2nd Eid

I am not terribly knowledgeable of Islam admittedly, but this weekend is 2^nd Eid, also known in English as Big Eid. It is the time when Muslims, who can, travel to Mecca for the Hajj – one of five actions to be up held as part of following Islam. It is also a five day weekend. And while for me that means life grinds to a near halt, there is a lot more activity around Kabul – many more people out on the street – most specifically, I have seen more women out and about than normal.

From my new guesthouse room, on the second floor facing the street, I can hear the neighborhood boys playing all day outside on the street. And, like boys everywhere, they are setting off celebratory firecracker. While a normal activity elsewhere, when you live in a city where popping or thudding noises give pause, it seems strange.

The good thing about the Eid weekend coinciding with Thanksgiving Day weekend, is it gave us something to do over the five...long…boring…days. Fortunately I attended both a T-day dinner on Thursday and a second “transitional” dinner on Friday. The latter was Thanksgiving themed food followed by a Christmas-y white-elephant gift exchange (I ended up with a bottle of balsamic vinegar in a red sequined zippered wine bag), a viewing of Charlie Brown Christmas special and The Grinch.

As I write, there are two more days-off to go. There is only so much internet (only available at the office), sleeping, reading, exercising and TV watching a person can handle.

Kabul Thanksgiving

I had been invited to my colleagues’ Cathy & Mike’s Thanksgiving day dinner. And since I had successfully made pumpkin pie from scratch in the Maldives, my ego volunteered me to reproduce said accomplishment for this dinner to feed 14 guests.

As luck would have it, the cultures of the world aligned and the Big Eid holiday coincided with the T-day weekend. Therefore, I had a significant amount of time to accomplish my mission. And if the guests could be trusted – many of whom were non-Americans – the pies were successful. But with any recipe from home, success depended upon a certain amount of creativity and intuition. But three hours of pumpkin cooking, followed by pureeing and draining, a rectangular pan as a second pie plate stand-in, cleaning a suspicious blender, estimating eggs, milk, sugar, pumpkin and pretty much every ingredient, the end product was edible and rather tasty – though strangely colored.

However, the biggest adventure during the pie making was navigating the oven. I have little experience with gas ovens, and no experience with lighting them. I had been warned that this one could be volatile, but still was not prepared for the mini-explosion that occurred when I lit it the first night. No injuries were sustained, and the next morning it lit rather gently. The oven was all bark and no bite because although I converted Fahrenheit degrees to Celsius, I’m pretty sure it didn’t matter since the pies required an extra half hour to bake.

Inauguration Day

It's a ghost town in Kabul. If there were tumble weeds to be had, they would be blowing through the streets. The reason for the empty streets is the inauguration imposed city lock down. Hilary and Holbrooke are in town along with a host of other dignitaries and with the heightened threat of violence this brings, they have put up road blocks and made it a national holiday. This means that our national staff have the day off but the expats were supposed to be able to come to the office. As it turns out, two of us made it through the road block searches before the decision was made for everyone to stay in the guesthouses until the road blocks lifted.

Later that morning the radio room guys told us two that they could walk us back to the guest houses when we were ready. On the walk home, I noticed that the road blocks were gone. However, we were still a) not allowed to return to the office until 2p and b) a group of us walked back to the office. Why walking was preferable to driving, I do not understand. At any rate, being able to walk outside twice in one day - which I've only done a few times since I've been here - was a good but strange experience.

In other news, since returning to Kabul from a great R&R in the states, I have moved into a different guest house. I have a much bigger room, on a second floor and I am living with colleagues - a few permanent and some just passing through. It is a vast improvement.

Kabul odds and ends

As life falls into usual patterns, there seems to be fewer events and observations to write about. Unfortunately, the usual pattern of life in Kabul is not always so pleasant. Within the past week there was work discord, the dramatic UN situation and an earthquake - the second earthquake in one week. And there is the daily waiting game to find out what will happen with the election. But the day-to-day life goes on in its perpetual guesthouse to office rotation.

Interspersed, there are some more enjoyable moments. Last week, I sat down with two of our three female staff while they ate lunch and heard about what it's like to be a woman in Kabul. One had had an arranged marriage - though she was given final say. And she was sure to ask her potential husband if he supported her going to school, working and wearing modern clothes. She was very happy that he did. The other, if I understood correctly, has opted to remain at home unmarried because she wants the freedom to have a job.

Also, on Friday, we received a welcomed break from the tension of Kabul by attending the annual pumpkin carving party hosted by the wildlife conservation society guesthouse. Saturday was one more outing to pick up last minute gifts before I head out on R&R. To say I'm looking forward to it, is a mild understatement. Life is Kabul is inexplicably as complex as it is simple.

The 3rd gender (aka expat women)

As an expat female, especially in countries where women have a defined position in society, it is an interesting experience navigating social customs. Actually, I don't think they know what to do with me, which is probably for the best. And so, I float between two worlds with societal etiquette as only a guideline. True, in AFG, outside a building, I wear a headscarf, and keep myself dressed modestly - long tops, high necklines and long sleeves (no sun-related aging here). But I work, travel and eat with the men. I use their restroom, sit at their table, and attend their meetings. Granted, I also have rules about where I can sit in the car (more than one man? Sit in the front seat. One man? I sit in the back). And when greeting a man, I take his lead on whether to shake hands.

When I was last in Faizabad, one of the national staff invited us to his house for dinner. Again, per usual, I was the only woman present. At the end of dinner, our host brought in a gift from his wife for me - a very bright shawl. And then he asked me to step out of the room so I could meet her. Once the dining room door closed, he motioned her upstairs. She was very friendly and asked me to come visit her sometime because she is home alone. And then she hurried downstairs, the door was reopened, and I joined the men again. It was decidedly surreal and a stark reminder of the different worlds inhabited by AFG men and women. And a reminder of how I am able to pass between the two.

The road to Pul-i-Khumri

The past week has flown by. After some significant weekend down time, partly inspired by an unhappy stomach, we have gone head-long into what will be a week and a half of meetings and travel. Our program requires a serious overhaul. In other words, structure. For two very long and tedious days, the program's upper management team duked it out in the Kabul makeshift conference room in order to first figure out how decisions, design and project implementation has worked (or not) up until now. I will spare the reader the gory details, but no lives were lost, though perhaps a bit of sanity.

With a project cycle in place, corresponding forms developed, and a rudimentary training plan at the ready, we headed out Tuesday on the 5 hr long drive to Pul-i-Khumri, Baghlan Province for the first of two trainings. First stop (for the food-minded) was lunch at a road-side shack where we ate giant, flat, deep-fried potato/leek samosas dipped in a thin salsa.

In someways it was a very nice drive...for the most part paved, and very scenic. The mountains I had seen from the plane, I was now driving up and through. The road is fairly well traveled especially by the most pimped out Pakistani (I'm told) cargo trucks. I wish our semis in America sported similar flare. Tuk-tuks have nothing on these gaudy art installations on wheels. The downside (figuratively) of driving through the mountains was the winter weather road protection. Really, really long man-made tunnels. Sure they keep the elements off the road, but they also prevent road repair and hold in the diesel fumes from the glamor trucks. On one particularly long stretch of tunnel, with no vents, the fumes were overwhelming. Had there been a breakdown in the tunnel, a) I would have feared for fire, but more concerning b) feared aphyxiation. And since the road condition is particularly bad, and it's pitch dark, you frequently see headlights coming straight at you while cars (fortunately, slowly) navigate around slow trucks, rivets and potholes.

On the brighter side, sort of, there were numerous reminders of the Soviets littered along the way. Abandoned tank hulls, tank tread, and roofless barracks.

Back to Faizabad

Two days after returning to Kabul, I was back on the milk-run plane to Faizabad. We hosted the program quarterly meeting, bringing together national staff from two other agencies who are implementing projects under the same grant in other parts of the country. Many had never been to Badakhshan before. The first day was spent in a very hot, stuffy meeting room in the closest thing to a hotel Faizabad has to offer - and where the other agencies' staff stayed. Though one would think, if you are going to have a conference room in a hotel, public toilets might be a bright idea. As it was, one of our guests kindly let me use his room's bathroom.

The following two days were spent on field trips. We revisited the two canal sites Peter and I went to on our last visit - it was interesting to see the progress. Though we also noted that perhaps some construction site safety training might be in order. OSHA would have a conniption.

On the second day we also visited the calf/lamb farmers participating in a "fattening" project. I was the only visible female over the age of 9 in a crowd of men and starring boys. After the formal meeting, and a visit to a farmer's outhouse - an adventure complete with a guard dog which made a rabies immunization seem like a good idea - we went to watch a calf being weighed. Soon, however, my oddity gathered more attention and a herd of children were peering and giggling at me. Pete helped me say a few things in Dari and then we got a rare group photo - generally you sneak photos because they are camera shy and as it is, don't smile for photos. But they seemed to enjoy looking at themselves in the photo afterwards.

It was a long and tiring week. And to stretch it out, our flight back to Kabul was delayed but we got a glimpse inside the relationship between the Faizabad airport and the German military. The military were working on the the airstrip and because the plane had missed its landing window (during their lunch break), it had to wait in Kunduz until they were done with their work before it could land. The airport operator had to call a man appropriately named "Rolf" to get permission to use the runway. Fortunately, Rolf was cooperative and we got back to Kabul three hours late.