Excellent insights into the land, culture, religion and people of Afghanistan. The author had a very unique and effective way of sharing the teachings of Jesus Christ with the people of Afghanistan. A very interesting and challenging read.

The author seems to be a lovely, faithful, honest, loving, caring and (mostly) culturally humble person. I enjoyed reading about her time in Afghanistan and what she learnt while she was there. I think that Americans and many of the rest of us in the West also need to learn many of the lessons she mentions, such as gratitude, the joy of giving, and for men to treat women with respect. ( )

My emotions were all over the place reading this, even more so than in Kabul Beauty School. The authors of these 2 books could not be more different, religion aside.

I know I would never be interested in doing what the author did, nor Deborah Rodriguez from the other book either. I would not want to cope with sporadic water ( having OCD with no access to available running water would be my worst nightmare ), spotty electricity, bad drivers, constant staring and never ending attempts at converting me. It is also a fairly no hope situation, as in this country converting to another religion means execution.

One of the most disturbing things in this book is that someone told the author that if anyone owns a Bible he is automatically Christian and therefore must be executed. What ???

They marry their little girls off to men who sometimes are old enough to be their fathers, without even knowing who the man is. I can not even begin to imagine being told at 12, I will soon be a bride and have to have sex and endless amounts of male offspring in the 4th grade. Unthinkable to my Western mind, child's rights/protection stance as an ex social worker in child welfare. It is worse than living in the Dark Ages. Women are covered from head to toe, have to walk soundlessly, get beaten regularly, rarely leave the mud huts they live in, most are illiterate and infant mortality is high.

I would never in a million years put myself in harms way and live in such wretch conditions only to be told by some man there that his Koran says anyone who is not Moslem should be killed.

There are far more causes I support with my heart and wallet that actually does a bit of good.

This would not be one of them - but God bless her soul for doing what she felt called to do even if it meant getting kidnapped, murdered or blow up by a bomb. The holiday from hell. ( )

If you are having a bad day...read this and be encouraged that you are not alone and things can be MUCH worse. You could be a woman in Afghanistan.
True story of a woman's experiences as a worker with an NGO in a smal village in that country. Her love for the women especially and her conversations there with the people she worked with and met will open your eyes to many things. I dare you to read this book! ( )

Hellspark by Janet Kagan has introduced me to the concept of culture, that Silent Language we all speak without knowing, those subconscious assumptions we call “logical” or “obvious” or “natural” but cannot really explain. We are blind to our own culture. When we explore another culture, we learn way more about our own. Anthropology and speculative fiction have this in common: by exploring strange and foreign ideas, at the same time we broaden our horizon, and we learn more about ourselves.

Kate McCord has lived in Afghanistan for five years, working for a NGO. But this book is not about providing training and humanitarian aid. Her work is only the background for a more personal journey, learning the language and the culture. As a foreign, female, single, non-muslim project manager she had to find and invent the rules that apply to her in Afghan society, where something like this simply does not exist, where all women marry at age 11 to 19.

Wearing a scarf, but not a burqa. The complicated rules of sitting apart from men in public transportation. Social interactions. Explaining herself without giving offense. She has to be deliberate in what she does and what she says. She describes her actions as well as the cultural implications: “I didn't look directly at either man. That would be rude.” Living as a foreigner in a gender-segregated society, she has access to both worlds, the public space dominated by men, and the private area of women.

Afghan culture is very much intertwined with religion, and even our own, mostly secular western culture was shaped by religion for hundreds of years. (Remember, we are blind to our own culture.) Through this book, I have learned much about three cultures: my own, the culture of Muslim Afghanistan, and that of the New Testament. ( )