An amazing factor of life I have been constantly encountering since my return from Afghanistan is no matter what you plan for, or work towards, if you let life take its natural course you never really know what is coming next or where you will end up. This time last year all Afghanistan was to me was a warzone and a top university to enhance my education when it comes to being a student of war. As for Roya Mahboob and the students of the Baghnazarghah school of Herat the struggles of women entreprenuership and lack of education in Afghanistan was as normal to them as the war to me.
Here we are a little over a year later alongside Filmannex and history has already been made. With Roya teaming up with Filmannex the first internet classroom has been established and built along with videos being produced by Roya's
filmmakers to film the results of everyone's hard work with the project. This amount of work and time that was put into this project now opened up the doors for the many aspiring women of Afghanistan to start their own ventures who maybe needed that small amount of inspiration that could show them yes it can be done. For the Afghan children who wanted more of life but did have the know how to look beyond what they saw in school, or books, now have the internet which serves as a window to the outside world where all the knowledge they knew they wer missing is now attainable. A self opinion of mine about education is you are extremely lacking if all you have is book knowledge and no life experience, or traveling to explore the other cultures. Everything is a learning experience from the horrors of war to classrooms of highest educational platforms such as Harvard and Yale. Imagine everything there is to learn in between these two extremes that many people overlook. Many young Afghans as well as adults, along with the many new and old veteran entrepreneurs have experienced these in betweens and have used this, along with classroom education and succeeded not only financially but in benefiting everyone they have around them. You take a war vet, or third world Afghan woman or child, all of whom shared in their lifetime the constant inside struggle of knowing this could be my last day alive, or everything I have worked for could be taken from me at anytime. All it takes for any of these three is the thought of knowing they are now free, and watch them soar, with all three collaborated together there is no telling to what heights they will soar.
Being a student of war is a lifelong study, and will never cease to hold my attention. I have learned in my last year to look at the war in Afghanistan second and the children of Baghnazarghah first as well as the all around reconstruction of the Afghan people and its economy. No one who has ever invaded Afghanistan has ever been able to conquer and take it, their culture is strong and I respect everything there is too learn from it. Learning from myself also opens my eyes to bigger things, I have recently looked deeper into my veteran blogs and will now keep in the back of my mind the more I put into them and readers attention I hold, how many veteran business opportunities will I be able to create? There is always more to life than what what we phyically see, I guess we have to look on the things we create with so much more than just our eyes. Life is something we can all see in the phyiscal form, but for a selected few like myself, the Afghan children of Baghnazaraghah, Roya Mahboob's women entreprenuership, seeing the vision of life is now becoming more and more crystal clear. Never above you, never below you always beside you. Semper Fi. This is a quote from a fallen brother's gravestone who was killed this time last year in the war. Always live well for the fallen!
