Tag Archives: politics

Free samples

In this summer of no peace and abominable news, there’s one from Italy that has alienated me from the human race.
In short: in a video (unfortunately authentic), two women in white scrubs and later identified as a doctor – a GP- and a nurse, are seen showing boxes of a drug from an Israeli company, TEVA, crossing out the brand name, and then throwing the packages in the trash.
When the Local Health Authority forced the two women to publicly apologize, they stated: “We didn’t throw away real drugs; they were free samples, wipes, and a sodium and potassium supplement. After symbolically scribbling them down, we put them back.”

When I moved to Sanaa, during my first year, I spent my evenings at my boss’s pharmacy. It was a way to understand what was around me, learn Arabic and have a wider view on Yemen.
Attached to the pharmacy was what they called “the clinic,” nothing more than a battered room where first aid was provided, injections were administered, and a bit of everything was treated: malaria, dysentery, high fevers, bruises, cuts, swollen joints. Wounds were cleaned. Sometimes, for free. Often for free.

On the main counter of the pharmacy was a string with a pair of scissors attached. They were used to cut medicine blister packs because, basically, people could afford ONE aspirin, ONE Panadol, ONE ibuprofen, ONE suppository.

In some countries, there are no free samples; there are no wipes, sodium, and potassium supplements that can make a huge difference in a person’s life.
If we want to protest, we should always consider the greater good and how our protest fits the wider picture. I am afraid that throwing away – or pretending to – free samples lacks any sense and definitely will not help the Palestinian people. It might actually offend them. But also the Yemeni and all those people who are dealing with bombs, wars, lack of outlooks, people who sit in refugee camps with no clean water and no tomorrow.
All those whose lives have only received constant free samples of misery.

Afghanistan, Beyond the Battles

Mujahideen, the Taliban, North American invasion of 2001, the struggle for democracy (whose democracy? Which democracy?), through the eyes, scars on skin and words of the actors on the ground.

Antonio Pampliega‘s book Afganistan Mas Allá de La Batalla (Testimonio) had the intent to humanize the inhumanity of war and, specifically, the endless state of wars in Afghanistan, a country so torn that newsrooms can no longer handle truth.
Nobody cares any longer.

Nobody cared and cares of Sayid, barely four months old who died quietly, in a hospital bed where there are no medicines, where machinery donated by NGOs could not benefit from maintenance or the luxury of top-notch spare parts.
Nobody wants to care.
Nobody has the time to notice.
Sayid was a victim of statistics, they say. Just one more number in a long list that measures in decades.
In 2010, when the book was written, of every ten children born, more than half died before reaching the age of five.
We know it did not get any better. Perhaps never, in our lifetime.

I think of Pampliega’s encounter with the people involved in the renaissance of a bookstore, a cinema, a team of girls playing football, a tireless NGO, the victims turnt into angels of prosthetics and rehabilitation in a hospital and all those hopes and dreams of a dignified life.

I bow to his tribute to the figure of fixers, especially his fixer in Afghanistan, without whose help this book would have never been possible and without whose dedication most of the articles and correspondences around the world would never come to life. If we know anything about a difficult country, we owe it to fixers, not governments.

The people who become heroic in Pampliega’s Testimonio are ordinary people who simply try to do the right thing.
Who choose to stay human and be their better selves whatever context they navigate.

The book made me think of someone I knew, a young Afghan called Mansoor.
People like Mansoor made sense of this world.
He believed in education, he believed in egalitarianism in its purest sense.
He loved children.
When he started working for Save the Children, he followed a special and essential project: bringing clean and safe water to remote villages of Uruzgan province, Afghanistan.
His actions meant everything to so many.
In 2015, Mansoor – just 25 – was kidnapped with four colleagues.
After a month of negotiations, the captors decided to proceed with the slaughter of the five young men.
Along with Mansoor, the captors took the life of Rafiullah Salihzai, 27, Naqibullah Afkar, 29, Mohammad Haroon, 27 and Mohammad Naeem, 24.
All but Mansoor were married and, together, they left 12 children behind.
Mansoor is gone, his killers most likely are still alive.
Antonio Pampliega would have loved him.

They say that when Allah made the rest of the world, He saw that there was left a heap of rubbish, fragments, pieces and remains that did not fit anywhere else. After gathering them, he threw them into the ground and thus created Afghanistan.
Make some sense of it