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.