Our Own People Have Destroyed Our Country
Aug 17th
Another beautiful day in Afghanistan! We started this morning with a trip to the palace ruins that was the residency of the former king 96 years ago.
The ruins of the palace were enormous. It’s a shame that years of war and unrest have caused it to be in it’s current state. There are walls that are missing, bullet holes all over the building, and areas that appear to be the result of a bomb
. We got out of the car and met with some of the soldiers who were guarding the ruins. Their interpreter, Zamir, spoke great English and a little boy, probably around 5 or 6, came out to greet us as well. Zamir told us the history of the building and then exclaimed, “Our own people have destroyed our country.” It’s sad to see a piece of history completely destroyed but what else can be expected from years of war from the Russians, the Taliban, the warlords, and the most recent conflict?
After the palace we headed to visit the model center, another AWEC school, as well as the famed Chicken Street. We begin by heading to one of the older AWEC schools. There are two classrooms and since the area is less conservative, the boys and girls share a classroom, unlike the school we saw the previous day. We met with Massouda the social worker of the school. She has been at the school for 8 years and she gave us a history of the school and some of the children that were there. There were 4 special needs children that we received information on. All of these children needed more care than the AWEC doctor could provide. One of the children needs surgery. 
The story we were told is that when he was a baby his mother had to make money by doing laundry. She use to leave the boy laying on his side while she did all the laundry. From laying on one side for so long, his neck developed wrong. He doesn’t have the ability to turn his head completely to the right, it almost appears as one of his tendons / muscles is to tight to allow it to turn. The surgery costs $800-$1000. It seems so cheap compared to how much surgeries cost in the US but here it is a fortune, one in which many family’s simply do not have. Another one of the girls that saw us had bleeding gums. The doctor said she needed vitamins which AWEC doesn’t provide and which her family could not afford. Danielle and I will be giving her some of the vitamins that we brought from donations that people sent in. Hopefully they help her.
After visiting with some of the special needs children we went outside for their recess. 
The children were all playing either outside or playing games inside. The dirt playground consisted of a slide and two swings. The girls were jumping rope and the boys were rough housing on the slide. It was nice to see the children socializing and playing together because they usually don’t get this interaction once they hit a certain age. We got a great picture with all the children and of Danielle jumping rope, or attempting to anyway!
After the center, Danielle and I walked down the famous Chicken Street. Chicken street is a street full of shops that most foreigners go to. It is way over priced but it’s fun to go for the experience. We had two girls that were begging for money that kept grabbing Mine and Danielle’s hands. You felt so bad for the girls that they were out there begging, they couldn’t have been older than 8 or 9. No matter how much we said Go or No they followed us relentlessly for our whole time.
Later that night we were meeting with one of Anna’s friends, Qaseem. He is working with a business partner to build fiberglass domes. He thinks it could be a great solution to the housing problems (people living in tents) or could be used for schools / clinics. The domes are easy to put up and take down and last over 15 years. We have plans to go and see his domes and it might be a viable option for setting up some of these remote clinics, especially when the cost is around $7,000 / dome. We could set up a dome in a few days, stock the dome with medical supplies, and ta-da you’ve got a mobile clinic! I can’t wait to hear more about them and see them in person.
The School Walls Protected Afghanistan’s Future From the Trash Laden Streets
Jul 22nd
Wednesday June 23, 2010
An early day for Danielle and I, as the call to prayer sounded over the loud speakers at 3:30 am. Followed shortly by the sun peeking in our window. It’s 4 am and I am wide awake and excited for the day. We have a packed day of events. We are headed out to see one of AWEC’s schools, register with the minister of interior as a foreign visitor, and meet the Hassina, the director of AWEC. At 9:00 we met our new driver Jamal. Jamal is 24 years old and speaks English very well. He loves American music and we drove around all day listening to his favorite artist Shakira along with other’s like Ricky Martin and T-Pain.
Michelle ready for the day
After registering with the Ministry of Interior, we drive across town to meet with the executive director of the Afghanistan Woman’s Education Center (AWEC). AWEC is an organization that Anna Hacker (the woman we are staying with) has worked with for many years and has been in the process of building their model center over the past 5 years. Hassina was an amazing woman. She spoke so passionately about the work that AWEC was doing as well as the hardships they are facing with funding. AWEC has some amazing programs that focus on the street working children and widows of Afghanistan and they also provide a doctor medicine to all the children that go to their centers.
One of the main reasons that we wanted to meet with AWEC is because they do work in the Paktika province (which is where I was stationed at) and have health education programs there. After some discussion about what we were hoping to accomplish in a health program, Hassina said that AWEC was willing to put together a proposal for a program that would focus on pre and post natal care for women and would have social workers that would to women’s houses to check up on them. I plan on meeting with a few more NGO’s over the next few days to decide which ones seem like the best fit for the AMP. AWEC has been in existence since 1991 and they are audited regularly so I know that their books are kept in order.
After our meeting with AWEC, we headed over to visit on of their centers.
As usual, the drive to the center was exciting. We weaved in and out of cars and I even got to see a woman driving! This is not very common as women just got the right to drive again after the fall of the Taliban.
The school is located on the other size of this trash filled lot
It still amazes me the vast contradictions you see when driving through Kabul. You see poverty, wealth, destruction, rebuilding, old, and new all on the same street. Not to mention the oddities such as KFC Mexican Pizza. As we got closer to the children’s center it was clear that we were entering into a very poor area. There was garbage that littered the road and small streams of waste water that tricked down the sides of the road. The flies were terrible and as we approached the center we drove over a massive trash pile in which children were playing. The smell of rotting trash and sewage stung my nose as we exited the car.
The center was a very small unassuming hole in the wall. We entered through a gate into a reception area. We were greeted by a male and a female social worker whose job it is to go out into the villages and recruit children for AWEC, check up on the children at their houses, and over look their medical care. We spoke to the male social worker for a while about the center and what exactly they were accomplishing there. AWEC takes in street working children and teaches them grades 1-4 in a matter of two years. Once they complete this training, they are transitioned to government schooling. Most of these children would not be allowed to go to government school as they are too old. If it wasn’t for AWEC taking them in, most would never get an education. The children come in shifts and while we were there, grade 1 was there. Grade 1 ranged in age from 8-16 year old and they were divided in boys and girls classrooms.
Ramatullah
We were introduced us to some of their special needs children. Many of these children need medicine and AWEC pays for the majority of it. One boy had polio and has to take medicine that costs 150 Afghani’s a month (roughly around $3.00). AWEC is running out of money to provide this medicine for him and may not be able to support his medical needs much longer. Another boy , Ramatullah, that we met was 16 and in the first grade. He was a little slow mentally and had epilepsy. To make matters worse he had shrapnel in his brain and in his leg from the war. The shrapnel had affected his ability to use the left side of his body. Ramatullah was the oldest out of 11 kids and was from a very poor family. The doctors told him that if he wanted surgery to remove it, he had to go to India. Although doubtful that surgery would benefit him in any way as the mental damage has already been done. His epilepsy medicine is 400Afs ($9 / month), and AWEC could not provide it for him in upcoming months. He typically suffered around two seizures a week. Danielle and I took a picture of the boy and will be posting it on the website if anyone would like to sponsor Ramatullah so that he receives his medicines monthly. We asked the social workers to identify any others that had special needs and we would see what we could do to help.
We were taken on a tour of the center and we got to go into the boys classrooms as well as the girls. There were about 40 boys sitting on the floor in the boys classroom. There was one light bulb in the ceiling that cast very little light. The boys were working on their penmanship when we arrived. All of them were very curious about the two American girls and we were told that the boys all work either as street vendors pushing food carts, selling calling cards, or other items. They come to the center after they spent all morning working.
Practicing writing in a dark room
The girls were on the other side and they were reciting passages from the Koran. There were also around 30 girls in the classroom and they were so adorable! The younger girls allowed us to take their pictures but the older girls covered up as they didn’t want their pictures taken. A storm was kicking up so our time was short lived on the girls side and we quickly said our goodbyes and made it back to the car before the downpour of rain started.
New and Old Clashed and Converged on the Streets of Kabul
Jul 9th
The plane ride into Afghanistan was long. We touched down in Afghanistan early in the morning. Before exiting the plane in Kabul we swapped out t-shirts for a more traditional tunic and head scarf. Kabul International Airport was a frenzy of activity. Two planes from Germany landed within 20 minutes of each other and it was so crowded as everyone was in a hurry to retrieve their luggage. After 40 minutes of waiting, we finally saw our luggage and grabbed it and tried to navigate our way through to the customs area. The custom’s area was a huge gaggle of people pushing their way into line. All luggage had to be put through an X-Ray machine before you could retrieve it on the other side. People were ramming their luggage carts into us as I’m trying to push my way up to the belt to send my luggage through. I finally get up there and stick my luggage on the belt and subsequently, 5 other bags are loaded on top of mine. How they were x-raying anything with 5 bags stacked on each other was beyond me but I pushed my way through the crowd to the other side, even had to jump over a few luggage carts to successfully retrieved my luggage. Finally, we were out of the airport after 2 hours!
We were staying with a friend of mine, Anna Hacker while in Afghanistan. Anna was once a school teacher in Afghanistan back in the 70’s. She has traveled all over the world teaching school from Laos, to Nigeria, to Venezuela. Anna has been traveling to Afghanistan for the past 5 years to build a school for the Afghanistan Women’s Education Center (AWEC). The center is to be a model center and Anna had fund raised around the word to raise the money to build it. She got the land donated by the Minster of Education in Afghanistan and oversaw the entire building process. The building is to open in a few months.
Once we found Anna, we loaded our bags into the vehicle and we started the trip to the house we would be staying in for the next two weeks. Driving in Afghanistan (or being a passenger in a car) is an experience in and of itself. There are two lanes on the highway but the separating line appears to be there more for decoration than serve any real purpose. It seems like all the drivers are in a contest to see who can out maneuver the other in a race to get to their destinations the fastest. On a two lane road the cars would be four abreast, inches from one another. And amongst the cars you would find people walking, bicycles and motorcycles filling any open space. Right hand turns seem to be made from the left most lane, cutting in front of 4 or 5 cars. It’s amazing how our driver managed his way through this traffic.
The scenery on the way to the house was a little hard to describe. When I was in Afghanistan with the military, I was only in the conservative rural areas. City life in Afghanistan was a mixture of progress, money, and poverty. New and old clashed and converged on the streets of Kabul. You would see blown up buildings, remnants from past wars, on one side of the road and on the other, a newly constructed mansion which was renting for $15,000 US Dollars a month. You would see women in Burka’s mixed with women in less conservative dress. It was very shocking to see women on the streets at all for me. For the months that I spent in Afghanistan, not once did I see a woman on the streets of the local town. It was all men. Women were freely walking the streets with no male escorts, carrying books as they headed to class. It was great to see that women were getting educated, as the majority of women here are illiterate and uneducated due to the Taliban’s reign which restricted women from going to school.
We arrive safely at our house and headed to bed to catch up on the hours of sleep we missed in the commute. Tomorrow will be a busy day for us and we need to hit the ground running to make the most of our time here in Afghanistan.
You’re Headed to Where?
Jul 2nd
It’s 7am in the morning. My eyes pop open and I’m swept with a wave of anxious energy. In a few hours I will begin a 48 hour journey back to Afghanistan. I haven’t been back since I left with the military last year and I a mixture of nerves about making the journey back. I’m excited, nervous, worried, and apprehensive all at the same time. Making the journey with me will be my sister who is meeting up with me in Frankfurt, Germany.
I get ready to head to the airport, kiss my mom and nana goodbye and off I go to begin a 18 hour plane flight and many hours of layovers. I arrive at the airport and go to check in and I get asked a question that I will be asked repeatedly for the next 48 hours….You’re headed where??? From the ticket counter gentleman. I explain that I’m headed to Afghanistan. The guy replies… oh you are in the military? A contractor? No, I reply, I’m headed there for work.
I’m headed to Afghanistan to meet with some Non-Governmental Organizations that need funding. I’ve tried to set up appointments with all of them, but get told that I should just wait until I’m here before they can decide to any date that is concrete. I’m worried that I will not be able to meet anyone while I’m here and it will be a wasted trip. When I started my non-profit a year ago, I knew I wanted to make a difference in Afghanistan, and I wanted to help women become midwives. This was a lot easier said than done. The past year has been about building contacts and getting frustrated that I can’t get anything done.
I make the first two legs of the trip with no real issues and meet up with my sister in Frankfurt, we get to enjoy an amazing day in Frankfurt and then head back to the airport to check in for our flight to Afghanistan. We arrive at the ticket counters to find a never ending line of people all headed to Afghanistan. We get in line and then it hits me….what am I doing? You see, up until that point when people asked me how I felt about going to Afghanistan, I really hadn’t thought about it. I knew that I wanted to go and experience as a civilian life in Afghanistan but I hadn’t really thought it all the way through. Standing in the line with all Afghan’s speaking either Pashto or Dari, I kept asking myself, what am I doing? I was dragging my sister to Afghanistan because I wanted to make a difference.
I suddenly felt very small and wondered what difference I really expected to make. Here I was, am American girl, headed into a country with no security, no real appointments set up, and was just kind of winging it as I went. I never felt nervous for myself, I was nervous that I was brining my sister along and potentially putting her in danger. I calmed myself down as I remembered the story of the guy walking along the beach who was picking up starfish who had washed up on the beach and throwing them back in the water. A gentlemen walked up to him and asked him, what difference do you hope to make, there are thousands of starfish and you can’t possible get to them all, the guy bent down, picked up a starfish and threw it back into the water, replying, I made a difference to that one. I know that I don’t have the expertise in setting up nonprofits, or even in midwifery, but I also knew that if I could impact just one woman, or send one woman through midwife training, or allow one woman to advance her career and give her the opportunity to pull herself out of poverty, well then I made a difference.
AMP Turns One and Is Afghanistan Bound!
May 13th
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
Woodrow Wilson
A letter from our President, Michelle Johnson:
First off, I want to thank everyone for the immense amount of support that we have received over the past year. It has been an amazing year and year number 2 for the AMP will be even better!
This past year has been a year of learning, growing, and being inspired. AMP went from being an idea I had of how we could help women in Afghanistan, to a team of 5 committed board members and countless volunteers who believe in AMP’s mission. I have been so touched by the amount of support we have received. I never thought when I started this that it would become what it has and I am excited to see where we can take this.
We started this nonprofit with the simple idea of existing so that in Afghanistan’s near future, every birth is safe, every woman has access to medical care, and every woman is treated with dignity and respect in times of medical need. Simple enough, right? Well, this year has presented the Board members of AMP with some very unique challenges. You never realize all the work that goes into something until you are doing it yourself. We’ve been able to accomplish a lot though. We are moving right along with our federal nonprofit status. We should get the determination letter within the next two months. We are also learning the complexities of working with non-profits in other countries. For me, I want everything done right now and I have to sometimes step back and remind myself that we are working with people on a different time schedule and time line!
In June, my sister Danielle and I will be traveling to Afghanistan for a few weeks. We will be meeting with some Non-Governmental Organizations that are working to help women in Afghanistan. These organizations are female run, and either provide midwife training or medical care to women. Most of these organizations work in some of the poorest provinces and are receiving little international aid. We will meet with the NGO’s, learn about the work that they are doing, and get a better understanding of their vision and mission. We will then be choosing the NGO’s that we will be partnering with. We will also be interviewing people to be our country director to ensure that our programs are running smoothly and be the point person for any non-profits that need assistance in Afghanistan.
Once again, thank you so much for your support over the past year. None of this would have been possible without it. Make sure you check the website frequently to get updates on the work that we are doing and pictures from our trip to Afghanistan.
Michelle Johnson, President
Upcoming Event!
Apr 7th
Come out to The Buzz Café for a wine tasting event to benefit a great cause!
When: April 25th @ 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Where: Buzz Cafe
905 S. Lombard Ave
Oak Park IL 60304
Please join Michelle Johnson, founder of the Afghanistan Midwifery Project, for an evening of awareness raising and delicious edibles at The Buzz Cafe.
On April 25th, Michelle will share her experiences as a soldier in Afghanistan, where she experienced life-changing events that encouraged her to start the Midwifery Project.
Ticket price is $35.00. This includes wine tasting and gourmet hors d’oeuvres. Tickets can be purchased in advance at Brown Paper Tickets.
All proceeds will go to support the Afghanistan Midwifery Project. Additional donations will be graciously accepted.
SGS Today – Norwich University
Mar 5th
Diplomacy graduate establishes a lifeline for Afghan women
Anna Hacker at one of the children’s centers run by the AWEC [Photo courtesy of Anna Hacker
by Amy Roach Partridge, correspondent
© March 5, 2010 Norwich University Office of Communications
Just before Christmas in 2008, Michelle Johnson experienced a life-changing moment.
While serving as a U.S. Army sergeant in southeastern Afghanistan, Johnson, a 2008 graduate of Norwich University’s Master of Arts in Diplomacy (MDY) program, helped save the life of a 13-year-old girl who was carrying a stillborn baby.
The Afghan teenager was brought to Johnson’s Army base in grave condition. She had been in labor for days and the local midwives were ill equipped to help her. While there was a male medic at the base, rural Afghan custom does not allow women to receive medical treatment from men. As a result, the Army medic walked Johnson–whose only medical training was basic first aid–and two other female soldiers through the necessary steps to extract the baby and save the mother’s life.
“I don’t know her name. I don’t know anything about her, but that girl changed my life,” said Johnson.
Sparked by this experience, Johnson began volunteering at the women’s clinic near her base in Paktika Province, working to bring in medical supplies and support. When her time in the Army was finished, Johnson knew this was her life’s calling.
Today, she runs the Afghanistan Midwifery Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization she founded to provide midwife training, health education classes and medical supplies for women in Afghanistan.
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— Michelle Johnson |
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“The girl that we saved–her case was not unusual,” said Johnson, explaining that many midwives in these rural areas are not well trained and the clinics have limited medical supplies. Some women cannot even get to a clinic and only have access to a village healer for treatment, she said. This is where her organization hopes to make a difference.
Johnson’s goal with the Afghanistan Midwifery Project is to “one day make Afghanistan a place where, even in remote villages, women have access to medical treatment and aren’t afraid to seek medical care due to social stigmas.”
To achieve that goal, Johnson has partnered with the Afghan Women’s Education Center (AWEC), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) run by women in Kabul that provides widows and orphans with vocational education and literacy training. AWEC is opening a new model center in Kabul in May, where Johnson’s group will run a midwife training center.
She hopes to bring women from all over Afghanistan to Kabul for training. Those women will return to their regions and train other women to become midwives. “This way, pregnant women in the rural areas will have a qualified medical professional to go to,” said Johnson.
Reaching such lofty goals in a traditional, male-led and war-torn society is no easy task. But Johnson has the perfect background to tackle these issues, said Anna Hacker, a fellow American who works with AWEC and has raised nearly all the funds for the Kabul center.
“Michelle’s training in the Army and in the Norwich diplomacy program gives her the structure she needs for her humanitarian efforts, while her on-the-ground experience in the field allowed her to see the need in Afghanistan firsthand,” said Hacker. “Plus, her youth and idealism are key.”
For Johnson, the Afghanistan Midwifery Project is a natural extension of her planned career path.
“I always wanted to serve my country in one way or another, and I figured after the military that I would work for some type of NGO or government agency,” she said. “I picked Norwich’s MDY program because I knew it would give me the education I needed to enter these fields. It was a great stepping stone.”
She has had to start small–Johnson retains her full-time job as an information security officer for The PrivateBank, and has tapped family and friends to help her get the Afghanistan Midwifery Project off the ground. Her sister Danielle, for example, is the project’s bookkeeper and webmaster; her best friend Amy functions as the fund-raising and volunteer guru. Getting help with these activities allows Johnson to focus on the big-picture initiatives like securing certified midwife trainers for the centers and enlisting the support of other NGOs to expand the program outside Kabul.
“It’s hectic and logistically challenging to work on the Afghan time schedule. I’m often making calls at 2 a.m. here in Chicago, but it is all worth it,” she said.
“I have seen what the Afghan women go through. If I can help them get a profession and they, in turn, can go back to their villages and help other women–that is the best feeling in the world.”
See Article Here – SGS Today
My Tears Mixed With Dust – Sharifa’s Story
Mar 4th
Sharifa, 23, lives in a remote village in Yamgan District of Badakhshan Province. When her pregnancy became an emergency, she was carried on a wooden ladder to the nearest clinic, where no one was able to help. She then endured the pain of an almost 200km journey to the nearest hospital – only to arrive too late to save her baby.
I had delivered my other three children at home and I was expecting to do the same for this one. But the pain was terrible this time and I saw that one of my baby’s hands was protruding from my body. I was in extreme pain.
There is no doctor or clinic in our village, so my family decided to take me to a clinic in Jurm [about 100km away].
As we have no roads or cars in our area, they decided to take me by donkey. But I couldn’t sit on the donkey because my baby’s hand was hanging out of me. So they bound me tightly onto a wooden ladder and some men carried me on their shoulders to the clinic.
But doctors there said I should be taken to Faizabad hospital [capital of Badakhshan Province, about 200km away].
My husband rented a car to drive us there. I don’t remember how long we traveled until we reached Faizabad, but I remember crying out in pain for hours all the way. My face was streaked with mud, because my tears mixed with the dust as we were driving.
I fainted before I was brought into hospital, and when I was brought round I was told my baby had died. It was a boy – a handsome boy – I was told.
Doctors told me that I’ll never get pregnant again. If we had roads, cars and clinics in our village, I would not have suffered that pain and my baby would not have died.
My Turn Day
Feb 10th
What if.
What if you woke up one morning, and you were flooded with messages from people you know…all talking about the same thing? On your cell phone, on your Facebook and Myspace, on Twitter and Linked-in, in your email and on your instant messenger, Virtually everywhere you turned, you saw a message about yet another American giving their time to a great cause.
Think of the statement that could make.
Today, February 10, It’s your turn to announce to the world exactly what you’re doing to serve your community. You blog it, text it, email it, twitter it, webcam it, maybe even write it on the back window of your car. Let the world know exactly what you’re DOING. Chances are, all those messages will inspire them to serve too.
For one single day, we can unite America in a single cause.
My Turn Day.
That being said for My Turn Day help us spread the word about Afghan Midwifery Project and our cause. Post a link to our site on Facebook, on Twitter, on your blog. The more people who know, the bigger impact we can make!
Leave Her to Her Fate – Nadia's story from Paktika Province
Jan 27th
Nadia’s Story (From Veil of Tears)
Paktika Province in southeastern Afghanistan does not have a single female doctor. This has huge implications for the 180,000 women living there, as conservative traditions prevent women from being seen by male doctors. Nadia, 28, is the only woman with an education in her village, 30km south of Paktika’s main town, Sharena.
I got married 11 years ago when I was in Peshawar, Pakistan. We lived there for more than a year after our marriage, but then my husband said we had to move to Paktika where we both came from, because of economic hardship.
After our return, I discovered how different our village was to where we had lived in Pakistan. I found we had no roads, no school, no clean drinking water and no health clinic. The women and children were all illiterate. For a fairly well educated woman like me it was very hard to adapt, but I had to. I realized that I would have no access to medical care if I got pregnant, so I asked my husband to wait before we started a family.
After a couple of years, I became pregnant and gave birth in the neighboring province of Ghazni, which is more than 200km away. In those days it used to take two days by car to get to Ghazni.
After the fall of the Taliban, I thought there would be some major changes, but unfortunately we didn’t see any changes in Paktika. The problems the women in this province face are huge. The lack of health facilities and education is stimulating the spread of preventable illnesses among women. There is no female medical doctor in the whole province and there are not enough midwives. In the provincial capital there are a few female nurses and midwives, but there are none in the districts and villages. I myself have seen many women die during or before childbirth.
My son is sick and I know he is malnourished and he will get worse if I don’t take him to hospital. We don’t have proper doctors or medicine to treat him here. Patients have to go to Ghazni hospital. We do not have female health workers, and our men will never take their wives to male doctors. So they leave their wives at home to either get well by themselves – or die.
For generations the attitude has been: “leave her to her fate.” I knowmany pregnancy-related conditions could be easily treated in a clinic, but men in the family just say “what will be, will be.” This means the woman will either die or recover alone.
Whenever I go to Kabul or Ghazni, I make a point of talking to doctors and midwives to ask some questions and get some information, so I can at least give some advice to women in the village.
I know how bad it is for the health of a pregnant woman to perform heavy tasks at home. For example, lack of drinking water means women have to carry water from natural springs very far from their houses. You can’t imagine how difficult it is for a pregnant woman to carry two jerry cans full of water over a long distance. I have seen many pregnant women doing that and I have also seen them having a miscarriage because of it.
Ultimately it’s a combination of three things that are killing the innocent women of my province: lack of female doctors and midwives, ignorance, and conservative beliefs of men who will not take their wives to hospital or to a male doctor.
The answer is for the government to send us female health workers. I am sure men won’t have any reason to say no if we have a female doctor. I know the security situation is not as good in my province as it is in Bamyan or in the northern provinces, but this doesn’t mean that we
should be denied access to good health care.
I have heard there are midwifery schools in other provinces and that the government offers good salaries to midwives from Kabul to go and work in the rural areas.
But most girls are uneducated in this province, and also the men never allow them to go out without a male family member. That means we cannot send them to midwifery schools in other provinces or in Kabul.
I want the government and the international community to focus on volatile provinces like Paktika, too. Security is being disrupted by others, but it’s we civilians who pay the price.
I’ve been to Kabul many times with my husband and I’ve asked government officials to send doctors to our place, but they always say nobody is willing to work in an insecure province.
The news of women dying in pregnancy, childbirth and after delivery is so common here. I fear one day most of my beloved relatives and other women in the village will all have died! We really need an answer to this.
Stories like these really reaffirm what we are trying to accomplish. Training women to become midwifes can make a huge impact on these rural communities where no clinics exist. Most of the complications that are causing maternal mortality are very treatable. A little education can go a long way in improving the outlook for these women. Please donate today
