Child Funeral

Since the weather has started to turn a bit more towards spring (even while it snowed on Easter Sunday), I have been something of the exercise freak. I work out in the gym for two hours a day, 5-6 days a week, and get up at 6 a.m. to either do abs or climb PT Hill, the nicest Stairmaster in Central Afghanistan. From the gate and back generally takes about an hour (best time I have ever done was 40 minutes, and that was practically a run), and in the 25 minutes it takes to get up hill we climb a good 1000 feet. It's a great workout.

One of the nice things about the hike at 6 is how quiet everything is. At that time of the day, the only activity you see are the giant ravens circling looking for trash and scraps to eat, and lots of smoke rising from houses throughout the valley, as the pungent aroma of burning donkey dung lets you know that women all over Bamyan are awake fixing food for their families. Other than that, nothing.

Two days ago, however, my hiking pal Sally and I were surprised to see a band of men out nearby the road. Two younger men were on their hands and knees scooping out earth, while some older gentlemen knelt by the side of that hole, bowing and prostrating themselves every so often. Next to the eldest man was something wrapped up in a colorful sheet/sari. I could only guess, based on the small size, that it was the body of a small child.

Usually when we see locals here, they are almost always cheerful, waving, giving us a smile, which is not the case for all of the country. In the South and East, the mostly Pashtun people are much more guarded in their reactions/emotions towards Coalition forces. On this day, as the two young men and the older men prepared the site to take the body, the looks we received were undisguised anger and hatred. It was quite a shock.

I am not certain what drove those looks. It may have been that a woman was witnessing this action, which appears not to be something for the women to do in Bamyan (women and children regularly will visit graves on Fridays to clean and sweep them, with no men present). It may have just been a general anger at foreigners generally. It could have been anger that these rich foreigners could not do more to save this child from his or her tough lot in life.

Children in Afghanistan do have it tough. Infant mortality, and under 5 mortality, is higher here than anywhere else in the world. Malnutrition is rampant, poverty is endemic, disease ever-present. I could see why a parent might shake his fist at the fates that decree children in Afghanistan are less likely to make it, and at the foreigners whose obvious different circumstances may seem so grossly unfair.

Whatever else I have managed to do here, hoping to make a difference in the lives of the people of Afghanistan, of Bamyan, it wasn't enough for this child. May he or she rest in peace, in a better place where life is not so hard for the kids.