I just read this article on ABC News (Australia) and thought I would share it with you.
“My name is Latifa. I am Colonel. I am an active helicopter pilot in the Afghan Air Force.
I wish to become a very good pilot and train other women to become pilots.
I have a five-year-old daughter who has been flying with me since she was two months of age. This is because there is nobody to look after her in the Air Force. I am trying to convince them to have a kindergarten, so women can be calm and do their job very well.
My message to other women in the world is that they should work hard to achieve their goals. They should be ambitious and have confidence in themselves. They should stand by Afghan women and share their experiences with Afghan women.”
The struggles that Latifa and her sister, Laliuma, went through to get the education they wanted, let alone rise to the top of their profession as they did, are astounding.
Read the article, it will make you feel even luckier that you have the life you do.
Buried words and Bushwa. 
It’s amazing what they’ve achieved. I dread to think what will happen to them and other educated women if the Taliban get back in power there. With luck she’ll fill her helicopter with as many as possible and decamp over the border to Pakistan.
It’s barbaric to think that a group of men should fail to see that women need education and the opportunities that men have, or that a group of men should dictate that men who shave should be punished. They’d be taking Afghanistan back to the stone age.
When I read the article I was totally amazed at what they had achieved, most people would just give up wouldn’t they?
Wow… a courageous, heartwarming, heartbreaking, inspiring, daunting example of “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I hope their future is a bright as Latifa hopes it will be.
I’m so glad you read the article. Even though sometimes our lives seem hard we should be a lot more grateful for them shouldn’t we. We can do whatever we want without fear, our worst enemies are ourselves. What amazing women.
I was so sad to read of Laliuma’s death, those statistics of childbirth deaths are frightening. How can the men allow that state of affairs to continue? Surey even with their narrow vision they would realize that the safer childbirth was the more sons their wives could bear for them?
Bloody hell. 😦 Remind me never to complain about anything ever again.
Just imagine taking your two-month-old baby with you everyday like that. It is ok if that is what you want but not ok if you have no choice. People in Western/ first world societies have it so easy and still complain about everything. 😦
Yeah, when you learn things like this, your perspective really changes. I hope I remember this in years to come.
And when kids whinge about having to go to school, their safe, co-ed, the worst thing that happens is yard-duty school, there should be some way to make them understand what those girls had to go through and what drove them to succeed.
Sadly I don’t think anything would get through to those kids except perhaps a visit to Afghanistan and a first hand view of what life is like.
I often think a period of time after high school in a third world country doing something helpful for a community should be seriously encouraged, kind of like life-experience instead of work-experience. It might change attitudes for the better.
I agree in theory but I know I would have been hopeless without modern facilities like toilets. 😦
🙂 I am sure that you would have appreciated the life you have at home much more once you returned… job done!
lol – you’re not wrong!
unreal!
Different people have different problems don’t they, no matter how hard our lives get there is someone out there who would love our problems.