide orthotics and prosthetics, and I had been keen to learn what resources the country has to deal with the amputee patients. They were opening up a new health clinic in Mazar.
At the opening ceremony I was sat right in the front with the most pivotal people to the project. The speeches went on for 4 hours, in Dari which I do not understand. I was desperately trying to fend off somnolence because the TV cameras were insistently panning onto me, thinking I was someone of status. How awful it would have looked if I was looking bored or fell dribblingly to sleep. I had to try to be alert to pick out the Dari of when the speakers welcomed me specifically as 'honoured, esteemed guest' so I could nod and smile for the camera. It was a kind of torture.

Toothbrushes were this week handed out to the kids at the hopelessly grey and awful government-run orphanage for older boys. The plumbing is not working, so the boys defecate outside. The smell in the dormitory is gag-inducing. They need the electrical system overhauled. (they have no electricity). There are no pictures on the walls and no carpet in the corridors. The classrooms are filthy and barren. But the boys are lovely. They want to learn and learn. 
 
From time to time I sit in on the afternoon lesson for the mentally ill (the afghanis cheerfully call them "the crazy people classes"). Currently the focus is washing oneself with soap. There is a fair bit of repetition in these classes I note, and the students remain thoroughly unwashed, so I imagine they'll be persisted with for some time yet.
They have started on their gardening project. Yesterday they weeded and started planting out the volleyball court in carrots...

I was invited to go to an afghani family's home for dinner the other night. It was a looong saga of going to the aunt's for snacks and tea, then to another relative's for more snacks and tea, then finally - the climax - a big feast of kabuli pilau (rice cooked with carrot, raisins and meat) and meat and leek-filled bread with about 15-20 family members all eating together down on the floor.
First though, before the feasting, Hamid's wife, bless her misguided heart, sat me down in front of the whole extended family and painted me in the most garish and god-awful make-up. complete with glitter applied by the fistful. I felt for the rest of the night like a cheap clown. It was so nice of her, but terribly humiliating for me also.
 

Earlier in the week, a group of International security force soldiers wanted to see around one of the orphanages we have some involvement in, and Mohsin and I were assigned to take them. We had to meet them in their compound first (at 0800 hours and after succumbing to a thorough frisking each) for a full briefing - to map out the exact route we would take getting there and back, to learn the radio password, get the alerts on nearest hospital and know precisely what to do in the event of an attack on our convoy, what to be vigilant for in case of suspicious tailing vehicles etc.
 
The commander then barked "action's on!" (I'm not telling lies) and the soldiers turned to a bench to briskly load their humungous machine guns and stash loads of ammo into their vest pouches, then leapt into their protected vehicles each with body armour and ballistic glasses and helmet on. Meanwhile I climbed unremarkably into our tinky little van with Mohsin and our driver, and put my scarf over my head (the limits to my own personal maximum protection plan). And as a focussed unit we burst enthusiastically out of the compound to charge through Kabul in convoy, me spectacularly obvious as the best target choice by anyone keen to diss us.

I rather prefer travelling out of convoy, thank you just fine.
After-all, that is what I love most about working with PARSA - the unglamourised engagedness of the experience. I feel like I have had a chance to see some parts of afghanistan from an un-veneered perspective (as compared to what must be the case when one has a security cordon in situ). It can't be the real thing just yet, as restrictions on foreigners still prevail because of the safety threats that remain, but this is as close to afghan living as foreigners might realistically get at the moment.
Thank you Marnie and PARSA for that."