Pictures: A Little Variety

Another day of Buzkashi with some new friends; this time in Mazar-i-Sharif.

This guy must have been close to seven feet tall, and his horse was quite the giant as well.

The overcast sky and muddy, icy fields made for a spectacular Buzkashi game with over 100 riders.

Having lunch at work. Sometimes a surreal experience. We have Kabuli Palao and bread. Kabuli Palao, or Kabul-styled rice, is made with lots of oil, raisins, and shredded carrots. We share large platters of this rice between two or three individuals, and usually eat with your fingers or bread (though I sometimes cheat with a spoon).

This is our night chowki-dor which is basically a watchman. We enjoy a cup of tea once or twice a week while he practices English and I Dari. This particular evening we worked our way through the magazine, Fur, Fish, & Game.

This picture can seem empty to the untrained eye, but there are many things we can pull from it. Notice the hook-shaped tube in the upper right corner. This is a lantern attachment for a bottle of natural gas, and probably the main source of light for them at night. There's also an oil lamp in the window, which would be used if they need to go outside of the lantern-lit room. They do actually have flashlights but said they prefer this. This large Persian rug is handmade and marks the main commons area; at the far end of the room, you can barely make out everyone's shoes, which are always taken off at the door. You can say a glass bowl of candy at the bottom, and a large thermos of chai on the right, two essentials in Afghan culture.

This is one of the gates over the central road in and out of Mazar. On the left, Ahmad Shah Massoud stares down at the road; he is a hero to many Tajiks and Northern Afghans but a warlord to others. He was assassinated on September 10, 2001 by two Arab extremists. An emblem of the Afghan flag sits in the center, and Hamid Karzai, the current President of Afghanistan is on the far right.

We pass these men selling fish every day on the way to the factory. I believe they are from the Amu Darya, an ancient river of the north. Most of them are carp, so I haven't exactly sought out an opportunity to eat or cook them.

This is the road toward our office. A woman begs sitting in the muddy road.

Your average orange stand, usually sitting on every other corner.

If you can make it out through the mud and snow, this is a chaikhana, or teahouse, around the corner from our house. I wrote about this in a former entry for those of you that have been tagging along.

The streets are always busy, lots of cars and many people. Its hard not to wonder what all of the are doing, where they're going, and why.