Considering it's been a month...again

Thought I'd give a short update:

I left Kabul at the beginning of September to enjoy nearly a months long vacation in the states. I've spent most of in in California, but also had the chance to visit my wonderful sister, brother-in-law, and miniature zoo (in their house...yes) just this past week.

I've decided to return to Kabul for at least the fall to finish our project with the Ministry of Public Health as well as to potentially look into other contracts.

Will be giving a more detailed update soon...but wanted to at least provide a "where in the world ARE you?" update and hello.

Hope you are well...

Afghan Weddings

Imagine entering a giant Easter basket…though to enter you must walk up five flights of stairs decorated with neon orange and blue flashing palm trees. “Paris” Wedding Hall (which now reads as “Pars” due to a seemingly permanent electrical problem) sits on the outskirts of Kabul among a row of similarly alarmingly decorated wedding halls. With the heat and (relative) electricity of summer comes waves of weddings, an event which hoards hundreds of guests…family (loosely defined), friends, neighbors, colleagues, friends of families, families of colleagues, neighbors of friends…you get the idea.

After hiking up five flights of stairs, you are hit with a sound wave only appropriate for a concert at Red Rock and a room full of…women in 80s style prom dresses (no joke). Hundreds of women whirl around the top floor-wedding hall with curled hair up-does and glittered arms, eyelashes, and hair to match their sequenced dresses. In this nearly entirely man-less crowd (wedding ceremonies and celebrations take place in completely separate rooms for women and men) women are free to expose arms, legs, upper-chests, shoulders, and the likes.

The combination of the brightly colored guests with gaudy and gargantuan chandeliers all swinging chaotically in front of the pastel green-walled backdrop can only be appropriately interpreted as a transportation into a titanic Easter basket.


At my second Afghan wedding the other week, I passed the night away dancing to a mixture of Arabic pop music and Bollywood hits…a task typically dominated by single women seeking the attention and approval of potential mother-in-laws (a dynamic only pointed out to me days following the wedding…no wonder I had such a wonderful reception by so many of the women!☺) The hilarity of the dress-code and the hall preparation aside, weddings are a wonderful chance to actually interact with Afghan women rather uninhibitedly. A large proportion of the guests had spent time in Pakistan as refugees, which meant I could blunder away in Hindi in hopes to find something comprehensible in Urdu. The guests were overwhelmingly welcoming, intrigued and eager to discuss the state of Afghanistan, the USs involvement, and what it will take as individuals and nations to move this country into a place of stability.

Panjsher Valley

Beautiful, beautiful Panjsher.


Munching on fried fish which followed a full portion of naan covered with Pakistani cream...I think this meal will unfortunately stay with my digestive system for quite some time.




Rahim...our driver for the weekend and a good friend. He noticed my love affair with melons over the weekend (unlike anything I've ever tasted in the states) and, with a sincere smile edging on laughter, would bring freshly cut melon to us by the river for our afternoon tea break.

************************************************************************************

Despite the dust streaming into the open windows of our blue corolla (which quickly turned my white salwar kurta a golden brown) I sat, jaw completely agape. Scurrying along Afghanistan’s main “highway” north (an unpaved 1.5 lane road), we raced the snake-like river carved into the jagged mountain ranges of Panjsher Valley. Nearly comatose from the beauty, Kabul (only 3 hours south) could not have seemed farther.*

*Security note: the road north of Kabul is quite safe; light years different from the ones running south.

Panjsher Valley, renowned for both it’s physical beauty and one of the only areas never controlled by the Taliban, was the chosen destination for a short work trip. Despite the physical beauty of this place, the historic reality of war was painfully visible. Old Soviet weaponry (literally covering the entire valley) jarringly integrated into currently used infrastructure: an old Soviet Tank, rusting in a nearby stream, now used as a fishing platform and picnic bench; sections of 1970 Soviet Fighters spotting the hillsides with segments removed for building material; and shipping containers converted into shops, grocery stores, and schools. A rather rugged, and eerie, illustration of survival.

Photographs and icons of Masood, the herald Mujahadeen from Panjsher killed by the Taliban only days before September 11th, 2001, decorates houses, clinics, shops, and roads. Now seen as a national hero (to many), Masood is also recognized as a leader in women’s rights, where the Panjsher Valley was one of the only areas where girls education has remained fairly uninterrupted.

We visited a number of health facilities included in our health survey to both settle logistics and help maintain a more contextual understanding of the information we gather, in hopes to bridge the context with the health programs/policies we attempt to guide. Working from Kabul on a policy-concentrated project, it is easy to get bogged down with numbers, program plans, analyses, etc., forgetting the stories and faces which these policies and programs supposedly impact. Roya, a 20 year old Nuristani, placed these stories back center where they belong. Having traveled for over two days (presumably by donkey) to reach the health clinic, Roya sat muted by fear with her 18-month-old daughter, who (by weight and size) looked closer to 6 months. This 5 room health clinic, carved into the side of the mountain, was one of the best sources of care for miles around.

Kabul Complexities

Driving into Kabul city from the countryside makes the city’s numbers (frequently quoted by journalists, demographers, political analysts, and the likes) disappear from importance….the landscape says it all.

The hillsides are covered with makeshift housing…quick-builds replacing the houses destroyed over 25 years of war (1 out of every 3 houses were destroyed during they decades of war) and meeting the needs of the millions of returning refugees from Pakistan and Iran annually.

In the past 6 years, Kabul’s population has burgeoned, with only small gains in the physical size of the city. Though this phenomenon is widely understood, actual figures on Kabul’s population is difficult to come by. Population estimates range from just over 3 to nearly 5 million, shedding light on the lack of quality information about city demographics and needs. With basic information such as population lacking, one can only imagine how difficult it must be to create and run systems of education, sanitation, health, governance and the likes.

To complicate issues further, Kabul’s artificially inflated economy (resulting from the large ex-pat presence among other factors) places rent (alongside household needs/commodities) at exorbitant rates. Despite an annual per capita of around $360, a 1 bedroom apartment in Kabul averages at $200 per month (compared to $7/month for a 3 bedroom home prior to the Soviet invasion...and thank you BBC for the quote!) Consequently, families often live together, pooling incomes to make rent.


**The above picture is taken from an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp on the outskirts of Kabul. No matter how long I live here, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the shoe choice for women. It seems if I could imagine and manufacture the worst type of footwear possible, practically speaking, for this terrain (under a burqa no less) I would have created the local shoe market.

The Penthouse View...in all her glory.

You can see the side of my penthouse on the right portion of the second photo. Many afternoons are spent reading and evenings chatting away with dear friends on this rooftop. As you can tell...the view from our rooftop (and consequently my room) is simply stunning. Unfortunately the penthouse quarters, made from the clever combination of tin and glass makes the room act strikingly similar to an oven. As long as I avoid my room from the hours of 10 AM to 4 PM, however, I tend to be OK.



And, my gosh...I cannot believe a month has passed without a blog update. I plan to make up for my negligent behavior in the upcoming week. :)

A day in the life...

**Forward: I wrote this entry a few weeks ago, but in the fury of work failed to find time to post it. If it seems a bit anachronistic...well, now you know why. :)



6:30 Barely awake, I shuffle the mere 20 yards across the compound in search for coffee; a process which, in true Afghan style, takes nearly 20 minutes. Each greeting spins away in Dari (the Afghan version of Farsi—Persian) with a barrage of salutations that translate as, “How are you? Are you fine? How’s your family? How’s your health? How was your previous day? How is the weather? How’s your style?...” and countless others.

7:10 With Arabic pop music blasting through broken speakers, we pile into the 70s minivan and truck across town. The streets buzz with morning life in Kabul, which results in a near 8:1 male: female ratio.

7:30 Training begins. The distinctive features of Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Uzbeks are present in a wide and abundant variety as 59 men and 2 women from Afghanistan’s 12 central provinces gather for regional training. I’m responsible for managing the national health survey within Afghanistan’s central region, which can prove quite the entertaining as well as challenging undertaking.

12:00 Lunch break. Trays of kofta (ground beef), mutton (goat), Kabuli Pulao (fried rice with raisins and carrots), and an absurd pile of naan gather into a sea of food. The table of 12 men explodes into laughter following a recurrent joke of the misery a man faces following marriage. So…after the laughter subsides I comment that I’ve frequently heard a given rendition of this joke and wondered if women joked similarly amongst themselves. Blank face, they stared back until one responded…”Oh…well…we have no idea.”

2:30 Tea break….number 4.

5:00 While discussing details for our compound 4th of July party, an Afghan colleague comments that such is our Independence Day. “In your country you have only one Independence Day, but here in Afghanistan we have many….one from the Brits, one from the Russians, one from the Taliban, and hopefully, one from the US”…and the list continued. Though executed with humor, his comment was a stark illustration that Afghanistan’s fight for independence is centuries old, and will not easily be solved.

6:30 Over dinner with fellow ex-pats, the conversation turns to stories under the Taliban reign. Some stories were dreadfully horrific, others well documented but nonetheless unfathomable, and then there were recounts of the simple mundane daily occurrences. Two accounts, however…caught me so off guard, they simply must be shared.
A. Resulting from (apparently) the global rage over Hollywood’s “Titanic”, “Titanic Haircuts” were national outlawed under the Taliban…the Leonardo Dicaprio golden hair swoop would simply not fly in this country.
B. The summer of 2001, a friend was invited to join the local security force (aka…the Taliban) for dinner. After what he recalled to be a frightful dinner with long bearded men refusing to break a smile, he noticed a large display of trophies in the back of the mud compound. Plagued with curiosity, my British friend delicately probed for an explanation of the competition, war, etc. which resulted in such a collection. Stone faced, a man responded “Oh…the Taliban volleyball competition.”

9:00 The fifth and final call to prayer (aazam) echoes throughout our room with the two nearby competing mosques proclaiming from the top of their minarets:
“Allah is great
Allah is great
Allah is great
Allah is great.
There is no God but Allah
There is no God but Allah
Mohammad is His prophet
Mohammad is His prophet.
Come to prayer
come to prayer.
Come for deliverance
come for deliverance.
Allah is great
Allah is great
There is no God but Allah.”

10:00 The electricity cuts out…for the 10th time today. I surrender to this reality, and quickly fall asleep.

**The photo is from our Regional Training which took place over the past 2 weeks.

Driving in Kabul

Well…it’s a bit like herding sheep.

(Granted, I’m not exactly proficient in the ways of sheep herding, but we’ll let creative thought suffice for now.)

The same routine occurs daily at the end of the Ministry of Health workday. The drivers stream though the single entrance parking lot without the slightest consideration of the return route. The cars pile in, and quickly thereafter drivers hop out to chat with a long-lost cousin, grab a cup of chai, and goodness knows what else. Exits invariably consist of long drawn out arguments over how to resolve the unfathomable parking crises, which frequently settles through a number of Afghan men manually moving the now driverless cars. My daily dose of deja vu…

I distinctly recall overhearing a conversation between two colleagues my first week in Kabul.
Dasha: “Are there any stoplights in Kabul?”
Kumar: *Pause*…”No, I don’t believe so. Oh wait, yes…there is that one by the main roundabout.” And then, as if divinely conspired, we arrived at that exact roundabout, driving straight through the red light.

Oh, the simple delights of Kabul...


Driving has proven all the more creative in the rains last week. An anomaly to say the least, Kabul experienced downpours three days in a row. The roads promptly turned to mud (as only a few major roads in Kabul are paved), the once marigold hills turned a smoky brown, and the city’s lacking public sewer system “naturally” networked throughout the city (a thought which I’ve avoided to dwell on at all costs). Though the rain proved quite entertaining within our compound (as we stood inside watching the windowpanes’ fruitless attempt to hold back any amount of water which quickly resulted in compound wide floods) I am reminded of the large toll regional rains have taken. Though 80 people have died in Afghanistan due to recent flooding, this pails in comparison to the near 300 deaths in Pakistan and 150 in India. Though the rain death toll now fades as old news, the impact remains with 1.5 million Pakistanis alone internally displaced and otherwise impacted by the floods. It’s so easy for numbers to remain distant and cold representations of the latest in international news. As I seek to recognize these stories as those affecting my neighbors, I hope it is appropriately reflected in my actions and commitment to this area of the world.