An inspiring story was told at the noon Lions lunch on Tuesday.
D. Mohammad Shamim, an Afghanistan native, spoke about the odds of him getting to the United States and then Henderson. He said it was zero. Shamim, soybean specialist and canola researcher, is an extension associate for the University of Kentucky with Henderson connections.
He grew up in a mud-brick home in the high desert of Afghanistan and listened to Voice of America broadcasts in the middle of the night as a way to learn English, said Lion Cory Bridges in his introduction of Shamim.
Shamin provided many anecdotes in his talk. One was that school tuition when he was young was 25 cents and many families couldn’t afford it. He also said the gross domestic product of Afghanistan is just six times that of Henderson County.
Shamin was very studious and after graduating from Sheik Zayed University he got a job teaching at a high school that was 30 miles from his home but took two hours to get there because of the horrid road conditions.
Later, he received a scholarship to the Kyoto University in Japan, and after graduating with a Ph.D., he wanted to pursue postdoctoral work in the U.S. because of this country’s strong agriculture. But an Afghanistan passport is one of the weakest and getting her would be hard.
In Japan, he met an American connection and had an idea to come to the U.S. to study English, which could occur more easily than agriculture studies. Shamim was able to study English in Alabama, where he met a woman with a Henderson connection.
Soon he was going to Lexington for an interview at the University of Kentucky set up by the Henderson connection, local farmer Robbie Williams. The next day, Shamim got a job offer, he said.
Now in Lexington, he often comes to Henderson to work with local farmers and visit friends, including the Williams family. He called Henderson a “home away from home.”
“Hope, education and kindness can make impossible things possible,” Shamim said.
