Educational Filming Turns into Medical Mission for Two Minnesotans
Posted by NEED Staff on December 1st 2009 in Organizations, Photo Essays, Volunteers
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.









Makhmoor, home to around 11,000 Turkish refugees, was actually nicer than most villages that I have visited in the region. After a short drive through the dust-filled town of Makhmoor, about 45 minutes from Erbil, my translator, Leo, and I came upon the large security barriers that formed a maze before coming to the first guard. I promptly got yelled at for taking a photo of the UNHCR flag at the gate, which led to a traditional Kurdish yelling match in which I can never quite tell who is winning. Until, invariably, someone will turn to me and say “OK. Everything is OK.”

