Talking with Freedom Fighters
by Chris Verrill

“Father, please go to Pakistan,” Anwar said his young daughter told him while living in Afghanistan. “Please don’t stay here. We will die here.”

      Thus, as I was passing through Afghanistan on my way from my home in the United States to do volunteer work in Pakistan, Anwar and Bahram began to tell me their individual stories. At first Anwar said I could use his name. I always try and ask. Moreover, when someone makes significant and possibly life threatening statements I reconfirm his granted permission. Upon confirmation however, realizing some of what he’d said, Anwar changed his mind and told me I couldn’t write about anything we discussed. After some convincing, he said I could write so long as I didn’t use his name; and thus Anwar is not his real name.

      “Is dangerous for me” if you use my name Anwar said. “I am fearing now from these” people in the current government. He made it clear he feared for his life and also for his job. The mere fact that he has a job makes him better off than many Afghanis. Bahram, also not his real name, who I spoke with separately, made it clear from the beginning I couldn’t use his name. For the same reasons.

      Now, I’m a smart boy, I realize that having a name behind these stories makes them more powerful. It certainly gives them more credibility. But the mere fact that these two men (or they could be women, but I’ll refer to them in the male sense) were concerned for their livelihoods and their safety speaks volumes about the current unstable and tumultuous political climate in Afghanistan.

      “This is very sensitive,” Bahram said. While he was concerned for his life, he was more concerned with harm coming to his business. The ratio of life fears to business fears was about 30:70 he said. Bahram is a well educated well traveled Afghan with excellent insight into his country’s current situation. I’ll come back to his comments. But first Anwar.

      Anwar, while an educated professional, repeatedly professed, “I have no politics.” But he is intelligent and has lived in Afghanistan through the hell of the last generation. Although “existed” or “survived” would be better verbs. His daughter, he said, was basically right.

      “Here was no school, no education. They [his family] should go to Peshawar. There was no choice,” he said. Life in Afghanistan was just too hellish. In addition to the lack of school, there were no telephones and no electricity either.

      In defiance of the Taliban, Anwar shaved every day. But this had severe consequences. “Five times they caught me and want to take me to prison.” Anwar said he was able to talk his way out of it each time, and despite the threats, continued to be defiant. When the Taliban were here, he said, “In this country is dark time.”

      I mentioned to him that some people I’d spoken to in the Middle East opposed US intervention in Afghanistan. They argued that the Afghan people should have liberated themselves. Taken care of their own problems as it were. Anwar completely disagreed.

      “Yeah, that’s impossible” to oust the Taliban without outside help, he said. “We need help from foreign country.”

      “If America didn’t come here we were in darkness. Life was not good. There was no power to push the Taliban back from this country,” he said. “The Taliban was too powerful.”

      How did the Taliban come to power, I asked? More importantly how did they stay in power? The Taliban stayed in control, Anwar answered, because outside countries supported the Taliban and the terrorist elements in Afghanistan. “The religious people in Egypt and Saudi Arabia they have a dark mind,” he said. That speaks volumes.

      Despite the horrors of the Taliban regime, the current US supported government of President Karzai is also very bad. Hence Anwar’s insistence on anonymity. “Our current government is not so good.”

      “My opinion is good US is here,” he said by way of giving his overall assessment of the situation.

      “I think this is going to be better,” he said. “Now we are free.”

      As heartfelt as Anwar is, Bahram is thoughtful, logical and well reasoned. Moreover, he has a very worldly perspective—a worldly perspective that is certainly the exception to the rule in developing countries.

      “The problem of 9/11 was created by the Americans themselves,” said Bahram. We have no one but ourselves to blame, he argues. Referring to the tragedy of September 11 he said, “what happened in the United States was an American mistake.”

      That may seem harsh, but his reasoning is sound.

      “Throughout our resistance to the Soviets, America supported us. We appreciate that,” he said. As a former Mujahedeen freedom fighter, he should know.

      “After the Soviets left Afghanistan it was mistake of American administration that they decided to abandon Afghanistan.” Thus allowing Osama bin Laden and his cohorts in crime to breed unchecked. “When the Berlin Wall is collapsed, when former USSR is collapsed, they [America] forgot Afghanistan.”

      Bahram doesn’t fault America for supporting Osama, and for that matter even Saddam Hussein or the Shah of Iran, when we did. He’s quite visionary and sees the big picture. After all, he said, “this was a cold war era.” But he hastens to add, America’s “policy of abandonment” after the cold war ignored and by default permitted “what was happening in this country.”

      “There was a total blood bath and they didn’t care,” he said. “Kabul became Beirut.”

      During the cold war, the enemy of thy enemy was thy friend. Thus Bahram recognizes that Afghanistan—along with Vietnam, Iraq, huge portions of the Middle East, Central America, Eastern Europe and many other parts of the world—were pawns in a worldwide struggle of good versus evil. Indeed, even as a citizen of one of those kicked around pawns, he’s glad that America won the cold war against Stalin. Even if that meant supporting rotten, vicious, third world dictators in the process.

      But the cold war is over now. The world has changed. But not everyone recognizes that. Not quite yet anyway. The USSR is gone, Bahram says, but the USA has left all the lesser enemies in place. It’s time to clean house. It’s time to reconsider, he says, that at this point in history, “the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.” Indeed, Bahram says, “he could be my enemy, too.”

      That complaint made, Bahram now has a better-late-than-never attitude regarding the US intervention in Afghanistan after September 11.

      (At some point during our conversation, another person came within earshot of us. Bahram deftly changed the subject to something innocuous. I don’t think we started talking about the weather, but whatever topic Bahram redirected us to, it was equally uncontroversial. As this nearby person didn’t go away, and Bahram and I moving might have caused suspicion, we weren’t able to continue this conversation until much later.)

      “Taliban were try to take Afghanistan back to the stone age,” Bahram said. They imposed “inhumane restrictions on the personal activities.”

      “In the last days of the Taliban the situation was intolerable,” he said. “Without American forces nobody could remove those nitwits.” Clearly Bahram’s English was more colorful than Anwar’s.

      The Taliban was very clever at perverting the name of Islam to their cause, he said. “It was a very good pretext for them that they were defending Islam.” The fact that he recognizes this pretext demonstrates that he has much more insight than the average person.

      “This is the freeing force of the Afghan people from tyrannies,” he said in support of the US military’s liberation of Afghanistan post September 11.

      “What they did in Iraq, what they did in Afghanistan, was a good thing.” The military action was welcome. As a Phase One the military action was a success. But there was no follow up. No Phase Two. America risks repeating the mistake it made when the Soviets were ousted. America “did not realize the ground realities in this country.”

      “There are thousands and thousands of private armies” roaming the Afghan countryside. These renegade militias are controlled by individual warlords. They create so much fear and insecurity that he, and Anwar, fear for their lives. Fear enough that they won’t allow their names to be used. For all their evils, Bahram said, the Taliban at least provided security. Indeed, they were accepted because they provided security. The current government is comprised of former thugs and criminals who still make life intolerable in Afghanistan.

      My Afghanistan traveling companion Diana would say, transitions are hard and “democracy is a messy business.” She’s right. But Bahram would argue, and Anwar would probably agree, the transition could have, and should have, been done better. Getting rid of the “nitwits,” as Bahram called the Taliban, isn’t enough.

      So, if he’s pleased Afghanistan is liberated, but frustrated that there was no follow-up, no Phase Two, what would Bahram suggest? He suggests the creation of a government that is free of criminal elements. But he doesn’t stop with that pat answer. He goes so far as to agree that, even if that government is a non-Afghani government, so long as it is internationally sanctioned and provides real security, that’s a positive Phase Two. This more effective transitional leadership would govern, with the full moral authority of the United Nations, for four to eight years which would allow enough time for a gradual transition to democracy. Establishing the current transitional government was done too quickly and without enough authority from the UN. The result is that Afghanistan has thugs and criminals running the government.

      “That’s it. People need security first. People need peace first,” Bahram said. As part of the international government, he strongly and repeatedly suggested that the first real step is the landing of a police force. A police force that, at first, would not be Afghani. It would be blue helmets. Or American. Or European. Any composition is okay to begin with so long as the people have security.

      If people have security he argues—and I think he’s right—then free enterprise takes off and helps the economy far more than aid ever could. Not that the aid isn’t useful. It is. It’s tremendously useful. But giving entrepreneurs, both in and out of Afghanistan, the confidence that their budding enterprises will be protected by the full weight of the international community would give them the necessary confidence to launch all sorts of large and small business.

      Not only would a secure environment boost the economy, but it would stabilize the political environment as well. Newspapers would publish, neighbors would talk, some might even talk to first time book writers on the record. Campaigns for elected office could be run with everyone participating. Starting small at the local level and then ending at the national level as the transitional UN government completed its mission.

      Unlike some people I’ve spoken to on my journey, I most definitely did not get the impression that Anwar or Bahram were telling me what I wanted to hear. Despite their fears, they were speaking from their hearts.

      “Security and peace is the first priority. Then food,” Bahram said. “Then other assistance.” That’s insightful. The security, Bahram argues, and I agree, will beget the other necessities of life. Security gives people confidence—and hope—to help themselves.

Chris Verrill is the author of the international travel biography Is For Good Men To Do Nothing, now available for order at your local bookstore or online at Amazon and over 200 other online booksellers.  He can be reached at chrisverrill@yahoo.com.

Bethlehem Prison
by Chris Verrill

This morning at some absurd hour I heard someone ringing the front desk bell trying to get the attendant’s attention. They were loud enough and forceful enough to wake me up. I’m one floor up and on the opposite side of the hotel which is located in the Old City of Jerusalem. It’s a small hotel and the sound carries easily through the atrium, but still, whoever was making this racket wasn’t going to go away. I groggily rolled over to check my portable alarm clock. It was 5:40 am.

Two or three minutes later I got a knock on my door. A forceful no nonsense knock.

You know, that should have scared me. But for some reason it didn’t. Perhaps I just didn’t have the good sense to be scared. Perhaps I was still half asleep.

“Security. They need to talk to you,” came the voice from the hall.

I responded. I don’t know what I said, but some verbalization to let them know I was awake. I was coming. They shouldn’t break down the door. I scrambled to get dressed and, much more calmly than I should have been, opened my hotel room door.

As soon as I opened the door a clean shaven, muscular man dressed in plainclothes walked in like he owned the place. A second similar looking man stood guarding the doorway with my Palestinian hotel manager standing behind him. The manager, who was only half awake himself, looked a mixture of fear and annoyance.

The man standing in the doorway clearly blocked my exit. Not like I was thinking of leaving. But had I wanted to, that option was not available to me. The man standing in my hotel room identified himself as Israeli security police and asked to see my ID. I handed the soldier my passport. I don’t know for sure if he was a soldier or not, but I was getting that impression. He asked where I was from. I told him. He thumbed through my passport. He thumbed through it again. Not finding the Israeli visa, he got a little agitated. He asked where that was. My Israeli visa is stamped on a separate piece of paper tucked into the back of my passport. I showed it to him. Because I’m going to Pakistan later, I don’t want an Israeli visa in my passport—because the Pakistanis won’t let me in if they find evidence that I’ve been to Israel. Israel accommodated this by giving me a visa on a separate piece of paper.

While he looked it over, the hotel manager standing outside in the hall shrugged and gave me a look as if to apologize or perhaps say, “This is life.” Upon seeing my Israeli visa, the soldiers promptly left. They then knocked on the door of the next room.

Wow. I guess the tumult of the Middle East has visited me up close.

I closed my door and went back to sleep.

When I woke up, I made my way to Bethlehem. This simple journey was not so simple and provided more opportunities for interaction with Israeli security. The day trip was wonderful, but nowhere near easy.

First the good part. The Church of the Nativity was a very special place indeed. Although I am not a very religious person, I am a deeply spiritual person. This church was out of the ordinary. The inside was grand yet simple. I don’t know if that makes sense. But it was so simple in its elegance, it was grand in its impact. Moreover, I got to go down into the caves and tunnels where Jesus was born. I stood at the exact site of his birth and then walked eight feet over and sat in the little alcove where he was laid in the manger. That’s a once in a lifetime treat. I must say, that church was probably the best touristy thing I’ve done in Israel.

While here I bought Christmas tree ornaments for my family. They’re very simple carved wood ornaments; very kitschy. But they’re made in Bethlehem, and that’s where I purchased them, so that makes them special. I mailed them from the Bethlehem post office. I’m told that given security concerns it will take three to five months for them to arrive. Well, at least they’ll be there in time for Christmas. Hopefully.

The downside of Bethlehem is the getting there. Bethlehem is in Occupied Palestine. I had to take a service taxi to the border. A service taxi is a group taxi where everyone shares the fare. A good idea—if you can get one. Normally service taxis are easy to find. Or you can take a tour. But with tourism so depressed, tours aren’t running and service taxis are only running often enough to serve residents—which isn’t very often. So, I took the service taxi to the border of Occupied Palestine.

Incidentally, Occupied Palestine should more accurately be called Occupied Palestines. With and S. Plural. There are about seven cities blocked off. These cities are not connected to each other. There isn’t one area called Palestine. At least not any more. There used to be. But Israel has continued to build cities (the Jewish settlements) in between the Palestinian cities. The nice roads connect the new Israeli communities and the Palestinians are kept prisoners in their own cities. Palestinians can’t simply move from one city to another or to Israel. They can only do so after completing extensive, unreasonable and sometimes impossible paperwork. It occurs to me before WWII, the Germans did this to the Jews. Herded them all into their own designated “areas” and told them to live there. Forced them to keep paperwork and identification with them at all times. It was wrong then. It’s wrong now.

So anyway, I take a service taxi from Jerusalem, but I can only take it as far as the checkpoint station at the border. Most cars aren’t allowed through; unless you have certain paperwork, which a very special taxi might have, but most do not. From there, I walk through barricades and into Bethlehem in Occupied Palestine. On that side, I catch another service taxi and take that to downtown Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity on Manger Square.

In the taxi, much to my good fortune, I met a French seminary student who was doing volunteer work in Bethlehem. He showed me around the church and kept the land sharks at bay. He and I and an out-of-work tour guide acquaintance of his talked politics for a while. He’s out of work because tourism is gone. Instead of 5,000 tourists a day, now there are 50; one percent of what there used to be. I saw lots of closed shops attesting to this. Given the hassles of getting here, can you blame the tourists for staying away? The unemployed tour guide hoped for peace, but with all the Israeli settlements being built in Palestine, he no longer thought a solution of two independent nations was possible. He said a solution needed to emphasize human rights treating everyone equally and that it was wrong to confine people to this four square mile prison—one known to the rest of the world as the birthplace of Jesus.

I caught a taxi back to the border checkpoint. There was no service taxi in this direction because there weren’t any tourists and not enough locals to generate one. It dropped me off at the border and I was told to wait until they came to get me. I asked how long it would take and was told a few minutes. I asked how much and they said five sheqalims, which was correct.

During this “holding time” I was a sitting target for the land sharks and had one of them practically begging for me to buy anything for any amount so he could feed his family. I refused. I made a donation to a local NGO the other day, so I think I’m doing my part to help. Another taxi driver offered to take me to a different checkpoint so I could “cross faster” and it would only cost me 100 sheqalims—twenty times the correct fare. I again inquired of the manager how long it would take before I could cross and was told a few minutes.

At this point, I noticed three college age women just walking towards the checkpoint—and I realized I’d been had. There was no need to wait. This guy was no “manager.” These land sharks kept me in the “waiting area” just to con me.

I got out of there. I started walking after the college women. While heading towards the checkpoint, and towards Israeli security with guns, the land sharks dropped off one by one. Eventually only one member of my land shark entourage remained.

“These people bad people,” the last land shark said in a very hushed tone, referring to the other land sharks. Then he proceeded to plead for a “donation.” I kept walking. By the time the Israeli guards came into view, he had disappeared, too.

I had to show my passport to the military guard to get out of occupied Bethlehem and into Israel. Or more accurately, into the Israeli dominated non-prison part of Occupied Palestine. There were no taxis at all on the other side, but the college women helped me out, and together we found one to take us to Jerusalem.

You know, I completely defend the idea of a viable Palestinian state. But when these folks abuse tourists, they do little to help their own cause. While I felt safe in Bethlehem, I was frustrated and angry at the con artist attitude. That said, the economy of this place wouldn’t be gone (tourism down 99 percent is tragic) if Israel would learn how to make peace. Both heads of this beast are to blame.

Although I am beginning to really think the greater part of this problem is Israel’s. Seventy-five percent the blame is Israeli and 25 percent is Palestinian. Yes, the violent Intifada of Hamas and Islamic Jihad is horrible and morally wrong (and politically counterproductive). The Israelis have real security concerns and, as an American, I am going to do everything I can to defend and safeguard the Israeli people and defend the democratic state of Israel.

That said however, Israel has gone overboard. Keeping Palestinians prisoners in small cities, without a reasonable way of getting between them, is wrong. Building a wall that divides Palestine into small unviable pieces is wrong. It doesn’t help the Israeli cause. It hurts it. By treating the Palestinians like prisoners, they’re only making matters worse. They’re shooting themselves in the foot.

And all of this stupid violence takes place at Jesus’ front door.

After an adventurous afternoon and a frightening morning I finally got back to my hotel, complete with an apologetic manager. As I lay down to go to sleep, the fact that the security police had knocked on my door at 5:40 am this morning started to get to me. I’d been okay all day. Perhaps I was distracted by different security concerns. But when I got back to my room, my mind started racing.

After I arrived in Jerusalem, a colleague put me in touch with some locals who I have met with. These people are involved in the Israel/Palestine issues and have provided me with a good on the ground education. My colleague has also asked me to go to Jenin in the West Bank and evaluate potential kindergarten schools to be rebuilt by a local NGO with funding from a UK foundation. I responded that I would and contacted the person she suggested as a guide.

In addition to my trek through Bethlehem prison and my 5:40 am knock, my prospective guide offered some insight that frightened me just a little bit more. Frightened is an over statement. Let’s just say she elevated my concern.

“I don’t know if you can even get into the town where the schools are, not easy these days,” the prospective guide responded. “The whole trip will probably take hours as you change from one van to the other and have to stop for numerous checkpoints. Pro-Palestinian individuals are stopped, questioned, can be jailed and deported, as you probably know. Be careful. My e-mail is censored.”

Not only did I get that email, but upon mentioning my early morning wake-up call, another acquaintance advised me to “keep a low profile.” The result of all this is, I am slightly nervous.

One thing I have decided to do, which is why I am at this internet café at 10 pm, is to make sure this story and my entire manuscript are preserved online instead of on the disc I carry with me. So, I’m here doing a little housekeeping. Given the way the border inspectors go through my belongings, I am surprised they didn’t read it then.

Chris Verrill is the author of the international travel biography Is For Good Men To Do Nothing, now available for order at your local bookstore or online at Amazon and over 200 other online booksellers.  He can be reached at chrisverrill@yahoo.com.

Men In Red
by Chris Verrill

Upon leaving home in the United States, bound for my volunteer mission in the Afghan refugee camps in the frontier province of Pakistan, I took a pleasure-filled detour through the national parks of Tanzania.

Chris Verrill is the author of the international travel biography Is For Good Men To Do Nothing, now available for order at your local bookstore or online at Amazon and over 200 other online booksellers.  He can be reached at chrisverrill@yahoo.com.

Panhandler Lottery
by Chris Verrill

Upon leaving home in the United States, bound for my volunteer mission in the Afghan refugee camps in the frontier province of Pakistan, my high school friend Linda snuck me a bon voyage card. I’d say she gave it to me, but in truth she sort of squirreled it into my possession as I was saying goodbye. Like many people in my life, in the card she wished me well in my travels. Here’s kicker, which others didn’t do. She enclosed $58. A fifty dollar bill and eight singles. What was I supposed to do with $58?

Linda wrote I should use the cash for two purposes. One, I should order a really good meal and think of her when I did. Thanks. I appreciate that.

Two, and more importantly, I should “ease someone’s suffering.”

Linda, aware of the immense poverty in the developing countries I’ll be traveling in wanted to do something, anything, to help. By proxy through me, she strove to do her part to make the world a better place. I tell you, here’s someone do gooder humanitarians can be proud of.

In addition to the fifty dollar bill, Linda said, “I am also enclosing all of the $1’s I have for you to give to any woman or child you find having to beg for survival.” This is anathema to my way of thinking. Anathema to my modus operandi for supporting those in need.

Although many people give street beggars their spare change, a nickel or a dime or so, I long ago resolved to generously support non-profit organizations, but not to encourage or be subjected to panhandling. There are more intelligent means of supporting those in need than handing out a few cents or a few schillings to someone who holds out a quivering hand. If everyone in the world supported non-profits and followed my lead, no one would have the need to beg on the streets. But that’s my soapbox.

In deference to Linda’s request however, I made a decision. I would make an exception to my rule and honor my friend’s intentions. What was I getting myself into?

I started leisurely walking down the main drag in downtown Nairobi, Kenya; one of my stopovers on my way to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This late afternoon, like many afternoons before it, I strolled along the streets of Nairobi. Today specifically, I walked four crowded blocks from my hotel to another hotel with an ex-pat bar and a band playing The Tennessee Waltz. I knew what was coming. I just knew it. I prepared for it in a way that would surely surprise someone.

I continued to stroll.

Linda’s bon voyage card tucked into my book du jour, I headed out. Knowing full well, as a Caucasian and presumably affluent face, what this meant for Kenya’s poverty stricken. Safe and probably not too secure in my book, the card stuck out an inch or two or three beyond the pages. I wasn’t paying attention to the card, let alone the cash it enclosed.

Stroll, saunter. The sidewalk is crowded. People bustling about. Buildings rising six or seven floors above the thronging masses.

The average Kenyan earns $200 per year. As per my lifelong friend’s instructions, I clutched three months wages in my hand. I say “lifelong friend” for, while I know others better, Linda and her brother and I go all the way back to high school. Maui High School, which Linda and I graduated from in 1982, has a, shall we say, less than stellar academic record.

I weave in and out of the other pedestrians.

My stepfather graduated from Maui High School, too. Surprisingly, given the time lapse, we had the same biology teacher. That biology teacher was quite surprised, no shocked would be a better word, that my stepfather who was a delinquent in high school, could have a geeky intellectual stepson like me. Mr. Biology Teacher referred to all his students as Mr. Insert-First-Name-Here.

Saunter.

He must have rubbed off on me. I don’t know how much biology I learned, but to this day I have an affectation of referring to people as Mr. Bob or Ms. Jane. But back then, I was Mr. Chris, and I am confident Linda was Ms. Linda.

Maui High School, with a college attendance rate lower than a blade of grass, must have produced a few good nuts. I mean Linda, not me. My sister is now the intelligent one in my family. Let me establish that. OK? Got it?

Walk and weave some more. Scan the oncoming crowd.       

But the academic rigor, a word which many Maui High students would have to look up, leaves a lot to be desired. I say this knowing that my baby sister transferred out of Maui High. Oh yes, some of it was her own doing, that rotten bugger, but some of it is attributed to the environment of the school. I say this knowing that a friend of mine, who I spent lots of time with in high school but have barely spoken to since, is now, bless him, a teacher at Maui High School. Knowing him, I bet he’s a very popular and respected teacher.

But high school is, I’m sure he and other educators would argue, what the student makes of it. Fair enough. But there are many kids on the margin. Those kids get left behind in a program that doesn’t have the resources to help them. I won’t jump on the education soapbox now, but suffice it to say, I think a quarter of the kids will flourish even in a bad environment. Another quarter of the kids will fail even in a good environment. The remaining half, like my baby sister, are up for grabs. That’s where a solid education system makes a difference. My statistics—quarter/quarter/half—may or may not be accurate, but the principle is very accurate.

And for all you legislators out there, remember it. Investing in education, as Thomas Jefferson would say, is the best investment any community can ever make.

You know it. I know it.

Glance at the faces of children living on the street.

All right, I said I wouldn’t get on my soap box and did. But I minimized it. Believe me, I could have gone on and on about he importance of education in a free and democratic society.

So, where was I? Ah yes, sauntering down the main drag of Nairobi, Kenya, Africa. Clasped in my grubby paws a well-intentioned greeting card. Enclosed in the card is $58, US greenbacks, three month’s wages for the average Kenyan. Perhaps more than the average beggar on the street collects in an entire year.

Saunter.

Stroll.

Saunter some more. That rip in my jeans has gotten bigger.

It’s bound to happen.

It happens all time. Today won’t be any exception.

Stroll along, with purpose, card carrying book swaying in my hand.

Sure enough the inevitable happened. A little girl, perhaps about six, big pleading eyes, scraggly hair, dirty torn clothes, desperate demeanor, clutched my hand. Not letting go of my hand, seizing it like a line to a better life, followed me. Like a con artist who had either mastered her craft or child in genuine need, she clasped my hand, weaving with me in and out of hundreds of other pedestrians, yet not releasing her grip on me; unrelenting with her pleading. In Swahili I presume, I don’t know. I didn’t understand her spoken language. Her physical language however was universal.

Walk, walk.

Pleading for about 20 paces. Thirty paces. I don’t really know. Forty.

“Please mister,” she pleaded in English. She wanted a schilling. Half a schilling. Anything. More hand to mouth motions as if to say, “Is food such a bad thing to ask for?”

I don’t want to break my own no-panhandling code. I don’t want encourage this child that panhandling is a worthwhile option.

Keep walking. Eyes straight ahead as usual. Almost.

Except this time, instead of eyes straight ahead, I look. At her. At her pleading face. More importantly, I look around.

Ah, that’s what I’m looking for.

My stomach knots to see it. But as I suspected there it is. A little boy. Clearly her younger brother. A not-so-old woman. Clearly her mother. The mother staring at me. Watching her child. Successful con artist or someone genuinely in need? The boy hurries to catch up. I’ve established Linda’s required parameters.

“Ease someone’s suffering,” she instructed. “Any woman or child you find having to beg for survival.”

If this doesn’t fit, my heart doesn’t know what does. I figured she satisfied Linda’s requirement for who she wanted her donation to go to.

I stopped.

Walking no more. Nairobi’s thronging masses maneuvering around me and a homeless six year old girl in tattered clothes—a little girl who still has not released her grip on my hand.

Holding my breath, I opened my book. Removing Linda’s card—everything, the envelope, Linda’s personal note to me, and the $58—I handed it to her. At this point I spoke the only words I ever spoke to her.

“This is from my friend,” I said.

I quickly, hastily, maybe perhaps guiltily, resumed my focused walk down the crowded sidewalk toward the ex-pat hotel. The Tennessee Waltz would sound good, grounding, comforting right about now.

I mean, who I was I to think this pretentious act was even at all significant? Pious? I don’t know. Pompous? I don’t know. Perhaps there’s a fine line between the two. This gift, this—I don’t know what to call it, but gift is not at all right—violated my no panhandling credo. It was a good deed yet a bad deed.

Or, more accurately, perhaps it just wasn’t as good a deed as I hoped it should be.

The six year old in the tattered clothes looked confused. Handing her the envelope, for the first time she released her death grip on my hand. But you could see the confusion in her. A schilling she would have recognized as success. I’ll wager my lunch she would have recognized a dollar or even a euro as success.

But there she stood, befuddled, her prey for the afternoon walking away purposefully, with an envelope in her hand. An envelope?

I just walked on. The Tennessee Waltz was calling my name. Anything to get me away from this child I had, I want to say helped, but that really sounds too arrogant. Away from this child whose panhandling habit I had in a lottery like fashion significantly encouraged.

Besides, I had to keep walking. She presumably dug into the envelope. I don’t know. I didn’t look back.

I firmly believe that true kindness is anonymous and doesn’t require acknowledgement.

It certainly doesn’t require gratitude.

When she gets the card open she’ll recognize the George Washingtons, I’m sure. But Ulysses S. Grant? Who’s that?

The personal note on the personal card to me from my old high school friend will probably be lost on her. That’s okay. That wasn’t Linda’s objective. But I hope, as I’m sure Linda does, that this unfortunate girl’s life for the next little while will be a tad better. Even if she can’t read the card or understand Linda’s motive in having me do what I did, I hope she benefits from my old friend’s generosity.

Ten seconds later, the little boy, her brother, chased me down and unsuccessfully attempted to grab my hand.

“Can I be your friend?” he boldly asked.

Chris Verrill is the author of the international travel biography Is For Good Men To Do Nothing, now available for order at your local bookstore or online at Amazon and over 200 other online booksellers.  He can be reached at chrisverrill@yahoo.com.

Afghanistan:  Closer to home than you think
by Chris Verrill

 “Kabul suicide attack: 7 injured,” reads the headline today.  The news story says, “A suicide grenade attack in the center of the Afghan capital of Kabul Saturday injured seven people, including three international peacekeepers.  Three blasts shook a shopping area in downtown Kabul.”

Sitting here in my normal, quiet, safe two-bedroom apartment in suburban California, with the World Series on the television, what seems like a lifetime away from Afghanistan, the world comes back and reminds me of my new reality.  My new appreciation for the world around me deepens.

You see, I was in Kabul, Afghanistan this time last year.

“The attacker exploded hand grenades strapped to his waist, in Chicken Street in Afghanistan's capital,” the article informed us.  “The explosions came outside a carpet shop in a shopping area popular with international shoppers.”

Including this international shopper.  Me.  This international shopper cum aspiring amateur peacekeeper.

You see, not only was I in Afghanistan, I was shopping on Chicken Street in downtown Kabul.  The non-profit foundation guest house I stayed at was at the corner of Chicken and Flower Streets.

My fears and concerns and prayers for the people who live in Afghanistan have wiggled their way back into my peaceful suburban ocean-breeze filled consciousness.  My fears and concerns and prayers for average Americans work their way back into the forefront of my thinking.  My fears that, in this angry and passionate American election, that some of our elected leaders don’t thoroughly understand that those two fears are intertwined.  That our two futures are forever interdependent.

I spent a week in Afghanistan and six weeks in Pakistan volunteering on behalf of the Rotary Club of Pacifica to build a vocational educational program for Afghan refugee women.  Most of my time was spent meeting with teachers and school administrators and annoying bureaucrats.  While on Chicken Street in Kabul, I bought two carpets.  When in Rome, right?  I’ll be darned if I was going to get all the way to Afghanistan and not buy a carpet.  I bought two.  One of them I kept.  The other I donated to the Rotary Club of Pacifica which then auctioned it off at our annual Spaghetti Feed fundraiser.  My Chicken Street shopping expedition raised a little bit of money for the good causes Rotary supports.

During my travels over the last 18 months, I have been to many places.  Places some would consider dangerous:  Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Bosnia, Ethiopia, Kuwait and more.  But this event on Chicken Street is different.  In the sea of bad news in the world, perhaps not different for you.  But for me, this event is very different.

“I can’t tell from the photo because there were a lot of carpet stores on this street,” referring to the accompanying news photo, I wrote to Steve, a fellow Pacifica Rotarian who helped immensely in our club’s attempted project.  “If I didn’t buy it from this store, odds are I went in this one to compare prices.  Of all the horrible things that have gone on in the world in the last few years, of all the places I’ve been in the last couple years, this one hits closer to home than any of them. Even a guy like me who, if something good can come of it, doesn’t mind traveling to unusual places, this gives me pause for thought.”

 Even here in calm peaceful suburban California, this bomb on Chicken Street in Kabul hit a little close to home.  A little closer to home than I expected.

“I don't even know what to say, except damn,” Steve wrote back.  “Sure glad you weren't there when it happened.”  Me, too.  Except seven people weren’t so lucky.  By the grace of God, one of them could have been me.  Or you.  In spirit of humanity, it certainly was “us.”

 “The Taliban takes responsibility for the suicide attack in Kabul,” a Taliban spokesman told a news agency by satellite telephone. “We plan more attacks.”

String them up by their beards. On this score America has done well.  But we need to understand what motivates millions of others who support them.  Understand how our futures—our destinies—are forever linked.  On this account, we and the world have much to learn.

Maybe I’ll shop at Wal-Mart from now on.

Nah.  I still like Chicken Street.

Chris Verrill is a Pacifica resident and the author of the forthcoming political travel book Is For Good Men To Do Nothing.  He can be reached at chrisverrill@yahoo.com.

Marshall Plan II
by Chris Verrill 5/2004

Saddam has been plucked from his hole.  Iraqis have freedom and Iraq is on its way to democracy.  And yet we are badly losing the war on terrorism.  We are losing the war on terrorism, not because of what we did in Iraq, but because of how we did it.

Like it or not, the United States of America is the world’s policeman.  George Bush has this right.  But we are not the world’s judge and jury.  And on this point, George Bush is dangerously wrong.  The world likes us less, respects us less, and is more afraid of our bullying than any time in the last 100 years.  This fear does not stop terrorism.  This fear breeds terrorism.

The United States of America needs to implement Marshall Plan II.  After WWII, President Truman courageously sent Germany and Japan down the road to democracy.  We need to follow that model and sew the seeds of freedom throughout the developing world in places that now have little hope—in places that breed terrorism—in places that disrupted our lives on September 11 and are destined to do so again unless we compassionately address the problem.

Terrorists aren’t born.  Terrorists are created.  They’re created from a lack of hope.  Marshall Plan II will bring peace and prosperity to people that have no hope.  Marshall Plan II will increase intellectual and cultural exchange programs, decrease barriers to investment, encourage good old fashioned free enterprise in hope-starved nations, and promote open societies and free media in countries oppressed by dictators.

And yes, when necessary and all other options are exhausted, America should promote regime change.  But regime change that is done in cooperation with, and the moral authority of, the United Nations.  Regime change that is done—not because of some trumped up weapons of mass destruction fabrication—but regime change that is done because people deserve freedom.  Because we, as the free people of the world have a moral responsibility to help those who are not yet free.

Given the great resources it takes to bring freedom and democracy to oppressed people, I was asked how many countries I thought America should help.  My answer:  One—at a time.

You can’t prevent a person from becoming a terrorist.  You have to prevent them from wanting to become a terrorist.  Marshall Plan II will win the war on terrorism peacefully.