Hunting in the Hazarajat

Will: One of my Afghan colleagues invited me to go hunting in the Central Highlands over the Eid Holiday. His family live in a remote village 260 miles west of Kabul surrounded by mountains that rise to 4500m. On this occasion, he also asked me to take his nephew Ali home to his family in an adjoining valley. A foreigner’s life in Kabul can easily develop without ever forming meaningful relationships with Afghans. Although I work with Afghans everyday and spend a great deal of my time talking to the community where I work in Kabul’s old city, I have not found it easy to establish true friendships. This journey was a small step towards friendship with my colleague’s family, and a reminder of what attracted me to this country in the first place. The journey took us through some of the most spectacular landscapes that I have seen in Afghanistan.

We reached Charikar after an hour, and left the metalled road for a gravelled track that took us into the Ghorband valley. A Gurkha regiment under British command was destroyed here on November 2nd 1841 when British subsidies were withdrawn from the Ghilzai tribesmen. There was great concern at home over the heavy burden being placed on the Indian finances by the cost of maintaining an army in Afghanistan. At the same time, serious questions were being asked of the new Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel about a policy that was at once so costly yet so ineffective. Two months later a retreating force of 4500 men and 12,000 camp followers were slaughtered in the Khord-e-Kabul pass with only one apparent survivor.

We followed the Ghorband valley to Bamiyan, passing first through a series of Pashtun villages to the bustling bazaar of Siya Gird. The rocky escarpments on both sides of the valley were covered with white polka dots where de-mining teams had painted the rocks where the land had been cleared. We passed through villages of children chasing inflated inner tubes across our path and women sat in colourful huddles in the middle of the track. This was the first day of Eid. Little girls were sparkling in new dresses and boys were fighting over new toys. The women were momentarily relieved of household duties and gathered in groups to gossip on the banks of the river.

As we climbed higher, we left the river behind and snaked our way up the Kotal Shibar pass into a series of fertile green valleys. There were signs of development everywhere: great signboards marked the entry to NGO compounds and projects such as potato storage huts, passive solar greenhouses, hydro-electric turbines, and bridges. The Hazarajat has been relatively stable and accessible from Kabul and has therefore received a steady stream of foreign aid during the last four decades.

We continued to gain height, weaving our way in between donkeys and abandoned tanks on the way up the Kotal Shibardos pass, leaving a great cloud of dust in our wake. The final approach to Bamiyan took us through narrow defiles and boulder fields and out into a wide expanse of patchwork fields bounded on either side by great sandstone monoliths including the ‘red city’ of Shahr-e-Zuhak. This ruined citadel is 900 years old but it was the White Huns who originally developed this site in the 6th century. Genghis Khan’s favourite grandson is reputed to have been killed during the Mongol storming of this citadel. In revenge, he killed all the inhabitants of the Bamiyan valley. We were stopped at a checkpoint and asked for details of our journey. Reza, who was driving, replied that we were teachers returning to Daykundi province for the holidays. This seemed to satisfy the indolent policeman who waved us on whilst wiping kebab from his chin with his other hand. I looked at Ehsan as we drove through the barrier and he winked. He explained that the local police were not to be trusted and that they occasionally passed information on to would-be attackers further up the valley. I noticed that he never once told the truth about where we were going.

On our way out of Bamiyan, we passed the empty niches where the giant buddhas had stood until they were blown up by the Taliban in 2001. These monumental statues were hewn from the rock in the 6th century and would have once been painted in carmine red, with complex features detailed in stucco and a wooden mask to represent the face. Afghanistan was part of the the vast empire established by Ashoka the Great three hundred years before Christ. Buddhism thrived under generous patronage and was later developed by King Kanishka three hundred years later. This buddhist heritage is displayed in numerous stupas around Afghanistan and Japanese archaeologists even uncovered a 20 metre sleeping buddha last year.

The track took us past myriad caves and niches and up onto a desolate desert landscape where the road branched into a dozen different tracks all snaking their way through the sand and shale. We must have taken a wrong turning and emerged at the end of a prominent spur overlooking a valley below. I could see one of central Afghanistan’s highest mountains, the Koh-e-Sangagak, which still had snow in its upper gullies. We followed a precipitous route down the spur and arrived abruptly in a village where a group of women sat on their haunches around a grave, arranging flowers and making tea. Our mistake turned out to be rather fortunate as we followed a track through a beautiful valley full of golden corn, past a ruined fort and back onto the main track. The landscape was dominated by streaks of red oxide and constant variations of browns, reds, greens, and golds.

We reached Niyak, the administrative centre of Yakowlang district, after three hours and filled up with petrol, using an old t-shirt to filter the suspect fuel. The sun was low in the sky and it was beginning to get cold as we arrived in the Zareen valley. We asked for the house of Abdul Hamid and found it nestled into the hill with a commanding a view of the entire valley. He is the former head of this district (Oluswal) and his family have lived in this valley for at least five generations. He has not worked for most of his life but has survived numerous political upheavals and until recently, maintained a position of power and influence in the area. We drove off the track and over the fields and parked outside his gleaming white house. His garden was spread over three terraces and was full of vegetables and flowers, with a stream running through the centre. He showed us to the guest room and we did not see him again until the morning. We were told he had a funeral to attend. I was relieved as my head was pounding and I had not got much sleep the night before. His son Mohammad gave us tea and agreed to accompany us on a walk down to the river. We passed two large mastiff dogs patrolling the field and strolled through the fields as men threshed and winnowed the corn with oxen and pitch forks. We slid down a small cliff to the river and weaved our way through young willow groves up to the old fortress. A group of young boys fought in the fields with sticks and stones and then broke into smaller groups to play marbles. A young girl helped her father toss the threshed corn into the air with a pitch fork that was far too large for her to handle. It was dark by six o’clock and Mohammad brought us a plate of rice and some chicken. We drank a lot of tea and Ehsan and Ali played on their mobile phones, watching a video of a girl dancing before a room full of old men in Kunduz. I slept for ten hours and dreamt vividly.

The morning sun lit up the old fortress and its earthen ramparts shone gold against the clear sky. Our host Abdul Hamid joined us for a breakfast of bread and tea. He was in good form and admitted that he was trying to make up for his apparent lack of hospitality last night. He very quickly began to talk about politics and said that the thing Afghanistan needed most was justice, which he equated with construction. He reasoned that if you could see where the money was being spent, you knew that the money wasn’t being stolen or wasted. He pointed to the new wall that he had built for 25,000 Afs ($500) and questioned why there was not more construction locally. He suspected it was being stolen by the President’s cronies and foreign agents.

We followed a steep track out of Zareen which wound its way up another pass to the watershed separating the Hari Rud river in the west from the Kabul river in the east. The mountains extended to the horizon on all sides. An eagle perched on a rock ten metres to our front. With a couple of wing beats, it picked up a rising thermal, adding yet another drop of brown to an already crowded palette in the valley below. We joined the Hari Rud near its source and followed it to a village called Siya Cheshma. Groups of men were winnowing corn and preparing fodder for the winter. We carefully picked our way between them, picking up an old man along the way. We dropped him a day’s walk away near Qala-e-Now, where a large fortress sat on the far bank of the river. Soon we were in Safed Ab, the main local bazaar. Great blocks of salt sat beside the track and men were selling sour buttermilk in white triangular pouches. We crossed a river and emerged onto a wide plain in front of a row of teeth like hills. We threaded our way through long grass and boulder fields, dropped down to the river, and came up into the village, weaving our way between small huts to arrive at a large fortress: my colleague’s family home.

His cousin Ahmed greeted us and showed us to the the paranda (veranda) where a group of men sat drinking tea. They had been following our approach for the last ten minutes with a pair of old Soviet binolculars and had a commanding view of the entire valley. They were discussing the construction of a bridge downstream and whether the hydro-electric turbine, that they had built last year, needed repair before the winter. Women were preparing small dung cakes called chalma and stacking them on their roofs ready for winter. We drank tea and ate Russian fudge. There were between six and ten old men sitting with us. Every so often a visitor would arrive and join the group on the paranda for an hour or so before moving on.

Mir Mohammad Husayn Ghori arrived. He wore a beret, had a large white beard, and a belly to match his status as senior elder. His prayer beards were red and were decorated by an old coin that he said was Safavid. He showed me a sword that had been given to his ancestor Qalbi Reza Beg by one of the Qajar kings in Iran during the late 19th century. He said that his grandfather had used the sword to kill forty of the neighbouring Aimaq tribe in one day. The sword itself was a reverse scimitar and surprisingly light. It was one of four swords presented by the king to four khans in the Hazarajat in a bid to win their support against rival dynasties. He recounted his family history in detail, going back five generations to the point at which they had claimed their land from the neighbouring Aimaq. We talked about the elections. Ahmed said that he knew of over a thousand people who had voted for a certain candidate, yet the results showed he had only won two hundred votes. There was not point in complaining he said, since it was all fixed anyway.

I sat next to an engaging man called Ali Juma Khan who was the deputy director for all schools in the area. He talked me through the differences in the Arab, English, and Persian alphabets in a very didactic fashion and then questioned me to see how much I had absorbed. He was surprised that I could speak Arabic and we talked openly of our different faiths. “What comes first?” he asked. “The body...or the spirit?” I said that I believed God was eternal spirit and that the spirit therefore preceded the body. I added that the Bible describes the spirit as hovering over the earth’s surface before creation began. He asked me accusingly whether or not christians believed in Mohammad. We talked about the prophets in the Christian scriptures. I asked him whether it was true that one of their articles of faith was to read the Christian scriptures. Heated debate broke out amongst the men, with the teacher and me in agreement, struggling to convince the others. One of the men asked about the holy spirit and the difference between protestants and catholics. “What powers did the Pope have?” Whilst I struggled to remember details of the reformation, they asked about the Anglican church and the various denominations. I told them that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s position went back 1400 years to St Augustine when Mohammad was still a young man.

Lunch was served in the guest room by Ahmed’s eldest son Aziz. The room was lit by one energy saving light bulb and decorated with bright green curtains. We had soup and chicken, raw onion and a lettuce. The room was full of nine local elders, all visiting over Eid and most related to the family in some way. I was asked to sit in the far corner of the room. Ahmed’s youngest son offered me a jug of water to wash my hands and served me first. He was an attractive young boy who looked much younger than fifteen. The men teased him for being intelligent and said he would be a doctor one day. Mir Mohammad asked about wild animals in England. While I tried hard to convince him that stags could be very dangerous, Ahmed asked about the difference between Presidents Bush and Obama. Mir Mohammad interrupted again, this time with questions about the channel tunnel. “Is it true what they say? Can you you really drive underneath the sea from France to England?” “Did Princess Diana do this journey?” “She is very beautiful, a true princess.” “Who is the new deputy Ambassador at the British Embassy?”

After lunch Ehsan and I went for a walk along the river. We found a bridge where Ali’s younger brother was sitting dangling his feet over the edge. The river was very inviting and I stripped off and jumped 5m from the bridge into the pool below. Ali’s brother pointed to a spent grenade on the river bed and said this was where soldiers had come fishing with an Rocket Propelled Grenades. We walked on through fields full of corn and up a scree slope to a ridge from where we could see Ali’s house in the next valley. I walked straight past a grey and black snake. When we came back into the village, a man was skinning a cow. It had become bloated after eating too much grass and had to be killed. He was surrounded by a group of small children who watched intently as he cut the head off and sliced the knife down the belly. There was a pool of blood and the enormous cow’s belly was slowly revealed as the skin was pulled away. There were about 25 houses in the village, all occupied by tenants farmers who give a percentage of their crop to Ahmed, their landlord.

Ahmed talked a lot about the last king Zahir Shah and said that the country worked well until the Soviets came. “There was little corruption” he said. “There were schools, roads, trees and even security.” He said it was a great mistake that the international community had given power back to the warlords such as Dostum, Hekmatyr, Khalili, Mahmoud, Rabbani... Karzai. He said people trusted the international community to bring justice and remembered throwing flowers at them when they arrived. It struck me that, unlike in Iraq where the Coalition had identified Saddam’s cronies in a ‘pack of cards’ and then pursued them to the point of justice, there was no such process here; certainly nothing approaching a truth and reconciliation process. Instead the international community adopted a ‘nation building lite’ approach which relied on these warlords for local stability and restored them to positions of great power. Like Abdul Hamid, he wanted justice and to see things being built. He questioned why more wasn’t being done to help them when their region presented none of the security challenges of somewhere like Helmand. He credited local patronage networks with maintaining this relative stability and said that the region had hardly benefited from central government or the international community.

Supper was again very busy. This time we were served large plates of rice with mutton, sheep’s testicles and yoghurt. After supper, there was a period without conversation where we listened to the radio, slurped tea, and burped a lot. I imagined how sketching people would have been great entertainment during the long winter evenings on Rory’s walk across the country in 2001. I went outside to the toilet and was totally awe-struck by the star-lit sky. A star that must have been Venus shone brilliantly amongst numerous galaxies. There were so many stars, it took me about half an hour to find the Plough.

I woke early as Ehsan returned from his morning ‘fajr’ prayers and we both dozed a little as the sun began to light the room. Aziz brought me a jug of warm water to wash my face and I spent some time praying in the small copse next to the fort. An old tractor that he had driven from Kabul nine years ago stood in a clearing surrounded by willow and poplar trees. A stream tumbled down a bank and fed a small pond next to where I sat on a fallen tree. The smells were autumnal and reminded me of home. The stream reminded me of endless hours damming the stream at Everglades. It felt like a spiritual place. It was a rare moment of privacy and I read Psalm 27 from the prayer book Canon Kennedy had given me at my wedding five years ago.

I find eggs difficult at the best of times. So when Aziz, Reza, and Ali, Ahmed’s three sons served breakfast on the paranda, I was a little uncomfortable when first a plate of two fried eggs arrived, followed by a plate of two boiled eggs, and then finally a plate of scrambled eggs. Fortunately it was all washed down with delicious sheer chai (sweet milk) fresh from the cow and we began to discuss the day’s hunting. Mirza, another cousin, joined us for breakfast and was treated with great respect. Ahmed explained that he was a famous local hunter. His glasses were held together with string. He walked with a stoop and lent heavily on a stick. His trousers were padded and held together by a variety of colourful patches and he wore thick luminous green hand woven socks. He showed me the heads of three ghazal he had killed and told me that he had tracked one for four days before getting a shot in with his old rifle. He said this with a twinkle in his eye knowing that we were only going for a day and a jolly at that.

Four of us squeezed into a Toyota pick-up. Ahmed cradled a .22 rifle in his lap and I saw a kalashnikov rifle under the seat. It took us three hours to drive 25km up the valley. We stopped to rebuild the track on several occasions and at times were following no more than a donkey’s trail. Ruhollah came with us. His father had been killed by Iranian agents from the Sepah-e-Pasdaran for resisting their attempts to influence local affairs. We passed through several villages on our way to Kotal Kushan, one of the main passes on the route to Sar-e-Pul in the North. We stopped at several points to examine the ridge lines and caves with the soviet binoculars. We were looking for Ahoo (deer) but after Mirza’s knowing smile, I suspected this was no more than an elaborate excuse for a picnic. Ahmed told me that there were 900 people living up here in tents during the Taleban era. They had closed all roads and the UN World Food Programme had courageously brought ten trucks full of wheat up this valley.

We reached the top of the mountain and looked straight down into a deep canyon. We heard a whistle and turned to see a young shepherd boy who had emerged from behind a rock. I was slightly startled since we were miles from the nearest village but Ahmed, who seemed to know everybody, greeted him warmly and we posed for photographs with his ancient camera. We began to head down into the gorge when a man approached us on the trail leading a white stallion carrying two boxes of apples. Ahmed knew him too and before long I was riding on horse back down into the gorge while the others set about preparing lunch. We explored the gorge and washed the apples in a spring. Ahmed began to film me with his mobile phone and wouldn’t stop until we arrived back at the of the mountain, where Aziz and Ruhollah were cooking lunch. They had cooked up some chicken in a pot and we ate it with raw onion and fresh milk from a jerry can. After lunch, when we were certain we would not see any Ahoo, we set up sweet wrappers in the trees and took it turns to do some target practice with the old rifle. I went some way to convincing Ahmed I was not a total liability.

There was a funny moment on the journey back when a mother pulled her horse out of the way of the car and sent her small child spinning with a large sack of wheat on her head. She knocked into her little sister who then tumbled down the into the ditch. She started to cry and her mother scolded her for spilling the wheat everywhere. Ruhollah, who hadn’t said a word all day collapsed with laughter and said, “Thank you Mr Aziz!” We laughed all the way home. It was 18:00 by the time we arrived back at the fortress. Ehsan had been fishing with Reza and between them, they had caught a dozen small fish without having to resort to grenades. They were all talking about the local Lithuanian PRT (provincial reconstruction team) that had driven through the valley. Two tanks and two armoured landcruisers had stopped in the valley, consulted maps, driven a short way up the valley, before turning around and heading up a different valley. The old men did not know what they were doing and said that no one really understood why they were there.

We began our journey home early the next morning and stopped off at Band-e-Amir, Afghanistan’s first national park and one of its most beautiful attractions. There are a series of five beautiful blue lakes that lie at about 3000m. They have been formed by calcium carbonate deposits that have formed natural dams. Ali and I stripped off and slipped down the calciferous cliff into the water. A family was picnicking on the other side of the lake and young men were splashing each other from brightly painted pedalos in the middle of the lake.

As we approached Bamiyan, gone were the groups of gossiping women and instead, women lined the river bank washing pots and plates and clothes after the Eid celebrations. Children were no longer playing in the street but returning from school and we were caught in traffic as others returned home from family vacations. We slept on the floor in a dormitory on thin mattresses above a mechanics workshop. Ehsan and Ali lounged around and soon the conversation turned to typical male banter. They talked quickly so that I would not hear but I heard enough to know that it was little different from pub banter anywhere in England. They brought me into the conversation at the point where Ali was saying that it was a medical fact that having sex too many times in a week was bad for your health. Ehsan replied that this was nonsense and that he had sex whenever he fancied, which was at least ten times a week. Ehsan talked for half an hour on the merits of Head & Shoulders shampoo which he referred to as ‘shoulders’. He boasted of his new Gilette razor and they compared notes on how often each other washed. Ali was curious about pork. He said that his friend in Germany had told him that pigs have twelve piglets. “This is the ideal animal for Afghanistan!” he said “Cows and sheep only have two or three young.” Then he said that he’d heard that pork tasted really delicious. Ehsan, who had been growing increasingly indignant, put an end to this heresy and said that as a Muslim, he would not tolerate this sort of talk. It was afterall haram (forbidden). Ali changed the subject and asked about alcohol. I explained the different percentages of alcohol in wine, beer, and spirits. Ali looked a bit disappointed and said, “You mean my 5% beer drinking is no big deal? I should drink whisky.” He told me that people who have gall stones here are encouraged to drink beer for breakfast. Ehsan said it was true that drinking too much could make you blind and said that this had happened to a friend of his in Iran.

On our way back to Kabul, we struggled to overtake columns of Super Kamaz trucks on the winding mountain road. They were weighed down with bags of zughal (coal) and kachaloo (potatoes) and teetered precariously above the river as they negotiated deep ruts in the track. We passed a district governor’s office just out of Bamiyan and Ali said that this belonged to the nephew of Abdul Hamid. We stopped to buy some apples from a small boy. He must have had about 3 seer (21kg) which should have been worth about $16. Ehsan haggled with him and to his credit the boy was a strong negotiator. Unfortunately he did not fully understand the value of these apples and Ehsan unscrupulously bullied him into letting them go for $3. We stopped short of the road and spent half an hour washing the car. A small boy helped his father by wielding a hose that he could hardly lift and spraying everything but the car in the process. Once it was clean, they washed it again, and again. We eventually reached the metalled road and covered the 54km back from Charikar in under an hour.

The village where we stayed was 260 miles from Kabul. There is only a track and that is navigable only at certain times of the year in large Kamaz trucks or 4x4 mini-vans. Despite its remote location, the people are well connected to what’s happening in Kabul. They know the names of NGOs and foreign diplomats. They have a rich history and can recount their local history in detail. They are heavily dependent on a good harvest. Except for sugar, oil, and a few sundry items, everything that they eat is produced locally. Society is feudal and more or less based on a subsistence economy. Despite the large distances and inhospitable terrain, everyone seems to know each other. The same families have often ruled their local areas for centuries. Shepherds take their master’s flocks miles and miles over the mountains in search of new pasture. There are camps of nomads in colourful patchwork tents that exist in the most remote of places. People are proud to be Afghan and talk of the watan (homeland). They are suspicious of Iranian and Pakistani agents and want their country to stand on its own. On the surface, it appears that their women are treated as chattels and traded between families. The local dowry is three lak ($6000) unless a cousin is pledged in marriage, in which case there is some discount. Often, this sum is made up with cows, sheep, a tractor, or perhaps even a generator. Every community has been traumatized by war. Many families have lost sons and daughters and can describe tales of terror and conflict as if they were yesterday. Ahmed’s village was strafed by soviet gunships and a rocket lodged in their roof. Donkeys which cost on average $400 remain the mainstay of the working community and Kamaz trucks are relied on for transporting wooden beams, stone etc to remote valleys for the construction of schools etc. Above all else, most people want security. They do not however regard the Taleban as a major threat. In rural Ghor, it is the local qazi (judge) who distributes justice and most people seemed happy with that system. There is minimal crime and what conflict there is is normally down to land or family issues. The people I met on this journey want the international community to actually do something: to stand up to warlords, to build roads, bridges, schools, dams.

I speak enough Dari to hold a series of conversations on different topics. I know enough about the country to keep up in conversation and to understand what’s expected of me in different situations. However, it is very unlikely that I could ever persuade anybody of anything. I have no platform for assertive action whether it be religious, sociological, mechanical, or political. I am simply a guest. At the most I can hope for shared experience, some sense of mutual understanding, and the beginning of a friendship. My understanding of local politics is basic and my ability to gain a nuanced understanding of these deeply ingrained and complex kinship relationships almost impossible. Despite all these limitations, I feel that the two nights I spent with Ahmed and his family has given me a good insight into how best to help them, and enough shared experience to relate to each other as friends rather than host/guest or Afghan/foreigner. I wonder then about the usefulness of the Lithuanian PRT. I wonder how foreigners can hope to help, let alone change anything for the better, when they mostly lack the language, local knowledge, and personality, to access local power structures.

Kabul is often seems very political. Everyone is focused on the rights and wrongs of the current strategy. International donors and governments wield huge sums and try and use it for maximum political leverage. Detailed proposals are generated by literate and articulate theoreticians which in turn generate millions of dollars of aid. Conferences are held and papers written. Careers are forged and success stories gleaned from precious little. Security firms prosper and people live in fear. But in this village, they wanted to repair the road to Sar-e-Pul; that cow needn’t have died; and there are probably more efficient ways of storing food for the winter and of heating and repairing the houses. Local doctors need training. Teachers need training too and materials. Even if the Lithuanian PRT just employed people to build earthen walls, it would arguably be better than what they are doing now. People wonder what happened to all the money and expertise that they heard about on the radio. Seed fertilization, crop management, storage, drainage, water protection, animal husbandry - all these agricultural advances that are taken for granted in the west could have a huge impact on areas like the Hazarajat. The foreign contractors, the armoured land cruisers, the urban american-educated afghan interpreters, the salaries, the MREs (U.S army rations): none of it will work. Effective foreign assistance will only come through persistent, committed, courageous, modest, intelligent individuals implementing carefully chosen assistance packages alongside the local community.

If the last eight years have shown us anything, it is that aid and development alone cannot deliver security. There is no evidence that PRT schools and clinics in the south have won any hearts or minds. They are built and protected by foreign troops and their activities cease as soon as the foreign funding is withdrawn. It should not be a surprise that Afghans best understand local power structures and are therefore best placed to negotiate local deals. All we can hope for is success in a number of high profile projects that will encourage communities to ask for foreign support as and when their situation allows it. The Hazarajat seems like a good place to start. Foreign troops should reduce their presence in the south and let local communities organize themselves. This is likely to lead to some Taleban administered areas which are beyond the reach of the international community. But only when communities see what value the international community can bring, will we start to deliver projects of real worth.

Ramblings and somewhat self-important reflections!

Somewhere in between our visit to Delhi during the first elections and the announcement of the forthcoming second round next month, we celebrated one year of being here in Afghanistan. We’ve seen four seasons of the Afghan climate; snow, dust, storms and sun, lived in three different places, made and said goodbye to many friends and celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. Some days have felt like a week, some weeks like a day!

Today we are both suffering from dry hands, faces and lips. The roses might still be in bloom, but recently the temperature has plummeted so that today feels like a late November day in Britain. We have just stopped eating our meals outside which brings an official end to what I was still calling the summer just a couple of weeks ago! Suddenly the mosquito nets have been taken down to be replaced by the bukhari sawdust stoves that we used last winter.

I’m still amazed and slightly embarrassed by the wonderful place where we live. Sitting in our new living room in the far corner of the courtyard sun is streaming in through the windows partially covered by morning glory. There are bright red pomegranates and furry green quinces on the trees and the scent of basil hangs in the air. Men are on the roof above my head laying down a fresh coat of mud and straw in preparation for the winter weather. It has always been a great relief to arrive home from work every afternoon. Immediately the dust disappears, I push off my headscarf and Pahlawan the dog comes to walk me home to our front door. Kaka (Uncle) Nabi will have carefully arranged our shoes in a neat line by our door and the bathroom will be gleaming. I remind myself to enjoy it while it lasts – we won’t live like this again, free of housework, cooking and utility bills for a long time (if ever)!

I was telling my mum and dad the other day how the time here seems to go by in waves of highs and lows. I don’t think I’m the only one who experiences this. Ex-pat workers who have happily been here for years will suddenly announce one day that they’re leaving Afghanistan – the next day they’re gone. And yet a satisfying day’s work will enthuse a person enough to argue, rant and rave for hours at dinner time, encouraged by their colleagues who have equally exciting stories to tell. Some days I arrive at my workplace and cringe – the last thing I want to do is to have to pretend not to notice the incessant stares and exclamations of kharigi (foreigner) wherever I go. I dread a knock at my office door, knowing it’s the 200th student coming to ask for an impossible group change. I’d like nothing better than to fly off to Dubai and indulge myself in the real world (ironic, as Dubai couldn’t be any more synthetic). Other days I must have taken my aid worker pill – I love seeing boys selling balloons, colourful kite shops, marble workshops, three people crammed onto a motorbike and old German buses that have been decorated with elaborate designs and names, often mis-spelled, like “Horny Bus” and “Fart Bus”. I love working with our student teachers who are so enthusiastic to learn and teach. I’m proud to see that our project is moving faster and more efficiently than many other foreign-funded programs in the country, and on a fraction of the budget.

Funny then, that I’ve never really noticed an Afghan going through these same highs and lows. In fact I find Afghans to be very passive people, happy to sit and wait it out. Wait what out? Well… the conflict, the day, life itself … I know very little about the subject, but I imagine this might be an illustration of traumatised society. People who had everything in their lives turned upside-down, and now that normality has returned they don’t know where to pick up again. It’s the ‘not knowing where to start’ feeling that we all have when faced with a huge amount of work lying ahead. The passiveness has varying levels of intensity. Mostly it’s the older generation that I notice – men squatting by the side of a road, seemingly waiting for absolutely nothing, women sitting in a dark corridor watching the people come and go.

What gives me hope for Afghanistan are the young people. The university graduates, male and female, who all express a deep desire to serve their people and country in the future. Young men and women who want to get to know me and the culture that I come from. I am privileged to work with them, impressed by their diligence in attending training sessions, planning and delivering lessons during their free time. Many of them do this alongside their final year studies. These are the future teachers, lecturers, managers and politicians of this country and they hold its destiny in their hands.

So when I have a low day I very quickly have to kick myself. I remember that I can home one day, back to what is comfortable and easy, back to my family and friends. But until then I have precious days in which to make a difference. It doesn’t matter if I stick out like a sore thumb – the kharigi – what matters is sharing what I have learnt from a privileged Western education and helping my colleagues here to become the best that they can possibly be!

Dust and headscarves

A short update to our blog seems like a useful thing to do while I shelter from a dust storm and wait for my taxi to arrive to take me back home. Once again my headscarf comes in extremely useful, this time as a mask to cover my nose and mouth as the dust clouds engulf me. In the past my headscarf has done a great job of keeping my neck and ears warm (in the winter) and protects me daily from the black diesel fumes that fill the car on the way to and from work! On the other hand, it can be a pain in the neck, literally. It causes me to overheat when teaching and is constantly falling off my head so that my blonde locks are exposed to the world (horror!). This happens to the extent that I use hair slides to hold it in place and often do a very good impression of a WW2 field nurse, or a nun, depending on the colour. I am well impressed by the women here who manage to keep them cemented in place the whole day long. Fortunately for me I am able to whip mine off the minute I drive through the gates of our guesthouse! Back in my bedroom I have ammassed an impressive collection of scarves over the past year, most of which, i'm afraid, languish at the bottom of my wardrobe. They are a true reflection of the fashions here (headscarves have to match outfits after all) and many of the most garish were gifts from students and colleagues to mark a celebration such as teacher day and womens' day. There are shiny sequins and silver thread, peach pleats and transparent roses! Such a difficult choice to be made in the mornings!

Well, I hadn't intended to write a blog post about headscarves but there it is. Time to haed back out into the dust storm so I better wrap up well...