Living here, there are things I consciously don’t consider. The plight of the roly-poly puppies playing on the street. Kittens play-fighting along the tops of compound walls. Children begging on street corners. Women.

Life here is difficult. The sort of difficult that pales when you try to put it into words. Once you’ve lived here for a while it becomes one of those “you had to be there” things. A series of experiences separating you from your life at home and bonding you to those experiencing it with you. To survive, you employ sarcasm or denial to deal with what you cannot address.

The good days are the ones that present an opportunity to make a difference – the chance to reach out, to connect. Today was a good day.

Today I met Parima. She is four-months-old, with chubby pink cheeks and dark searching eyes. Her mother died giving birth to her and her father remarried, keeping her two older brothers, leaving her. She’s lucky to have ended up with extended family in an orphanage. Here her 14-year-old aunt looks after her – doing things like fashioning a makeshift swing out of an old scarf.

The orphanage is privately run and provides a clean, safe place for widows and their children to live. The  long, two-story cement building houses three-room suites down either side of a long corridor. Bare electric bulbs hang mostly unused from sockets in the ceiling. The only access to electricity is city power which is weak and sporadic.

Each suite includes two rooms and a bathroom. They are sparsely furnished, but are carpeted. Toshaks (long cushions used for seating and sleeping) line the walls. Each room also has a propane tank and burner that not only provides a cooking surface, but also is the only heat source for the family.

The orphanage, though private, receives some government support through 2% of the customs tax on imports. Each family receives 7,000 AFN/mo. or about $155 USD for food and fuel to cook with.

What made this a good day is that it looks as though we will be able to provide support. The orphanage appears to be a prime candidate for skills building and training. Initial discussions indicate that the women are interested in learning marketable skills such as tailoring, weaving and embroidery. The program I’m working on is helping local business such as these expand to meet local demand for their products.

The orphanage also has plenty of land, so it might be possible to put in a green house and possibly start a kitchen garden and poultry project. More questions than answers at this point, but it looks good.

What started it all… a colleague invited me to visit the orphanage. She was checking it out to see if it would qualify for a grant from the Linda Norgrove Foundation. I had interviewed with Linda shortly before she was kidnapped. I am sad that we did not have a chance to be colleagues, and I am inspired by her legacy that quietly surrounds me.