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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April 29, 2007

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.