By Tylere Couture (First appeared in Campbell River Mirror - March 28, 2008)

Although the major work of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team (KPRT) is supporting and building the capacity of the Afghan government, there are several ways where the help we provide is more direct.

Even if these small interventions have little impact on the country as a whole, they provide us with something where the results of our help are more quickly evident, and that win the hearts of individual Afghans.

For example, not long ago a man came to the front gate of Camp Nathan Smith where the KPRT resides.

This happens often and as part of the Kandahar City CIMIC team it is usually me who is called to go out to meet with them.

Frequently, they are contractors looking for work from the PRT, or local leaders to request aid for their communities, but this man told me a different story.

He appeared an old sun-worn figure with a long dark grey beard.

His age was impossible to tell, but I would guess this man who looked 70 years old was probably in his early forties.

Through an interpreter, he told me his wife had died giving birth to his son, that his baby boy was not born healthy, and the doctor had to perform immediate surgery.

His baby had a “pipe” sticking from his abdomen, as he put it, and would need further surgery soon, he did not have any clean bandages, and he didn’t know what to do; he was poor and now had to support his six children without his wife. Since he lived in a village a couple kilometres outside of the city,

I asked him if he had visited a medical clinic, and at this he seemed happy, as he recalled there being a medical clinic in his village, and that he would go to visit it.

It was an odd reaction, I thought. Perhaps the concept of a community medical facility was foreign, perhaps he was under so much stress, his only thought was to visit the KPRT, or perhaps his mind was not all there.

I did not mention to him that the KPRT could help in any other way, as I didn’t want to raise any false hope with the already greatly suffering man. But there was something we could do thanks to the Assistance to Afghanistan Trust Fund, a fund composed of money donated by private Canadian citizens and businesses.

I hadn’t used this resource yet, but recalled it from one of our many briefings.

I contacted an Afghan doctor who works closely with the KPRT and is a surgeon in Kandahar City’s regional hospital – unlike our meaning of regional, their “regional” hospital covers five provinces.

I asked him if he could have a look at this man’s son and investigate whether the surgery could be done in Kandahar or if he would need to be sent elsewhere.

When he got back to me, the doctor said that they had done all they could do locally, and that he would need to go to Pakistan for surgery.

The KPRT has approved this aide and the boy is now in Pakistan with his father, just as I am introduced to a 12 year old girl in constant pain as a result of a congenital heart problem, a ventricular septal defect.

I hope that we will be able to do the same for her as we did for the widower’s newborn son. Yet, at the same time I know we cannot help them all.

If you are interested in helping these small humanitarian deeds to continue, you can donate through Boomer’s Legacy (www.boomerslegacy.ca), a charity named in remembrance of Corporal Andrew James Eykelenboom, a Canadian military medic from Comox who was killed by a suicide bomber in Kandahar.

Although in some cases, these minor interventions may seem inconsequential in the big picture, I can tell you from experience that without a doubt, as stated on Boomer’s web page, they support the morale of Canadian troops as they recognize that they can make a difference on a very personal level.