Life in Afghanistan.

Think you have it bad?

   Imagine looking out of your window and seeing a blimp hovering about 80 feet in the air all day every day equipped with military grade cameras with very high resolution, night vision capabilities, a laser that can aquire your distance with a click of a button and even fire missiles at you if you are caught committing a serious enough crime.

  What if all you ever had to look forward to was growing up to work someone elses fields and all you received out of the deal was a hut to live in and a few animals to live off of.

  No shoes, tattered clothing, no television, no smart phone, no formal education system, no sanitation system, no internet, no healthcare and a highly unreliable government.  

Let me make it clear that there are big cities over there that have many of the luxuries that we have here in America, but Afghanistan is mostly made up of small villages under these very conditions.

  When I left for afghanistan I had no idea what awaited me.  I had that mindset that everyone living in that country were terrorist or at least supported terrorism in the U.S.-boy was I wrong.
There are families that work fields owned by the Taliban but they are forced to.  Their lives are on the line.   The lives of there children.   Taliban come by at night and collect the crop.  Our military has spent years training their police force and national army on tactics and weapons handling but just as any where else there are corrupt cops who don't uphold the law and extort these people even further.   They are constantly living in fear.
  As a medic,  I'll never forget the day we were patrolling through a village and met with the village elder in hopes to receive information on who was doing what and when.  He was the oldest and the village was named after him.  We went in and had chai (hot tea) and began our meeting.  The tea isn't bad,  the only problem was we were drinking hot tea in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the summer.

 Anyway, as sort of a peace offering I would initiate a little medical clinic.  There were always lots of complaints of headaches, back pain, leg pain.  Its funny because I would treat everything with Motrin.  Then the interpreter ask if I had anything for the elder.  I said "Of course, what's wrong?" He told me that he couldn't feel his legs and asked if I would be able to give him some pills to bring the feeling back.  I ask how long has this been like this and he told me for about a year.   After doing a quick assessment which was pretty much just touching and squeezing different places to see if he could feel them. ...Nothing.  He had been paralyzed for the last year and spent 90% of his day, everyday,  sitting in that very spot.

After explaining to him what his condition was and that there was nothing I could do for him he told me well thank you any way and asked for something for his headache.  I felt so bad I gave him a whole container of Motrin.

     I'll never forget that day or that village.  So when you feel like complaining about something minor or you think you have it bad, remember that there are people with it much worse.

100%percent true story.  Signing off.

-Jot Lyfe