A Hero has left    -    25th May 2012. 

I want to tell you about my friend Mohammad Shafiq Ekrar – a judo champion, writer, engineer, and humanitarian aid worker, who died on Friday 18 May, just 36 years old. I first got to know Shafiq in dusty Kabul, Afghanistan in the summer of 2002. He was running a judo club in the basement of a bombed out building near the Kabul Stadium. They were training on a tatami made of sheep wool, covered by plastic sheeting. Shafiq was a young man, still in his twenties, but already knew how to defy the laws of nature for the love of the sport. 

Inspired by a project I started to let children from an orphanage learn judo as a life skill, Shafiq decided to take it one step further. He wanted to give the street children of Kabul something to look forward to by offering free judoclasses. What cause could be nobler – and what challenge could be more difficult? Shafiq just got on with it, and within a few months hundreds of streetchildren got to experience his classes. 

One biting cold January morning in 2003 Shafiq told me about one problem he had, and of a dream he had. The problem was that the street children coming in to train judo at 06:00 in the morning should get a cup of tea and a biscuit before going back out into the freezing urban jungle. The problem of tea and biscuits we solved quickly together. 

Then he enthusiastically explained his dream – to construct a dojo for less than 10.000 USD, by wielding two containers together. I did not discourage him, but quietly thought that it would be difficult to pull off. Fast forward five years to 2008 – Shafiq proudly reports that he has overseen construction of a first container dojo in collaboration with the help of enthusiasts from the Norwegian project Judo for Fred: http://judoforfred.org/j/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31&Itemid=37 

Some of his friends knew that Shafiq was suffering from a serious medical condition, but he was hiding it well. He continued to write instructional books in judo in the Afghan language, building more dojos, and training now hundreds of children every month. Not for money, not for fame, just for the love of the values of Judo. For all of his accomplishments, Shafiq belongs in the eternal Judo Hall of Fame. In these sad days our thoughts go to his family, all is friends, as well as to the hundreds of street children that got hope from his work. We will remember you Shafiq. And we will do what we can to continue the work you started.

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