24/3/2017
By Dr Hakim
I’m so often caught up in the daily concerns of work and the wars raging across Afghanistan and many parts of the world that I forget how remarkable it is that at the Borderfree Nonviolence Community Centre in Kabul, 19 small teams with more than 70 active Afghan Peace Volunteers are putting nonviolence into microscopic but concrete practice.
There’s also the pulsating energy from 100 eager street kids ready to change themselves.
All these ‘small people’ with ‘big souls’ touch me. They move my days and nights.
Night after day in Afghanistan
Night after day,
while many are stressed sick
providing for their mud shelters and dented aluminum plates,
and a few are unhappy despite excess cash,
I’m tired of all popular news.
I’m irritated by the stale showiness
of stiffly-dressed politicians and business sharks
sweet-talking the world.
I’d rather spend time with the unglamorous millions,
like with boot-polishing street kids, Mahdi and Inham.
They never claim to be smarter or better,
like when Mahdi offered his meek, non-digital sound byte,
“No human is above another”.
In their discarded voices,
they nurse gratitude rather than greed.
Inham and Mahdi
Reflections reveal to us many warts:
We’ve been stratifying life along these general themes.
Some humans are more moral than others.
We use animals, plants and non-living things however we see fit.
At all cost, we chase the ‘bottom line’ – money.
That is, even without violently ‘spearheading’ abroad,
our normal lifestyles are shockingly imperialistic.
To discontinue these dehumanizing habits,
the youth try to weave horizontal relationships
and wage a different story : morphing me into we.
The Afghan Peace Volunteer Coordinators build horizontal, equal relationships
“I don’t want to watch the news anymore,” 16 year-old Marwa said.
What she was politely implying was, “Today’s media is shit!”
“We need to be our own message,” another Afghan Peace Volunteer suggested.
This is ‘Why we can’t wait’, Martin Luther King had written:
We can’t expect militarized mainstream structures
to value the air, the soil, the water,
rivers, mountains and trees,
children, our mothers, the people,
diversity.
Especially when we’re uncertain
whether we or future generations will survive,
“We need to call 911!
Our home is on fire,” pleaded Robert, an indigenous activist from Standing Rock.
“We need to feel again.”
Mother Earth is on fire!
These days, our leaders, political reflections of our egos,
neither embrace healthy feelings or facts.
“It’s mayhem
for the sake of private power and profit,” stated Ghulam.
In the grief of Mother Earth being carpeted by toxic bombs
and voraciously raped by oil drills,
we need to unlearn our deadly education,
with great urgency and patience,
day and night,
as if every day
was Mother’s Day.
Unlearning our deadly education
No.
Each group that resists or falls
Is not inconsequential.
Every civil movement raring to
disturb the rotting or obsolete conventions
can see themselves as tiny suns,
stars that cycle their gifts of energy,
desiring seeds to break through their sleep
and turn our nightmares and visions
into floral paintings and nourishing cuisine.
They are volcanoes with sub-atomic power,
attracting more beauty, momentum and respect
than Trump Donald or Teresa May or Trudeau Justin.
How could mortals who fart and defecate
fantasize about
semi-deification,
unless we goad them to?
Every civil movement is a tiny sun
The volunteers are strong
because they recognize their crumbling
psycho-social and biological selves,
and are not willing to leave the world
without understanding their human identity.
They are small people of disobedient actions,
serving, stumbling, doubting, persisting.
They exuberate fluid art
and rigorous clarity.
Because they love life,
I want to love them back,
day after day.
Fluid art and rigorous clarity
Green, Permaculture Team
Borderfree Street Kids School
Food Bank
Winter Duvet Project
Microloans
Borderfree Cycling Club
Accounts & Finance Team
#Earth! GEN ( Green, Equal, Nonviolent ) Team
Relations & Networking Team
Conflict Resolution Team
Education Team
Borderfree Nonviolence Community Centre
Media Team
Global Days of Listening
Afghan National Dance Team
Blue Scarf Team
Borderfree Afghan Football Team
Psychology Team
Plans to establish a Peace Institute in the near future
Afghan Peace Volunteers, March 2017
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