5 Lessons from Remote Afghan Villages That Can Change Your Perspective
I spent the last two months travelling with my husband through eastern Afghanistan, immersed in remote and isolated villages. The most recent leg of our journey took us to the province of Badakhshan in Northeast Afghanistan. We spent two weeks in the Wakhan Corridor, often referred to as “the roof of the world,” an expansive alpine plateau nestled 3000 meters above sea level (approximately 14,000 feet for American readers). The off-road drive to these locations, the sensation of being truly distanced from the rest of the world, and the hazardous adventures that unfolded along the way, is a story in itself. However, this post goes beyond that; it holds valuable takeaway lessons that I’m eager to share.
The list of lessons I’ve gleaned from my time in Afghanistan is comprehensive. But, I’ve distilled it into five pivotal points that are deeply relevant to my recent experiences and perhaps to yours as well. For fourteen days, I had the privilege of engaging with the lives of Shughni, Wakhi, and Kyrgyz women — sharing meals, dances, laughter, and stories, and simply observing their ways. Here’s how this encounter transformed me, and potentially you too:
Jobs and careers are not an identity, they’re our contribution to society.
Afghans have a thing, where your professional title essentially becomes your name. “Doctor” or “Engineer” are the most common. You don’t really need to be a doctor or engineer, you just need to be in the field somehow, and the name is bestowed. And the West is similar in this regard; our professions become our identity, and it invades our personality. Take a look at the cringe-fest that is Linkedin, it reveals all. We present ourselves to the world based on what we are paid to do, what we have our degrees and expertise in and not who we are. We have become our jobs. Our careers are our pride, the amount of our salary dictates our social status and our productivity is a measure of our intelligence. This is wrong.
Jobs ought to be taken as a task to create a more survivable world for our families present and future. And why should tasks determine our identity? Women in Wakhan and in further up Little Pamir, are dairy farmers. They milk cows and yaks and make cheese, butter and other milky goodnesses. But dairy farming doesn’t become a part of how they identify themselves. They introduce themselves with their name alone, and many don’t even do that. In fact, it’s not until they’re deep in conversation do they reveal details about who they are. And it’s their aspirations, beliefs, strengths and their role in the community that defines who they are. They don’t absorb “Dairy Farmer” into their persona or any of the soft or hard skills associated with milking yaks. Their character, personality and identity are private and left to be discovered through intimate conversations and interactions, not stamped upon by their job.
Digital activism is not far-reaching, at all.
I hate to say it, but I have to say it: digital activism, or sharing cute infographics to our little social network, is a past-time and it’s seldom that its efforts are enacted in real life. Unless we’re already influential in real life, influencing in the digital world is a sport of popularity. Sharing our political beliefs has become a way for us to connect with people, and behaviorally speaking, it paves the way for us to receive praise (likes). It’s become so rare for digital activism to make an impact, that it’s now being called “slacktivism”. Movements born online are hot for a minute, and then they dwindle, like a splendid show of fireworks. And, being involved with politics online is a cheap luxury. It reveals that there is ample time to consume the products of political games and that we really don’t have the issue of survival of the fittest.
People in remote places are personally unaffected by digital activism, or our opinions and knowledge of the political landscape. Regarding Afghanistan, most of the country is rural and disconnected from the World Wide Web. And it’s remote people in Afghanistan that are living the most hardened and isolated lives. Their lives go on whether there’s a Mullah in power or a President. An old Badakhshi woman said to me after I asked her what the best era in Afghanistan was: “They’re all the same. Neither a King nor a Mullah has built us roads”. We’re all too concerned with what’s happening in the cities, not realizing there’s a pot spilling of neglect in the village.
Sure, digital activism can give the feeling that we’re at least doing something to “raise awareness”, and it’s “educated” and “connected” a few of us, but it keeps us trapped in a bubble. A bubble that pops before it joins another to create a bigger one. A better use of time and energy is to impact our community, to connect in person with children especially, without being loud about it on social media. It’s far better to spark one young mind than to have our words land on one thousand overstimulated and fickle ears.
Embrace the unpredictable.
If it’s anything Afghanistan has taught me, it’s that we can aim the arrow at a target but we cannot control the gust of wind. Driving in off-road and remote Afghanistan exemplified exactly that. We had the plan of getting to our destination, but something happened along the way that delayed or changed our plans. And it wasn’t necessarily bad stuff (although we did get stuck in a rushing river and had our very own Titanic moment with a sinking 4x4 truck… but that’s for another time), it was good stuff that was unpredictable. We’d come across a village and without intending would get invited to a home that was filled with stories and hospitality. And that would leave a lasting impression on us, it added exquisite flavor to our plates.
Planning is good, but it is unpredictability where life happens. It’s in the uncontrollable where we are free, where we don’t constrain ourselves to what we think is best, but what fate (God) decides what’s best. The more we plan, and the more we stick to the plan, the more anxious we become. The more sure we become of ourselves, and anytime we’re sure of ourselves, our egos inflate. An inflated ego dulls our human experience, it closes us off to the infinite world of unpredictability. So, we can plan, but it’s good to keep in mind that the plan just might be the cause of anxiousness and a desire for control, both, of which strips us from being fully alive, present and an open receptacle to the wonder of our world.
Humble yourself and become a social chameleon.
The phrase “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” took on a profound meaning during my time in Afghanistan.
The best compliment I’ve received from women in every village we went to is “You don’t act like you’re better than us, even though you were raised in America, and you’re educated”. Because I adapted to the women I was around, and completely turned off the American part of me, women and girls opened up to me like we were lifelong friends. It’s humility and adaptability that allowed me a full spectrum experience of Afghanistan, and it was because of this that I have stories to last a lifetime.
Humility and adaptability are the best accessories in all social dynamics because it allows us to immerse in the experience, and we come out drenched in wisdom and joy. Being proud and rigid in our ways and inflexible is only a disservice to ourselves because it limits growth. By adopting a new and temporary lifestyle that’s alien to us, we enrich our lives because we develop skills on how to survive mentally when faced with discomfort.
No one likes a pompous know-it-all. Someone so conceited that their way of life is correct that they undermine everyone else’s. Someone who speaks more than they listen. Someone with a hero or savior complex and certainly not someone who returns to their homeland and doesn’t stay quiet about how life is better where they’re from. This is unfortunately what folks have told me in Afghanistan. That their visiting family members show off and dismiss them for being stuck in ways of the past. And it is this rhetoric that divides us and creates a slit in the fabric of humanity. Unity is our strongest asset in a crumbling world, and true unity is achieved by humility.
Keep your family close.
Family is everything. Sounds cliche but this is the way of village folk and it’s one of their biggest strengths. We are so removed from our cousins, aunts and uncles in the west and I now believe that is a reason for why we’re stressed with all that we have to do. We don’t have anyone to delegate our daily cumbersome tasks to, there are few to trust and if we need help around the house or with raising our kids, that’s something we need to hire a stranger to do. There are some exceptions noted, but what I’m talking about, is can our cousin or aunt or uncle walk into our home and know where everything is. Can they host guests on our behalf? Do we feel comfortable for them to do our laundry? If we need a day off, can we rely on them without feeling guilty? Can we give them a task without being overly grateful and feeling like we’re indebted? I don’t believe so. There’s always a feeling or thought that “I should be able to do this myself, I don’t need to bother them.”
I couldn’t tell whether the women I was sitting with were sisters, cousins, sisters-in-law, aunts and nieces, second cousins and so forth. They were all simply, family and they slept in the same room, shared clothes, house chores, child-rearing, and took turns with manual labor. And if there was a friend or a neighbor, they were the secondary family.
Having a tight-knit family makes life easier, eases our daily nuanced stressors and creates an environment for our children to have multiple adults to look up to and trust. We don’t depend on our secondary families enough and they are removed from our lives. Its cost is that we feel lonely and alone, burdened and stressed and our children grow up learning that depending on family is a weakness, a thought that is destructive and far from the truth.
By far the biggest lesson unlisted here is to simplify life and expectations too. We’re living in troubled times, where war, billionaires, displays of wealth, self-assuredness and accolades are defended and praised. In a world that’s increasingly becoming more dystopian and out of the pages of a science-fiction novel.
To survive in this turmoiled world we need to take a hard look at how we’re contributing to our community; whether sharing our political beliefs really makes a difference in the world or are we sharing our knowledge for likes and attention. Whether we’re hungry for control over our lives or liberated enough to let unpredictability take its course. And of course, we need to ask ourselves if we’re humble to learn from others unlike us, and if we’re truly present in the lives of our families.
