I had an interesting taxi ride at 3:30 am yesterday morning as I headed for Vancouver International Airport. My taxi driver had a very thick accent, as many drivers in Vancouver do. I asked him if he had been in Vancouver very long and he answered 25 years. That didn’t surprise me since the focus on immigrating to Canada is not always about learning the language. It is about creating a better lifestyle for the immigrant. Getting a job doesn’t necessarily mean having to know how to speak English.
I asked the driver, “Where did you grow up?”
“Afghanistan.”
My automatic reply was, “I guess you were glad to get away from there.”
He remarked, “We immigrated for the same reason many people did. Someone said Canada was a beautiful place to live, without the crowding that many countries experienced. There was no war as we hear about it now. In fact, what we do hear is not true, even though I also thought it was true.”
He went on to tell me that he and his brother had decided to take a trip together overseas about 6 years ago. They would have liked to visit their homeland but, like everyone else, about the war and what was happening on the news and through social media.
“We decided to go to India and Thailand instead. While we were traveling through Thailand, we ran into a young Swedish woman who was living in Afghanistan and had been there for 7 years. She loved the country and did not find it dangerous at all! My brother and I decided to get tickets and for the first time in 20 years visited with our relatives in our homeland. When we returned to Canada and talked about our peaceful experiences other family members made the trip too.”
With all the media attention about war in Afghanistan, what is the true story? The taxi driver said there were areas where fighting was going on and has been going on for years. People knew not to travel where the fighting was happening.
When I hear a story like this, my concern is whether the involvement of the US Military and the Canadian “peacekeepers” was or is still necessary? The US sent their soldiers over to fight and many of them returned scarred internally and beaten down physically. Is there even a reason for them to be there?
The media hype definitely keeps the war at the forefront. Is war really just a money-making scheme for the US and other countries though? There is big money in wars; military equipment including tanks and guns and aircraft and uniforms and the list goes on! There’s also the employment factor when people are needed to serve.
By the time I got to the airport I had a different perspective about Afghanistan. It’s never been a country that I had on my list of places to travel but for those who do, maybe look into the possibility of visiting there.
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