The calls have been coming since September 11: “Is Mary MacMakin okay?”
The answer, as of early December, was yes.
When we last wrote about the 72-year-old humanitarian worker, the ruling Taliban had deported her from Kabul, Afghanistan, and she was running her aid projects from a makeshift office in Peshawar, Pakistan (On the Job, September/October). MacMakin’s five-year-old organization, PARSA, has been helping Afghan women, especially widows and their daughters, by distributing medical supplies to clinics, supporting homeschooling for girls and setting up living-room gift shops where needy women gather to make and sell handicrafts.
MacMakin, ’49, is still in Peshawar, unaffected by the occasional demonstrations there, says her former husband, Robert MacMakin, who runs PARSA’s U.S. office. She continues to direct her projects in Kabul as much as possible through a team of onsite co-workers. “Mary hopes to go up to Kabul soon for a look-see, but not to move the office from Peshawar just yet,” Robert MacMakin says. “There will be so much to do when things settle down and the political beginnings are made.”
Mary, who has spent 40 years on and off living in Afghanistan, considers it her home. In the earlier article she lamented: “As long as the Taliban are in control, I cannot go back.” Now, it seems, her exile is about to end.
