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.

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.

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.