Little Princess (Part 2) Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April, 1998: “Please,” she sobbed, “don’t leave me here with him. You must take me away with you.” 

The driver at last had to peel her from his leg and tell her, “Princess, you wait here.” 

The screams and sobs filled his confused head as he drove away. 

The entire emotional episode of Princess being removed from the orphanage had taken place while Binh was in Colorado. When she returned on this present trip she patiently worked with me and with those who had come to help her with the orphanage. But her obsession and driving goal was to seek and find Princess and learn of her condition. 

At breakfast one morning, I overheard Binh talking to Mr. Minh and another man. Binh was determined to find the worker who had returned Princess to her house. He was the only one who had any knowledge of where she had been taken.


“I have failed in my duty to protect the best interests of that child,” said Binh. “I will go to any lengths to find her and check on her.” 

The driver was located and indicated that he thought he could once again find his way through the rice paddies to the house where he had left Princess. Mr. Minh, Binh, Louise Bryer, and the driver headed out that same hour in search of Princess. 

“We drove to the end of the world and then walked to hell,” Binh told me, recalling the search. 

Later Mr. Minh confided that he would not have approved of the trip had he known the perils and dangers of getting there. “One of the bamboo and wood bridges should not have carried the weight of the car. We had to chase off the bridge a herd of water buffalo because their additional weight along with the car would have surely collapsed the structure.” 

The “road” was simply the top of the earthen dike that separated the soggy rice fields. There would be no way to turn the car around to drive out. When the earthen dike became impassable, they parked the car and walked a long distance to a small cluster of Vietnamese rural houses. The driver was confident he would be able to remember the correct house. How could he ever forget? The scene was still burned into his mind. He could still hear the uncontrollable, pleading sobs ringing in his ears. 

When they approached the house, none of the four was ready for what they found. There was a seven-year-old girl, a five-year-old girl, and a five-month-old baby lying on the filth-littered floor. An old, scrawny Vietnamese village grandmother was outside. No mother, and the father hadn’t been there for some time. The ages of the children would indicate that they had found the right house. But the children were not the right children. The middle girl was emaciated, and layers of putrid filth covered her body. The pigs, chickens, and other animals had free run of the premises, and no one cared to clean either the house or the dirt-encrusted children. 

Binh stooped down to get a closer look at the five-year-old girl as she lay curled up on the floor—not a sound, not a response. She scooped up the child, grabbed a filthy cloth, and headed out to the hand pump to wet the rag stiffened with dried muck. 

“Oh, God,” pleaded Binh, “don’t let this be Princess. Let me clean the terrible accumulation of grime from this child’s face, and let me discover that the driver was horribly mistaken. Surely he has brought us to the wrong house. We must go to another house and find my Princess. This child must not be her!” 

But it was Princess! Once her face was cleaned of the layers of dirt, the fine features of her face could be recognized. 

As Binh looked into the child’s lifeless eyes, there was no response, no recognition. 

“I have lost my baby. She is gone again. What have I done to this child? God entrusted her to me, and I have let her die again! God will certainly hold me accountable. I have failed both the Princess and God.” Binh laid the weak child back down on the floor and went out of the house and vomited. 

Later the stepmother rode up to the house on a bicycle. Binh pointed out to the scrawny, old grandmother that Princess was now smaller in size than when she left the orphanage. 

“Yes,” was the reply. “The child has been sick for the past three days.” 

Binh asked to please be allowed to take Princess back to the orphanage where she could be fed and attended to medically. The two village women flatly refused. 

“Look,” said Louise, “the dress Princess is wearing is the one we bought for her. But it is so filthy you can hardly recognize it at all. There are no washing facilities here. It is most likely that she hasn’t had that dress off since she was returned to this house.”

The father was not expected to return to the house, so the option of appealing to him to once again return Princess to the orphanage was impossible. Soon some curious, old village women began to gather at the home and peer in through the doorway. Mr. Minh sternly insisted that Binh and Louise leave right away. There had been no response from Princess up to that moment. The visitors concluded that it was no longer possible for Princess to respond intellectually or emotionally. But just as Binh and the other three were about to go, Princess made an effort to stop the driver from leaving. He had left her there once before to be consumed by her nightmare. He had told her to wait there. He had returned once again. Was it not to take her with him? Surely he would not have come just to leave her there—not again! 

Princess broke into a wail. Certainly they would not leave without taking her with them, she thought. The stepmother began yelling at Princess and telling her to shut up. If she did not, she would be punished. More curious old village women began to appear. Everything was in total emotional confusion. Mr. Minh now harshly insisted they quickly leave. 

Their walk back to the car along the tops of the rice-paddy dikes seemed much longer than their walk in. But the wail of Princess in the hearts and heads of the four visitors did not quiet or diminish even though they moved farther away from the house.


By the time Binh and Louise returned to our hotel in Viet Tri, they were emotional basket cases. The story of Princess has not yet ended well. All the people involved in the plot did not simply ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

But the story has come to me with crushing impact. It has forced me to grapple spiritually, emotionally, ethically, and behaviorally with the sobering realization that there are millions of Princesses in the world I travel who have no advocate, no help, no hope. Certainly we will not cure all the ills and save all the children. But “as ye have done it unto the least of these orphans and widows, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40, paraphrase). 

Project C.U.R.E. is now, and always will be as long as I have an ounce of influence on it, a holy structure of humanitarian outreach dedicated to easing pain and building up the least of these in the name of Christ. We have the power of attorney to work the works and accomplish the desires that would have driven him during his earthly ministry. I believe his all-encompassing ministry includes working out his heart’s desire through my human hands and feet, ears and eyes. My personal life and the life of Project C.U.R.E. must be the manifestation of the eternal life and heart of Jesus Christ. That very real manifestation must be worked out in Evergreen, in Denver, in Nashville, in Los Angeles, in Vietnam, in the Ukraine, in Mongolia, in North Korea, and in all the additional locations that will be added to the present list of sixty-one countries around the world. 

Binh Rybacki’s love for the orphaned and the leprous children of Vietnam has both encouraged and challenged my heart and mind. Thank God for the faithful ministry partners of Project C.U.R.E. As I travel, I find myself praying for her; for De, the blind musician in the orphanage; and for little Princess, wherever she might be.

 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Little Princess (Part 1) Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April, 1998: My flight from Vietnam to Denver seemed unusually long. The flight segment from Bangkok to Los Angeles was almost eighteen flying hours. I am eager to get back to my own home along Upper Bear Creek, where I can be with my wonderful wife and family. It will be a short stay of three days at home and then back on an airplane to Paris, France, and south to the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Benin, West Africa. 

As I rested my head against the coach seat, I reflected on a situation I had observed in Viet Tri over the past few days. Many elements of the episode, such as hardship, love, perseverance, rejection, dashed hopes, and deep emotion, I had seen at work in my own life under different circumstances. But the emotionally packed principles involved allowed me to vicariously revisit some of these elements once again in the following saga of the “little princess.”


Binh Rybacki had poured her heart and their family money into the orphanages she had established in Vietnam. Her living now in Colorado, and endeavoring to manage the orphanages in Vietnam, required her to make the tiresome trip many times a year, But it was almost as if she were driven on the inside to make a difference in the lives of the abandoned children. Had she not been able to escape to America there was a big possibility that she too, would have lived the fate of an orphan. 

When rice harvest is finished in a local Vietnamese village, the workers will sometimes walk to another village where the harvest is just beginning and work for wages in the neighboring community. Once the harvest there is complete, they will return to their local village or sometimes choose to continue on northward following the maturing harvest. 

An attractive, young Vietnamese mother left her two children with her husband and traveled with some of her close friends to work at a neighboring harvest. The family was having financial problems, and it was decided the wage labor could ease some of the pressure. Later it was revealed that the problems at home may have included more than just financial troubles. 

When the pretty mother from the village failed to return home, the community gossip machine flared with fury. Some of the older women swore they knew the girl had simply decided not to go back to the stress but, rather, had decided to take up residence in a mountainous area far away. But some said she had been lured away into crossing the border into China. Others declared they had read of kidnappers who had captured her and sold her into slavery and prostitution in China because of her beauty. 

One thing was known for certain: She never returned. No one had heard from her or of her since the day she departed. Her husband was left with two small children—the oldest was age five, and the youngest, eighteen months. The father was overwhelmed. An old relative took the older child but wanted nothing to do with the baby, who was still nursing. Malnourished and dirty, the baby was brought to Binh Rybacki’s orphanage and abandoned by the father, who wanted nothing more to do with the child. 

Binh and her workers took the baby and began cleaning and caring for her. She began to gain weight and function physically, but emotionally something was wrong. As a result of trauma or unknown abuse, the baby would only sit and stare. She would not focus, nor would she respond. Soon she was affectionately dubbed “Stone Face” in Vietnamese vernacular. The only word that passed her lips was “more” when they stopped feeding her before she was satisfied. 

Everyone who came to the orphanage was immediately attracted to Stone Face. She had inherited the fine features of her beautiful mother. She was the most beautiful baby to ever be brought to the orphanage. But what was going on behind the blank eyes of Stone Face? She would neither play with the other children nor reach out for an adult. 

Binh’s two sons, Preston and Craig, went to the orphanage in Viet Tri to work after school was out in Loveland, Colorado. Stone Face was now three and a half years old. Another teen, Joel, went with Preston and Craig, and when they set foot inside the orphanage compound, they were attracted to Stone Face as if she were a magnet. They were taken with her rare beauty but puzzled by her unresponsive and empty stares. “She’s spooky,” they said as they increased their efforts over the following days to try to get Stone Face to smile or speak. But there was no response.

The boys decided to take on the challenge to awaken Stone Face. Binh told them they would each be presented a ten-dollar bill if they could succeed in awakening her. The contest was on. The boys’ clowning and goofy antics fully deserved an Oscar award. Love and attention flowed to Stone Face like a river on a rampage. From morning to night, the boys packed her around on their backs, on their hips, or on their shoulders. They laughed, coaxed, stood on their heads. They were determined to awaken the inner beauty of this little princess. They just knew they could help her respond. Little by little the abuse of the past was replaced by confidence in her new friends. Little by little she began to anticipate when they would be coming for her and would turn and look for them. She then began reaching for them to pack her around. A light began to slowly—ever so slowly—be rekindled behind her blank eyes and her stone face began to soften. Little Princess was coming to life. 

Before the summer was over, the boys earned their ten bucks each. Princess was not only smiling; she was walking and singing and eating on her own. She was tagging along everywhere her new teenage friends went and even began making friends with another little orphan girl named Peanut. Princess was like a beautiful butterfly that had been freed from the long nightmare of the cocoon. The metamorphosis had been stimulated by nothing but love and affection. The young boys went shopping and brought Princess a complete new wardrobe and pretty new shoes. 

Princess was now nearly five, and the flow of love and affection was soon to be shut off. Binh was back in the United States with her family when she received a most disconcerting call from Mr. Minh, the orphanage director: “They have come to take Princess away from us. Her father has remarried, and he is trying to save face with his new wife by denying that he abandoned his children. He cares not one whit for the child, only for what he wants this new woman to think.” 

“Over my dead body” was Binh’s reply. “The cruelty of that child’s abuse and trauma will not be repeated again in her little life. We shall protect her and fight to preserve our successful efforts on her behalf. She was for all purposes dead when we received her. She is now alive. I will not allow her spirit to be killed again by abuse, rejection, and cruel neglect.” 

But the determined father appealed to the court, and permission was granted for him to take Princess back to his home. When the day came for Princess to leave the orphanage, the workers packed all her pretty new dresses in a box, along with her new pairs of shoes. But Princess refused to leave. She perceived very well what was happening. At the sight of her father, she became uncontrollable. Eventually it was necessary for an orphanage worker to load Princess and her box of belongings into a car and take her to her former rural village miles away. 

For the entire trip, Princess clung to the neck of the driver, sobbing and begging him to take her back to the orphanage and her friends. Once inside the house, she spotted the father and grabbed hold of the car driver’s leg and would not let go. 

Next Week: Little Princess (Part 2)

 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Miracle of the Water Deal: Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April, 1998: The ride to and from the temple mountain gave me a rare opportunity to get better acquainted with Mr. Nguyen Van Vinh of the planning and investment department of the People’s Committee. I found that he is a walking source of names and contacts. I explained to him about our goals for Hanoi and also about Project C.U.R.E.’s relationship with North Korea. I asked if he could help me arrange meetings with the important people I needed to see. Mr. Vinh was flattered and eagerly agreed to help me. After all, if Project C.U.R.E. can be encouraged to participate in his regional capital, then Mr. Vinh will gain a tremendous amount of job security.

After our delegation returned to the hotel in Viet Tri at 5:00 p.m., I was informed that a meeting was scheduled with Mr. Vinh’s boss, Mr. Hong. He had been keeping close tabs on the possibility of Mr. Jackson coming to his region and helping with the hospital. At the meeting we talked of many things that are taking place in his region. Then he said something that really made me blink: “Mr. Jackson, in addition to the medical supplies that our seven-region area needs, we also desperately need help with our water-purification problems.”

I was listening very closely to Binh Rybacki’s translation of Mr. Hong’s request. His mention of a water project made me blink because of the timeliness of the subject. The day before I left Denver for Vietnam, I had a meeting on that very subject.

During an evening dinner party at Daniel Yohannes’s home in Denver, he introduced me to Mr. Dick Campbell, a prominent corporate attorney in the Denver area. Daniel is president of the large U.S. Bank conglomerate. Mr. Campbell and his wife were very taken with the work of Project C.U.R.E. Subsequently, Dick Campbell, Daniel Yohannes, my son Doug, and I had several lunch meetings regarding Project C.U.R.E. On one occasion Dick asked if I knew Mr. Sam Perry. I inquired if he was the same Sam Perry of the large real-estate company in Denver, Perry and Butler. Dick confirmed my guess. I told him that twenty-five years ago, when I was still very active in the real-estate industry, Sam Perry and I had put some deals together between our companies.

Dick informed me that he and Sam had grown up together, and both of them are devoted Catholics who had been on some spiritual retreats together. He also mentioned that Sam had gotten quite serious about spiritual matters and was looking to get involved in some humanitarian efforts. Dick gave me Sam’s personal phone numbers and almost insisted I call Sam.

When I reached Sam, he was very eager to get together and asked if I would mind if he brought with him to our meeting three of his close friends and business partners. He said he had been reading and hearing so much about the work of Project C.U.R.E. from Daniel and Dick and others that he was hoping he would get to meet me.

At our first lunch meeting, Sam and I were joined by John Peterson, whose brother is the head of the prestigious Blackstone investment group of New York City and whose sister sits on the board of directors of Johnson and Johnson medical group. Greg Bohannon also joined us. He is the president and CEO of a new venture called Aqua-Asia, a firm devoted to producing water-purification systems, especially in developing countries. They have created a new purification process that utilizes electronic collectors to remove harmful pollutants from the water. The system doesn’t require traditional electric sources of power or generators, because photocells are employed to power the facility.

A lot of the discussion at the lunch centered around what God had been doing in our lives and about values and priorities. I challenged them to consider joining Project C.U.R.E. and setting up some of their purification units on a donation basis in some of the most desperate areas of the world. By the time lunch was over, they had agreed to join efforts with Project C.U.R.E.

Our next meeting additionally included my son Doug, who is now president and CEO of Project C.U.R.E., as well as Mickey Fouts, who has large real-estate holdings in Denver. Mickey had just returned from Hanoi, Vietnam. Sam and Mickey told me about Tobin Lent, a young investment banker they had mentored. At the time he was in Vietnam establishing a base for Aqua-Asia. They told me how very keen a young man Tobin is and gave me his phone number in Hanoi. They said they would inform Tobin about me and the work of Project C.U.R.E. “Perhaps the two of you working together in Vietnam can locate a suitable project for us to do our first pro-bono venture,” they told me.

Around the office in Denver, the staff and volunteers continually say they can’t stand being away from the office because they are afraid they will miss out on one of the regularly occurring miracles. I, too, am continually amazed at how God proceeds ahead of all our domestic and foreign scrambling and prearranges the pieces of the mosaic to bring about a product that is pleasing and desirable to him.

With that in mind, you can only imagine the tingle that went up my spine today when Mr. Hong said, “In addition to the medical supplies our seven-region area needs, we desperately need help with our water-purification problems.” Could it be happening again?

My evening with Tobin was one of the highlights of the trip. The young man is sharp. He is focused. He is from Littleton, Colorado, and his parents now live in Beijing, China. He has been an investment banker and a mortgage broker. I sensed he has a tender heart beneath his driven surface. I think Tobin and Doug will hit it off very well. Tobin is not only fascinated with what has happened in my life, but just from the things the guys from Denver have told him, he is already in love with Project C.U.R.E. 

He took me to a small restaurant located in an old French home. It was very classy, in addition to serving delicious Vietnamese food. While visiting with Tobin, I explained all the things that had taken place leading up to tonight. I also explained to him about the town called Phu-Tho (pronounced “Fu Ta”), which Project C.U.R.E. and the Denver guys are proposing as the target town for the first water-purification venture. It is a smaller town with a lot of residual French influence. It presently is home for a well-respected, smaller university. I expressed how I think the town is small enough to be able to collect accurate data on the before-and-after effects of the purification plant. Also, its setting in the mountains will make a perfect show-and-tell location for Aqua-Asia’s product. Tobin really got excited about the possibilities. 

After thinking about all the apparent miracles that are taking place and about my meeting last night with Tobin Lent, I felt an urgency not to lose any momentum on the water project. At breakfast I asked Binh to contact Mr. Vinh and Mr. Minh in Viet Tri and have them bring their boss to Hanoi for a meeting with Tobin either this evening or early tomorrow morning. Our time is running out before I return to Colorado. I need to be at the Hanoi airport by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. I know that we are pushing our luck on getting the bigwigs to come to Hanoi from Viet Tri on such short notice. But the next step in the deal is to get Tobin introduced to them personally so they can all move forward together on the project with the Needs Assessment Study and projections. Another miracle is taking place right before my eyes.

 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Song of the Blind Orphan

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April, 1998: In my previous journal entries about Vietnam, I mentioned Binh Rybacki, a native of Vietnam who was one of the last to be plucked off the roof of the American embassy in Saigon in a spectacular rescue effort as the Americans were retreating from the city in 1975. There isn’t even the slightest shadow of a doubt that had she not been on that helicopter chopping its way to safety out of South Vietnam, the Communists would have killed her, along with all the other American sympathizers who were left as we withdrew in shame and frustration. 

But Binh is still in love with her mother country and its people, even though her permanent residence is with her immediate family in Colorado. Over the years Binh has done a heroic job of reentering Vietnam and taking on the responsibility of caring for thousands of orphaned and disabled Vietnamese children. Binh’s organization is called Children of Peace, and she has orphanage facilities under her direction in the Ho Chi Minh City area in the south, as well as the Hanoi area in the north. She remains a computer engineer at the Hewlett-Packard enclave north of Boulder, Colorado, and lives in Loveland with her own adopted American Vietnamese kids and her husband, who also works for Hewlett-Packard. Between the two of them, they spend over seventy thousand dollars of their personal income from Hewlett-Packard to support the work of Children of Peace in Vietnam. Binh confided in me that all of her salary goes to pay the costs of the orphanages, and she and her husband even pay out of their own pockets the salaries of the staff at the local Vietnamese government pediatric hospital. 


 Binh shared with me about her Children of Peace project in 1996 and asked if Project C.U.R.E. would ever be willing to work with her and her orphanages. In January of this year, she called me from her home in Loveland and asked if I would accompany her and a group of her supporters when they return to Hanoi in April. I agreed. We immediately began making the plans for the trip. 

My welcome at Hanoi airport was a warm one. The people there met me with a beautiful bouquet of yellow and red roses. The temperature when I walked off the plane in Vietnam was 104 degrees, and the humidity was very high. 

I looked around for a telephone so I could call back to Colorado and let everyone know I had arrived safely. I had promised to keep closer touch with the office and Anna Marie after the bazaar twist of events during my recent trip to Thailand in which the Denver office was notified that I was missing in action. 

I couldn’t see a phone anywhere, so I opted to wait to make my call home until I got checked into my hotel in Hanoi. However, my hosts threw all my bags into a van, and we headed not to Hanoi but north and west for another forty miles to the city of Viet Tri, the capital of Phu Tho Province. Viet Tri is located in the mountainous areas north of Hanoi and serves as the provincial center for about 1.5 million people. But when I got checked into the hotel, I discovered that the one thing they don’t have in the city is a reliable telephone system. It could take days to get ahold of an international operator who can connect me to Colorado. That part of North Vietnam reminds me a whole lot of North Korea. 

Thang Nguyen is a young Vietnamese man from Saigon. He is a nephew of Binh’s but was unable to escape Vietnam in 1975. His father spent fourteen years in a Communist prison in solitary confinement for being an enemy of the Communists. There was no light in his small, wet dungeon cell, and when he came out of prison after fourteen years in the dark, he was totally blind. Binh, on a previous trip, had encouraged Thang to complete his college education. During the years following 1975, Thang had grown up on the streets of Saigon totally by himself. All his family escaped or ended up in prison. 

Mr. Nguyen Van Vinh is the country representative for Binh Rybacki’s Children of Peace organization in Vietnam. He is very sharp and has done an excellent job as director in the past. Mr. Vinh speaks four or five languages and now has a top government job. 

At 8:15 the van arrived to take our entourage to the Children of Peace home for the disabled and orphaned. I would be able to see Binh Rybacki’s work firsthand. Two years ago, the city of Viet Tri had offered to give her an abandoned middle school that had fallen into severe disrepair. The Communist Party of Vietnam told her that if she wanted to take the challenge to clean and repair the property, she could use it for her orphanage. Binh has done wonders! 

As we drove in through the green iron gates, 120 jumping, smiling, chattering kids welcomed us. As is the case with orphanages I visit around the world, all the kids wanted to be talked to and touched and held … all at once. And like the kids in the African orphanages, it didn’t take long for them to discover that I am not only a different skin color, but I also grow hair on my arms. Their curiosity inevitably led them to start pulling on the hairs to see if they were attached. But the serious pulling and tugging was on my heart. If you don’t want to be totally spent emotionally, then don’t run the risk of visiting an orphanage in a developing country. 

Perhaps the experience that was most wrenching and exhilarating at the same time was watching three young, blind musicians perform for us. Two young boys and a young girl sang and played their hearts out.

The instruments they played included an old, beat-up set of drums with bent cymbals and ripped drum heads; an ancient, one-string, horizontal, guitar-type tube; and a small electronic keyboard donated to the orphanage by some mission group headed back to America. 

  The one sixteen-year-old boy, De (with the vowel pronounced like “debt” or “death”), also played a bamboo flute. He is good enough, in my opinion, to grace the stage of the Colorado Symphony any day. He also wrote some of the songs he sang for us. Of course, they were in Vietnamese, but Binh interpreted the words into English as he sang.

The words of his first song said, “If I could see my mother—if I had a mother—her hair would be long, and her voice would sound to me like the singing of the birds.” As he continued, it came crashing into my conscious mind like an eighteen-wheeler semitruck bashing its way into a supersilent, sound-controlled recording studio. This boy had never, never, ever known his mother. He was orphaned at birth, and he was blind at birth. He was singing about the mother he had never known, if he even had a mother! His hope was in the idea of a mother and a father! Instead of listening with my ears, I started listening with my heart as he sang his next original song:

I have never seen sunlight
Nor have I seen darkness
All I have known
Is my mother’s sweet voice
And my father’s warm embrace
Mother guides me with her gentle heart
And Father lends me his strong hands on my shoulders
I may never see sunlight
Nor will I know darkness, for … 
My mother is my sunlight
And Father will guide me
Through darkness.[1]

By the time De finished, Binh was crying and I was crying. God may not have given De sight, but he withheld absolutely nothing from De from the great storehouse of insight. 

1 Written by Nguyen Van De, 1995, Viet Tri Center for Handicapped Children and Orphans. Used by permission

Nest Week: Miracle of the Water Deal
 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Invincibility: Vietnam

Note: In 1998, I made fourteen major trips that included 30 countries. In that year I made three separate trips to Vietnam. In the next four blogs I want to lift out and share four short incidences that took place on just one of those Vietnam trips: April 22-30, 1998.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: April 1998: My first needs-assessment trip to Vietnam took place in October of 1996. Project C.U.R.E.’s involvement in Vietnam actually began two years prior to that date through our contact with Dr. Randy Robinson; his wife, Ginger; and their organization Face the Challenge. My October 1996 journal entries chronicle our partnership with Face the Challenge. We jointly went to Ho Chi Minh City (Old Saigon) and were part of the effort that resulted in over sixty surgeries being performed on kids and young residents of the Ho Chi Minh City area.

In many ways that trip greatly affected my life. Witnessing the talented surgical team using Project C.U.R.E.’s donated medical goods in the operating and recovery rooms indelibly underscored in my heart and mind the undeniable value of our mission to take medical supplies into developing countries around the world. The lives of the children and parents, who were so radically changed during that trip alone, merited all the combined efforts of Project C.U.R.E. over the past eleven years.

I was glad I had actually gone into the operating rooms and closely observed the restructuring of the little faces and bodies of the children. I was glad I had been present to see the tears and looks on the faces of the parents when their children were returned to them in the recovery rooms. The children, who had been so disfigured from birth, were handed back to anxious moms and dads, who were more often than not in shock when they saw the kids and realized for certain that their own flesh and blood had been given beauty and a second chance at living normal lives.

While thinking back on the 1996 trip, and at the same time anticipating my upcoming trip to Vietnam, I was struck by another startling realization. Life is precious. Life is short. The length of life is totally unpredictable. Our tendency is to begin to think about ourselves and our friends in terms of invincibility. We will always be here. Our friends will always be here. Drastic change is neither thinkable nor acceptable, especially while we are involved in doing “God’s work.” We will always be protected from harm, and our families are somehow guaranteed to never be subjected to grief or pain or loss resulting from our endeavors. That possibility just doesn’t occur to us, or if it does, it is instantly rejected by a good inoculation of denial. We simply get another shot of invincibility like the yellow fever or cholera shots we get before going into the African jungles.

But that ideal of invincibility is not always the way real life works. Bill LeTourneau worked closely with Face the Challenge and Dr. Randy Robinson. He was also my front man making all the necessary arrangements for the surgical trip in October of 1996. 

Putting all the details in place necessitated that Bill travel to Vietnam many times before my departure for Ho Chi Minh City. Bill, who at the time was forty-one years old, had a natural talent for diplomacy and negotiating. In fact, it was Bill who helped me tag the right contacts in Ho Chi Minh City, which eventually produced meetings at the Vietnamese ministry of trade, where I proposed a working relationship between North Korea and Vietnam, with Project C.U.R.E. orchestrating the international countertrade of Vietnamese rice for North Korean iron ore to help keep the people of North Korea from starving to death. Bill sat in on those meetings with me in 1996.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Robinson’s group, Face the Challenge, returned to the hospitals of Old Saigon to once again perform cranio-maxillofacial surgeries on little kids. They are once again using Project C.U.R.E.’s medical supplies, which our staff sent to Ho Chi Minh City a few weeks ago.

Once again, Bill LeTourneau was in on the advance detail assignment to prepare for the surgeons and nurses, who would arrive later. Everything was properly set up with the local doctors, the hospitals, the hotels, and the shuttle buses. The parents of the children who would receive the reconstruction surgeries had been notified of the scheduled day the team would arrive. Because of my scheduled trip to Hanoi, I opted not to return to Ho Chi Minh City with the medical team.

During the days and often into the nights, the medical team performed their life-changing surgeries. But one morning Bill didn’t show for breakfast. At the age of forty-three, he had died alone in his room of a massive heart attack. Bill not only left his wife, Julie, and his two kids, Joseph and Jackie, but he also left a lot of us with hurting hearts and another opportunity to revisit our stubborn beliefs that our lives and endeavors on this earth are somehow invincible.

My prayer is that God will bring healing to our hearts and be especially near Julie and the children as they try to sort through the emotions and trauma of such an unexpected tragedy. I know today that heaven is richer because Bill is there, but I also know that we all feel a little pillaged today, and a whale of a lot more vulnerable.

 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

A Tribute to My Friend: William L Armstrong

On Tuesday, July 5th, 2016, a very dear friend of mine died. On Friday, July 15th, we gathered to honor him, we shared stories about him, and we thanked God for his extraordinary life. How could one man have accomplished so much in such a short period of time? 

Bill Armstrong was president of Armstrong Broadcasting Company and later Ambassador Media Corporation. He bought KOSI-AM radio station when he was 22 years old and soon stretched it to include FM coverage as well. He owned and operated the Colorado Springs Sun newspaper and three ABC television stations in Idaho and Wyoming. He owned and operated more than a dozen private companies and served as director of six public companies, including the chairman position of the Denver-based Oppenheimer Funds. 

He served in the Colorado House of Representatives (1963-1964), The Colorado Senate (1965-1972), U.S. House of Representatives (1973-1978), and U.S. Senate (1979-1990). Upon leaving the Senate, he returned to Colorado and once again became involved in the business world. In 2006 Senator Armstrong became the president of Colorado Christian University. He claimed that his work at the University was “the most significant, energizing, and rewarding work I have ever undertaken.” 

As I sat in the large crowd at Senator Armstrong’s funeral, contemplating the impact of this great man’s influence on our contemporary world, I quickly realized that had it not been for this one man it is very likely that there would never have been an international humanitarian organization called Project C.U.R.E. 

I had serendipitously been seated at the same table with Senator Bill Armstrong and his wife, Ellen, at one of the first presidential prayer breakfasts of the Ronald Reagan administration in Washington D.C. He was warm and engaging and interested in what I was doing. I explained a bit about my work as an international economic consultant in Africa and South America. At his invitation, I returned to Washington and met with him at his office. I chatted with him about my ideas regarding debt for equity swaps in the lesser developed countries in South America. I asked Senator Armstrong if he could assist me in getting introduced to the political leadership of the country of Brazil, as I thought I could be of help to them. He graciously agreed to help me. 

I had previously been introduced to some very powerful people in Sao Paulo who had considerable influence in the capital, Brasilia. In addition to those names my portfolio now included letters of introduction and recommendation from Senators Armstrong and McCain. The Brazilian government now officially invited me to come to Brasilia. Senator Armstrong had contacted our U.S. Ambassador, Shlackman, U.S. Consul on Economic Affairs, Michael J. Delaney, and U.S. Economic Minister to Brazil, John Bowen. Mr. Bowen would formally introduce me to Brazil’s Minister of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Eventually, I was introduced to Brazil’s President, Jose Sarney, and one of his chief economists, Antonio Basilar. 

That is how I got involved in Brazil. It was in Brazil that I eventually became sensitized to the incredible need for medical supplies and pieces of medical equipment in the lesser developed countries of the world. I was eventually able to organize Project C.U.R.E. to help in fulfilling that need in over 130 other hurting countries. Senator Bill Armstrong played a pivotal and irreplaceable part in that protocol and sequence of events. 

On Thursday, April 7th of this year, I had a meeting with Bill Armstrong in his CCU office. I took along with me a copy of one of the letters he had written on my behalf in Brazil. He could hardly believe that I had kept the letter for nearly thirty years. At that meeting I was delivering an advance copy of my newest book Better Off that he had agreed to review for me. Little did I know that meeting would be the last formal meeting I would have with him. 

On Saturday, April 16th, I received a call from Senator Armstrong. He was so excited and enthusiastic. He had just finished reading the book. He was so encouraging and said he was sending a personal endorsement email to me within the next few minutes. Tears came to my eyes as I thanked God for William L. Armstrong. His immense love for God and his compelling desire to help other people had not diminished during his times of pain and cancer, but had become even stronger with each remaining day of his life.

This world is a better place and all our lives are richer because of the loving life of Bill Armstrong.
 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

At First Blush

I’m intrigued by the illustrious traditions of the book business. While the printing presses are still running, the publisher snatches a couple of sample copies from the conveyor belt, hustles down to the nearest UPS or FedEx store, and sends them to the anxious author who is sitting at home chewing his or her finger nails. That is the first instant the author gets to touch, smell, and stare at the new product. The baby is born.

This week I received from FedEx my two sealed copies of the hard bound book,Better Off. Indeed, the one split second of satisfaction was worth the innumerable hours of copious research and writing. Yes.

With this book, however, I decided to do something different. I thought it would be fun to flush my mind of all previous involvement with the book and read it straight through as if it were my very first experience with the subject and the written words.

I had a very interesting reaction when I finished and closed the back cover and laid down the book. I want to share that personal experience with you.

I fancied myself in heaven, twenty-five years from now, where I was looking down over the lofty banister back onto old mother earth. I had already been experiencing a ton of information and wisdom that I recently learned would have been freely available to me while I was back stumbling and stomping around on earth. I had been so messed up, however, thinking about what we were going to do when we ran out of oil, or sunlight, or water, or electric grids, or computer chips . . . or whatever. I found out that I could have been spending my time, my mental energy, and my imagination exploring and freely discovering all the new and exciting things that were right there before my eyes.

They were all right there, but my preoccupation with fears and worries about shortages, lack, and insufficiencies had burned holes right through my inner eyes of hope, imagination, discovery, and achievement. Those impediments had left me blinded to the possibilities that now I could clearly see.

Why didn’t we, God’s highest achievement in creation, simply reject those who wanted to manipulate, stymie, and control us and condemn us to lives of poverty, scarcity, and bondage? Why didn’t we go ahead and perfect nuclear power, harness hydrogen and finish fusion? We were so tied to the logic of the limited that we were hindered from learning about the ability of abundance.

We had spent all our collective time thinking how to recklessly divvy up the scarce commodities when we could have easily utilized heavenly intelligence and energy to discover available abundance. I caught myself desperately wanting to give it another try.

The rest of the hard bound books have not yet arrived for distribution, but I find myself very eager to get the message of Better Off out to my friends.  I would like to have you own a copy of Better Off. I truly believe you will find it inspiring and personally helpful.

To order go to www.winstoncrown.com or www.jameswjackson.com.

After you have read the book I would love for you to send me your personal responses at press@winstoncrown.com

 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

"We're On Fire"

Afghanistan: August, 2002: Our bus left the refugee area and we were driven back to the warlord’s enclave. Everyone got off and went into the heavily guarded headquarters where Commander Chief Miramza met us graciously. We were seated once again and additionally fed ripe watermelon slices and freshly picked grapes. The commander seemed genuinely appreciative of our having made the effort to help the people. It’s just that you never really know where their true loyalties lie. Maybe he was happy that the Taliban had been dislodged from power in his area and maybe Bin Laden may have been his hero. There was just no way of telling. You just never knew whose side he might figure that “Allah” was on. 

I remembered that back in Tashkent during my meeting with the embassy folks they had told me a supposedly true story of an incident that had taken place during the American bombing raid. They told me that a Taliban tank operator was sitting on top of his tank watching the absolute precision of the American bombing operation. The bombs would travel along the ground ripping deep trenches in the ground then find their way exactly to the pinpointed target and completely wipe out the designated object. 

He watched the precision operation for several days, turned to his Taliban buddies and said, “I was told specifically that Allah was on our side and assuredly he would give us the victory. But, I don’t think so.” And thereupon he jumped down from his tank and walked home. 

We pulled out of Balkh and drove back toward Mazar-e Sharif. It was early evening when we returned to the Young Nak compound. The showers there were nothing to brag about but the wetness of the water washed away the desert dirt and soothed away the emotional afternoon. God’s faithfulness had protected us once again. 

After dinner it began to cool down a bit outside. It was so hot at night that we just laid on the mat and sweat. As I had mentioned earlier, fortunately, our room was equipped with a fan. 

To keep the mosquitoes and other insects from attacking our totally unprotected bodies, the manager of the Young Nak compound delivered each night to each room a burning citronella coil that stayed lit like a punk and burned slowly throughout the night. He set the punks in the windowsill, which was made of concrete, and no one worried about safety but simply enjoyed the mosquito-free atmosphere. 

Monday, August 5

About 1:30 a.m., I was startled as I caught a glimpse of a figure running in the darkness out of our room. My eyes bounced open and I was wide awake. I sat up and reached for my little flashlight, which I had lying on the sleeping mat next to my head. I quickly turned on the light and realized that the room was engulfed in a heavy layer of smoke. 

The sleeping pads had been situated on the floor adjacent to the room’s walls, around the entire parameter of the room, except where the door was located. I was sleeping on the pad on the same wall as where the door was located. My head was in the corner and my body stretched toward the doorway. The mat that was at a right angle to my head was placed right under the low positioned window. Jason was sleeping exactly opposite the room from me and Mr. Kim was on the floor opposite the window. Toward the end of the mat, which was under the windowsill and at a right angle to my head, I could see a patch of flames about three or four inches above the surface of the mat.

About that time Jason jumped up and we got to the hot spot at about the same time. The coverlet on the mat was ready to erupt into full flame. The mat itself had burned most of the way through and had reached a kindling temperature sufficient to launch it into full flame.

Immediately I started pulling my things off the mat. I had placed my travel bag, my camera, and other items on the mat next to my head. If the flames had erupted they all would have ignited quickly.

It had been Mr. Kim who first realized that we had a fire. And it was he who had run out of the room to get some water. Soon he came running back into the room with a supply of water and thoroughly doused the fire. Jason and I then grabbed the mat and hauled it outside just in case the fire was not totally extinguished.

Another Korean man who had been sleeping upstairs had also come to the room sensing that there was a fire. The smoke coming from the mat had been toxic and once the episode was over I realized that it had affected my lungs as well as my vocal chords.

The thing that bothered me most about the mishap was that I had not awakened at the strong smell of the smoke. I had awakened at the man running out of the room. It certainly was no mystery as to what had started the fire. The fan had blown the window curtain just right to flip the mosquito-repellent punk off the windowsill and onto the mat. I guess my subconscious mind had accepted the fact that there was supposed to be smoke from the punk and didn’t let me know the difference between the burning citronella and the toxic smoke from the mat. Had I been by myself in a room somewhere in one of the other countries where I traveled, I might not have awakened before the mat burst into flames. Once more, God had been faithful to protect us.

It seemed like a short night after that, because we had to be up at 4:30 a.m. in order to get ready to leave on the bus.

On Monday we would reverse the trip that had taken us into Afghanistan as we traveled back to Uzbekistan. We left Mazar-e Sharif and drove through the sand dunes that had blown their way back over the road. We cleared Afghanistan border control and made our way across the bridge that joined the two countries over the Amu Darya River.

It was actually more difficult getting back into Uzbekistan than it had been getting into Afghanistan. There was a tremendous amount of drug traffic out of Afghanistan. Production of heroine in Afghanistan topped nearly all other countries in the world. Therefore, they very carefully check not only the travelers and their luggage but pay particular attention to the large and small trucks that cross the border and the automobiles. I was surprised, however, to see drug-sniffing dogs employed at the Uzbekistan border working to detect the chemicals.

Tuesday, August 6

Tuesday morning was an informal training session for Jason on needs assessments. Anna Marie and I met with him for a couple of hours reviewing observations and situations that had taken place on the trip. Jason was an eager learner and had really become a committed and loyal member of the Project C.U.R.E. team. I had become impressed that he would be able to handle international assessments for Project C.U.R.E. in various venues around the world.

At noon Daniel Kim came to get us checked out of the hotel and delivered to the airport. We had a good opportunity to discuss the findings of our assessment studies with Daniel Kim and suggest the logistics and details of the medical shipments from Project C.U.R.E. into Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. It was going to be an exciting project to see what we could do together with the Koreans in Central Asia.

Meeting with the Main Warlord

Afghanistan: August 4, 2002: We drove out from Mazar-e Sharif to an area called Balkh. It was the home of about 150 refugee families. They were IDPs, as opposed to being refugees from another country seeking safety in Afghanistan. They were a part of a larger segment of the community but had not integrated into the rest of the community. 

Their living quarters were within the walls of bombed-out buildings two and three stories high. The buildings had been completely gutted by the explosions and fire. The new inhabitants pitched their tents on the dirt floors of the old structures and any earthly belongings they retained were stashed under the makeshift tents. There was no running water available to them and no sewer facilities. They had no means of income and were relegated to beggar status. 

Our bus pulled up in front of a high-walled enclave heavily guarded by plain-clothed and uniformed soldiers. All were carrying automatic weapons or shoulder-held grenade or rocket launchers. Daniel asked me to accompany him into the fortified enclave. 

The walled enclave was heavily shaded by large trees and there were remnants of a couple of large concrete and stone pads at the center. At one time in history the location must have been quite lovely. Along one outside wall there were about 15 Afghanistan tribal men seated in an oval configuration on dark red Persian carpets that had been spread on the ground. All were grizzled and seasoned older men with full beards, traditional parahan turbans, and Afghan turbans. We had gone to the very headquarters of the warlords for the northern part of Afghanistan. 

Daniel Kim had always made it a practice to pay a call to the area warlord, Commander Chief Miramza, to greet him, inform him of why he was in the area, and ask his permission to hold the free medical clinic and distribute the bread and fruit to the refugees. 

The warlord was a robust man dressed in military fatigues and wearing an unusual bit of headgear. Instead of the traditional turban he wore a round ring over his baldhead with a flat piece of material over the top. But looks aside, the order for the moment was definitely dignity and respect. 

We greeted Commander Miramza by formally embracing and shaking hands. We were then invited to sit in the formation next to the warlord on the bright red Persian rugs. We explained what our agenda was for the day and then Daniel Kim explained all about Project C.U.R.E. and introduced me to say some words of greeting to the council. 

From the leaders’ enclave we drove to the refugee area. Some of the people were living in brush arbors made of sticks and weeds piled over a framework to shield the families from the extremely hot sun. The temperature was about 106 degrees even at that early hour. I watched but simply could not understand how even the refugee women could tolerate wearing the long covering over all their other clothes, over their heads and faces. Even inside their brush arbor tent houses they still kept their heads covered although some had removed their chadiri in their makeshift houses. 

As we walked into the refugee area the tribe leaders led us to a mound of dirt elevated about five feet above the regular landscape. The top of the mound was flat and measured about 20 feet in diameter. While we were standing there men came with shovels and hoes and knocked down all the large weeds that had grown over the mound. When cleared they brought pieces of carpet and spread on the flat surface. 

We unloaded 5,000 loaves of Afghan bread from two vans and stacked them on the pieces of carpet. Daniel Kim and Young Nak Foundation had pre-arranged for the bread ahead of time and had paid for men to collect the loaves from various local bread makers right at their outside ovens. 

When the bread was unloaded we set to work unloading 150 large melons and stacked them on the edges of the carpet in front of the bread. Our next duty was to count out exactly 30 loaves of bread and put them in 150 individual stacks. 

While we were working with the bread and melons, the Korean medical team of three doctors plus nurses, assistants, and interpreters, set up a clinic site on the porch of an old, bombed-out building. Each individual or mother of sick children was issued a piece of paper with a sequential number on it. That piece of paper allocated a place in line for those wanting to see a doctor. 

At the beginning, the refugees kept pretty orderly in the lines. But as time went on the would-be patients began to get restless and some of the more aggressive women tried to push and shove their way closer to the front of the line, or they tried to go around the house and sneak onto the porch from another direction. 

As I observed, I came to the conclusion that the Afghan culture was quite a ruthless and physically cruel society. Delegated or self-appointed men of the tribe began to enforce the crowd’s behavior. They were equipped with thick green branches. At any perceived misbehavior of the “rule breakers” in the lines, the men with the sticks would violently attack them and beat them severely until they either ran off or complied. 

As I watched it seemed to me that, indeed, the cruelty of the men toward the women was made easier since they really didn’t have to reckon with the identity or personality of the women they were beating. But identity of the misbehaving children didn’t seem to affect the striking of the kids in any way. They just got a beating. 

As the sun bore down and the time drug on, there was more violence. Women pushed and shoved other women and there was a lot of abuse from the women to the children. Under pressure, it seemed like the only way to communicate was by hitting. 

By 3 in the afternoon, the refugees were getting restless. I told Jason to watch how the crowd was reacting. I pointed out just how nasty crowds like that could become in a split second. I even told him of our experience in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea when Project C.U.R.E. had teamed up with Dr. Howard Harper and Vision International to perform free inner-ocular lens transplants on blind children. When the time had come for us to shut down the procedures and leave, those parents and grandparents of children who had not received the sight-restoring operation became very emotional. They had anticipated that their children would see again like the other eighty-some blind children who had received their sight as a result of the procedure. “You can only imagine how it would feel to come so close to having your deepest need met and then realize that the people who could help others were leaving without helping you.” 

I went on to explain that it probably was one of Anna Marie’s most emotional times of her life, when as we were getting ready to leave, the parents and old people would go to her and beg and even offer wads of money if our doctors would stay and also make their babies see again. “It’s a real thin edge of emotions when a crowd of people realize that they might get left out. It can turn violent very easily.” 

Daniel Kim sensed what was happening and spread the word that we would shut down the free clinic at 3:30 p.m. The people also sensed what was going to happen. 

Suddenly men started pushing past the nurses and just grabbing bottles and sacks of pills. One man I saw was running away with about six bags of intravenous fluid. Those IV fluids would do him absolutely no good at the present or in the future but he wasn’t going to be denied his share. 

When things started to unravel, we packed and closed up the boxes of medical supplies. We each carried what we could and quickly headed for the bus. 

Meanwhile, Jason and others were distributing the loaves of bread and melons to the refugee families. The head of that refugee community was standing atop the mound and calling out the individual family names of the camp. When their name was called they would go up on top the mound and receive their 30 loaves of bread and their fruit. But, some folks were greedy and not willing to settle for order. Earlier their family had possibly already received their food, but they wanted more. 

Before all the bread could be distributed fairly some of the men in their 20s or 30s began breaking through the lines and grabbing the bread and running off. Then the rest saw what was happening and rushed the mound. 

At that point Daniel Kim hollered to Jason and the others handing out the bread and fruit and told them to just drop whatever they had in their hands and quickly go to the bus. By that time the young men were trying to grab anything they could get their hands on. They began trying to strip the waist pack Jason had fastened around his middle. They could not get it unlatched or the pockets unzipped. But someone did reach in and grab a hold of his camera from one of his side pockets. He ran back and grabbed it back from the young man and quickly made his way to the bus. 

Now then, at a church picnic or even at Denver’s National Western Stock Show, such an incident wouldn’t be too significant. But, when nearly every man in the community was carrying an automatic high-powered rifle or a grenade launcher and you are a citizen of a country that just recently bombed the “puddin’” out of the neighborhood, you are apt to have the makings of something nasty or at least dangerous. I was very pleased when Jason and I and the 18 Koreans were safely seated on the bus. 

Jason was a little shaken from the incident. It was the first such occurrence he had ever witnessed. In fact, our trip to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan was the first time Jason had ever been outside the US. 

Next Week: “We’re on Fire”

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

Into Afghanistan via Rashkent Uzbekistan

Afghanistan: August, 2002: On Friday, July 26, Anna Marie, Jason and I met at Denver International Airport. We flew from Denver to Chicago and on to Germany. We arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan at 10:30 p.m. following a frustrating five hour delay in Frankfurt due to Uzbekistan Air mechanical problems. I was given a note to call my good friend Dr. James Terbush before I went to bed. He was also in Tashkent and staying at a nearby hotel. I apologized profusely for awakening him. We set a time to meet the next morning. 

Sunday, July 28

It was good to see Dr.Terbush. He works for the U.S. State Department as an embassy doctor and medical liaison in different regions of the world. Jim and his wife Leigh have been special friends of ours for several years. He had just been to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and also Mazar-e-Sharif where I was planning to go. He gave me a thorough briefing on the terrorist situation. Of course, he had the advantage of riding in an American government convoy with gunners on each corner point of the procession. But nevertheless, his trip had been extremely risky and dangerous.  

Dr. Terbush asked if Project C.U.R.E. would be willing to get involved in sending medical items into Kabul and other southern parts of Afghanistan, as well as Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. He let me know that the government thought it would be an advantageous gesture if Project C.U.R.E. would, as a third party, increase our involvement of humanitarian aid into Afghanistan. He said that if it was of interest to Project C.U.R.E., he would set up a meeting with the necessary people the next day.  

Monday July 29

Mr. Sung Han Kang told us that for a period of time the people in Afghanistan, primarily the internally displaced persons (IDP, sometimes called internal refugees) had only grass to eat and infected water to drink. IACD had tried to help them build earthen ovens where they could bake bread. They had been able to get blankets to give to the refugees and some bread to deliver to them. Mostly they encouraged them not to stay in refugee camps but rather to try to return to their old home areas and start over. They explained that things in refugee camps never get better, only worse. 


For lunch, Jason and Anna Marie went to the Kim’s home, and I left to keep my appointment with the folks at the US embassy. My meeting went extremely well as we discussed the possibility of Project C.U.R.E. getting involved in medical aid not only in Mazar-e-Sharif, but also in the other major cities in Afghanistan. The Afghan embassy in Tashkent and the United Nations were each requiring lots of information regarding our applications to go into Mazar-e-Sharif. But as of Wednesday they had not rejected our requests. We knew we were making progress when they asked for our passports and valid photos to be delivered to them on Wednesday morning. I wanted to be sure to include Jason in the meeting so that he could catch the feeling for what Project C.U.R.E. was required to do on the diplomatic front.  

Dr. Sharipov’s looks and features were more eastern European than Uzbekistan. He carried himself well, dressed very Western and had a fresh haircut. He certainly fit the role of being a part of the top cabinet ministry of Uzbekistan. The two of us hit it off very well from the beginning. He was extremely complimentary of what he had seen at our Project C.U.R.E. operation when he had visited us in Denver. He just flatly admitted that he wanted us to work with him at the top levels in Uzbekistan and promised to introduce me to all the cabinet members who were the decision-makers in the country.  

We rushed back to the rehabilitation center where we received a very fine and thorough briefing on what we would be doing on our trip into Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. The trip had been approved and we would be traveling in a group of Koreans who would be performing a free medical clinic for the refugees. We would also be delivering 5,000 loaves of bread and fruit to areas of desperate need.  

Saturday, August 3

Anna Marie would be checking out of the hotel that morning at the same time I checked out. She would go to the home of Dr. and Mrs. Chong Soo Kim where she would be safer and better looked after. Jason and I had to be at the airport at 7:30 a.m. to catch our flight to Termez, Uzbekistan, near the Afghanistan border. From there our group of 18 Koreans plus Jason and me would travel by bus across the border and continue on into Afghanistan.  

The Amu Darya River makes the boundary line between the two countries. The process at the border crossing took nearly four hours. We just patiently waited in the hot sun for the officials to do their work.

The road from the border to Mazar-e Sharif was fraught with lots of drifting sand dunes. A bit of wind and the road would totally close over with several feet of sand. Of course that would make the travel very dangerous. It was not only bad on the vehicles, but if you would get stuck you would be absolutely helpless and very vulnerable to being attacked, robbed, or kidnapped by desperate predators. Nearly all adult males carried rifles or automatic weapons, or shouldered rocket launchers.  

The sun was setting when we arrived in Mazar-e Sharif. The streets were crowded with donkey carts, taxi carts pulled by ponies, and old beat-up automobiles and trucks held together with the best repair patches available to the drivers.

The streets were mostly dirt and sand. The previously paved roads were deteriorated and full of potholes. The men all wore beards and Afghan turbans. Everyone and everything was dirty. The women all wore scarves over their heads and the majority of women wore the full-length dress called a “chadiri.” It even covered all the head and face, leaving a woman to peer out of a patch of lace about five inches square. A lot of the men wore the “parahan turban.” A knee-length shirt was worn over baggy pants that were pulled tight at the waist by a drawstring.  

Almost all Afghans were Muslims. In the previous years the radical sect of Taliban had completely taken over the country and had carried on a cruel and unusual campaign to strictly enforce the most severe of the Muslim traditions and laws. All men had to pray five times a day at a local mosque. Women not only had to completely cover themselves, but they could not work outside their homes and could not go to school or attain any formal skills. Any non-compliance to the Taliban’s interpretation of the codes resulted in severe beatings in public and other forms of intimidation and humiliation. Death to anyone resisting the Taliban or their carrying out of their rules was not at all unusual. It had become a terrible and inhumane system of control by cruelty.  

Our bus inched its way down the dirt streets between ramshackle structures. We made an abrupt right turn barely squeezing the bus around the corner. Down about a block on the left side of the street was a walled compound with a small sign on the gate reading Young Nak.

The sign stood out as a bit incongruous. All the turbaned men, women in chadiri, donkeys, dirt, carts, and rag-a-muffin kids, and in the middle of all of it was a clean, well painted, well maintained compound with a Korean sign on it!  

Quite honestly, it was a welcome sight, because I didn’t think that there was a decent hotel in the city. We were fed a good meal of rice and cooked vegetables and fresh Afghanistan bread right out of an earthen oven from down the street. After dinner we were assigned sleeping spots in the different rooms. We slept on mats on the floor. It was so hot that no top blanket or even a sheet was supplied. Jason, Mr. Kim, and I slept in one room. We were really quite fortunate because our room was furnished with a ceiling fan. It was miserably hot in Mazar-e Sharif in August. 

Next Week: Meeting with the Main Warlord

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House