Pictures & Such

I've not written lately because life seems monotonous and mundane, but hopefully I'll have some resurgent desire to give an update soon. Until then, here are some pictures for your enjoyment.

A small jeep convoy; mostly German, Turkish, or Italian in this region.

I can't wait to drive somewhere with street laws...

The "world" roundabout toward the mountains.

Our backyard with a random dusting of snow; the two days before this were 60 degrees.

Another roundabout; I'd call this one "Spaceship" but I guess that's not my role here.

A fancy house in the "nice" part of town.

A mosque.

Dari script on the walls of common homes.

OK, One More Little Rant... (and Pictures)

Another electricity fiasco I left out of the last blog:


About three weeks ago our city power wasn't working. For some reason, the wiring was/is messed up. The same thing happened just before we arrived here, and they had someone fix it. So, we called the same guy to come and do it again. He was in and out in about 10 minutes, but charged quite a lot compared to what we've heard other people pay to fix the same problem. We paid it anyway, happy to have city power. Then, one week ago the whole situation repeated itself for the third go-round, except that this time he wanted double what we paid him last time. Not only did he want to charge me double for literally jiggling wires until a light blinked on, he said he needed to replace the main wire and would charge me for that too.


In my broken Dari, I began to ask him why it was double and why he didn't just fix it the first time if that was the problem, but we weren't communicating very well. I could tell he was becoming frustrated with me, but I only thought it was the language issue. At first, I called one of our Afghan drivers to translate over the phone. The 'electrician' shut down the conversation and got on his motorcycle to leave without answering any of the questions. I just wanted an honest answer, and don't even mind paying the guy for what he's done, but I would like to know what I'm paying for. Luckily I was able to stop him. My neighbor happened to be pulling in, so I had him translate for me again, but apparently I crossed an invisible line and he drove off on his motorcycle as he had started to do earlier.


My theory: he was fixing the electricity just enough to last a few weeks, get paid, and wait for the next call. Perhaps I'm wrong, but several people, both Afghans and expats have confirmed my thoughts on this. When I challenged his way of doing things, it seemed like he took it as an issue of honor and respectability. The paradox of it all is that I want to know what I'm paying for and why, but when I ask these questions, it seems to be taken as an offensive gesture to their integrity. Quite a paradox when bargaining is required in almost any business transaction.

Here's our electric box and power lines:

My view from the factory:

This guy's car wouldn't start, so he decided to check the gas--with a muddy piece of cord off of the ground...

The view down our street, and our street lights that work about half the time (or less):

A wall we pass every day; notice the bullet holes:

The mud home we're staying in:

Another view from the factory:

Electricity & Intl Aid: More Ranting than Rambling

In the states, we have large, systematic bureaucracies that provide infrastructure for our society; the government, businesses, and organizations all operate within a bureaucratic web. While there are great inefficiencies and inconsistencies in our system, I am quite thankful for how automated some things have become, especially electricity...

In Mazar, we have city power approximately half of each day. During the other half of the day, we either choose to run a gas-guzzling generator or go without power. Going without isn't too bad, except that the windows are covered with blankets to keep heat in, which leaves us with flashlights to accomplish everyday household tasks like washing dishes, cooking, and reading. When we wake up in the morning, we use flashlights to get the coffee going on our wonderful gas stove. In some ways, it feels like a hobbit house-- dark, kinda cold, but also cozy.

Some of the more frustrating parts of dealing with the lack of electricity include:

• delays at work for lack of a decent, economical power source to run the machines at the factory
• the inability to wash clothes without steady power for a few hours
• having to pump water into a tank on our roof every day so as to not be in the middle of a shower when it runs out 
• having to keep track of whether the hot water heater was on long enough to last through your shower
• and tripping over everything in the dark to find a flashlight when you're in the middle of something and everything blacks out

Another interesting thing about electricity here is the way you pay. In the states, our bill is mailed to our house, and we either mail a check in or have it automatically withdrawn from our account. Here, you register with the power company and they give you a bill. You pay it at the company, but keep the latest bill until the next one is due. When the Qalandhar (a neighborhood "leader" of sorts) asks you to pay (about every two months), you are suppose to take your old bill to the company to obtain your new bill and make a payment. If you don't have the old bill, they charge triple or more the amount owed on the bill. I try to be culturally sensitive and understanding, but why the heck is it this complicated to pay an electric bill?! I guess that's the result when there isn't an established postal system.

Oh, and almost all of the generators are Chinese, which means they fall apart every couple of weeks. You can buy Japanese brands that have greater longevity, but when they break, nobody knows how to fix them.

Beyond the local issues we have with power, its frustrating to see American tax dollars and donated money go to waste. Our factory is located in an industrial park that was built by the USAID. Basically, they decided to build an "industrial park" 15 km from Mazar with the intention of having potable water and 24/7 electricity later. They built the park--spending millions of dollars--with the "hope" that a large power line would be completed between Uzbekistan and Mazar. I'm not sure where they were hoping to get water pumped from; I guess the plan was to have it trucked in every week (completely unsustainable...).What this has amounted to is a failed project, though they wouldn't admit this because they checked off all of their boxes. Idealism killed the project. They created contracts and completed a project based on an idealistic premise that the electricity would be completed. Now that the premise has fallen through, the project is worthless to anyone who purchased property within the industrial park.

I guess that's enough ranting for now...

Ramblings on Driving & Culture

Traffic in Afghanistan may be the craziest I've ever experienced. There are many cars on the road, but that isn't what gets me. What gets me is that every time I get in a vehicle, I feel like we're playing chicken with everybody else on the road. This quote from our Country Director sums up how I feel when I'm driving in Mazar:

"Driving through Kabul in a snow storm is like playing Russian Roulette with 3 bullets in the chamber instead of 1."

There are no speed limits or stop signs. The street lights only work when there's actually city power, and even then, its only a suggestion. When you come to an intersection and the light is out, you have to ease your nose into oncoming traffic, flick your lights, and honk your horn until you cut someone off. Its a bit of a doozy because you have to cut them off, but leave them enough time to stop before they hit you. Then you fight your way through the middle of the road and squeeze into traffic going the direction you want to go.

In the city, there are typically lots of cars, motorcycles, trucks, bicycles, pedestrians, and wheelbarrows on the road, which means there's a much greater chance of being in an accident, but at least everyone's going slow enough that it only results in fender benders. However, on my way to the factory, we are on a major highway heading out of town. There's less traffic, more big trucks, and everyone moves much, much faster. Sometimes we're passing one semi or dump-truck with another one coming head on, the pedal's to the floor (meaning you can't go any faster, and you can't slow down or the guy following you around the big truck will also wreck) and you swoop in front of the truck just in time. Its a rush; one I'm still not fond of. Oh, there aren't really any shoulders on the side of the highway either...

I think there's an intriguing cultural dynamic to all of this. In the West, especially America, we tend to be hyper-security oriented, and everything we do is a calculation of risk in some form or another. We don't let the kids play in the street because its risky- the child could be hit by a car. We (most of us anyway...) buckle our seat-belts because we know it is safer, and the statistics say so. (I must admit, I didn't start wearing my seat-belt here until after our wreck...). In the worldview of most Westerners, we believe our choices and actions are legitimate in and of themselves. It is a matter of our own responsibility to control life, good and evil, etc. I have been stressed many times at work, school, and in my travels because I have ultimately seen myself as the one controlling outcomes. Not necessarily a good thing.

For many Afghans, and I think many people throughout the Greater Middle East, our ambitions to control life seem futile. If you get into grad school, it was Allah's will. If we make it past the semi, it was Allah's will. If we didn't, the same remains true. You get the picture. Everything is rooted in the fact that Allah controls everything, especially outcomes. This particularly relates to death, life, good, and evil. The crazy driving and kids playing in the streets seems crazy to me, because in my worldview, my decisions and choices matter quite a lot, and perhaps more than they should. Here, people don't see themselves as the controllers of their own destiny, and see struggling with Allah for that position as a pointless endeavor.

So, there are definitely pros and cons to the way we view things, from whichever side of the world we come. It is one thing to take responsibility for what we do, but it is another thing to try to control outcomes. The world, and life, are far too large and complicated for us to control them, and we drive ourselves mad trying to do so. On the other hand, our decisions in life do make a difference and we must be responsible for them. By introducing seat-belt laws, the number of deaths from car accidents dropped-- its a fact. All that to say-- I'm learning to relinquish what I think I control in life, and hopefully, some of those I'm around are learning that they do have some responsibility in the decisions they make.

 

Living in a Fish Bowl: Restaurants and the Bazaar

This week, I felt like being anywhere but here. Upon reflection, I remember feeling this way in other places, even in the states. Remembering this relieved some of the slummed-out feelings I was having and reminded me that its very much a part of being human. Its how we remember we're finite and small in quite a large world, regardless of where we're from or who we are. Today's blog is about a trip to the restaurant and the bazaar. Its amazing to me that a simple trip to town can turn out to be such an overwhelmingly different experience than it would be in the states.

Restaurants and the Bazaar

On Thursday, I left around noon to have lunch with a few friends and find a tailor in the bazaar. It snowed the night before, so the streets turned into a sludgy, muddy mess. It was clear and cold, and the wind cut through all three layers of clothing I was wearing. As I sloshed down the street, I passed the small tea (shai) house on the corner. They smiled and greeted me with the four to five ways you say, "how are you?" and insisted that I come have shai on the way out. This was quite a change from the way it has been.

For the first month, I would wave or smile as we drove by, only to receive deep stares from very serious faces. A little under a week ago, I was walking by and decided to have some tea and try for a chat. I greeted them, and they hesitantly returned the same. I sat on the carpeted wooden platform, three or so feet from the ground under a canvas tent. They passed me shai and offered some kabob. Though my Dari is quite elementary, they could tell I was trying, and it seemed to make all the difference in the world. It intrigued them that a white guy from America, not in the military, is having tea and at least trying to communicate in their own language. So, now they wave, smile, and insist on my stopping in every time I pass by. This is my goal everywhere I go here: to get people to smile back, wave, and give a greeting, which can be intimidating due to the hard stares and serious faces, but seeing these guys on the corner reminds me that its worth it to keep trying and pressing on.

I met my other friends down the road and we walked to the restaurant. They had the grills cranking and everything smelled delicious. As we walked in, it seemed as if the whole place stopped for just a moment to give us a good look over. This place was a mix between a traditional style restaurant, with platforms lining the walls and places for people to sit, and a modern or Western style restaurant with tables and chairs. I think this was the first time I've eaten at a table in over a month. Lunch was excellent, though limited to the usual diet-- homemade yogurt, lamb shanks, and chicken kabob with fresh bread. Oh, how I long for fresh fruits and veggies!

From here, we went to the plumbing area of the bazaar to find a toilet seat for one of the guys. I waited outside, talked to a few curious guys on the street, and enjoyed freezing in the wind. We hiked on toward the main bazaar, toilet seat in hand, and stopped at two carpet stores. The first was a friend of a friend, and the other is a friend I made a few weeks back. We found a chess set made of lapiz and onyx stone. It was quite unique, but I wouldn't pay $120 US for it. At my friend's shop, I made my favorite purchase in Afghanistan up to this point, a pair of gorgeous hand-made twin carpets.

It took us about three hours up to this point, and with all the tea and talking at each stop, I had to find a bathroom, which can be quite tricky in this country. Most guys find a wall, or a ditch, or wherever to do their business but for a white guy, it tends to draw more attention than I'm comfortable with. So, as we were about to head on from the carpet shop area, I asked a man where I might find a toilet. He pointed me down a narrow alley and told me to go upstairs and turn right. The smell was quite rancid, the trash overflowing, and I decided not to let my mind wander too far with what all the stains were from. Nonetheless, it was sufficient to do the job.

We traveled on, crossing busy intersections, weaving between three-wheeled carts, motorcycles, donkeys, and taxis to arrive at the lailomi bazaar (a sort of walking market; mainly second-hand goods). We went to my friend Mafuz's tailor, which was in a small box, about 2 meters x 3 meters x 3 meters. As he was getting measured for his PuranTamBone (Afghani style pants and shirt; similar to Shalwar Qamiz found in Pakistan or India), I took off to another area of the bazaar to find some cloth for my own PuranTamBone. After visiting several stores with an Afghan guy, I realized I was quite close to paying a foreigners "tax" because my "buddy" was getting tipped to bring me to specific shops. So, I decided to go to a different shop of my own choosing. I'm quite proud that I was able to get the cloth I wanted for a third the price he had found for me. I made the purchase, 4 meters of cloth for a full PuranTamBone, for approximately $8 US and went back to the tailor. The tailor measured me up and said to return on Tuesday. Let's hope it turns out well!