Dusty roads, sand storms, police check points, attack helicopters circling above – such is life in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. As I sat at my desk under security lock down on the west side of Kabul, I was reminded of my previous tour in Iraq with the US Marines. However, to my surprise, I did not feel endangered at all. Maybe it was because this time around I got to walk around the city in my civilian clothes and shop at the local bazaar like one of the locals. To my benefit, I actually blended in perfectly with an ethnic group of Afghanistan called the Hazara people. Now, I only just needed to keep my mouth shut.

A lot had happened since my arrival a week earlier. During those seven days my eyes opened wide. Some GHNI co-workers and I went outside the city to a valley near the town of Yakawlang, where the mountains reach the sky, snow capped peaks are still present in the early summer and poplar trees line the valley streams. We surveyed and conversed with village elders looking for a way to work with the people in this far reached area of Afghanistan. As always, our mission with GHNI is to help empower local villages to help improve their state of development themselves. At the end of the trip, we identified a village at the end of the valley where a school building project had been stalled for two years due to corruption and greed. We will continue to visit this village, building relationships and finding ways to combine the strength of the locals as well as our organization to bring education to the village children. In a land that has seen so much violence and grief, there is hope for Afghanistan’s future.