Last night I caught up on some TV. This is really rare for me, as I have way too much to do and too little time to do it in, so I pretty much only catch up with television on a Sunday if I have a hangover, which is rarer these days that it used to be. Especially with having found a house (yay! More on that when I have successfully got the keys as not to jinx it), this week is particularly busy. But I set aside some time and watched two documentaries; one that Emma had told me about, and another that we started watching the series of but I had missed the rest.
The first was called “the life and loss of Karen Woo” and is something that you should all take the time to watch if you can. It was on ITV and was about a woman who was selfless and beautiful inside, and lost her life for what she believed in. It was harrowing; told as a mix of the documentary she had been making up until she died, mixed with the documentary that her fiancée had finished for her after her death.
Karen started her adult life as a dancer, which appealed to me from the start, yet she jacked it all in when she turned twenty to train as a surgeon. She worked at Harley Street (a prestigious medical area in London) and then decided to do something for the greater good and went to Kabul to help the innocent people caught up in the struggle with the Taliban. She nursed every day ailments and helped children; kids who had been injured in blasts or born with deformities. Five weeks before she was due to fly home for her wedding she went on an aid mission into a desolate area of Afghanistan. Invited by the local people their only mission was to heal and cure, and to pass on medicines to benefit the civilians who lived on the land and wanted nothing to do with the fighting. On her way home, her and her ten colleagues were ambushed and shot dead at close range by the Taliban.
Karen’s story is something that should strike somewhere in the heart of all of us. She was a woman that wasn’t content watching the struggles of innocent humans, and felt that you should do something to help at least someone in your lifetime. She wanted to leave her mark on the world, and she did; she is in the hearts of every one of those little kids whose lives she helped to make better, its just such a shame hers was cut so short doing something that was helping others.
What a beautiful tribute that her fiancé finished the documentary for her. People are so good to put themselves in harm’s way to try to help others. I am sure she will be greatly missed in the word.
Great story!
Thanks for sharing this. I didn’t know about Karen Woo, but I bet my little sister does. My sis is planning to head to the Middle East as soon as she can to love on the unloved, to help heal the broken, and to share her heart. Scares the heck out of me, but she’s very at peace with it. She feels called to go to the places where no one else is willing to go.
You should watch it although I’m not sure if you can get it in America. Your sister sounds like she has a good heart, it just seems that Karen thought that there was no danger in what she was doing and sadly there was. Her partner told the rest of her story for her and did her justice, but I think its so important that people hear her story.
I think I remember this from the news.
She was called to her mission and did it well – this just proves what animals the Taliban are and why they can never be allowed to take over Afghanistan…
Love and hugs!
Prenin.
What strength and courage she must have had…and what a tribute from her fiance to finish her story…