Where's Dara?

15 April 2008

Yup, sushi in Kabul. I kid you not. Complete with wasabi (sinus burning), pickled ginger, sticky rice, seaweed. Complimented by potstickers and a fabulous dipping sauce, and chicken on a bed of rice noodles.

Really, it was in Kabul.

You know how you can tell: the fillings.

It being so rare to have sushi fixings minus the fresh fish (that would be pushing it too much in a landlocked, already dodgy food country), the sushi chefs went a bit crazy. On offer were: tuna (canned), smoked salmon, vegtable, peanut butter and oreo. On the last one, I confess it may have been slightly my fault.

I walked into the house where the sushi fest was and the birthday girl came up to me and said, "What do you think of oreo sushi?" Taken slightly aback, I answered, "Why not!" Well, we found out why not. Foul. Opinion was split on the peanut butter sushi.

Dinner parties, such as this birthday do, are always enjoyable in Kabul. You usually end up hanging on the toe-shaks (long cushions on the floor), slipping wine, and having a laugh. The restaurants are good for a dinner, but, as with home, nothing can replace hanging out at a friend's place.

With the warm weather sneaking in--though not last night, as the rain poured down with the nippy air, bonfires and garden parties are on the upswing, and Kabul is again becoming a fun place.

April 14, 2008

well, it has been eons since I actually posted on my blog. I know. It's a crime.

Lots of crazy things have happened... including a move to Kabul to work the org's headquarters, frozen pipes, the untimely death of a friend, and the departure from Kabul of many.

Being in Kabul, while not as exciting as road missions, and field work, definitely has its moments that are unique to Afghanistan and to Kabul. One of the drawbacks, though, is excruciatingly slow internet (except at the restaurants and cafes, which are now back on limits). Another is long hours at work... of course, that is off set by being surrounded by good friends.

Anyway, I hope to write a bit more than I have been and to post up some old stories, and some non-Afghan adventures (shocking, I know!). Now, though, I have to run to another one of those dastardly. meetings.

Hope all is well.

20 June 2007

Well, it is been an embarrassingly long while since I have posted onto my blog. Not for lack of desire. Problems with internet connections, utter exhaustion, and being overworked have thwarted my efforts.

Today, though, I am back in our provincial office, where the pace is a little slower and the internet connections a bit better. Plus, we had a little event that I thought I would write about: my Gender Assistant and I shocked our little compound in Fayzabad. How? We played volleyball.

When I came to visit in mid-April to investigate a mass grave (more on that later), the guys in the office had begun to play volleyball. The court was set up on the compound, and the drivers, guards, and substantive staff all played at 5 pm each day, weather permitting.

The volleyball court

On this visit, I was a spectator... and broke in my fancy dancy new camera. I must say, it was a lovely way to end a day--with laughs and hollers, rather than staring madly at a computer.

Our fearless security assistant in action

The competitive head of office blocking

Of course, this is Afghanistan, so there must be two things:

The requisite tea

and...

The spectator

In fayzabad, the mountains are always looking on as well.

On this trip to Fayzabad, I told Dominique, I was determined to play with 'the boys'--however 'scandalous' that would be. I wanted to play too. Harumph.

So, I packed my culturally appropriate clothes to do a culturally inappropriate act: the seemingly innocent act of playing a game of volleyball with my colleagues--co-ed.

And so, at 5 pm yesterday, I walked out onto the court with my long, light pink shirt from Pakistan, and my brown cargo pants along with my well worn sneakers (trainers for you Brits) ready to play--for the first time in 15 years.

The boys did not blink an eyelid. They were happy to play and just rolled with it--particularly my, um, skills. (let's just say I did not do my sex proud yesterday.)

At one point, Dominique and our Political Assistant laughed at me after I hit the ball (successfully, I might add). I asked what was up.

"You," Dominique said laughing, "close your eyes when you hit the ball." It's been 15 years.

Our security assistant decided that I was the weakest link on the team--not necessarily so. He would hit the ball and yell, "Dara!" Beaming with anticipation of me missing the hit. More often than not, I got it. Still, there were enough times that I did acrobatic moves and missed it to entertain everyone.

Towards the end of the 3 set match, the ball went over the the wall of the compound into the neighbors. The guard went to get the ball and came back empty handed. We were informed that the neighbor refused to return the ball. In fact, it turned out, about 6 balls had gone unreturned or been returned punctured. Not a nice neighbor. Of course, the boys had neglected to apologize to the neighbor and thank in with some small gesture... still, though, that behaviour was not called for!

"Dara," our Political Assistant said to me, "he is a bad person."

The boys produced another, dilapitated ball that after a few minutes of play had had its last play. We tried to get the ball back again--to no avail.

Meanwhile, my Gender Assistant said to me, "I am going to play when they come back with the ball."

This is a big thing in Afghanistan. Women do not play with men. Particularly Afghan women. It is shocking enough that I was playing, but huge that she wanted to play. It showed the level of comfort she had in the office, as well as her determination to establish her own rules.

This determination, and her confidence, has led her to become the 'leader' of the women in the office, which is no easy task. Being a women in Afghanistan, and a working woman, is a struggle. Snears, snickers, gossiping behind your back, crude words and insults lobbed at you, and the freezing out of meetings and work in which you should be involved... balanced with the desire to not create 'security concerns' for you or your family. It is not easy being a working woman in Afghanistan--and strong, vocal one. Add to that the weight of the other women's hardships on your shoulder, and you carry a tremendous burden. Coupled with a small child, a husband in Pakistan, and an ill parent and you find a woman with incredible strength of will.

And so, we come to the volleyball court in Fayzabad.

Today, she and I walked onto it, ready to play. She with a scarf wrapped around her head for appropriateness, and I with my pink shirt and cargo pants.

And we all had a blast!

The guys in Fayzabad office were great. She immediately was taken in as part of the team.

My Gender Assistant and her team

They immediately put her in to serve... and boy, does she have a strong serve! They kept her there. Eventually, my team figured that I might be good at serving too and threw me the ball (I was ok).

Me ready to serve

It soon became a battle of the serving women.

My Gender Assistant ready to serve

Me serving!

And another serve...

The game was quite intense today. 5 sets.

The action gets heavy at the net

More action at the net

My team won--little thanks to me,except for my serving. The Security Assistant still was targeting me, relatively unsuccessfully. And Dominique was sending all the difficult ones my way--at least that is what my Gender Assistant felt. I was improving my game--marginally. Still, we beat the other team. Victorious, and with only 1 ball over the wall.

At one point, my Gender Assistant asked, "Do you think that they are talking about me?"

"If they are, it is only good because you are winning them points, unlike me!" I replied. She laughed.

After the game, she was beaming but said to me: "Dara, I only played because you did. I know that they will talk, and they will talk to the guys in the other office." She paused. I looked at her and said, "So what? What did you do wrong?"

She thought, looked at me and said, "Yes, I don't care if they talk. I had fun."

Actually, the guys in the Fayzabad office were great. They made my Gender Assistant feel comfortable, and made sure that she and I had a chance to hit the ball. It is like a little oasis in many ways, but particularly for her. I could tell immediately when I arrived a couple days after her and she was happy, laughing with the guys, and looking much more relaxed than she does normally.

"I think you should spend more time out here," I said to her.

"Yes," she replied with a smile, "I like it out here."

In fact, I am pretty sure that the same would not happen in other offices. In many offices, integrating women staff into the work of the office is a challenge. I never knew how much until I had to do it myself.

As an international women working here you have to be aware of perceptions of you and how that plays into your effectiveness, but for Afghan women the calculations are harder, and choices more difficult.

During one crisis in our office related to gender dynamics, I turned to my female Head of Office and said, "Wow, this must be what our mothers went through--but this must be worse."

So, today, the guys in Fayzabad helped give my Gender Assistant some of the confidence to challenge barriers, and she will no doubt keep pushing. She is one of the many strong women of Afghanistan, and one who does not quite understand her strength. Soon, I hope, she will realize it.

Who would have thought a little game of volleyball could be such an event.

For once, I am posting an entry on the day of the event. Unfortunately, it is a depressing subject.

Today, a suicide bomber shattered the relative calm of Kunduz. It was as audacious as it was devastating. The suicide bomber set himself off on the road in front of the provincial police station. A large number of police were there, apparently practicing for a parade on 28 April. It was in the center of town. It was close to a school. According to reports, 8 died at the scene and at least 20 were seriously wounded.

At 8:35 this morning, the world shattered for those nearby and those whose loved ones and friends died.

My chokidor went to the hospital. He had a good friend who was a policeman. His friend is dead.

"Madam Dara," he said to me, "it is a very horrible day."

Indeed it is.

I found out about it after our morning meeting. My head of office called me and said "No one leaves the office. There are reports of a suicide bomber in town." I called my colleague, who was outside the office, to make sure that he stayed where he was. No movement. I went and told the staff.

And then she called a few minutes later and told me the news. The staff already knew. They find these things out fast.

The last time there was a suicide bomb in Kunduz was last June. At that time, 3 died and 8 were wounded. It was in a market, I believe. There was one attempt in the time that I have been here, but it was thwarted.

Now, we have been warned and jolted out of our sense of relative security. We had a few IEDs (improvised explosive devises) in the provinces, but most were defused. We have the most mobility of any region-and we enjoy it. Now, though, we have been warned.

My female assistant said to me, when she heard the news, "I must start wearing a burka." She interprets this as a clear sign that the Taliban have returned.

I told her to wait and see and not to overreact.

"I was not here last time," she said, "but I heard they killed women for not wearing the burka here."

Wait and see, I said to her.

Another of my national staff said to me, "I just can't figure out what makes someone do this. They are just poor police officers. And why would someone kill himself to hurt others?"

A good question. And one that I really could not start to answer.

The strange thing is about a suicide bombing in the town you are in is that it seems like a hundred miles away if you do not see it with your eyes. If you cannot touch it, it just does not seem real. But you know that it is. And you know the implications.

You are no longer safe.

Nor are your friends or your colleagues.

It happened right down the street--to the people who are supposed to protect you from these things.

It may not seem real--but it is. Your rational side knows.

My female assistant had brought her son into the office. They were supposed to have flown to Fayzabad with her son, a day ahead of the rest of us. The flight was cancelled (as usual) and she returned directly to the office. The only place the car was allowed to go.

Her son is one and half with big, curious brown eyes. Oblivious to our discussion, which was in a language he could not understand, anyway, he blithely went around the office, playing with everything. A happy distraction. So, I thought, let's go into our other office and bring a smile to the guys. The laughs came, as we played our game of hide-and-go-seek.

Normalcy, for us, had returned.

24 February 2007

I made a promise to Dominique before I came to Fayzabad. The promise was that I would bring food—good food—and cook.

The last time I was in Fayzabad, in October, food was an issue. It looked unappetizing; it smelled unappetizing; and it tasted unappetizing. Tired looking lamb with bones in an unrecognizable brown sauce and some tired looking rice at the guesthouse, where the staff lived. At one point, desperate, I asked Dominique if the staff could find something decent to eat. They came back with… strawberry pop tarts! Unbelievable. I have never even seen them in Kabul. We had them for 2 days until the cleaning ladies at the guesthouse absconded with them.

The guesthouse compound

I decided that this trip I was going to take cooking matters into my own hands. And Dominique was more than happy to oblige.

Having recently been in Kabul, I had done a PX run, even filling Dominique’s orders for “anything pork” (it becomes a luxury item in a strict Muslim country) and lots of V8 juice (vegetables are a scarce commodity in Badakshan). I lugged enough pasta, sauce, spices, olive oil, and meat products to last us the week. Plus, I brought the 'piece de la resistance', Betty Crocker brownie mix.

Brownie mix, though, was a compromise. It was in lieu of chocolate chip cookie makings.

The Badakshani Boys had received regular shipments of homemade Afghanized chocolate chip cookies. (They were Afghanized by the fact that our Pakistani gem of an oven, along with the halal margarine (no butter around Kunduz) appeared to render the cookies slow more crispy than my normal cookies.) The boys (Philbert, Dominique, and Hakim) had received relatively regular deliveries via plane and car. It got to the point where I was convinced that, when Dominique said, come out, that he really just wanted my cookies and not my smiling face!

Cookies, I told Dominique before I left, were not in the cards. I had seen the kitchen and it was just too dire to make cookies. Brownie mix was pushing it but would be procured.

After settling in, I pulled out the supplies and asked the food-deprived boy for his preference. Pasta with tomato sauce doctored with one of the treasured port products. So we headed to the kitchen.

The outside of the kitchen

Shiver.

It smelled like an amalgamation of hospitals and a garbage dump stained with meat flavouring. Ugh.

And the implements were coated with blackened oil, basted with a coat of grease, and usually only half functional.

Oh—and there was no sponge or soap. Gotta love Afghanistan.

The guts of the kitchen

More of the glorious kitchen

Dominique dug out some cleaning supplies from his room, and we set off to make ourselves dinner. Cutting onions, garlic, pork products, and boiling water on the greasy counters.

Dominique getting ready to assist the cook

30 minutes later, viola! All was done, except the parmesan. How to grate it? There was a grater but it looked disgusting. We went for shavings.

With our steaming pots and pans in hand, we went into the living room/dining room to eat. Sitting on the table was pizza (if you can call it that) made by the cook. “That,” Dominique said, “ has been there since yesterday’s lunch.” Lovely.

One of the things about being deprived is that even the simplest meal is heavenly. It was so for our Dominique. Easily pleased, I must say.

He was most delighted when I pulled out the brie and crackers. I had to ration them.

“Dominique, there are five days until we go to Kunduz. Pace yourself, man.”

We went to bed that night satiated.

The rest of the week we strategically ploughed through the meat, cheese, and other goodies until Friday, when we had decided we would do a nice dinner with the smoked salmon and veal roll and I had brought… and the brownies, of course. People from outside the organization(shocker for me) were invited over—though only one came.

The challenge for me was to figure out how to cook the brownies. There was no pan the right size. I finally decided on the “pancake method”, as seen below. It is quite involved, you know. Dump the batter and let the batter roll out as it may.

Pancake brownies

(There is also the "dam method", as it is known in posh mission cooking circles-yeah, right. The "dam method" is when you fold up a piece of aluminium foil to make a fake 'wall' and shorten the dimensions of the pan. Honestly, that one slipped my mind.)

Only problem with the pancake method, I discovered, is that it cooks really fast.

Didn’t help that the oven, if it could be dignified with such a designation, had no handles or indicators regarding on what temperature it was.

The problematic oven with the experimental brownies

In fact, we spent four days trying to figure out how to get the oven to work. Yes, a PhD, LLM, and various other degrees between the two of us and we could not figure out how to turn on the oven. It required pliers (or very strong fingers) and turning on the timer as well as the temperature. Who knew?

When the timer ran out in mid-bake (Oh, did I forget to say that, of course, the time was not marked nor were the few markings reliable), you had to battle with the metal remains of the knob to turn it back on. In the midst of roasting potatoes, the timer went out. Our guest had arrived but I was stuck for 10 minutes battling the metal rod with the grease dish towel (don't get me started on that!) until it finally gave way.

By Sunday, when we had to drive back (yes, again!), I must admit that I was gleeful with anticipation of returning to my mildly functional kitchen in Kunduz. Still, I had a happy Dominique, so all was right in Fayzabad.

Happy Dominique