You couldn't find a thermometer in the Afghan refugee camps, but according to Chen Chin-fa, who often went to the Frigid Zone to deliver relief goods, the temperature would have been at least -5 degrees Celsius [23 degrees Fahrenheit].

On the evening of January 18, Tzu Chi's Afghan relief team returned to Taipei from an eleven-day relief trip. The team members immediately went to Kuantu, Taipei County, to report to Master Cheng Yen, who was staying there during an island-wide tour. The team members had not taken a bath in eight days, and they had only brushed their teeth every other day during the journey. From their expressions, we saw the plight of Afghan refugees.

"In the snow, the refugees wore only very thin clothes. The crotches on kids' pants were torn, but they didn't have any underpants beneath..." Chen could only speak so many words when his lips started quivering. Chen had been carrying out relief work for a very long time and had seen all kinds of miseries in life, but he still shed tears as he recalled the orphans and the widows in the refugee camps.

He went home, took a shower, then sorted through more than four hundred photographs he had taken--children barefoot in the snow, women with grievous expressions asking for help, patients with broken arms or legs, refugees curled up in corners... Each scene repeated itself inside his head. He couldn't sleep that night.

Where were their homes?

In October 2001, Tzu Chi and Knightsbridge International joined hands to help the Afghan refugees. In December of the same year, Knightsbridge International Chairman Edward Artis and Walt Ratterman again went to Afghanistan to prepare for Tzu Chi's relief work with the displaced people.

On January 8, 2002, eight Tzu Chi volunteers from Taiwan and the United States flew to Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, and met up with Artis and Ratterman. Then they went through Termez, a city near the Uzbek-Afghan border, and entered Aibak, a city southeast of Mazar-e-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan.

More than two hours of driving showed nothing but emptiness and desolation. There was hardly any human or vehicle on the roads after the wars. Wrecks of old Russian tanks have dotted the roadside for ten years.

Following the Tzu Chi principles of relief work--priority, practicality and timeliness--the team chose schools, hospitals, and the Hazrati Sultan refugee camp in Aibak as the main relief points. These places were not receiving any help from the World Food Program.

Refugees in groups of tens or hundreds gathered around abandoned shops or ruins of theaters. Each family was squeezed into an area of 9.91 square meters (107 sq. ft.), and only broken walls or rags partitioned one family from another.

The cold wind mercilessly buffeted the Tzu Chi visitors as they walked into those ruins. The refugees built fires to keep themselves warm, and the whole place was filled with pungent smoke that assaulted one's eyes and nose. One woman was trying to fan the fire so it wouldn't die down. Her three little children extended their hands and sat close to the fire to keep themselves warm, ignoring the offending smoke.

There was no electricity. Even though it was daytime, it still felt dark and damp. The smell of mildew assailed the visitors. In the dark, one woman curled up in a corner and several children extended their hands, begging for things.

One abandoned school housed forty-six families. When they saw the arriving Tzu Chi members, they kept asking for everything--because they had nothing and needed everything. The volunteers didn't know what to do. They just wished they had a treasure bag that could magically satisfy all the refugees' needs.

According to Tseng Tun-hua, a volunteer from Texas, the refugees who had tents were the lucky ones. Others had to use tree branches as frames and place tarpaulins on top to cover themselves. Still others had to live like cavemen, digging holes underground like marmots and covering the holes with plastic sheets.

If it snowed heavily, the tents made with tree branches and tarpaulins would collapse. When snow covered the tarpaulins, the volunteers were often unaware that they were walking over the "roofs" of these shelters. Thus Artis, the biggest person in the team, once tripped and fell into someone's home.

On our way to Hazrati Sultan, a woman in a traditional burqa--a piece of cloth that covers a woman from head to toe--brought a letter asking for help and begged the volunteers to accept it. No one in the team understood the letter, but they could all imagine what it was all about. They were all saddened by the miseries brought by war.

In the refugee camp, they saw in a tent four little children, the oldest being about five years old. Through the translator, they learned that the children had been here for nine months. Their mother had died, and their father was working somewhere else. The five-year-old had become the head of the household, and he had to look after his younger siblings.

The team left with heavy hearts. A few steps further, they noticed a woman kneeling before a cave. She looked very feeble with long-term malnutrition and the cold. These sad scenes made volunteers Stephen Huang and Tseng Tun-hua turn their heads so they could secretly wipe their tears with their handkerchiefs.

Huang, director of the Tzu Chi Department of Religious Affairs, said that while in the refugee camp, they only saw gray sky and yellow earth. People were lonely and their homes weren't like homes at all. "This is my saddest trip in ten years of relief work," he added. Whether through poverty or apathy, all that was left for Afghans were hunger, illness, cold, and a future without hope.

Tseng recalled that in the evening when he was leaving for Afghanistan, his son told him not to cry too much. He said to his son, "I have done relief work many times in many countries, so I certainly won't cry anymore!" However, he cried in Afghanistan, many times.

Distribution in the snow

The distribution in the snow that night was quite memorable to the volunteers.

When they arrived in Afghanistan, it was still above ten degrees Celsius [50 degrees Fahrenheit], but it started snowing on the distribution day, January 13. The yellow, muddy land in Aibak was covered with a blanket of pure, white snow, which lay heavy on the minds of everyone there.

The team members wrapped themselves in thick jackets, scarves, gloves, and other clothing to keep themselves warm, but they still shivered whenever the cold winds blew. They also felt colder whenever they thought of how the refugees had only a few thin pieces of clothing or no shoes.

The snow and the temperature kept falling. The relief goods were scheduled to arrive at noon, but they had not showed up by that time. The Afghan truck drivers didn't have any communications equipment, so the team members could only wait and worry while refugees stood some distance away and gawked at the team members.

While waiting for the relief supplies to arrive, Tseng Tun-hua, who was also a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, borrowed a tent to give acupuncture treatments. The mats and blankets borrowed from other tents and caves had all been soaked by melting snow. Living in such horrible conditions, the Afghan people had to fight back hunger and cold with their bodies. Tseng was very impressed with their tenacity.

Skin illnesses, eye problems, colds, stomach problems, sores, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. were rather common here. Tseng tried to ease the symptoms with acupuncture. He said helplessly that with the current substandard living conditions, the refugees might not recover completely even with better treatment. Many illnesses were so obvious to him that there was no need for translation.

Tseng also noticed that refugees had diarrhea, which showed how bad the local food and sanitation conditions were. Most refugees came out in the freezing night with only a thin layer of clothes to go to the toilet. No wonder they would catch colds!

A wound on a man's hand was seriously festering. It was so deep that you could see the bone, and it was emitting a foul odor. Tseng remarked that the hand should be operated on at once, or it would have to be amputated. However, not a single medical station was available in the refugee camp, so surgery was out of the question. With no other choices, Tseng could only apply some medicine onto the wound.

The sky was getting darker, and the team members heard that even UN trucks had been robbed before. Thus, when Chen Chin-fa asked an Afghan next to him about the relief goods, the reply was, "No news is good news." Chen didn't know whether he should be happy or sad at the answer.

The relief supplies finally arrived safely at dusk. It was still snowing, but seeing the urgent looks on the faces of the refugees, the team members decided to unload the goods immediately and distribute them in the dark.

Each bag of goods weighed 50 kilograms [110 pounds], so it was not easy to unload, place and classify them on the snowy ground. But the thought that the refugees would receive them soon made the loads feel lighter, and the refugees' happy faces also warmed the volunteers. As they continued unloading the goods, a local military commander also came and helped with the work.

On this snowy night, one could see thousands of lights twinkling in the darkness as the refugees approached the distribution site with kerosene lamps in their hands.

Three hours later, more than one thousand bags of food, six hundred cans of cooking oil and four hundred blankets had all been distributed to the refugees.

"Tashker"

War had ceased in Afghanistan, but members of the relief team were still worried that they might face a lot of trouble in doing the distribution. From the moment they entered Afghanistan till they left, the team was carefully protected by armed personnel. While they were waiting for the relief goods, an unexpected military confrontation at the front line made them wonder if the distribution could be carried out.

However, the distribution this time went smoothly, and the relief goods were abundant and useful: kerosene, sugar, shoes, tea, beans, rice, flour, cooking oil, blankets, medicine, etc., enough for three months.

Besides handing out relief supplies, the team also went to inspect a woman's school and a hospital in Aibak.

The Taliban regime had banned women from going to school, so this women's school was completely destroyed. It was transformed into a stable for horses and donkeys four years ago. The books in the library were all burned; there was not one chair or table in the classrooms, and the blackboards were actually walls painted black. There used to be a ten-inch-thick layer of horse dung on the floor, and it wasn't completely removed until recently when the school was re-opened. When the team came to visit, they could still smell it.

There was only one hospital in the city, but it had no running water and no electricity. The hospital had only heaters, broken surgical tables on which no surgeries could be performed, and some simple medicine. It didn't look like a hospital at all, but it still had to take care of 700,000 people in the area.

The hospital had fourteen doctors and seven hospitalized patients. The hospital superintendent said that transportation in Afghanistan was very primitive: those living far away couldn't come to the hospital, and only nearby villagers would come.

The team donated some medicine and medical equipment to the hospital. Tzu Chi is evaluating the possibility of rebuilding the school.

When the mission was over and our Tzu Chi members were leaving, they all took out their money and gave it to members of Knightsbridge International who were staying behind to purchase food for the needy. They also took off their winter clothing and gave it to their Afghan friends.

The Afghan refugees had been rather shy when they first met the Tzu Chi members. But when the volunteers were leaving, the refugees all came out of their tents to wave good-bye. Even the women poked out their heads from the tents, brought out their children and smiled. Their cries of "Tashker [thanks]" were a beautiful repayment for the Tzu Chi members.