Blind City Tech Student from Afghanistan to Compete in New York City Marathon

It won't be hard to spot 45-year-old Nooria Nodrat among the 37,000 or so runners participating in the New York City Marathon on November 5. She'll be the one in an Achilles Track Club t-shirt accompanied by a coterie of six runners, one of whom will be tethered to her with a dish towel.

One of 20 totally blind participants seeking to complete the grueling 26.2-mile course, Nodrat, a student at New York City College of Technology/CUNY (City Tech) majoring in human services, has been there before; this marks the sixth year in a row she has competed. Her support team of volunteers from the Achilles Track Club will help her avoid collisions, stay upright throughout the course and find toilets and water.

Her achievement is all the more remarkable given a daunting array of difficulties and tragedies that lay in her path. Born in Kabul in 1961, long before the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Nodrat remembers the country as an old world poised for change -- a world where women had to accept a subservient role. At 16, she entered an arranged marriage with a man 21 years her senior. They had two children, a son and a daughter.

Both her oldest brother, Zia, whom she idolized, and her husband were blind. To be of assistance to them, she learned Braille, unaware of how necessary that skill would become later in her life. She worked as an editor in the Publishing Services Department at the Institute for the Blind in Afghanistan, proofreading large print books and checking Braille texts.

In 1988, her brother was kidnapped by fanatics and never heard from again. A few years later, her husband of ten years was killed by a terrorist bomb. Soon after, Nodrat came with her parents to the United States, leaving her children with her husband's brother, who then refused to send them after her. Finally, in 1995, after four agonizing years, she was reunited with her children in New York. "Women in my country have to be patient. Very, very patient," she says.

In 1997, tragedy struck again. Nodrat was attacked in the subway by a mentally disturbed teenager who threw her to the floor and repeatedly punched her in the head, destroying her retinas, which were already weak from glaucoma. Following the attack, she lost her sight completely. Despite five surgeries, the doctors could not restore her sight and in 2003, after she developed an infection, she chose to have both eyes removed because of the pain.

Through it all, Nodrat persevered. She will receive her associate degree at the end of this semester and will go on for a bachelor's degree in human services at City Tech. She then plans to earn master's and doctoral degrees from Hunter College to prepare for a career as a clinical psychologist. Her children, now 25 and 22 years old, have done well academically and have made Nodrat proud.

"I'll be walking the marathon course this time," she says, "because my schedule is too busy to make time for running training." Not only is Nodrat a full-time college student, she has mentored other students and has worked as a volunteer at the Catholic Guild for the Blind and the Jewish Guild for the Blind, offering English as a Second Language training to blind students.

As president of the National Federation of the Blind's New York Student Division, she helps blind high school and college students navigate the higher education system. The group's mission is to help blind students understand their rights, help them achieve their goals, and realize and maximize their potential. Her strong knowledge of computers and technologies for the visually impaired has proven to be very useful.

"I've contacted 15 colleges and am working with the heads of their disability offices to develop strategies so that we can pursue programs to help disabled students," she explains. "One person alone can't achieve very much. But many voices together can make a difference."

In addition, she is trying to create a foundation to help blind women and children in Afghanistan. "My job is to raise my voice," she says. "I hope to encourage sighted people to join the struggle -- to support organizations that help women and the disabled."

She is also an active member of the Women's Association of New York. A resident of Long Island City, she was a volunteer in the Department of Music Therapy at the Queens Center for Progress. In her "spare time," she does karate (as an advanced yellow belt), yoga and ceramics.

Nodrat has received awards and scholarships in recognition of her activism and academic achievements from the National Federation of the Blind, the American Council of the Blind and the New York City Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, among others. In 2006, she received a Benjamin H. Namm Scholarship from City Tech. Despite a jam-packed schedule, she has maintained a 3.7 (out of 4.0) grade point average in her studies.

"I think I've chosen the right field," she says about her decision to become a clinical psychologist. "A person who has known hardship, as I have, is in a good position to help others who are struggling to make sense of their lives."

Nodrat's guide dog, Yahoo, a black Labrador named after the Internet company that sponsored his training, changed Nodrat's life, she says. "For the past four years, Yahoo has allowed me to move through the world with more confidence. He was trained by Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a wonderful training school."

She expresses deep gratitude to other organizations that have helped along the way, including, The Lighthouse, the Catholic and Jewish Guilds for the Blind, the Achilles Track Club (which helps athletes with disabilities compete in sports activities), the Commission for the Blind, Vision Self Manner, Recording for the Blind, Hadley School for the Blind and City Tech, which supports more than 30 students with varying degrees of visual disabilities.

As the marathon approaches, Nodrat is looking forward to the challenge. "Last year, I finished in seven hours and 15 minutes. This year, if I can make it in six and a half hours, I'll consider it a great victory. I want to say to the world, if Afghan women have the chance, they can do great things. If I can be an example for them, it would be an honor for me."

The largest public college of technology in New York State, New York City College of Technology of The City University of New York enrolls more than 13,000 students in 57 baccalaureate, associate and specialized certificate programs. Located at 300 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, City Tech is at the MetroTech Center academic and commercial complex, convenient to public transportation.

Source: New York City College of Technology

walking 200 miles with no food for charity

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Another Example of Seva (selfless service)

Dentist Sinks His Teeth Into Relief
Los Angeles Times10/31/2004By Steve Chawkins

Jim Rolfe has spent weeks and about $50,000 trying to fill a big void in Afghanistan. Now he is planning to set up his own clinic in Kabul
At 65, Jim Rolfe has been a dentist for a long time, but his practice in downtown Santa Barbara hardly prepared him for what he found in Afghanistan.
"There was a continuous flow of problems you couldn't imagine even existing in the U.S.," he said. "It's like coming onto an auto accident with bodies lying all over the street. That's how it is when a person opens his mouth to be treated."
Like numerous other medical professionals who pitch in at Third World clinics for brief periods, Rolfe wanted to spend a few weeks simply doing what he could. What he didn't count on was his spark of altruism turning into a full-fledged mission.
So far, Rolfe has spent more than $50,000 of his own money to provide dental care in Afghanistan. What he has in mind, though, is far grander in scope than simply writing a check.
Rolfe could be the only Santa Barbara dentist currently looking to buy land in Kabul. When he finds it, he will plunk down a used shipping container he purchased as the hub of his future clinic. He will rig it up with a generator and running water, outfit it with dental equipment, recruit U.S. professionals, train Afghan dental assistants, and, practically overnight, give Afghans in sore need of dental work an opportunity to get it.
Rolfe has a gray beard, rock-star-length hair, and a down-to-earth style. It's not hard to picture him as what he once was: the official dentist — as well as goat tender and truck driver — for a Santa Barbara commune called Brotherhood of the Sun.
Decades later, his office is as distinctive as his background. Conga drums and bongos sit in the waiting room for patients anxious to take the edge off their visit to the dentist. Patients recline to view TV sets mounted in the ceiling as a fountain cascades in the background. Designed and built by Rolfe, the treatment areas are cozy beige nooks with curved walls, a style Rolfe calls "Southwestern Eskimo."
Such comforts are a world away from the grim certainties of a country torn by war over the last 30 years. Sitting in his waiting room, Rolfe wearily reels off the statistics: The average male dies at 44. One in four children die by age 5. Ten percent of the population are orphans. Only one in seven people can read.
And the number of people in a land of 27 million who have ever seen a dentist is too small to measure.
"I'd look into mouths and just see a disaster," he said. "Instead of teeth, I'd see abscessed roots. These people had never had their teeth cleaned; I'd pull out tartar in huge rocks."
In 2002, Rolfe read about an orphanage in a remote mountain province and volunteered there for three weeks. He worked from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., using the children he treated as his "assistants."
"When I saw how grateful they were, I cried," he said. "They couldn't wait to get treatment."
Two years later, he returned for another couple of weeks, this time setting up shop at a women's clinic in Kabul.
For this trip, Rolfe had made a portable wooden dental chair, pocked with a Swiss-cheese pattern of holes to reduce its weight.
He also had some help. A recent graduate of Kabul's medical university acted as translator for $20 a day. He was jobless, as were all of the other 314 graduates in his class. And one of Rolfe's Santa Barbara patients, yoga instructor Hayley Parlen, came along as well. She had hoped to teach yoga techniques to children in Kabul but wound up assisting Rolfe.
Parlen, 29, had learned about Rolfe's plans when she was getting her teeth cleaned. She had no idea that within months, she would be able to soothe frightened women by intoning, in the local dialect, standard dental bromides such as "Just breathe" and "It'll only hurt for a second."
"With one hand, I'd suction blood from their mouth and with the other, I'd squeeze their hands or massage their forehead," she said. "My calmness translated to them that they'd be OK."
Rolfe is looking for donations and volunteers to help him on his planned trip in April. Setting up a booth at a recent state dental conference in San Francisco, he already has recruited Ike Rahimi, an Afghanistan-born dentist who treats farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley.
"The need is enormous," said Rahimi, whose mother might accompany him on the trip to see sisters still in Afghanistan. "Life is not so forgiving there."
In January, the secondhand shipping container that Rolfe bought for $2,500 will be stuffed with equipment and placed on a freighter to Rotterdam. From there, it will travel by rail to southern Russia, and then by truck through Uzbekistan, and, finally, to Kabul.
When it's set up, it will house a lab and three dental chairs. Westerners now fly four hours to Qatar for dental treatment. With his new facility, Rolfe hopes to treat them for fees that will subsidize treatment of the poor.
He hopes to eventually add simple accommodations for visiting professionals and classrooms where Afghan hygienists and technicians can be trained.
His is not the first such plan in Afghanistan. Other dentists have volunteered as well, and the American military has worked on restoring the nation's only dental hospital. Still, Rolfe said he has to focus on not being overwhelmed.
"I feel like a drop of water in the desert," he said.
For more information, see Rolfe's Afghanistan Dental Relief Project website at http://www.adrpinc.org .

Alberto Cairo's Work - An Example of Selfless Service

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