Reporting from Kabul

Frances Hopkins Irwin ’63, Angene Wilson’s sister, began training for the Peace Corps in July 1964. She worked on The Kabul Times in Kabul, Afghanistan, from November 1964 to July 1967, and met her husband, Will, also a Peace Corps volunteer. Following are excerpts from her letters home.

Fran reads proof on The Kabul Times with colleague Mohammed Ibrahim. The Times moved to a brand new marble building with much-appreciated central heating and a spectacular view of the mountains during Fran’s second year in Kabul.

Dec. 26, 1964: (a New Year’s letter to friends and relatives.) I am one of the 55 members of Afghan IV, the fourth Peace Corps contingent to come to Afghanistan. Half of our group is teaching in the provinces and the other half is teaching, nursing, or working in various ministries in Kabul as secretaries, mechanics, or irrigators. (Afghanistan) is an Islamic country about the size of Texas. . . Perhaps 350,000 of its. . . thirteen million people live in the capital city of Kabul (equal stress on each syllable) which is situated at 6000 feet, several hundred kilometers west of the Khyber Pass and within sight of the snow-covered Hindu Kush ranges to the north.

More specifically, I live in a six-room mud house enclosed by a ten-foot compound wall, along with two fellow Peace Corps volunteers.

My job is working on The Kabul Times, a four-page daily (except Friday), English-language newspaper sponsored by the government. I work with an all Afghan staff editing wire service stories from Reuters, AP, Tass, and New China News Agency. . . . A new constitution has just been written and under it a new press law will allow some freedom of the press by next year. Political parties may be formed; more women may come out of chadri. It is an exciting time to be getting to know the people who are rediscovering the East and West and trying to emerge with a synthesis of their own.

Fran talking with nomads near Qala Nau (northeast of Herat) on a trip around the country gathering stories for The Kabul Times.

Aug. 25, 1965: We took off over an apparently barren hill and found a beautiful valley – the Willian – and talked to three different families on the way through about schools, hospitals, water, and machinery. At the first house there were three brothers, one of whom had been sick for four years. (My colleague) gave him a note to a doctor in Kabul. One of the boys did go to school. Down the hill we sat on the roots of a mulberry tree and talked to a man threshing wheat by driving five cattle round and round. He noted that they probably did that by machine where I came from, which was interesting because he hadn’t been to school or far from home.

Aug. 25, 1965: I am sitting under a mulberry tree on my sleeping bag on a mat about 100 feet above the green, fast-flowing Kokcha River. This morning I woke to the sound of camel bells; three caravans totaling about 150 camels passed by in the next hour about 15 feet in front of me through a row of poplars.... In the six days since we left Kabul, we have seen at least 4,000 camels, one bridal caravan, thousands of goats, sheep, and donkeys.

"On our way between Taloqan and Faizabad, our Land Rover got stuck crossing a river. We didn’t meet many people along the road, but we had an audience of villagers, nomads with their camels, and a German mountain climbing expedition when we got stuck. We lost only a tent pole and dried out overnight."