About Butterflies

I always say that if you listen long enough when interviewing someone the lead will find you. In this story that happened in a big way. When she got to telling me about the plastic butterflies, I thought, "Oh my God, can anything be more horrible?"
When this story was edited, the copy editor took the liberty of making almost every sentence a paragraph and I'm not sure if it works, you decide.

By ALAN FOSTER
Patriot-News

Butterflies are beautiful things. They glide and flutter gently, making their way from flower to flower, not harming anyone or anything.

That’s why Deborah Fulmer,45, a nurse with Pediatric Services of America in Colonial Park, was perplexed when she saw plastic shapes of butterflies is a museum exhibit of was munitions in Kabul, Afghanistan.

She asked her guide why they were there. Her guide told her, “ The Soviets dropped them in mine fields to attract children.”

This was a glimpse of the decades-old struggle facing the Afghan people.
Fulmer spent the first two weeks in June in the war-torn nation as part of Global Exchange, a U.N. organization that builds schools.

She was philosophical about the mission of building schools where schools have been targets.
She said it is “a good time to be doing humanitarian work, because there is a lot of work to be done.”

“We call ourselves the cleanup crew,” Fulmer said. “It’s going to be years before we can leave this country.”

She said the existing schools have bullet holes in the walls.
“Education is very important to them. It is their way out of poverty. It is the number one priority,” Fulmer said.

Global Exchange is building a school and needs school supplies.
To that end, she is hosting a drive for school supplies Saturday at the Sharp Shopper, Jamesway Plaza in Middletown.

She said she is concerned about America’s commitment to rebuilding the country following its liberation from the Taliban regime.

Life is hard there, water does not come out of the faucet—you have to go and get it,” Fulmer said.

“The whole country is in rubble,” Fulmer said.

At the airport in Kabul, she passed blown-up planes on the right and vehicles on the left. “The destruction is the first thing you see,” she said.

Bur Fulmer said the people she met in Afghanistan “are wonderful and sincere, nothing like I thought they would be. They need help right now,” Fulmer said.

“I thought people would be (trying to) stab me or shoot at me, but this was not the case, they welcomed me with open arms and warmth. They cooked me meals, and would not eat until I had finished,” Fulmer said.

“These people have lived in bondage for so long. They are so enlightened, you can see it in their faces.”