November 19, 2008

Documentary Recalls Life ‘Once in Afghanistan’
Women Peace Corps Volunteers to Discuss Experiences at Film Screening

A Peace Corps vaccinator interacts with Afghan women during her assignment nearly 40 years ago.

Photo courtesy of Dirt Road Documentaries

Although the Central Asian republic was one of the world’s poorest nations, Howard says, its people typically were warm and welcoming.

Howard, chair of Ohio Wesleyan’s Department of Sociology/Anthropology, recalls visiting rural Afghanistan in the early ’70s with her sister, Rita Hackett, a Peace Corps volunteer working to provide smallpox vaccinations to Afghan women and children.

Hackett and 16 other women Peace Corps volunteers recount their life-changing experiences in the new documentary, Once in Afghanistan. The 70-minute film will be screened at 7 p.m. December 2 at The Strand Theatre, 28 E. Winter St. The event, which kicks off Ohio Wesleyan’s 2008 Human Rights Celebration, is free and open to the public.

Hackett, who now lives in Seattle, is scheduled to attend the screening along with fellow Peace Corps volunteers Jill Vickers of Bridport, Vermont, who directed the documentary, and Kristina Engstrom, their Peace Corps trainer. The three women will answer questions from the audience after the screening.

In the documentary, Hackett says, “We walked in on weddings, on funerals ... whatever was going on and vaccinated everyone.”

Another volunteer recalls explaining to a dying Afghan woman what the group was trying to accomplish. The woman immediately called her children to her side and had them inoculated.

According to the documentary’s creators, “In a world in which messages of hate travel faster than ever before, this is a message of understanding.”

Howard agrees, noting “The film provides a perspective on Afghanistan that most of us don’t have. Now we think of Afghanistan in terms of the post-September 11 world,” with people angry and afraid of the Taliban and, by extension, the Afghan people as a whole.

“Oftentimes crises make the world black and white,” Howard says. “This film helps to make the world more complex and gives a better understanding of the Afghan culture, including the challenges presented by a dry, mountainous environment and the central importance of the extended family in adapting to the environment.”

The screening is sponsored by Ohio Wesleyan’s Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, International Studies Program, Film Studies Program, and student chapter of Amnesty International.

Read more about Once in Afghanistan and view the film’s trailer at http://www.dirtroaddocumentaries.com/trailer.html.

Click here to learn more about OWU’s Human Rights Celebration events.

– Cole Hatcher