Among middle class retirees, volunteering helps fill the void post-career. At a dinner party recently, I thought the guests had met through a book group, but I learned that at least one member of each of the other four couples volunteers for Meals on Wheels. One of the men volunteers a day a week for the emergency squad. I suppressed the urge to mention my little gig driving Mexican farm workers to health care appointments, but it wasn’t easy. As little skill or responsibility as it takes, we’re attached to these roles.

An Afghan friend shared her experience with American volunteerism. It was during her year as an exchange student at a mid-western high school that she first encountered volunteering. In the midst of our ethno-centric society with each succeeding generation more self-absorbed than the last, she’d found something in it she wants in hers and in her country’s life. She volunteered at the public library that year and has made volunteers from the West a critical piece of a non-governmental institute she heads up now in Kabul.

But isn’t it just part of the evolution of our society from small, tight-knit communities to the mobile, impersonal ones that take their places along the road to modernization? Or have we consciously cultivated this volunteering? Is this because we care so much about our community or is it to develop some caring? All of this I suspect and now we can search the Web by locale to find opportunities to volunteer.

Whether plan, offshoot, or unintended consequence, volunteerism is something for Americans to hang on to, teach the next generation, and export when the opportunity arises.

Every gardener is on intimate terms with the most abundant weeds in her or his garden beds. Here where farm fields surround us, grasses are the most common and also the toughest with their deep roots in the heavy soil of the clay plain along Lake Champlain. Nettles are nastier though as they can leave one’s fingers for hours with an unpleasant tingle. The easiest is pigweed with its soft leaves and stem and shallow roots. It practically jumps out into one’s hands and withers almost immediately.

The summer we had an Afghan houseguest, the rich green of corn and grass in a neighbor’s field provided a strong contrast for a huge patch of yellow, a farmer’s cover crop of mustard. Our houseguest brought my attention to its beauty. We walked up the dirt road and back through the fields to get closer one sunny afternoon. Once we reached the cornfield, her gaze left the bright yellow to fix on the ground between the tall corn plants. She’s a good cook interested in preserving traditional Afghan dishes and was delighted to find a familiar plant, our pigweed, growing there in abundance.

When I explained it was an unwelcome weed there, we returned to the house with armfuls of it. She then washed and chopped to prepare a delicious, fresh steamed vegetable dish for our supper. The first summer I gardened here, I had so much pigweed among the vegetables I was raising for stir-fry, I’d idly wondered if I couldn’t fry it as well. Now I’ve learned it’s not only a favored dish in Afghanistan, but in many cultures around the world.

Seeing the farming area where I live for the first time, she had asked me, “Who waters this?” Her eyes were accustomed to orchards, flowers, and crops only where irrigation is possible and set against a brown, arid backdrop. And my eyes saw Amaranthus retroflexus as a nuisance to pull and discard. The soil, the sun, the summer give us so much. May I cultivate the eyes to see and wonder at its beauty and usefulness.

Is there any reason to believe that things will turn out anything but tragically as the West withdraws troops and dollars from Afghanistan? If you believe as I do that one person can make a tremendous difference, I have to say yes, there several good reasons. First of all, there are hundreds of non-governmental agencies and foundations working with steadiness and insight to create new leadership. One example is School for Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), and this year’s batch of bright, ambitious students are heading off for higher education after immersion in leadership experiences in Kabul.

Vermont barn

There are also individuals around the world, but mostly on the east and west coast of the US working to provide access to education and career experience for young Afghans. This week I ran into a woman who has just completed raising college funds for the Afghan student she has supported through high school in Vermont. This woman is one American putting time and energy behind Afghans politicized as children by Taliban tyranny.

Afghan students who come to the US and then defect to Canada make the news, but in contrast there are those who apply themselves to improving their country. An Afghan American doctor fresh out of med school here is spending part of each year practicing in Afghanistan. A new graduate I know has begun working for an international company based here to find companies in Afghanistan with which to form partnerships. Another Afghan is working with provincial women for the National Solidarity Program in Afghanistan. These are examples from my tiny network.

Yes, the storm clouds gather, and most of us feel defeated by our faulty policies and horrendous sacrifices of the past ten years. I see others investing in the future for the time when the energy of these young professionals will bring independence to their homeland and freedom to the Afghan women and men.

That perennial topic made The Critics section of the July 2 New Yorker. Elizabeth Kolbert questions the values we convey hovering over our children, removing obstacles for them, while overloading our lives with their stuff. Even I, with my child long out of the nest, have heard the horror stories of today’s parents showing up for college and job interviews. I’m not positive, but I can’t recall my parents, who made sacrifices to assure that all their children could have a college education, asked what happened at my college interview much less considered prepping me for it. And I fought growing up, idolized Peter Pan, and moved back home twice after age 21. Both times my parents wisely made it clear, after a month, that I was not welcome as a resident.

An Afghan friend left her childhood home, parents and three younger siblings and moved to Kabul in search of higher education. She’d acquired the skills of a mother and housekeeper, but yearned for academia. She has had to grow up in many ways being virtually on her own working and studying in preparation for college, but recently faced a new challenge.

She had removed her headscarf at a family wedding. Before her mother could hear of this from others, she called to tell her. Her mother’s angry reaction was more intense than she’d imagined. Remember your mother’s reaction when you told her you were living with him? Days later her teenage sister called to say how upset their mother was and how mom swore never to allow her younger daughter to leave home.

When our actions cause pain and strife for people we love, we have to make hard choices. My friend determined that there are some changes in her that her mother is not prepared to know, at least not now. She called back, expressed her sorrow and regret for her actions, and promised never to do that again. To swallow some youthful passion for the Truth to protect our mother and our sister, without losing our new identity, is a balancing act only the mature can manage.

Afghan female students attend a seminar in Kabul aimed at reforming Afghanistan's educational system. June 2012 Photo by Getty Images

It is one thing to accept and assume the responsibilities of adulthood in an isolated society in the Peruvian Amazon society researched by anthropologist Caroline Izquierdo, quite another in a society with rapidly changing roles. Perhaps no where in the world is that playing out more dramatically than for Afghan women making their way in a few short years from traditional roles to those open to them with a college degree.

An annual ritual for me is a visit with sixth graders who’ve studied Afghan history, culture and contemporary problems. I take my Peace Corps issued trunk filled with the Afghan clothes I brought back. The boys would prefer rifles, the girls lapis jewelry, but from my own teaching days, I know how sixth graders like to dress up. After some play with the language and other aspects of Afghan culture, I open the trunk. This is the signal for their two teachers to pop back into the classroom, the female under a chadri (burqa), the male wearing the “Karzai coat” and embroidered cap. The students who’ve looked bored thus far crack a smile.

Then a few student helpers dress one Afghan-looking girl and one Afghan-looking boy in an outfit I’ve put together. The girl takes a fan she’ll use to keep the flies off her grandmother while she dozes, and the boy holds a small fake bird he has as a pet. Teacher and student cameras click to capture this. Then students can try on one or all of the outfits including dresses, tunics, baggy pants, headscarves, and turbans. With no encouragement, some of these thirteen-year-old boys, as well as the girls, try on the burqa.

Since this year’s event, I spent a day with an Afghan student friend looking at these same clothes. What a surprise to learn after all these years and all the school programs I’ve done, that the long shirts I thought were for Afghan men were made forty years ago by tailors in the style of a man’s shirt, but in colors foreign women like me would buy to wear. My friend pointed out that the tunics did not have the seam pocket on one side required by Afghan for prayer beads and money. We laughed imagining an Afghan man in 1969 wearing the robin egg’s blue tunic.

Shopkeepers of cloth and tailoring learned what the foreign women would buy even at a time when there were relatively few foreign women living in Afghanistan. This is not remarkable given Afghanistan’s survival through the centuries at the crossroads of Asia, but was a sign that it’s a country of adaptability under pressure. And the Afghans continue to adapt to the pressures on them.

“Spaghetti salad” is my friend’s translation from her native Dari, of a favorite dish from her childhood. She prepared it for a group of young Afghan students visiting the institute where she studies in Kabul.

First you boil the pasta, she explained, and then you mix some yoghurt into a lot of that white stuff that comes in a big jar. She jumped up to get the jar when I couldn’t guess what it was.

“May-onn-aise?” She sounded out the strange word on the label checking with me if her pronunciation was correct. Sure enough, she held a 2-quart jar of mayonnaise just like the one in my refrigerator. It felt like turning a corner in the old bazaar and finding a McDonald’s bustling with Afghan customers. She said that her friends were unfamiliar with mayonnaise, so it is not readily available and isn’t produced in Afghanistan currently. She added that some people had the mistaken idea that it is something to put on bread.

No, it is for spaghetti salad. Any type of flat noodle is cooked and flavored with the yoghurt-mayo mixture. The yoghurt is to make it easier to mix. A bit of salt is added. Meanwhile one peels a cucumber and cubes it. Then one chops up a tomato taking care to dump the seeds and juice. Spaghetti salad is pasta with cucumber and tomato on the side. The students had never tried this and pronounced it delicious.

So, it isn’t just movies, TV shows and music carrying culture West to East. May the Afghans keep traditional connections between what one eats and one’s health as this younger generation acquires a taste for pasta salads with mayonnaise.

The shopkeepers in the college town near where I live are good ambassadors. While shopping for a sewing machine, a student friend from Kabul and I asked a lot of questions about their products. To help her create garments for friends and family in Afghanistan, the machine must be reliable, sturdy, versatile, not too complicated, and light-weight. The search is for one that’s both high performing and indestructible.

The seamstresses-quilters working as sales people explained and re-explained features, demonstrated them, compared and contrasted different models, scared up pamphlets, hauled shipping boxes out to measure them and verify weights, and all this without once being distracted. Then they invited my friend to try out the different features on different materials as they watched.

Later my friend remarked on how much she’d learned from them that day and how generous they were with their skills and their time. In Kabul, she feels this would not happen. Also, it is not an Afghan habit to attribute what one knows to other people. One just knows things. As an example, she told me that she now uses those things you wrap around the open end of a plastic bag to close it.

“Twisters?” I ask.

“That’s the name of them, twisters. ” My Afghan student friend continues. “I showed my sister how to do this and told her I learned this from Jill.” She was smiling about how she’s picked up this good American habit of giving credit. I’m smiling at the idea that this is what she’s learned from me. Just by cooking together at my house, a bit of wire and plastic bring us together without my knowing it.

You can buy 50,000 Twist Ties for $1.46 online. Maybe this is what we should be sending, along with good ambassadors, to that troubled country.

I had a strong connection to Afghanistan from when I was a young Peace Corps volunteer there and, through connections to Afghan students here, thought I understood what it means to grow up female and Afghan. Over the last eight months of frequent, lengthy conversations with female students at School of Leadership Afghanistan, I have come closer to seeing the full picture. Some of our Skype sessions are full of humor and culture swapping, others full of anger and sadness at the intolerance and inequality. We laugh at the irony of Afghan students’ being encouraged to watch Hollywood movies to improve their English and of all the misconceptions about life in the U.S. they imbibe at the same time. We bemoan the discrimination and doors closed by virtue of being female. The assumption that girls have no need for education beyond basic literacy and the fear that more would cause them to question their faith haunt their dreams for higher education.

Demonstration for Women, Kabul

Isolation and oppression feed determination for contact with a larger world among bright young Afghans women. Such determination is demanding and at time I feel overwhelmed with the need to connect through me with that world. Yet, they will carry the light leading theirs and future generations of Afghans to a better future. How privileged to have a tiny part in this revolution.

I got some powerful reminders of what it was like to be a smallpox vaccinator in Afghanistan 40 years ago making a documentary about the group. None, however, were more dramatic and humorous than watching the Iranian movie “Secret Ballot.” Vaccinating Afghans against smallpox before more people suffer was our all female group’s assignment in 1969, following the women volunteers of Group Xl. In the “Secret Ballot” a young Iranian woman from the city is assigned to find those with ID cards on a remote island and get their votes in the national election before 5 o’clock.

The Iranian woman is just as passionate about her work, and almost as out of her comfort zone, as we were back then, and the work is familiar. First there is the skeptical but compliant soldier who dutifully protects the female whom he is certain should not be doing this kind of thing. Then there is her first encounter with a potential voter. He runs away in terror, and the ballot seeker has her soldier driver chase him down across the desert in the jeep.

Like us, she has her spiel about the importance of her mission. As with Peace Corps vaccinators, this is met with resistance limited only by the imagination. One old man nodding and uttering one syllable finally admits he doesn’t understand Farsi. Each response illuminates much about the clash of tradition and modernity, about country and city lives, about gender roles.

"Once in Afghanistan"

Seeing my youthful idealism, my bizarre exchanges with the women, my racing against the clock brought short bursts of laughter from me as I watched this beautifully told story. Long sighs, as well, at my bullying, at the irony of vaccinating people who don’t have enough to eat, with my despair that maybe this effort won’t count.

The ending is a comfort. As my friend Linda from Group XV put it, there is magic in those moments that resonate with our being more alike than different.

Many conversations with new friends center on family. “Do you have brothers and sisters? Are you married? How many children? Where do they live? “ My conversations with young Afghan women are about these also, and the picture of American family life is often not pretty.

My only son lives on the other coast most of the year. We miss each other, but that is just the way it is today in many families. My Afghan friends must think it very sad that my one child, my son, is so far away. My only brother also lives far away, so visits are rare. Fortunately, my siblings visited our parents’ home when our kids were growing up. Now, however, with our parents gone and the kids grown and spread out, it’s hard to keep family traditions and values alive.

Our divorce rate, our school dropout rates, our college graduates’ debt burdens, the warehousing of our elderly - these family topics also come up when speaking with my Afghan friends. In speaking of marriage traditions, a friend in Kabul spoke of the father’s right to give his approval or not to a prospective husband whom the women of the family have chosen. Men can judge men better than women can, as women can other women, my friend explains. Given such a context, I hesitate to pass judgment.

We can share our customs and beliefs with one another, but we need to keep in mind that Afghans do not want our sympathy, in spite of images of vulnerable-looking, veiled women in our mass media.

They seek our willingness to learn about them and from them. We must share our weaknesses as a society as well as our strengths. If, in addition, we can stand with them against tyranny in all its forms and provide some resources for re-building, we’re all winners.