Muslim Chaplain Speaks on Trip to Afghan Refugee Camp

For Immediate Release
January 29, 2002

Sister Shamshad Sheikh will reflect on her conversations with dozens of
Afghan women forced to seek refuge in Pakistan.

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass.-- Sister Shamshad Sheikh, the Muslim chaplain at Mount Holyoke College, will speak about her recent visits to an Afghan refugee camp on Monday, February 4 from 5 to 7 PM in the lounge of Eliot House. She will also display slides she took of some of the women and children she met. The talk is free and open to the public, and the lounge is wheelchair accessible.

Sheikh left the United States on Christmas Day for a three-week visit to Pakistan, intent on learning firsthand about the plight of Afghan women. Prevented by security forces from crossing the border into Afghanistan, she visited the sprawling Kacha Garhi camp in Peshawar, where an estimated 150,000 Afghan refugees live in crude mud huts. There she met with dozens of Afghan women, who pleaded with her for food, medicine, and schools for their children.

Sheikh, a native of Pakistan, is intent on returning to the region, to see conditions across the border in Afghanistan. Until then, she is reflecting on what she has learned and plotting how best to help those made desperate by Afghanistan's decades of war.

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