A road trip... a bit belated

Back in March I took a cool trip to Hazerajat.
Yeah, yeah.... I posted the Hazerajat photos but here are some from the road trip.

Here I am at a stop on the road for a photo op. In the US this would be called a scenic outlook.
Bandi Amir... the coolest lake in the world. I guess it has built up these walls around with minerals and now it is an elevated lake. Cool huh? I wonder if any geologist has studied this. You can find on google earth.

There are a million russian tanks from here to there anywhere you go in Afghanistan.

Me and the budda hole in Bamian. The buddist built it (duh) and the Talebs destroyed it and finally it fell. UNESCO is rebuilding it and there was some rumors of it being replaced by a lazer show. . . . I may have mentioned that before. What a serious waste of money, when there is no electricity for the people there. Nor water, and only food for some of the year.

This is Ophelie and the trucks. As we was rollin' down the road. Our trip was hard and long....
But our ass didn't hurt as much as this guys ass.

Flashback to Shabunda

Every now and then we recieve here in Kabul the Gaurdian Weekly.

A few weeks ago I was flipping through, looking at the photos and I saw a bridge that I knew.
I looked again, and said yes indeed I have crossed this river many times on a motorbike and on foot (as I decended to cross on foot because sometimes the tires of the motorbike would fall through the decaying planks) during my time in Congo. This is in the middle of no where, the bush - so imagine my surprise. The bridge is the only part of the road wide enough for a truck to pass - not that it could support a truck at that time, so we all crossed on foot, the drivers pushing the motorbikes, sometimes pulling them out of holes in the planks. The photo shows that the planks on the bridge have been replaced since my time there.

We protected springs in the area and some of my most fond memories are of cruising through the jungle on a one lane path on the back of a motorbike with a 10 kg HF radio on my back. We paid men to carry over 200 50 kg sacs of cement, 1 and 2 at a time up this road on their bicycles. Wow. What lovely memories.

I read the article. It agreed with the stories told to me during my time there and had fantastic photos. The names of the towns are where I have spent nights with rats chewing on my toes or running across my pillow. Where I have tasted smoked monkey meat and porky pine (neither are recommeded). Where I have climbed down ravines with no trails to a mucky spring. Where I have eaten many many plates of foo-foo (manioc goo) with chicken and palm oil sauce with lots of hot peppers. Ahhh. what faboulous memories.

Please check it out.
Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,,2162182,00.html
Photo gallery: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/sep/01/congo?picture=330664279

It is worth the read and the photos - the roads, the people, the airstrip. Some of the folks hanging around the airstrip are ACF staff - or were at one time.

Taiwara

"On the road again,

goin' places that I've never been

Seein' things that I may never see again,

And I can't wait to get on the road again."

- Willie

Trayle is takin' ova!
Taiwara district is in Ghor province, in central Afghanistan. It is pronounced like you would say "whore." We have a great WASH program there, but no expats had visited for over a year. Matteo, the Head of Mission and I had the pleasure of going in June... And it was SUPER!
Hills are red and yellow and green!

We flew first to Chagcharan, the capitol of Ghor spelled Ghwor on Google Earth, by Beechcraft airplane and then we drove for 8 hours to Taiwara, a district in the south. We drove and drove and we reached the top of a big hill to get out and rest (and pee). This hill was in the middle of no where, nothing to see for miles and miles. Wahkil, the logistics and administrator for the Taiwara base and our guide, announced this was the last place there was phone coverage. So we all had fun making calls. I called my dad, said hi and chatted about investing money. Totally surreal at the end of the world.

Coming into "downtown" Taiwara. Oh the hills are alive with color.

Villages are small and filled with mud houses and compounds. River run through as this year is a good year in Ghor. Lot's of water after 8 years of draought.

I just love this photo, taken by Matteo. The men are the program manager, Taher, and a local elder. Of course nothing captures the biggness like being there.
Here's the team, Taher, Abdullah (with his hands in the well) and Matteo, fixing a broken pump we found as we surveyed the water points.
This may be the only forrest in Afghanistan. Not really, just the only one I have seen. That is Abdullah with me. It is so unbelievibly green for this raw country. The results of this good rain year. After a long walk through the only woods I've ever seen in Afghanistan, we ate some tasty apricots. Afghanistan grows a lot of apricots.
So there are some images of the last region in which we work here in Afgha! You have seen Kabul, Hazerajat and Ghor! what a beautiful place. Maybe some more creativity to come, but with this workload I just am getting by....

What a short, strange trip...

A voyage in may, but went by too quick.

some few photos and fewer words.

sorry for that, you can call me a turd.

but i am too busy to even tak a shit

and that is why i made this lickity split.

AMERICA!

little pink houses for you and me.

DAMACUS!

lookin' for the mother ship.

My mamma and me. Sitting in a tree. Giggling dee dee dee.
Cindy, Cyndi and babies. So fun.
G5 Alive
The silly happy couple at the silly engagement party.

Hazerajat - Day Kundi Province

Typical Hazerajat village in a valley.

Can you see the irrigation channels?

View from the roof of the compound at sundown.

spring time

Ahhh. The field at last – out of Kabul and into Afghanistan. Started in a helicopter! What fun, a great sensation, but once you get going just like a small plane really, but louder. They do a small test where we were hovering just feet above the ground, then start going. It is like being in a loud box, pulled by a big crane over the sky.

From Kabul we landed in Bamian, where the big buddas are. Left from long ago, and destroyed throughout the history (that I know so poorly that I dare not try to tell). From the helipad there you can see millions of caves – small simple holes to great big budda shaped things, 10 stories tall. Really amazing. I would like to return for longer than 30 minutes at the airport. There is a project there to rebuild the buddas, and until they are built to replace them with lazers that outline where they once were in some sort of cool effects. Nice idea. Until you realize where you are talking about and that maybe lazers are a waste of money considering... well a lot of things. But it is art and it is politically incorrect to criticize art.

So we take off again and bob along through mountains, snow covered but melting. Rock colors changing from red to grey to green to black, melted by erosion, each tint spilling down the valleys in inverted triangles from the topmost layers into those below. Some places are wet, giving away the hiding places of springs as they themselves spill through the grounds, leaving a saturated patch running down the side of the hills.

We turn a corner mountain and there are wide spaces of granitic rock, flaking away like Desolation wilderness, cracked and chiseled by ice wedging and worn away by spring rains and winds. Grey and rounded, cracked into unbelievable shapes, with holes and caves. There are pockets of green crops (wheat, I know) and fruit and nut trees (apricots and almonds) now and you can see the miles and miles of irrigation chanels.

We land and I am met by some of the local team and head back to the base. Two other expats and my engineer are still on the way, they came by plane (little tiny Cesna) leaving two hours before my helicopter, but the airstrip is 5 hours away. We drive to the base- up and down and up and down about 15 minutes only but incredible turns. The base is simple, one office, one bedroom for the girls and one for the boys. 2 tents inside full of stock, a third full of fuel and a large blue water tank. We have a land line, we have radios and several thurayas for communication. No internet… yet.

Fixing the generator in paradise.

I am in Nili.

To do internet, you climb the hill behind the compound (quite a feat at 2200 meters, I am all out of breath) and then there are 2 metal boxes, shipping crates to be precise, and a huge satellite dish. See the photo. You enter one of the boxes, one has a desk and the other does not. You sit on the floor with your laptop in front of a big server beeping like Hal on top of an Afghan hill surrounded by snow capped peaks and the sun sets, putting it all on fire. And the server keeps beeping.

Watsan equipement in paradise.

Goats and sheeps hangin' on the hillside.

Gaurd, Driver and my Engineer fixin' a mean Kabob.

We had a barbeeque day at the river.

The watsan team in the field. Kickin' ass as usual. The road was bad. We had to walk the last half a kilometer or so to the village we were assessing.But this man was happy for the visit.

urban spawl

Urban Sprawl

This is a link to a nice article that sheds a bit of light on the water and sanitation situation in Kabul...

Kabul copes with lots of people, little water
Afghans see a possible livelihood in the city, despite its crumbling infrastructure.
By Mark Sappenfield Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

A Kabul Picture Poem

This is Kabul.

And her childrenengulfing them slow

crawling up from below

this motherful city

hiding what's smotherful colorful

within silent grey mystery.

The unemployed beside the destroyed

not sure who is who
between buildings or boys
looking upwards to something

that destroyed joy down the road.

* * *

It aint easy being green

playing the scene

making up dreams

sometimes wishing we were back

in Mombassa...

links to others photos

My uncle is famous! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcQZBSEyAMM:

OK all in French, but the photos are cool...
For more super Kaubl photos check out http://tomtommaou.blogspot.com/
For a french dudes view of this place check out http://jeanraphael.blogspot.com/
who seemed to find my analysis of francophone culture particularly funny (see entry 8 feb 07)
Both great guys.
For my honey's http://mothergaia.blogspot.com/ (in french no photos) and in english http://hotpotbelly.blogspot.com/

impressionist kabul

A kabul moment captured...

... the man in the corner is taking a piss.

Driving out towards Jalabad road, you pass tall buildings that look as if they belong in Novosibirsk - a remnant of some type of development that has since been not destroyed but damaged and then reworked into warmth. You might call them projects and imagine crack dealers peaking around the open dirty snow crusted yard between two towers where there was once a fountain or a pool of odd shape with a bridge empty now of water, but not of children with blue hands and red noses. But they are the nicest place in town the residents have private cars and sometimes water and electricity and carpets and warmth and food and lovely clothes and make up.
The buildings are grey reinforced concrete. The skeleton breaking out of the cracked cement at the top, fingers of rusted re-bar reaching for the sky freed by blasts of ... They were styled as Russian style goes with geometric shapes into the cement a bit subtle then, but now riddled with bullet holes pock marked, spaces in between but more holes than not. You can imagine the sound or wonder how long it took to cover the walls with bullets, even with an automatic Kalashnikov, or if there were people hiding and if it all happened at once or over the years.
But it’s a quiet day today sunny and the kids are climbing on the bridge over no water. And the men wander about maybe having hot tea by a shaggy sloppy stand in the parking lot. And the women are inside they have made this building home and warm. Carpet and cylindrical diesel heaters with their tell-tale smoking chimney, making dumplings and youghurt and spices with the smell of henna drying on the feet. Warm tea is always ready for those blue fingered children as they come in and out and in or a cousin or a bother in law or cousins brothers sisters cousin in law.

A man passes on a bicycle wrapped in a blanket and hatted tight against the cold, rolling heavy old and slow with some momentum a bit to tall for him. Difficult to ride, especially with one leg.

Sometimes there is some random person walking or on a bike with a handful of bright clear sparkling dancing helium filled balloons passing by never seen again themselves but the colorful bouquet is seen from day to day as if they fit into this grey city. I wonder who gets them in the end.

First snowy story...

This is outside my office door in our compound after the snow....
Last week in snowed. A lot. It was ankle deep and beautiful. The roads filled with people bundled and hiding from the snow. At home we started the day throwing snowballs at each other, at lunch time the guards joined in, but slowly, at first the just made a stash of snowballs for us to use, or threw them at each other. As we arrived at the office after lunch, we continued… the staff laughing with us or at us, but not really throwing.

The logistician was leaving so we got everyone together outside for a photo with him… and then it began. Someone slammed snow into someone else head. Snowballs started to fly. The head of mission is a great shot and hit almost everyone straight in the face.

Hierarchy here is well respected. The local staff did not at first want to hit the boss with snowballs, or especially the women bosses… but by the end everyone was laughing and hitting each other. Sneaking around behind the car and ambushing people. It was great. Everyone let their guard down and just laughed and laughed and laughed and got cold.

Settlin' in

Thanks to all the notes and emails - wow! Just awsome to hear about everyone's news! These are the moments when living so far away seems a bit hard...

Sorry about any strange lingo that may seep into my writing. A "mission" is how most NGOs call their operations in a country - so we are the Afghan mission for Action Against Hunger (http://www.actionagainsthunger.org ) . No covert operations, just plain old well digging and latrine building. This week has passed so fast! Our work week is Sun-Thursday, which for some reason makes it go by faster.

What do I do anyway? So I do "watsan" (water and sanitation) - which are grouped together because what good is water if it isn't clean. Perhaps the most important (but less sexy) part of any watsan project is the "software" (knowledge and skills) to complement the "hardware" (construction, see the handpump above). In the beginning of the week I went with the "home visitors" for some home education sessions. The home visiting team are all women and they visit the homes of those people in the neighborhoods where we implement construction. They go door to door and sit with the mothers and children, men sometimes, and talk to them about hygiene behavior... cleaning their water jugs, cleaning toilets, washing hands and more on washing hands. It is just a great approach I think, makes people feel really responsible - more so than if they are all gathered together into a public place and taught in a session.

To enter into someone's home; you see their children who are comfortable and climbing around, their rug they are working on, half-done and rough and beautiful, their simple room with mud walls (thicker than mud walls in Africa), no furniture except the loom, warm from a diesel heater and comfortable with flat pillows around. A family of 3 mothers, maybe the same husband or not, and an old grandmother. One could read (Dari written in the Arabic alphabet) so she said we should leave the colorful flyer with pictures with her to share with the family, so we did. Some of the women had darker skin and some with Asian eyes and some who look like me with darker hair. They are attentive and positive and smiling with the home visitors.

After the team of home visitors had prepared a meal with afghan food from their homes; boiled meat and some wonderful boiled dumplings with lentil sauce and youghert poured around. The ladies were so sweet and lovely. One older women spoke French and was so cute, asking me about Paris.

Most Afghan people assume I am French, because most of our expatriates are. I tend to not correct them, and if they ask I say that I have American origins, but I am French now because I am married to a French man. So first, I am not too psyched to be American in Afghanistan. I do not agree with how we are here or have been in the past (detrimental, hypocritical and self serving). I am very fearful of being judged by Afghans by that on first impressions. But as someone gets to know me or wants to know me, asking me about myself, learning my own personality I am happy to tell them about my nationality. In fact this I think is important so that people realize that Americans don't always agree with America or with W, so when I have the opportunity (a conversation deeper than an introduction) I try to discuss it too... so it is a bit of both and a careful balance. Second thing; here Mario and I are married. There is either married or not, and so we are married. This there is no getting around it. We just have to be married. Everyone now wants to know why we do not have kids. ACK!

Now to other expatriates, I am American. My country hasn't screwed up their countries and I would hate to be mistaken as French in the expat circles (ha ha ha), which would be easy considering that I hang out with mostly French people. It is an entertaining dynamic here. Most of the people I have met here are French, because the ACF expats are French… Some French people here refer to ALL non-“French NGO” people as “Anglophone” therefore: military (even ISAF which is mostly French) is anglaphone, private companies, security, UN is anglaphone, Russians are anglaphone, Indians are anglaphone, any NGO worker whose NGO is not French is anglaphone. It is a good joke with some Frenchies who make it fun, and really annoying from some others who are just plain ignorant.

I am giving a bad impression… Everyone here I have met are really cool, nice people. I am having a good time and having new friends, luckily especially those I live with. So don’t get me wrong at all, it is just sometimes the interesting things come out as negative.

Mario and I are happy here (although the picture is from Kenya with Mt. Kilimanjaro faintly in the background). We like our jobs and teams. We hope to stick around a while. We have each other. Security in Kabul is okay, although we are quite restricted to where we can go as preventive measures.

A change of continent...

After 4 years in Africa, I have arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan. Quite chilly and beautiful. A small high basin surrounded by snowy peaks, the air a bit polluted - trapped by the mountains and the ambiance is a bit French - a mission mangaged through our Paris office, but all lovely just the same.

Someone once asked me if wearing a headscarf would bother me. No it doesn't, it's pretty practicle as it is damn cold. It's just like a shirt in our culture - if you're a woman you have to wear one in public. All cultures are sexist, westerners just tend to think we are above it, but we are just used to it in our own way.

As you can see the scenery is pretty impressive - more to come as I get settled in. By the way I am 12 and a half hours ahead of the West Coast.