Your daily bread

Bread (or nan) costs about 20 cents. You can buy it on nearly every street, and once made, it is hung by hooks inside the shops walls. The dough is stretched and slapped onto the interior wall of this clay oven/fire pit contraption which gives it its elongated shape When you buy it, the bread maker will take it off its hook, and put it on a clay buchali-type oven to warm it. This bread is fantastic when warmed. The bread shops are basically just store fronts (or perhaps even the front rooms of the people’s homes), and the choices are: long shape, round shape, and (only in certain places) with seeds. Each morning I will see men on bicycles bringing back stacks of breads to their families, or boys carrying them wrapped in papers to the local restaurants. The bread shop storefronts are local meeting and gossiping places, the way barber shops typically are/were in the US.

The truth about nuts

There is a lot of nut and dried fruit eating here. In fact, dried fruit producing is a viable way to earn a living (especially for women since it can be done at home). At the office, the staff likes to snack on bowls of dried chickpeas (or something like it) mixed with raisins, or other dried items like figs or dates. But here is what I have learned about nuts: in the wintertime, you should eat nuts because it keeps the body warm. In the summer, you should avoid nuts, because they will give you pimples. Now I have been eating a lot of nuts and still haven’t gotten any warmer; I hope that means I am not in store for a pimply summer!

I guess it can be a religious experience ...

Every day I would see men kneeling against the wall outside of my office window. The wall is to the west, so I had assumed that it had to do with prayer. The wall is actually a toilet wall and since men here squat when they use the loo, what I thought was them praying, is actually them peeing. There aren’t any signs to indicate that it’s a good spot to pee, I think that it is advertised by word of mouth.

Guess who's coming to tea

Her Excellency, Minister Ghandafar, requested my presence to give me some presents. She has been trilled with how the new Directorate is coming together and wanted to show her appreciation; it is common in Afghanistan to give gifts for the slightest of things. I received a carving of Afghanistan with the country’s flag intertwined with the American flag. The thing weighs a ton! I also got a felt, heart-shaped box with lapis (the country’s gemstone) jewelry. I thanked her for opening her house to me and I offered to host her for tea in my house should she ever make it to NYC. On the way out, her senior advisor told me that I needed to give him all my information as they are, in fact, planning a trip to the US soon. Uh oh.

Some lessons learned

If you don’t ask for something, the chances of you getting what you want are 0%. If you ask for it from the Director of the Department that handles said request, the chances of you getting it are 5%. If you want even the smallest thing done; it requires an official letter. Even if you don’t think you need an official letter, you do. Don’t sit too close to the window when you are in a car; the bumpy roads will knock you against that window and it will hurt. That flower you are admiring … it is fake, so don’t bother testing. Oh, and the most important lesson: don’t use the squat toilets if no one else is using them - there is a good reason for it.

Thrill Ride

I experienced a first in Kabul – I took an elevator ride! There is a new ex pat “rooftop” lounge in one of the hotels and by rooftop I mean the 7th floor. Once my fawning over the electricity stopped, so did the elevator! There I was, trapped in the dark, with a voice beckoning to me from the elevator intercom. The problem was that it was all in Dari and for all I knew I was being told to “get down get down the elevator is about to plummet!” I started to laugh (funny how fear will do that to you) and kept repeating “hello, how are you .. hello, how are you” in my best Dari. It was all of ten minutes (feeling more like hours) before the electricity was back on and the doors opened. I walked the rest of the way up. ((the photo was taken against the mirrored wall of the elevator .. I was in total darkness which will explain why it is not some of my best photographic work)).

Ashura

For all of the build up and the security warnings about staying away from certain Shi’a zones (I live in the middle of one), the day was quiet. The occasional low flying aircraft buzzing overhead, the louder than usual calls to prayer, the waving of the Shi’a flag were common sights and sounds, but otherwise the day was marked by bright sunshine and a group walk to Kabul Coffee House for lunch (4 blocks away .. the girls all shrouded). The din of the “spring offensive” does put a damper on the warming weather, but I’m excited by the prospect that we might actually have running water again soon! As adept as I am getting at scoop showers, I’m looking forward to not having to work as hard to get clean.

Not a banner year ...

To understand the challenges faced with the launch of the Media & Communications Directorate, is to understand the type of people who used to run the Ministry's “image". Last year for International Women’s Day, banners were written with a message designed to empower women. These banners were paid for by donors (what we call the government and NGOs who assist in funding) … anyhow the man in charge with Ministry PR changed the banners at the last minute without notifying anyone. On International Women’s Day, banners were hung with the message “A woman’s virginity is the jewel in he husband’s crown.” People were outraged .. soon after the Minister was ousted (though told that there was no relation to the events) …but, and here’s the kicker, the man responsible for the banner change is still in place and still doing the job he couldn’t do. This year, that same man suggested the Afghan proverb of “A woman’s silence means her consent” Even in America, if a friend of the president fails so obviously in their job, they get fired .. eventually.

Are you chicken?

We had a visitor to the office; a French woman who is making a documentary on Afghan women. She came at the conclusion of the staff’s English lesson, and I introduced her to the group as “so and so from France who is here making a documentary.” Harkening back to their first English lesson when they were all animals, I said to the staff that she would have come in time for their English lesson, but she didn’t want to be a chicken. (insert a roomful of giggles here). One of the staff members (who believes their English to be far superior than that of her colleagues) turned to the visitor and asked “are you from Chicken or from France?” I assume Chicken is next to Turkey.