Yesterday’s blott about yaks inspired our team to visit the Pamirs Mountains in northern Afghanistan. We were invited to a lovely village about an hour northwest of Ahaneh Masjed.
We were greeted warmly when the WLBOTT team arrived in a quiet village way up in the Pamirs mountains.
We were treated to a delightful buffet at the village elder’s home. Such hospitality! Our hosts certainly gave us the very best they had. Hospitality is deeply rooted in the cultures of the Pamirs, and visitors are often treated with remarkable generosity despite modest means.
The kids really took to Sister Magdalena! They got out the soccer ball and talked Sister into playing. Who knew she was such a good soccer player!
Tess Twinehart’s Mission: The Yak Loneliness Epidemic
Our faithful readers will recall Tess Twinehart – WLBOTT chicken whisperer and psychotherapist to the Elders in need of therapy (i.e. all the Elders).
In preparing for her trip to the Pamir Mountains, Tess was saddened by this note in Wikipedia:
Females with young tend to choose grazing ground on high, steep slopes. The remaining males are either solitary, or found in much smaller groups, averaging around six individuals. – Wikipedia
She hoped to use this goodwill mission to address the Yak male loneliness epidemic.
Tess is mentoring local MSW candidates, and the students from Texas A&M have a special discipline for bovine healing (with an emphasis on Jungian yak archetypes).
And a lone UT MSW candidate joined the group.
Sister Magdalena also spent some time with the yaks, addressing their spiritual needs and telling them of WLBOTT.
This trip was special for Tess. Her great aunt Tilly Twinehart had made the same journey 50 years ago, for the same purpose. Tess shared Aunt Tilly’s photo album with the village.
Our newest staff member, Perch Periwinkle (of the La Mesa Periwinkles) shared her talents with the kids. She’d lugged up crayons, sketchbooks, tempera paints, markers, and oddly, 144 harmonicas.
The kids loved her.
Brotherhood / Sisterhood
Transcending artificially created boundaries is the WLBOTT way. Let’s share some sacred texts, and we’ll leave it up to our gentle readers to decide if they are from the Bible or the Qur’an.
"We have sent you only as a mercy to all the worlds."
"It was by God's mercy that you were gentle with them. Had you been harsh and hard-hearted, they would have dispersed from around you."
"Tell My servants to say what is best."
"From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth..."
"O mankind! We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may know one another. Indeed, the most honored of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you."
"So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them."
"I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right."
"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it."
"My mercy encompasses all things."
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor...?"
"The one who had mercy on him."
"Go and do likewise."
"In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful."
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind... Love your neighbor as yourself."
"We... made you into peoples and tribes so that you may know one another."
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one."