About

Jalal­abad, Afghanistan.

The round­about of civilizations.

First there were the Medes, then the Achaemenid Empire. After that, his­to­ry’s tides have washed in Gre­co-Bac­tri­ans, Kushans, Indo-Sas­sanids, Kab­ul Shahi, Saf­farids, Samanids, Ghaz­navids, Ghurids, Kar­tids, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis, and Durranis…

…and late­ly, British, Rus­sians, and Americans.

Peretz Parten­sky

In the 80s I was a lit­tle boy grow­ing up in the Sovi­et Union and everyone’s old­er broth­er was either going or busy­ing them­selves about how to get out of going to Afghanistan. Mil­i­tary ser­vice was manda­to­ry. If you didn’t study hard and get into uni­ver­si­ty, the gov­ern­ment had an alter­na­tive edu­ca­tion in mind for you.

 

“Study hard so you will go to university,” the teach­ers warned us, “so you will not die in Afghanistan.”

 

Iron­i­cal­ly there aren’t any more rungs of uni­ver­si­ty left for me, so per­haps it’s time to stop avoid­ing the inevitable.

Louisa Buki­et

Will write some­thing about herself.

Hameed has appeared and been cred­it­ed for a pho­to in the NYT!
 

I am Hameed Tasal, a senior year stu­dent at Nan­garhar Uni­ver­si­ty, Afghanisatn. I am study­ing Eng­lish lan­guage. I will be get­ting my bach­e­lor’s degree in June 2011. I have been moon­light­ing as a gen­er­al devel­op­ment work­er in Afghanistan for 3 years. When I was a lit­tle kid, I was pick­ing up trash from the streets and then we’d use that for cook­ing food at home. One day, I found this mag­a­zine next to a dump­ster. It was late after­noon and I was so tired. I sat on a step in front of a house with my bag of trash slung over my shoul­der and start­ed leaf­ing through the mag­a­zine. I saw a pic­ture with stu­dents going to uni­ver­si­ty (I kept the mag­a­zine with me and I was able to read it after sev­er­al years) with their beau­ti­ful attires. I said to myself, one day I am going to go to one of those schools and get the best edu­ca­tion there is, and then I will be able to help my fam­i­ly and oth­ers like us. I like work­ing in gen­er­al devel­op­ment. I like to trav­el and go on adven­tures and meet new peo­ple from dif­fer­ent cul­tures and back­grounds. I feel accom­plished when I can be of help to those who need our help. Ever since I was a child, I have dreamed of get­ting an advanced edu­ca­tion abroad. After I get my degree from Nan­garhar Uni­ver­si­ty, I would like to go for master’s in inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment in the US. After advanced stud­ies in the U.S., I would like to return to Afghanistan and work togeth­er with NGOs and IGOs to help make it a pros­per­ous and peace­ful country.

 

Check out Hameed’s Flickr Pho­tos.