In the weeks following September 11, 2001, most Americans sat in front of their TVs feeling pissed-off, overwhelmed and helpless to effect change anywhere but in CNN’s ratings. Ryan Costello, an Orlando-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist in his mid 20s, had even more reasons to feel helpless. Shortly after the towers fell, his car’s engine dramatically caught fire and he was let go from his job, all in the same week. As if things weren’t bad enough, he then fell ill and was bed-ridden for several days. The unbroken silence forced him to look inward.
“I had to confront some difficult questions about myself and the vanity and spiritual irrelevance of my life up to then,” Costello says. “After that point of surrender I began to feel myself drawn to Afghanistan, a feeling that became stronger and stronger until I would almost describe it as a calling. I knew literally nothing about it as a country, but somehow I knew I was headed overseas to be a part of the change that was going to happen there.”
During a two-week trip to Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul, in February 2003, Costello met with locals and foreign-aid workers to find out how he could help. They all stressed how sorely agricultural development was needed in the region. Afghan refugees who’d fled the Taliban were returning home to find their farms destroyed and seed stock wiped out.
When Costello returned to the States, he enrolled in training at the Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO), building on what he’d learned as a kid working orange groves in florida. He finished selling the remainder of his belongings and returned to Afghanistan in fall 2003.
For the next two years Costello worked in Afghanistan as part of the Global Hope Network, splitting time between Kabul and the central mountain village Yawcalang. He learned to speak Farsi, made friends, worked in the fields, took photographs and returned to his room each night, exhausted and barely able to muster the energy to cradle an acoustic guitar in his lap. But he was intent on setting his experiences to music.
“I had friends in the central mountains who saw their family gunned down, saw the Taliban pour oil across their fields and destroy their whole livelihood. But what amazed me was the hope they carried, and how, when this strange foreigner showed up with vegetable seed and some agricultural techniques, they were so ready to make a new start.”
Costello left Afghanistan for good in August 2005. After returning home to central florida, he formed The OaKs with a musician friend of his, Matt Antolick, and began fleshing out the songs he’d penned overseas. The resulting album, Our Fathers And The Things They Left Behind, pins Costello’s feathery vocals to a rich backdrop of acoustic guitar, horns, vibes and organ, proudly bearing the orchestral stamp of artists like Sufjan Stevens and Beirut. The band— now swelled to a six-piece—donates 50 percent of the record’s proceeds to the Global Hope Network, whose work with Afghan refugees continues in Costello’s absence.
“The Afghans have a proverb in their culture: ‘The first day you meet, you are friends; the next day you meet, you are brothers.’ I came face to face with my selfishness as a single American male.”
The real inspiration in this whole story is that, after stumbling upon that prickly realization, Ryan Costello didn’t go looking for a pulpit. He found himself a pilot.
For more information about the Global Hope Network, visit ghni.org. Costello’s photos from Afghanistan can be found at RyanCostello.com.