Denise O’Brien, organic farmer and  advocate from Atlantic, Iowa, who co-founded the Women Food And Agriculture Network (WFAN) in 1997 and was its director for more than 11 years, is now a USDA advisor in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.  Check out her website Nangarharadventure.wordpress.com for more stories and photos from her year in Afghanistan.  This article is published here with permission. 

On February 24, 2011, I left my home in Iowa to start my journey as an agriculture adviser in Afghanistan. First stop was Washington D.C. for four weeks of training. It is nearly one year later and I am looking back on a year that has passed in an incredibly short time! There were moments when time seemed to move at a snail’s pace, mostly when I yearned to be with Larry or my children and grandchildren. But now it is almost time to leave and the next six weeks cannot pass quickly enough. My head is a muddle of thoughts some of which I will now share with you.

It has been a year of personal growth. I have learned to live with the military, learned to function in a government bureaucracy and to adjust to life in an environment of hostility – weather and political.

My life in Iowa has been quiet, fulfilling and somewhat isolated. I am a social person but protect my privacy. Living in a community behind barricades with the majority of the population younger than me in a country at war has been interesting. In order to preserve my privacy, I chose to rise early in the morning to exercise, taking a couple of hours to work out on cardio machines and to do yoga. I have loved the early mornings when very few people are around and things are quiet. I have always been a morning person so it wasn’t hard to get up and out of my room.

Breakfast with up to one hundred people has been quite different from breakfast at home on my own. The day then goes on in endless meetings and reports to write. Many days I go out on mission as I have written about in my blogs. Even though it is a lot of work to go outside the wire, at least I have the opportunity to see the countryside and interact with Afghan farmers.

I leave Afghanistan with a heavy heart. It is a desperate country whose local tribal elders would, I believe, prefer that the country remain in the past. There are wonderful young men who want to work for the betterment of their country but are held back by those who already control the government and its assets. There is corruption and lawlessness that is very similar to the wildwest that was experienced in our country.

The international communities that came to build Afghanistan have created a welfare state instead. Building highways, government buildings and parking lots has been about as successful as throwing money to the wind. Spend, spend, spend was thought to be the solution. Far from it; without involving the people in process of visioning and creating their own country the Afghans feel no ownership of what has been created for them. What they received is what others believed they should have.

Given that my work in the United States has been with women, my biggest disappointment has been the lack of accessibility to work with women. I have never in my life witnessed such a sorry state of affairs. Every day there are newspaper stories of beatings, acid throwing, rape and forced marriage of young girls that it leaves me feeling that my time spent here has been useless. I wish that it would have been possible to be out among women. The women are so scared that they don’t even want to be seen with “foreigners”.  Many think that when the international military forces leave the Taliban will once again conduct a reign of terror.

The time I have spent here has been tolerable given technology. I have talked with my family everyday if not several times a day. I have seen Lily, Caia’s month old baby over Skype, but cannot wait to hold her. I believe my grandchildren think I live in the computer. They always know by the sound when Memaw is calling.

I have met wonderful people within the military and governmental agencies of the United States. I am proud to have worked with many sincere and dedicated people. My life has been enriched by this experience.