January 1, 2004 A huge Sony billboard greeted me when I arrived at the Kabul international airport in September 2003. There were restaurants that had not been there a year before. The streets in the downtown were lined with new shops and people were walking with sleek, compact cell phones in their hands. Internet cafes were everywhere, a big change from last fall when there was only one such cafe in the entire Kabul. Another surprise awaited me. Maharie had become a video journalist. When I last met her, she was working as a children's presenter at the state-run Afghanistan Television while teaching English at junior and senior high schools. "Last July, when I was working at the TV station, they asked me if I was interested in shooting videos. It sounded very exciting and so I immediately said yes. I teach no longer," she said. As the country's first female video journalist, the 20-year-old Maharie was chosen by a French NGO to receive training in imaging techniques. The job apparently suited her nature, and she quickly distinguished herself as a promising video journalist. Her bold ideas _ she interviewed inmates at a women's prison once - and enormous energy overwhelmed people around her. She was interviewed by the foreign media a number of times and was even invited to give speeches and appear on TV in France and Germany. She was now something of a celebrity. "It is incredible that I make as much as 250 dollars a month. Even male government workers can get less than 40 dollars due to the bad economy. I was paid little when I started this job, but I didn't mind and kept pursuing my interest. Money followed later. I'm glad I didn't lose faith in my potential." If one considers the pervading influence of Islamic fundamentalism and nationalism in Afghanistan and the country's isolation from the outside world during the Taliban era, the changes that are happening to Afghanistan right now seem even more remarkable. Times have changed indeed. (Published in EMERGENCY NURSING, January 2004 issue)