A land not forgotten

  • Julie Muhlstein / Herald Columnist
  • Monday, December 3, 2001 9:00pm
  • Local News

Thirty years and half a world removed from his time in Afghanistan, the Rev. Roger Rice has mixed feelings about the war in a country that changed him.

Julie Muhlstein

Herald Columnist

The Rev. Roger Rice has pictures of himself standing near massive Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. The ancient Buddhas are no more, nor is Afghanistan the place the Everett minister remembers from his years in the Peace Corps.

"I’ve stood on top of the head of one of those statues," Rice said of the third-century figures that were carved from a cliff overlooking the Bamian Valley.

"It’s one of the more beautiful places in Afghanistan," said Rice, who leads the congregation at the First Presbyterian Church.

Before Taliban became a household name after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the regime waged war on Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. In March, Taliban soldiers got the attention of the world when they blew up the Bamian Buddhas.

News footage of today’s war-torn Afghanistan shows anything but the physical and cultural landscape Rice recalls.

Now 54, he and his wife, Judy, were fresh out of Ohio University and full of idealism when they joined the Peace Corps in 1970.

"We had graduated from college and wanted to help. We grew up in the Kennedy years, and were inspired by Kennedy and Sargent Shriver," the first director of the Peace Corps, Rice said. In 1961, President Kennedy had established the organization to reach out to the world.

With bachelor’s degrees in journalism, the young couple volunteered as "B.A. generalists," Rice said.

Stationed in Kunduz, their assignment was to teach English to students whose native tongue was Farsi. Rice taught at a secondary school for young men, where he helped establish a library, while his wife was a teacher at a girls’ high school.

They stayed from 1970 to ‘73.

English being the international language of business and technology, Rice said the Afghan government under King Mohammad Zahir Shah was eager for their aid. Shortly after their departure, the king was ousted by a family member and has lived since in exile near Rome.

Rice recalls spare but decent living conditions in an adobe-style house with concrete floors. His wife remembers the cold, and illnesses caused by unsanitary water.

"I was sick maybe half the time I was there," said Judy Rice, speaking from Manhattan, where she works for Aetna U.S. Healthcare half of each month. "It’s a life-changing experience for people to go in the Peace Corps. We haven’t got an appreciation of how much we have in this country.

"For me personally, I matured as an adult. I gained an appreciation of other cultures, and some understanding of what it’s like to live in a Third World country confronted with poverty and disease," her husband added.

That exposure, and what he called "a crisis of faith and philosophy," helped Rice decide on the ministry.

"Confronted with people so desperately poor," Rice said he asked himself, "why would God allow this?"

The couple, who have sons ages 16 and 21, have closely watched news of Afghanistan, from the Soviet invasion in the 1980s to the current strikes aimed at rooting out terrorism. They sponsored an Afghan man they knew in Kunduz to come to the United States. A refugee after the Soviet war, he is now a U.S. citizen living in Chicago, Judy Rice said.

Roger Rice recognizes the name of a former student in news reports about the Northern Alliance, the Afghan fighters battling the Taliban.

Ironically, they know not only people in Afghanistan, but many who died in the World Trade Center tragedy. Grief has come as a double-edged sword.

"We lived in the New York City area. We knew people in the twin towers. We also lived in Afghanistan," Rice said.

"I support what our country is doing in Afghanistan. I support bringing bin Laden to justice," he added. "At the same time, the place I used to live is damaged."

For the Afghan community in this country, "this whole experience is bittersweet. I’m sure they’re glad to see the Taliban gone. Still, their country has seen 20 years of war," Rice said.

"Many Christians adhere to the theory of a just war. I do. I think this is a just war," he said. "We wish for peace."

Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.

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