Survival tips for Afghanistan

I have a lovely room with a view of the snows in Kabul. This is my refuge, when I get home from work. The street in front of the house is mostly quiet.  I hear dogs barking, horses clip-clopping by and the odd hooting of cars. Sometimes, it seems like this place has more military helicopters flying overhead than cars driving past.

We’re not in the centre where the recent bombs and shooting took a heavy toll. I’ve got to admit I’ve spent more than a little time working out my escape routes if we are attacked. Getting busy with my work has kept me sane. We can’t let this kind of thing stop us from delivering aid to kids in this war-torn country.

I also try and go to a happy place in my head. Like the all-women’s meeting in our office, where we talked about our careers and our lives. All of us sat with our “chadors” on, eating a meal that one of us had cooked, trying to make sense of the changing world around us. Together, women can do anything! No one actually said that at the meeting, but I left with that feeling. It was so uplifting!

My other happy place is this house, and my housemates.  Plus, my non-housemates who sneak over to use our wireless system. We cook, chat, eat, drink, chat, watch movies, chat, workout, and well, chat! It’s fun 🙂 There are so many of us with different nationalities, backgrounds and skills, all getting different jobs done and all of us here to save the children in Afghanistan.

I heard today that a child under the age of five dies every two minutes in this country. That’s the highest child mortality rate in the world. And there are a slew of depressing indicators on top of that:

• Nearly 60% of children are malnourished and will not recover from the physical and mental damage done by not eating nutritious food early in life.
• In some rural areas, over 90% of girls are not able to go to school.
• Children have to work to support their families
• Life expectancy is just 44.

What survival tips can I help give these families? What is an Afghan child’s happy place?