Bigger Living: One Woman’s Work in Afghanistan

Afghanistan got under her skin. She fell in love with the country, and she was inspired to help. Unlike most of us that allow that feeling to pass, Rosemary moved into action. She started a non-profit called A Little Help. She went back, every vacation, every break, any time she had. With her non-profit, she rebuilt women’s prisons. Most of the female prisoners were incarcerated for marrying a man their families did not arrange. Often children were imprisoned with their mothers. She built teaching kitchens. She taught canning and food preserving classes, a tradition lost to generations of women because of war. (Rosemary makes award-winning preserves, and she has the county fair ribbons to prove it). She helped run a beauty school, improve maternity care, and helped build a clinic for women and children, all in an effort to improve the lives of women in Afghanistan by giving them much needed help, a sense of purpose, and a skill.

When her term in local U.S. politics was over, she made the commitment and moved to Kabul, Afghanistan. She worked full time running a beauty school. Working in beauty parlors is one of the few professions an Afghan woman can have. It is also one of the few social centers women have to meet outside the home. Inside the beauty parlor she saw women thrive, away from the daily cultural restraints still so prevalent in Afghanistan.

As a foreigner, Rosemary had a few more privileges than Afghan women did, but she was not immune to the cultural restraints. She had been living above the beauty school, in the home of the American born beauty school owner and her Afghan husband. They were all good friends. She left one night after the husband threatened her at gunpoint, with a semi-automatic weapon, calling her a “whore” because she had a male friend over visiting in her room. Rosemary insists it would be a better story if they had their clothes off. They didn’t, they were just visiting. When it was over, she packed everything she could fit in two suitcases that night, grabbed her dog, and lived out of her car for four days.