Guest Blogger: Nasim Fekrat

Guest blog post: Today we have a post from Nasim Fekrat, a 27 year-old blogger and journalist from Afhgnaistan. Nasim is in the states as a Fellow with the National Constitution Center's Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. We have asked him to write a brief entry about who is and the work he does. After his entry we have posted some suggestions on using Naism's blog and photographs in your classroom.



For the first time when I start writing on Afghan lord, I didn’t know who is going to read them. After I got lots of feedbacks from my readers but all different, I didn’t know what subjects I should write about. Some were asking me I shouldn’t write more about military casualties and attacks against international forces, some were asking me I should write my personal opinion about the existing of foreign troops in Afghanistan. Some other asking me I should write more about culture, traditions and society. I remember the post I had on my blog about Che Guevara. I only wrote my personal opinion about his book called “The Motorcycle Diaries”.
Many were cursing him and many blamed me as a son of communist. It was not a good word to hear in Afghanistan. I remember the time of Jihad against Soviet Union, people were killing even their own brothers in Afghanistan because they were communist and communists were equal to infidel.


All these were experiments of blogging. I learned and start to have two different points of views on my blogs. I my readers for my Farsi blog and the same for my English blog. I start writing casual, putting picture, video and audio. There brought big courage to do a lot. Now I know who is reading and I am pretty sure they don’t like to hear suicide attack and casualties reports on my blog. They like to hear what a normal Afghan likes, hates, believe and loves. They like to hear about the society, women, children and culture.



Teaching about Afghanistan with Nasim's blog:

- Brainstorm with students a list of topics and keywords they may associate with Afghanistan.

- Have students look for these key words on Nasim's blog