Creating Opportunities | Making the Impossible, Possible!
Bladder control, an agony. Stalled car. Weeping windscreen. Road to Bamiyaan Mud, mud For a change, there is a line with only about 10 people in front of me waiting for their turn at the immigration counter at Kabul airport. My turn, I step up and hand my passport open to the page where Afghan […]
Part 1 – Indian Airlines, outstanding incompetence. When I land in New Delhi from Mumbai, it is as if the pilot must have made a mistake and landed at Kuwait or Dubai airport instead. But no, this is Delhi all right, no artificial glitter or shiny marble floors where you can almost see your jetlagged […]
Sacheck village. Shafiqa’s destroyed home. Shafiqa’s destroyed home. Shafiqa Shafiqa This is the story of Shafiqa Ahmed Hussein who I meet in the village of Sacheck, Afghanistan at Imam Sajjad (A) Clinic on May 27, 2010. A demure, pretty woman of 22, Shafiqa tells me the following heart wrenching story of her Dad’s massacre by […]
Balkh Water Project – An Update: CAI is USD60,000 short for the completion of this critical, life sustaining project in a remote area of Afghanistan for some 30,000 Muslims who currently depend on contaminated water for drinking and daily usage. CAI is in the process of mobilizing pumps, pipes and insulation for the delivery of […]
INDONESIA: The burly Iraqi Faris el Husseini in traditional Arab gown stands out amongst mostly Indonesian crowd at Jakarta International Airport and after introductions, upon knowing I am an East African Khoja, Husseini instantly starts conversing in very acceptable Kiswahili, startling me. Husseini, you see, spent 3 years in Arusha, Tanzania so is quite good […]
Al Zahra Elementary School Nahoor, Ghazni – An Update: After over 2 years of frustrating delays and very slow progress to build a small school for the children of this extremely remote and lawless area in Ghazni, Afghanistan, the school is now finally complete alhamd’Allah. Security issues, severe weather, accessibility and procurement logistics for this […]
Emirates flight 725 from Dubai to Dar es Salaam begins with hassles; the aircraft is parked quite a distance away from the main terminal and we have to ride a bus to reach it. Funny no, you never have to do this when traveling to say, Europe or the Americas or somewhere exotic; just one […]
Mosque in Zamboanga City, Philippines – An Update: There has been good progress in the repair and reconstruction of this CAI sponsored mosque (first one in the country), alhamd’Allah. This is an important fully funded (first phase) project for these new Muslims as they will now have a platform to consolidate and more forward in […]
I ask her name, her age, whether she goes to school…she replies coyly at first, then gains confidence and talks. She thinks she is ten, maybe eleven; she used to go to school but has now stopped. Why, I ask? I can’t see, she says, and the teacher gets frustrated at me, so I stopped […]
I ask the driver to take me to Naroda Patiya, Naroda Gaun and Gulbaag Colony. The former two are minority Muslim pockets and scars from those couple of days of mayhem are still evident, even after eight years. Drab, dusty and filthy at places, the State has neglected to develop these narrow wandering streets into […]
