On Sunday, June 1, Lochrane (Lockie) Gary spoke at the Methodist Church in Zolfo Springs. Gary is a powerful personality and a dynamic speaker. Below is an article I wrote about him, called Man on a Mission. I would appreciate comments. The suicide bomber went off into the inky blackness of Kandahar, Afghanistan, sometime before dawn, the explosion making a reverberating blast such as that which might usher in Armageddon. As the three-story building began to crumble, less than thirty meters away Lockie Gary was thrown out of bed and rushed into the hallway in his skivvies. His personal protection officer (PPO), one of nearly two hundred professionals hired to protect Gary and his fellow expatriates, was already there fully dressed and armed with his ever-present AK-47. An ensuing fire-fight blazed for eight hours leaving many dead or wounded. The bedlam ended only after the security team went room to room tossing grenades and killing the last four insurgents. Such scenes are common in Afghanistan, especially Kandahar, where the Taliban was organized in 1994. The first two weeks of this trip were mostly uneventful, with few explosions and little gunfire. The Taliban was busy harvesting poppy crops, which now account for more than two-thirds of the gross nation product (GNP) of Afghanistan, and supplies ninety-percent of the world’s heroin. The largest acreages are in the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand. A wheat farmer can gross two hundred fifty to three hundred dollars per acre, but he can make ten times that much growing poppies. Young boys helping in the harvest often become addicts by scraping the poppy head for the opium gum, which enters the bloodstream through the skin or cut fingers. Also harvesters are known to clean knives by licking the blades. Many Afghan parents smear opium on the navel of young children to quiet them or put them to sleep, making them addicts for life. When the harvest was done, the explosions and gunfire began again. The thing that has drawn Gary to the Middle East thirty-one times, and to Afghanistan six times, is his desire to help Afghan farmers by teaching reproductive physiology to help care for and multiply there flocks and herds. Gary is well-qualified for this task having received both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in reproductive physiology from Penn State University and having taught at the State University of New York for ten years. He has managed slaughter houses, trained meat inspectors, and managed ranches in Texas, Colorado, Jacksonville, and Arcadia. He worked as a livestock extension agent in Sarasota County and county extension director in Hardee. He resides in Arcadia with Karyn, his wife of thirty-five years who holds two master’s degrees and a doctorate, and was recently elected superintendent of schools in DeSoto County. The poverty, savagery, and ignorance which permeate Afghanistan defy the imagination of most Westerners. One relatively well-to-do Afghan man, who owned a half dozen head of cattle, complained to Gary that his fat cows got fatter while his skinny ones got poorer. Gary explained to the man that he needed to feed the fat cows less and the skinny ones more—he had been feeding them all the same. Another man, attempting to reduce the pressure in a cow’s bloated belly, accidentally killed the animal trying to insert a shovel handle down its throat and out its back end. Gary found the Afghans were astonished to learn that good water improved both the quality and quantity of milk a cow is able to produce. In Afghanistan, where the average lifespan is forty-one years, one child in four dies before the age of five, Gary said. The vast majority of Afghans are illiterate; only three percent of girls and thirty percent of boys attend school. Girls are forced into marriage between the ages of seven and eleven. A man can have as many as four wives. Forty languages are spoken in Afghanistan and there are two hundred dialects. Ten million active land mines, compliments of the Soviet Union, cover the Afghan terrain. Once an Afghan man came to Gary’s mud hut after dark and said, “Dr. Lockie, I will be killed if it’s discovered I am here. Everyone knows you are a Christian and if they think I am converting to Christianity, I will be tortured and killed.” But the man was curious about the Christian God’s position on forgiveness. Gary explained He was loving and merciful and that His son, Jesus, while on the cross had asked His Father to forgive those who crucified him. The man burst into tears. “I cannot forgive,” he said. He told Gary that he had been falsely accused of a crime and thrown into a filthy little jail. “When my wife came to negotiate my release the guards laughed and dragged her inside and raped her all night. I could hear her screams.” He said he was tortured with red-hot steel bars pressed to the bottoms of his bare feet. The Afghan wept bitterly. “I cannot forgive, Dr. Lockie.” The Quran in Sura 4:34 says, “Men are managers of the affairs of women because Allah has made one superior to the other.” A high-ranking Afghan official told Gary, “Get this straight, Mr. Gary. You see that cow? She has more value than a woman in Afghanistan. A cow can produce a calf and it can be milked. A woman can be bred but she cannot be sold. What value does she have?” Even in blistering heat women must wear the burqa, which covers them from the top of the head to the fingertips and toes. Gary has seen women severely beaten in public for accidentally exposing a small portion of ankle. One must wonder at the depth of Gary’s desire to help poor farmers for it to draw him back to this land, where his life is constantly at risk, again and again. He explains: “The Afghans are good people, but they are lost. They have no hope in this life, or the next. I teach reproductive physiology and animal husbandry, but I also tell the people about our Christian God. People flock to my hootch to hear about Jesus in spite of the very real threat of torture and death. I’ve never seen people anywhere so hungry for the Word of God.” He continues, “I study both the Bible and the Quran every day. I can tell you, no matter what you hear politicians say, Islam is not a religion of peace.” He points to the Sura, 3:54. “And they cheated and deceived, and Allah cheated and deceived, and Allah is the best of cheaters and deceivers.” “That is not a god I want taught to my children,” Gary said. “And I can assure you no military action will ever bring peace to Afghanistan. The only thing that will do that is the acceptance of Christianity.” When is he, Lochrane Gary, going back there? “When God calls me,” he says. “Until then I’ll stay here and study the Word, and teach Sunday school, but when the Call comes the only way they will keep me out is to kill me.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 00:05:05 +0000
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