Christmas in Chitral
Christmas in Chitral
Christmas in Chitral… Ringing in the New Year with lice, suicide, and a strange illness…
Christmas was spent in a small village nestled in the Hindu Kush mountains with my roommate and her family. Thank God for a nice break in the fresh air and personal time with my roommate’s family. They speak a different language, but one uncle was fluent in Pashto so we had some good gospel conversations as well as hearing the history of Chitral from when the jinn (spirits, demons) ruled Chitral during the time of Solomon (at least that’s what he said) to when their own clan ruled with such strictness as forbidding anyone else to wear white clothes or own a horse besides them. We journeyed back to Peshawar New Year’s Eve night and celebrated in the bus with a driver who was drinking and smoking weed and a group of drunk guys sitting behind us who kept giving us snacks.
When we arrived back in Peshawar I was horribly sick and had head lice. My friends in Islamabad sent me a care package with healthy snacks and lice shampoo and I spent every day this week in the hospital trying to figure out what happened. The doctors couldn’t find anything, but I was not able to eat or drink at all so I kept getting worse. After taking something yesterday I seem to have made a full recovery and am back up and running again, without lice as well.
The day after I made it back to Peshawar we heard the news that a student in the boys’ hostel hung himself on the fan. His suicide letter said he had no reason why, just he was fed up with living in this society. After further investigation, it appears he was a victim of sexual harassment from another student in his hostel.
He was good friends with my classmates as some of my classmates live in his hostel and he was part of a club for students from Dir which some of my classmates are very active in, so I had met him before at the Dir Students’ booth whenever there was an event, but didn’t know him personally. Pray for his family and friends. Pray for other victims of sexual harassment which is rampant on campus, especially homosexual harassment in the boys’ hostels.
And with all that, final exams for this semester are on Monday.
Pray for the Word to go forth and for the hope of Christ to permeate the darkness!
Christmas was spent in a small village nestled in the Hindu Kush mountains with my roommate and her family. Thank God for a nice break in the fresh air and personal time with my roommate’s family. They speak a different language, but one uncle was fluent in Pashto so we had some good gospel conversations as well as hearing the history of Chitral from when the jinn (spirits, demons) ruled Chitral during the time of Solomon (at least that’s what he said) to when their own clan ruled with such strictness as forbidding anyone else to wear white clothes or own a horse besides them. We journeyed back to Peshawar New Year’s Eve night and celebrated in the bus with a driver who was drinking and smoking weed and a group of drunk guys sitting behind us who kept giving us snacks.
When we arrived back in Peshawar I was horribly sick and had head lice. My friends in Islamabad sent me a care package with healthy snacks and lice shampoo and I spent every day this week in the hospital trying to figure out what happened. The doctors couldn’t find anything, but I was not able to eat or drink at all so I kept getting worse. After taking something yesterday I seem to have made a full recovery and am back up and running again, without lice as well.
The day after I made it back to Peshawar we heard the news that a student in the boys’ hostel hung himself on the fan. His suicide letter said he had no reason why, just he was fed up with living in this society. After further investigation, it appears he was a victim of sexual harassment from another student in his hostel.
He was good friends with my classmates as some of my classmates live in his hostel and he was part of a club for students from Dir which some of my classmates are very active in, so I had met him before at the Dir Students’ booth whenever there was an event, but didn’t know him personally. Pray for his family and friends. Pray for other victims of sexual harassment which is rampant on campus, especially homosexual harassment in the boys’ hostels.
And with all that, final exams for this semester are on Monday.
Pray for the Word to go forth and for the hope of Christ to permeate the darkness!
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