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Afghanistan Tour Journal, April 2009
I went to Afghanistan on April 15th for three weeks. I thought long
and hard about whether I should go. Bach With Verse was in
trouble. My salary hadn't been paid for three months. We would
need to put the flight on the credit card and hope for the best. And
even more unsettling, WADAN would be unable to host me this
year and I would be on my own. On the other hand, this was my
mission. My Afghan board member Nassim contacted Amir at the
YAAR guesthouse and he said I could stay there again. Also,
Ahmad Sarmast, who is directing the program for the renewal of
music in Afghanistan, emailed and said the Ministry of Education
could help with vehicles. So I was off. Sarah emailed Amir and
Niazi from WADAN as well as Ahmad to see if one of them could
meet me at the airport. Luckily, there was a Pashtun man on the
flight from Delhi who recognized me from either WADAN or the
YAAR guesthouse, and he lent me his phone. Amir and Niazi were
both in Jalalabad, but Niazi called his friend, the policeman who
works at the airport, and Ahmad and Masun from the music school
arrived soon after and all was well.
and hard about whether I should go. Bach With Verse was in
trouble. My salary hadn't been paid for three months. We would
need to put the flight on the credit card and hope for the best. And
even more unsettling, WADAN would be unable to host me this
year and I would be on my own. On the other hand, this was my
mission. My Afghan board member Nassim contacted Amir at the
YAAR guesthouse and he said I could stay there again. Also,
Ahmad Sarmast, who is directing the program for the renewal of
music in Afghanistan, emailed and said the Ministry of Education
could help with vehicles. So I was off. Sarah emailed Amir and
Niazi from WADAN as well as Ahmad to see if one of them could
meet me at the airport. Luckily, there was a Pashtun man on the
flight from Delhi who recognized me from either WADAN or the
YAAR guesthouse, and he lent me his phone. Amir and Niazi were
both in Jalalabad, but Niazi called his friend, the policeman who
works at the airport, and Ahmad and Masun from the music school
arrived soon after and all was well.
We tied the bass on top of a taxi and arrived at the gate of the YAAR guesthouse. Zargul opened the gate and his joy was
overwhelming. The place was deserted and seemed a little like a ghost town compared to last year. There are no projects going on
and most of the staff is elsewhere waiting for something to develop. So for most of the next three weeks, I hung out mostly with
the maintenance staff and Hazratullah, the IT guy. They all helped to tune up the translations and pronunciation of my stories.
Everyone helped teach me Pashto. After a couple days to get over jet lag and a bout of food poisoning, I jumped in and started
playing. I returned to the two Afghans 4 Tomorrow girls schools, and they were all glad to see me again. “Why do you come here
every year to play for us?" “Because education and especially the education of girls is the best thing for the country and I want to
support that work.” I did six concerts at the YAAR school and I visited the National Institute for Music twice. The instruments we
sent via the American Embassy arrived the last week I was there and I got to see Eric Sterns' dads' clarinet and sax, my mother-in-
laws' clarinet and some violins donated by Barry Kolstein in the storage room. They will have been distributed to the kids by now. I
also got to hear many of the kids practicing. For the next two or three months, they will be outside in tents while the building is
being renovated. Ahmad got two million dollars from the World Bank for the renovation and for hiring of teachers from the exterior
as well as building a concert hall. The school was full of positive energy and things will happen very fast now. Ahmad has been
amazing. The British, German and Australian governments are donating instruments and music and having it all flown in on military
airplanes. It's all set to arrive as soon as the building is ready. Bach With Verse can be very proud that we were first in the
international community to support this school after the war.
overwhelming. The place was deserted and seemed a little like a ghost town compared to last year. There are no projects going on
and most of the staff is elsewhere waiting for something to develop. So for most of the next three weeks, I hung out mostly with
the maintenance staff and Hazratullah, the IT guy. They all helped to tune up the translations and pronunciation of my stories.
Everyone helped teach me Pashto. After a couple days to get over jet lag and a bout of food poisoning, I jumped in and started
playing. I returned to the two Afghans 4 Tomorrow girls schools, and they were all glad to see me again. “Why do you come here
every year to play for us?" “Because education and especially the education of girls is the best thing for the country and I want to
support that work.” I did six concerts at the YAAR school and I visited the National Institute for Music twice. The instruments we
sent via the American Embassy arrived the last week I was there and I got to see Eric Sterns' dads' clarinet and sax, my mother-in-
laws' clarinet and some violins donated by Barry Kolstein in the storage room. They will have been distributed to the kids by now. I
also got to hear many of the kids practicing. For the next two or three months, they will be outside in tents while the building is
being renovated. Ahmad got two million dollars from the World Bank for the renovation and for hiring of teachers from the exterior
as well as building a concert hall. The school was full of positive energy and things will happen very fast now. Ahmad has been
amazing. The British, German and Australian governments are donating instruments and music and having it all flown in on military
airplanes. It's all set to arrive as soon as the building is ready. Bach With Verse can be very proud that we were first in the
international community to support this school after the war.
On the first Friday (the Muslim Holiday), I had one of those crazy
surreal days that you get when traveling, but you wouldn't get if you
were sponsored by the American Embassy in a place like Afghanistan. It
made me glad I was on my own. Sherif, who works at YAAR and owns
a car, came by and I was sitting in the garden drinking green tea. “Want
to go out for lunch," he asked. “Sure.” For the rest of the day, I was
carted from place to place with various other people in the car, never
quite sure what we were doing or who we had visited until afterwards. I
was dressed as an Afghan and passed everywhere, unless I was
introduced by Sherif. Lunch turned out to be a funeral, which I
discovered only after we had left the Mosque. "First we pray then we
eat," said Sherif. I sat on the floor with the other men and copied their
hand motions. Afterwards Sherif laughed with his friends, “Ha ha,
Dobbs went to the mosque.” We greeted Sherifs’ friend whose cousin
had died in a car accident in Saudi Arabia. Then we entered the house
and were served a dinner of lamb and rice. As soon as our group was
finished, another group sat and ate. Sherif said they would probably feed
800 or 1000 people. Then we went to Babarzais' house and had another
lunch. This was an hour later. After this we went to a meeting of Hazari
people in support of Women in the National Procedar (as the banner
read), I was filmed listening intently to the speeches unable to
understand a word. Then we went to the Minister of Education's house
where he was celebrating the successful return of his father who had
been kidnapped by the Taliban. He'd been ransomed. There was a lot of
hilarity, after it was discovered that I was an American. Most of the
fathers' friends had long white beards and hair just like me. Then we
visited the father-in-law of the director of parliament who had me sing
for him. Then suddenly it was over and at around 8:00 in the evening,
Sherif dropped Hazratullah the IT guy, who had joined us at some point
a few blocks from the guesthouse, and I off and we walked home.
I also did my annual show for Shamshad TV. This year it was a children's
concert for a Pashto school. I played some Bach, told a story in Pashto and
sang a lullaby that I wrote at the guesthouse while I was missing my new
son Scotty. Zargul told me that his new son of two months died of
pneumonia last winter. I told him that I would dedicate the lullaby to his
son, Halal, as well as my son Scotty. He translated the words into Pashto
for me. I was feeling good about the song and was inspired to do more, so
I asked Babarzai, who is my contact at the TV station, for a poem to set.
He is one of the leading contemporary Pashto poets. He gave me a poem
called "Me and Life." Hazratullah transliterated it and the whole group helped
translate the words. The music came quickly and I performed it several
times. I played three times at the guesthouse. Always for my friends and
then also for any other guests that there were. On the last night, Amir
wanted to hear me play but had to leave unexpectedly on business to
Jalalabad so his assistant Nur Zamin recorded it on cell phone for him. Me
and Life with the woman's song from two years ago, and the lullaby make a
nice set of Pashto songs.
I spent a lot of time on the phone trying to arrange more concerts. Zargul
was my personal assistant. He would take messages for me and let me use
his phone and I would leave his number for people. I was also on email in
the office and at the last minute, happily I made contact with Van and
Janese of the Afghan American Friendship Foundation in Mazar-e-Sherif.
They sent a driver for me at 4:00 in the morning, who took me to Mazar-e-
Sherif, about a seven hour drive. Zargul, who is primarily the guard and
doorman, inspected the drivers' identification and called the police to check
him out. He was not going to let me get in the car of a kidnapper. And
because the police car was there anyway, they escorted us out of the city
to the road to Mazar-e-Sherif. It's a beautiful drive through spectacular
scenery and I arrived in time for lunch. After lunch, we headed out to a
girls school that AAFF had rebuilt. Ironically, it is used by boys in the
afternoon. The next day I was back and did three shows for girls and then
another two in the afternoon for boys at another school and the day after
we drove to a village school for girls that had been just reopened after the
restoration of the old building and the adding of three wings around a
courtyard. I did five shows there and then headed back to Kabul. Van and
Janese had been living and working in Turkey and came to Afghanistan
immediately after the war. Van said “I knew there were things I could do to
help, so we just left Turkey and came here.” They have drilled over 150
wells and built seven schools and worked on another fifteen or so and have
several more in the works. We spent our evenings telling stories of living
and working outside of the US. They've been in Kyrgyzstan and have spent
time in the other Stans as well as Turkey. I chimed in with tales from
Bolivia and my Middle East travels. They have a staff of twelve Afghans.
The governor of the province has said, “If I had a few small NGOs like
AAFF we wouldn't need all the big ones.” They are small and efficient.
They work hard and get a lot done. I enjoyed myself immensely and look
forward to seeing them again next year and getting into some more village
schools.
You have probably sensed already that Zargul is an intensely interesting
person. He is kind and extremely intelligent. We talked a lot and gradually I
heard his life story. He was born in 1984 in a little village in the mountains
east of Kabul on the old road to Jalalabad. At age one, his family fled the
fighting; Russians and Mujahedeen, and became refugees in Pakistan. He
lived there twenty years. He went to five years of school and he proudly
told me he was first in his class every year, but he had to leave school
when he was twelve because his father was killed in a tractor accident.
concert for a Pashto school. I played some Bach, told a story in Pashto and
sang a lullaby that I wrote at the guesthouse while I was missing my new
son Scotty. Zargul told me that his new son of two months died of
pneumonia last winter. I told him that I would dedicate the lullaby to his
son, Halal, as well as my son Scotty. He translated the words into Pashto
for me. I was feeling good about the song and was inspired to do more, so
I asked Babarzai, who is my contact at the TV station, for a poem to set.
He is one of the leading contemporary Pashto poets. He gave me a poem
called "Me and Life." Hazratullah transliterated it and the whole group helped
translate the words. The music came quickly and I performed it several
times. I played three times at the guesthouse. Always for my friends and
then also for any other guests that there were. On the last night, Amir
wanted to hear me play but had to leave unexpectedly on business to
Jalalabad so his assistant Nur Zamin recorded it on cell phone for him. Me
and Life with the woman's song from two years ago, and the lullaby make a
nice set of Pashto songs.
I spent a lot of time on the phone trying to arrange more concerts. Zargul
was my personal assistant. He would take messages for me and let me use
his phone and I would leave his number for people. I was also on email in
the office and at the last minute, happily I made contact with Van and
Janese of the Afghan American Friendship Foundation in Mazar-e-Sherif.
They sent a driver for me at 4:00 in the morning, who took me to Mazar-e-
Sherif, about a seven hour drive. Zargul, who is primarily the guard and
doorman, inspected the drivers' identification and called the police to check
him out. He was not going to let me get in the car of a kidnapper. And
because the police car was there anyway, they escorted us out of the city
to the road to Mazar-e-Sherif. It's a beautiful drive through spectacular
scenery and I arrived in time for lunch. After lunch, we headed out to a
girls school that AAFF had rebuilt. Ironically, it is used by boys in the
afternoon. The next day I was back and did three shows for girls and then
another two in the afternoon for boys at another school and the day after
we drove to a village school for girls that had been just reopened after the
restoration of the old building and the adding of three wings around a
courtyard. I did five shows there and then headed back to Kabul. Van and
Janese had been living and working in Turkey and came to Afghanistan
immediately after the war. Van said “I knew there were things I could do to
help, so we just left Turkey and came here.” They have drilled over 150
wells and built seven schools and worked on another fifteen or so and have
several more in the works. We spent our evenings telling stories of living
and working outside of the US. They've been in Kyrgyzstan and have spent
time in the other Stans as well as Turkey. I chimed in with tales from
Bolivia and my Middle East travels. They have a staff of twelve Afghans.
The governor of the province has said, “If I had a few small NGOs like
AAFF we wouldn't need all the big ones.” They are small and efficient.
They work hard and get a lot done. I enjoyed myself immensely and look
forward to seeing them again next year and getting into some more village
schools.
You have probably sensed already that Zargul is an intensely interesting
person. He is kind and extremely intelligent. We talked a lot and gradually I
heard his life story. He was born in 1984 in a little village in the mountains
east of Kabul on the old road to Jalalabad. At age one, his family fled the
fighting; Russians and Mujahedeen, and became refugees in Pakistan. He
lived there twenty years. He went to five years of school and he proudly
told me he was first in his class every year, but he had to leave school
when he was twelve because his father was killed in a tractor accident.
He sold chiclets on the street for a while until the owner of a
medical equipment store befriended him. The man gave him a
challenge. If you can learn the English alphabet (to be able to read
the packaging on the medicines), I will give you a job. He came
back in two weeks and could sound out anything in English. He
worked for seven years in that store and learned enough to give
injections as well as stitch wounds. In 2005, he returned to his
village with his family. Their house had been destroyed and all their
things stolen. He got a job as a guard in Kabul and gradually saved
enough to rebuild the house. He told me he went to some
pharmacies, but because he had no degree he couldn't find work.
He married his cousin and has two children, 2 cows and 17 sheep.
He works 24 hours a day at the guesthouse and doesn't get home
very often. I wanted to go with him to visit on his next day off,
but before that could happen, his aged grandmother died and he
went home for the traditional three days. It sounds like he has a
hard time, but he is a very positive person and very proud of his
culture and his life. He is always studying English. He has a
dictionary that he is never without. I left him a little portable CD
player and all my CDs.
When I go back next year, Zargul has promised to find me a driver
because with constant access to a car I could have doubled the
number of performances I did (I still managed 27). It may possibly
be his cousin who is the only one in his village who has a car.
medical equipment store befriended him. The man gave him a
challenge. If you can learn the English alphabet (to be able to read
the packaging on the medicines), I will give you a job. He came
back in two weeks and could sound out anything in English. He
worked for seven years in that store and learned enough to give
injections as well as stitch wounds. In 2005, he returned to his
village with his family. Their house had been destroyed and all their
things stolen. He got a job as a guard in Kabul and gradually saved
enough to rebuild the house. He told me he went to some
pharmacies, but because he had no degree he couldn't find work.
He married his cousin and has two children, 2 cows and 17 sheep.
He works 24 hours a day at the guesthouse and doesn't get home
very often. I wanted to go with him to visit on his next day off,
but before that could happen, his aged grandmother died and he
went home for the traditional three days. It sounds like he has a
hard time, but he is a very positive person and very proud of his
culture and his life. He is always studying English. He has a
dictionary that he is never without. I left him a little portable CD
player and all my CDs.
When I go back next year, Zargul has promised to find me a driver
because with constant access to a car I could have doubled the
number of performances I did (I still managed 27). It may possibly
be his cousin who is the only one in his village who has a car.
I know my decision to return was the right one. I increased my
contacts and my understanding. I am presenting an American face
to the people I meet that is very different from the ones they
normally see. But the heart of it is playing for children. As soon as I
looked out and saw their faces listening as I played Bach, I knew
that coming to Afghanistan was the right decision. -Dobbs
contacts and my understanding. I am presenting an American face
to the people I meet that is very different from the ones they
normally see. But the heart of it is playing for children. As soon as I
looked out and saw their faces listening as I played Bach, I knew
that coming to Afghanistan was the right decision. -Dobbs
