|
Afghanistan to Pacific and back to save her people: A story to be told of true dedication by a Pacific alumnus to the women who lost a quarter century of their lives among war and oppression from the Taliban.
 Dr. Sakena Yacoobi In the mid-1970s, it was unlikely for an Afghani woman to be allowed to worry about her education, let alone be allowed to the United States to study. A 1978 graduate from Pacific, Dr. Sakena Yacoobi has returned to Pacific this week an internationally renowned identity and a heroine to oppressed women in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"I wanted to be a doctor," said Yacoobi, who was inspired to help women in pre- and post- natal care after seeing her own mother suffer through sixteen pregnancies with only five surviving children. She became a biology major at Pacific. She continued on to get both her masters and doctorate degrees in Public Health at other American universities.
During the time Yacoobi was in the U.S., Russia invaded Afghanistan and Yacoobi was told it was unsafe to return home. During Afghanistan's civil war, women and children were victimized. Many men died in the initial invasion, leaving women to care for their families alone. "Women became the heads of the household," explained Yacoobi, "Many fled as refugees across the border to Pakistan.
"My family was in Afghanistan, it was a very hard time for me; I knew I had to focus on my education." Yacoobi asked herself, "How can I help my country and my family?"
When Russia left Afghanistan in 1989, Yacoobi went home to rescue her family. She brought them back to the United States knowing, "It is better here, it is safer." After getting her family settled in the U.S., Yacoobi returned to Afghanistan where she has spent the last 17 years. Starting in refugee camps and with underground clinics and education, she began her fight to educate the women of her country.
The rise of the Taliban regime in 1996 had completely deteriorated the rights of women. Previously allowed to work, women were no longer allowed to leave the house without a male relative. There was no education for females. Yacoobi herself wrote seven manuals to train other teachers. These manuals included information on child psychology so the teachers could help the war-torn children cope with their fears.
"I came from a culture that was very closed-minded," said Yacoobi, everything from the US was very different; "from a Kingdom to a democracy." The education Yacoobi gained in the U.S. helped "encourage me to do the work I do now," she said.
Now, the Afghan administration supports the Afghan Institute of Learning, founded by Yacoobi. The government does not have the means to help educate its own women and children, so AIL works to educate women in health, nutrition, medicine, and peace. "When you educate a man, you are educating one person; but when you educate a woman, you are educating the whole family," explained Yacoobi. Women pass their knowledge on to their families in everyday life.
AIL has four full clinics that care for more than 10,000 people a month and a number of mobile clinics that travel to meet the health and education needs of Afghanistan. AIL has been very successful, but rebuilding the lives that were lost in a quarter century of war in Afghanistan is not an easy task. They are working to "teach them [women] about their rights – human rights, women's rights – they have been the victims. It will take a long time to give them their confidence back, said Yacoobi.
As Yacoobi describes it, they "try to build a woman as a whole."
Views: 407
|
News 
