Fieldnotes on Humanity

Here are some pictures in slide show that I've been taking for past years, roughly between 2003 and 2009. Most of those recent-uploaded pictures are from my workshops that I have been teaching blogging and online journalism for Afghan youth. The workshops have sporadically been taking place between 2006 and 2009. I thought it worth to put them in slide here on my blog as to showcase my works on digital Afghanistan. I'm still working on a project to develop blogging in Afghanistan, hopefully, soon, I will come out with some good news. Anyhow, I'm inviting you to observe these picture from very a volatile and insecure zone like Helmand to quite secure places like Herat, Bamiyan, Kunduz and Kabul.

BY ANNIE LOWREY From: At this point, the litany of contemporary Afghanistan's problems is well known. The country has few paved roads, let alone computers; its population is poor and illiterate; it is blighted with poverty, disease, and violence. For the past 30 years, Kabul has been under the control of radicals, strongmen, foreigners, or some combination of the three. Only rarely can the foreign reporters who describe these conditions leave the safe bubble of Kabul or the back seat of an armored vehicle. As a result, Afghanistan's people, culture, and traditions remain woefully unknown to the world, or reduced to crude stereotypes. "People outside of Afghanistan have no idea what really exists here," a deep-voiced 26-year-old blogger named Nasim Fekrat says. "I was searching for Helmand [on the Internet] the other day. The only things that came up were about terrorists and suicide and bombs. But there is another side to Helmand, another face. There is ...

Note that this article was first published in the America.gov ( direct link of this interview )and if you reproduce this article you must retain this notice. Afghan blogger teaches others his craft ------- By Jane Morse Staff Writer Washington — Tech-savvy Afghans increasingly are turning to blogs for information about their country and the world. They also use blogs as a platform for telling their stories about Afghanistan to the world, says Nasim Fekrat, one of Afghanistan’s trailblazing bloggers. Although Internet penetration is not high in Afghanistan compared with other countries, since 2002, some 20,000 Afghans have started blogging, Fekrat told America.gov . Fekrat, who blogs under the moniker “Afghan Lord,” estimates that at least 1 million Afghans access the Internet through Internet cafes and at local schools and universities. Fekrat discovered blogs in 2000, when only two Afghan expatriates — one in Canada and one in the United States — were blogging in Farsi. He ...

As we were about to land, suddenly the aircraft whirling round up and down in the sky, panic spreading through the passengers, an Indian who is sitting in front of me grabbed the backseat and looking on the right side. A fighter jet was moving close to us. Brad who has called me in the plane that we are going together in media center told me this later when we were in the car towards PRT media center. I never had this experience before, my mood was changing, almost nauseate. The aircraft bent to the right and start landing immediately. After we got briefing and asked our blood types, we were asked to wear body armor and get into the car. The car drove in dust among several other cars that were divided to different directions. I met Ben in PRT, who was my only contact. I had chance to check my e-mail and brows the news websites. Write you more here.

The title may a little surprise you. You may ask yourself, what happened to Nasim that he ended up prison in Berlin. Maybe you will think that he is suspected of something because he comes from a country that provides 95% of opium to the world, and plus, there is a war going on. I am in Kabul now, this post had to be posted already, but it was missing somewhere my computer. I was invited by the GTZ as a photographer for a photography workshop on November 7 to 14. There were six other photographers from other countries; Jodi Bieber from South Africa, Dörthe Boxberg from Germany, Stefan Erber from Germany, Elena Koktanek from Germany, Michael Tsegaye from Ethiopia, Leonel Vasquez from Colombia and two workshop leaders: Ralf Bäcker and Jörn Neumann from Germany. Before going to the workshop in Berlin I had been in Italy where i received my freedom of expression award from Information Safety and Freedom (ISF) in Siena . The workshop subject was “Developing security and security d...

-------- I am in Kabul now. Over the last few weeks I was in Hamburg , Germany , for a Summer school on freedom and responsibilities in media. What a wonderful occasion and what wonderful people from 18 countries who I’ve met there. I miss all of them now and the only thing that remains with me are memories and pictures. If this course was held in Kabul , it might not have been so successful and interesting. In Germany I had to learn every step, I had to learn about the people, cities and culture. I came back with lots of information and memories that I am now sharing with my friends who are coming to meet me. One of the topics we had to work on was ‘dealing with the past’. Working with 8 people from different countries in one group on how we can deal with the past is not such an easy job. In most cases, it is taboo to write about the past, or it might not be so secure, or even dangerous. In a situation like Afghanistan, it is very difficult to write about criminals and the warlord...

----------- Already published here Under the auspices of Association of Afghan Blog Writers , the second round on blogging workshop was held for tens of Afghan journalists and writers in ancient city of Bamyan . This workshop was underway from June, 12 to June, 15. First workshop of this series was previously held by the Association of Afghan Blog Writers in Kabul for journalists, university faculties, students and teachers. Two Western and three Afghan teachers participated in the latest round of blogging workshops. Mr. Martin (German journalist), who was supposed to teach on the first day of the workshop, unfortunately failed to do so due to illness. On the second day, the first hours were dedicated to theoretical issues, in which Mr. Jeffrey Estern (a young American journalist) approached the weblog phenomenon from a Western and modern-world perspective. Mr. Jeffrey compared visual and print media with blogging and evaluated the influence of blogging on public opinions, politics...

------ I am preparing to go to Bamian to launch the second round of the Blogging Workshop. I had a little money left from the previous and first ever workshop in Kabul , which will serve for materials, renting computer lab, internet, transportation and stationary. I hope this won’t be the last workshop on Blogging, because of financial problems. I appreciate the friends and people who helped us for the last workshop. I hope our friends and people who are really concerned about Afghanistan and digital media, and especially in the blogging spheres will help us. We are going to bring together young people, journalists, students and people who are interested to blogging, in order to bring changes, in order to give news out of Afghanistan , in order to fight for freedom of speech. I kindly ask people abroad to donate to us, and help us to fulfill our goals towards freedom of speech. I am sure, the small donations will be used for us to rent internet and a computer lab for teaching Bl...

-------- For the first time in Afghanistan , a two days Blogging workshop was organized by the Afghan Association of Blog Writers . The participants were an Afghan journalist, a University teacher, a poet and writers from different provinces and of various ethnic backgrounds. The main goals of this workshop are better access of journalists to weblogs and other digital media. Since Afghan print and internet media are of a very low quality, blogs could help the Afghan print media and become a milestone in the media situation in Afghanistan . This was just the first blogging workshop in Afghanistan . The plan is to continue with more workshops in different parts of Afghanistan , including Herat , Mazar-e- Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandahar , Bamyan and Daikundi. Cultural activities in cyberspace, theories of blogging, detailed similarities and differences between web sites and weblogs, and the techniques of making a blog were discussed in these two workshop days. And at the end, ea...