PERSPECTIVE
An aid workers impressions as she travels the world building toilets.
Latest public adventure: to be determined.
Poems, photos and ramblings abound.


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January 24, 2007

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.

January 20, 2007

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.

January 14, 2007

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.

Good bye to Africa... at least for a while.

A fitting farewell to Africa. Here is Dinner (shown at left), a dear gift from the Chief of Garbakoley in Mandera Kenya. He was the favorite Chief of most of us; educated, spoke great English, loved to debate politics and religion and was very helpful in implementation of the project.

We had a lovely staff party. One of my staff sang to me a goodbye song that almost made me cry. I received some thoughtful gifts (a headscarf for Kabul). We saw the honorary "Camle Dance." Speeches were made; the best again being from the Chief of Garbakoley who says "In Muslim culture women stay in the kitchen, but I guess that is up to Mario. I have some advice for Kabul, be patient and do not dress like an American, dress like a Muslim lady." The first part was a joke and the second pretty good advice.

I'll miss the continant that I had grown used to... all the chaos that works, the stinky, the green, the beautiful, the corruption, the comfort, the knowledge that there is always a solution. But we will be back I am sure...

And I do suppose I should explain who "we" are... For those of you who don't know, Mario is a lovely man I met in DRCongo, who also works for ACF, and to whom I have just gotten engaged. We won't be married until after our mission in Afghanistan is through, i.e. 2008. I am so happy to have found someone who I can work and travel with, who is smart and interesting, who has a cool background (he is French, but is of Syrian origin), who I can put up with and who can put up with me.


So here I go out on the next part of the adventure. Some of it staying the same and some of it getting better: I will still work in Water and Sanitation for Action Against Hunger, but this time as a coordinator (more mangaging, less cement). I hope that this blog will encourage me to write a bit more, get a bit more creative... although as you can tell this one is a bit of an update, make it easier to share photos with you all.