Hello From Afghanistan

I asked Brent to send me an email describing what it is he's doing there because frankly, I wasn't all that clear about it myself. I had a vague idea but not enough to be able to give an intelligible answer to everyone else. So this is the email and I hope, if anything, it gives you a better picture of how to pray for the men serving there.

Thanks for the pictures of bear. I sure miss her. Please send more or put on the blog. She changes so fast! It is weird, I know that she and Sage warm your heart when they do something funny or profound but it makes me sad. I don't really think about what I am missing until I see it and I get sad. There is my little daughter learning to stand. There she is with a smile. Or a story of Sage being shy. Oh Sage, you are our kid. I love the pictures and quotes but I sure wish I could be home.
I know you asked to write about what it is that my job is. Well, I am still learning it but it seems like a combination of things: there are 3 medical providers on our team--a PA, another doc, and me--along with 4 medics. We are in charge of our team of folks on this provincial reconstruction team. So, we provide medical care for around 90 or so people. Not that big of a deal as most are healthy and it is just seeing them now and then. So, that is the easy thing and what we all know how to do it well. Now it comes to the confusing stuff.
We are one "PRT" team charged with trying to help the government show itself to the people. Tough to do when there isn't much of a government. So our engineers try to help the Afghans build their roads or bridges, the civil affairs guys reach out to the community, and the medical folks try to help as well. The group before us were awesome and definitely on the right track. In my humble opinion modern medicine does not help large populations or societies, sure it helps individuals now and then with a heart procedure or something but changing a society's health it doesn't. Simple things do: sanitation, water, immunizations, food, etc. Well, that is what the team before me focused on. They found a way to purify water that is simple to do and cheap. They took a recipe that is helping many malnourished Africans and adapted it to Afghanistan. Instead of using peanuts (none are available here) they use almonds. With some almonds, milk, oil, sugar, etc. they can make high calorie food that helps the kiddo's. Cool. They got approval to have the national government start a midwife program here in Zabul. They also found a way to bring portable clinics to rural areas where their doctors were practicing out of a mud building. So, you ask what we are doing? Basically, it is our charge to keep these programs going. To bring clean water, food, and clinics to other villages. I like this. It is the right direction. There is no point with western medicine here and frankly it does not work and is nonsense to help an individual here or there when hundreds are dying of diarrhea or malnourishment. Does that make sense?
This county is weird. The villages/towns are made of mud. There is no electricity (or little), no running water, no way to heat your mud home except burning wood, and no economy. Yet, next to all this ancient world are a couple old cars, trucks, motorcycles, bikes, pop, and various modern things from Pakistan. Dirty but cute kids line the dirt streets and wave (some throw rocks) as we roll through in our $700,000 armored vehicles. The average Afghan makes $250 per year. The average Afghan lives to 43. The girls you know are growing up to be slaves. The people seem friendly, but yet I don't trust any of them. You pull up to the "hospital" and it is a mess and falling apart. The bathroom is used for storage, the paint is peeling, the walls are sinking, and the entire thing is corrupt. I am sure there are Taliban there and I don't plan on going there much at all. What a weird world.
Do I have much hope for this place? No. It does not come down to medicine, engineers, or reconstruction. It is money. It is the economy. This society does not have an economy that can sustain anything. There are no businesses. There is no employment. There are no roads to get things to market. There is no coastline to ship goods for money. How are these people going to sustain anything by themselves? How after the aid goes dry do they generate anything? How do they get things from the world when they have no money to give and no skills to offer? It just seems that it would be decades before this place gets out of this hole. Maybe I am wrong. Hopefully we will contribute a little good and help some out. It will be an interesting year, but one that I will be thankful is over.