One of the founders of NEED, Kelly Kinnunen, is working on a video documentary project in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is travelling with Dina Fesler of the nonprofit Children’s Culture Connection. Among other places, they have been visiting Charahee Qambar, an IDP camp where people are living in desperate conditions with very little aid. Dina emailed an update about what they are doing and we wanted to share it with you.

The people living here are from Helmand Province, where the US has been aggressively hunting the Taliban, and causing quite a bit of collateral damage in the process. With their homes bombed and burned, they packed what they had left and came to the camp in Kabul for safety while they figure out what to do next. Their makeshift neighborhood of mud homes can best be described as barely fit for human existence. The worst was when they showed me a baby lying under a filthy blanket, sick and covered in sores. They explained that the baby was dying but there was nothing they could do about it. One of the elders asked me if I would take him. They thought I might be able to save him.

These people are so desperate that they are giving away their children because they don’t know how else to help them? It was all so unbelievable. Stunned, I told them I had no idea what I could do, but Wusim, my guide and translator who used to work for the International Red Cross, said he had a friend who worked at an area hospital.

Now, between continuing to run all over Kabul getting film footage for our project, we have been running in and out of hospitals trying to get help for baby Rahim.

Monday morning started when Kelly and I, our guides Najib and Wusim, and baby Rahim and his father were greeted by the chief of staff at a new private children’s hospital in Kabul to figure out what was wrong with Rahim. Poor little thing, he was dehydrated, malnourished, suffering from edema, and to make it even worse, suffering from an infected circumcision. When the doctor took off his clothes, the baby was covered in blood. It was horrifying to see him without even enough energy to cry. The doctors cleaned him and did an x-ray to discover that unfortunately he only has one kidney. This got us referred to a specialist at a state-of-the-art children’s hospital in Kabul, the French Medical Institute for Children, where after all kinds of tests baby Rahim was checked into the ICU. One of the doctors didn’t think he would live through the night.

Rahim’s father was worried sick. As we were sitting downstairs in the lobby late Monday afternoon, he suddenly knelt down in front of me and shook my hand saying that he thanks Allah for me and all I am doing for him.

What? He’s thanking me? This guy who was just minding his own business trying to farm his land in Helmand Province and take care of his family when from out of nowhere, a bunch of bombs drop on his village, blast his home to bits, kill his oldest daughter, blow the arm off his youngest daughter, force him to go live in a pile of mud IDP camp without enough money to care for his sick son so that he feels giving him to a strange woman just to save his life was his best option?! Seriously?

From what I can tell, this guy has paid the price for my freedom as an American … and he’s thanking me? I didn’t feel worthy to be in the same room as him, and even while he was talking to me I couldn’t look him in the eye without breaking down. All I did was pay the medical bill to help one little kid out of the thousands still stuck in that camp. Everything seemed backwards.

All I could think of was how I told the elders in the IDP camp that I would try to think of some way to help. I finally did, and together with Najib and Wusim (my trusty guides who will not only show you a good time if you ever come to Kabul, but who are also former Red Cross medics, amazing humanitarians, and, above all, master networkers) came up with a brilliant plan:

For the last two days, Najib and I have been meeting with the directors of the top three children’s hospitals in Kabul and convincing them to join us in a civilian-led humanitarian mission where for one month they would greatly discount their fees for as many of the camp kids as we could bring in for medical assistance … if the American people would kick in donations to cover it. The idea is to work outside the government, the military, or even other NGOs to create a project where everyday Afghans and Americans can simply pool their resources to help the most innocent victims of all: the kids.

Meanwhile, Wusim has been in the IDP camp registering children there and planning how to bring them in. Currently, more than 2,000 children are living in that camp, and of the 250 he has registered and screened so far, over 70 percent have pneumonia.

The bottom line is, for 30 days the hospitals will to do their part, and Najib and Wusim will personally get the kids transported to the hospitals. For our part, Children’s Culture Connection has created the “Helmand Children’s Medical Fund” (HCMF) to collect earmarked donations until December 31 with which we will get as many of these kids medical help as possible. This money will go a long way. Anyone who would like to be a part of this effort can donate through War Kids Relief (be sure to indicate HCMF in the PayPal memo). When we finish the project, I will send all who donate an update of how many kids we helped.

Najib and I are also meeting medical NGOs this week to persuade one to set up a mobile unit in the camp that can carry on this work for the kids after the project ends. If we can get the ball rolling for these kids immediately, it will make it easier for a larger organization to continue it.

Anyway, while waiting to hear how Rahim is doing, Kelly and I have been meeting with girls schools and learning about street children projects.

Late this afternoon we stopped at the hospital to see what the lab results had turned up for the baby. Like a miracle Rahim pulled through! Even the x-rays suddenly showed that he had two kidneys after all! Such a mystery. By the time we got there, his vital signs were stable and he was being moved out of ICU into a regular room. Seeming quite surprised, the doctors said that they believed he was going to make it after all.

Maybe it is a sign for more good things to come?

HCMF Donations at War Kids Relief Children’s Culture Connection

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Organizations, Photo Essays, Volunteers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.