Four grey walls and four grey towers...

I arrived under the clouds and dusk of nightfall and so my introduction to Johannesburg so far has been minimal. What struck me as interesting is that once again I am in a city confining residents behind walls. Unlike AFG where it is to protect expats from targeted violence, here it is to protect everyone from random crimes. I was met at the airport by our country director who transported me to the lovely little Jubilee Guesthouse. With chicken take-away dinner in hand, I felt very secure behind two gates and a door requiring a remote control and two sets of keys for entry. After eating my dinner, having some rooibos tea and catching up on internet, it was time for sleep and try to keep this headcold under control.

Onward Adventures

It seems time to resurrect this dusty blog which got bogged down in the trials and tribulations of life in Afghanistan. And really how much can one write about when confined to house and office most of the time? Back on the outside since March, life has been humming along. It is amazing how much change there can be in the course of a year. From US to Kabul to US with a bit of ricocheting in between for good measure. But as fall rolls in, I am newly settled in Virginia with travel on the horizon. This begs the question whether this blog's title is still fits. I think it does. I will always be a Pacific Northwesterner at heart and changing it to Virginia Vagrant, though it has the necessary alliteration, just doesn't quite work. And perhaps Virginia is just one more stop - a career oasis, if you will. And so let's get back on board the proverbial caravan. Glad you've decided to come along.

When it rains, it reeks

As mentioned before, Afghanistan is having an unseasonably dry and warm. Which, while more comfortable for this fair-weather expat, is not good for water supplies later this year. Last night however, rain dances were answered and a deluge of rain fell upon Kabul. And rain in Kabul means snow in the mountains. Unfortunately, along with this favorable weather event, comes a slightly inconvenient living event.

At 1am last night I awoke to a really, really unpleasant smell. It smelled mostly of gas fuel which is always alarming. Out in the hall the smell was worse, and it was also downstairs making me wonder if it was coming from the oven. It was not fortunately. I ventured out into the rain, woke the guard up and we investigated the three floors of the guesthouse but couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from. So we opened doors and windows and I went back to bed. In the morning, the smell was less but still there - however my trip to the bathroom made the source clear. The rain had obviously backed up the sewer system at some stage and this gas was coming up through the drains and toilet. The peculiar thing is that it did not have the normal (thank goodness) sewage smell but truly more of a natural gas smell.

At any rate, the plumber has been called and fortunately, the bathroom still work okay and it's warm enough to keep the windows open. So with any luck, we'll be back normal atmospheric order soon.

Pulikhumri revisited

I have spent the last week up in Pulikhumri in Baghlan. This is the city reached from Kabul by way of the Salang Pass. Fortunately for us, there is no snow currently in the pass, and strangely hardly any traffic the morning we came up. However, this lack of snow could mean very bad things for agriculture, livestock and the general water supply. This winter has been unseasonably warm and dry. Generally in January, it is very cold and even Kabul gets a lot of snow. Instead, it has been about 20 degrees above average, and far warmer and drier than it was in November.

One of the reasons we made the journey up to Pulikhumri is that in our two larger program provinces we are implementing a winter feeding project where a one month ration of concentrate feed and de-worming services will be provided to livestock most at risk during the later winter months. The thought is, if the snows don't come, spring will be a very difficult time for livestock as well, because lack of water means lack of grazing land, so this additional feed will be beneficial no matter what the weather brings.

While we've been here, we've had a chance to go out and see a few projects around town. It is a nice change from Kabul where we hardly get out at all. However, much like Kabul our presence receives a lot of attention, though in this case it's more from curiosity than any negative interest - or at least that's what I tell myself.

Tomorrow we drive back to Kabul. And while it has been very nice to have a break from the big city (and fortunately missing the unrest), it will be good to return to my little piece of space and my routine. Stay tuned! Next stop is Jalalabad for a program quarterly meeting next weekend.

Afghan weddings

So I've had a few conversations with Afghan male colleagues about weddings. Many of our staff are of the marrying age, this coupled with the amazing number of huge, glassy, gaudy wedding halls that line the main roads of Kabul, make it a fascinating topic.

Weddings in Afghanistan are a huge, expensive affair. And I'm guessing when cost of living conversions are used, they are far more expensive than American weddings. Just now, I have learned that my guard (who is also a program staff employee) is saving money to be married in four months around the time of the Afghan new year. He says that it will cost him $12,000. His engagement party cost $6,000. However, the thing to remember here is they have to invite everyone, because everyone has some family connection to each other. And in this country, your relationships mean and influence every part of life. As he said, for everyone one person he invites, four people show up. He estimates that at his wedding will be 700 from his side and he guesses that his fiancee will have about 300 people. And that is normal from what I've been told.

Re-entry

I've been slacking heavily on the blog entries. I guess the longer you are somewhere, the less it seems like there is to report. Two weeks away on Christmas vacation was good but also surreal. Despite 30hrs of travel in each direction to help adjust to the change in...everything...bouncing between Kabul and Portland was a hard transition. The two places are different in every way imaginable. I think going to Virginia and back was easier because VA was unfamiliar whereas I know Oregon inside and out. At any rate, with sinus infection firmly in place, it took a good three days and many hours of sleep for me to get "used" to being back here.

So, since I'm coming up with less to write about, I figured it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty details. What is a day like in Kabul. Well, today is the weekend (Friday) and it is a quiet day at that. In some ways I was looking forward to it, because I've noticed the downside of having one's office in one's living area, is that you have even less alone time. I live for 4:30p when everyone: colleagues, office staff and the cleaner, go home and I have the place to myself again. As it is, people are coming and going all the time and even my room has frequent visitors as the cleaner goes in to clean and get laundry and the guards enter in the afternoon to fill and light my heater. It has been an adjustment.

Today has so far consisted of, brace yourself, doing yoga, eating breakfast, talking to David, having him help fix the internet connection so I can do email and post this blog entry, go to the grocery store...and here I am. I have nothing else planned for today except more internet, watching TV, and maybe read. I may even break out some real live, with cards, solitaire. And I will eat meals and go to bed. Wow. Tomorrow, minus the grocery store and internet fixing, will be pretty much the same with some work thrown in to shake things up. I'm alone at the guesthouse this weekend which is good but also exacerbates the lack of things to do.

And that is the exciting existence in Kabul. Fortunately, this coming week, those colleagues who went home for the holidays will start trickling back into town so chances are things will pick up.

Incredible shrinking world

So my life was not terribly expansive to begin with. When not traveling to a field office, I rotated between the office and the guesthouse with occasional excursions to the ooooh grocery store or aaaaah restaurant. And lately there has been some necessary Christmas shopping - where you are followed by small boys asking you to buy a map, or a pack of chewing gum and they keep saying "madame, madame, I am your bodyguard". Not sure if it's amusing for them or if there is a monetary game at play.

Anyway, life is small. It seemed inconceivable that it could get smaller. But it has. The Kabul office is bursting at the seams - a good thing in terms of program growth but bad in that our office can't grow. We needed a temporary solution to the desk deficit. The answer took shape in the form of the Asmara satellite office. The first floor of my guesthouse has a large room which, until last week, contained a rather nice, but lonely pool table. Now, it contains my program's office. Essentially I can wake up, roll down the stairs and be sitting at my desk. And I have to say, I really like this arrangement for a variety of reasons, namely INTERNET! Because we are an office, we are the only guesthouse with internet. So, on second thought, my Kabul world may have closed in but my connection to the outside world has cracked wide open.

(Photo: Rare clear view from the top of the guesthouse over Kabul at sunset)