Sorry for all the white space here readers. Your author has had nothing much to say. I’ll try to find some creativity in the next weeks as we wrap things up here, and summarise the key points, salient trends and offer humorous and provoking insights into life in a conflict zone.
But in the meantime we are just going through the mundane stuff of packing up our home again.
We have written a thankyou note to those who have supported us over the years, and I reproduce a section here:
This blog has always (hoped to, at least) combine the personal issues of being an aid worker, with the professional ones. I don’t think, and have never thought that these issues can be separated, nor should be. Aid work/ development work – whatever you call it, stems from a deeply personal set of beliefs and perceptions about the world, and how the world should be. We are all, in this business, ideologues, I guess.
Some years back, when I lived in Australia, and having fun was easy, I used to go surf-kayaking. In little squirt boats, we would surf the waves, rolling and flipping, like wannabe dolphins.
On one occasion, I got dumped, badly. I didn’t roll up immediately, and so I got a lungful of water, and got disoriented. When I finally did roll up, the next wave hit me, and by then, I was close into shore, and this wave pushed me deep into the sand. My head hit the sea bed, hard. A bit harder, I could have broken my neck. My mate Mike, who was watching, had no idea where I was. When I finally emerged, I was a wreck. I had to go to the doctor to get my ears syringed, to get the sand out. She didn’t believe me, when I told her what had happened.
That’s sort of how I feel now. The ride got really hard, this last year. I find myself wondering, has it been worth it? If I re-do the arithmetic, what will the answer be?
But, then, as I said, we are all ideologues in this business. We started this work, because we believed, long before the rest of the world was interested, that Afghanistan could be something more than a byword for misery and hopelessness. And that we could, or should, be part of that healing.
But why should that belief lead us to conclude that we would pass unscathed? Isn’t there likely to be a cost, somewhere? The other lives of which I am also a part - son, brother, friend – have continued, in their various parts of the world. Nothing stopped, just because we went to work in Afghanistan. There will be a cost, and we were told that, right at the start. If that cost is never apparent, you are either very lucky, or have somehow stayed close to the surface, buoyant enough to avoid the deep currents.
Deep down though, I know I hoped that these other lives would keep till we returned.
You know we hope for a good tomorrow in South Africa
But if we don’t learn to do for ourselves as equals, that hope will disappear. Disappear!
And my people will grow tired.
And if they grow tired, they will grow angry
And angry will grow violent.
And there will be no good tomorrow, for any people.
This is from the old film, the Power of One. A very revisionist, white-man-superhero film. Awful in lots of ways, but these few words are true, as are many others in the film. And when I hear them, I think of Afghanistan.
We buried my mother on Monday. We buried a lot of hopes and plans for the future with her, and there is a lot of sadness and uncertainty ahead. Already the path is marked with tensions, grief and strain. We have lost a lot of anchors, this last year, and Mum was the centre in all that.
I wish we had longer with her. Mum, you left too early.
It’s quiet on the blog-front. This is because my mother died suddenly last week. We flew home to Australia the same day and are now dealing with this death, just a year after my dad died. Grief, exhaustion and a fair bit of chaos are the dominant themes.
5.00 Julie wakes up to deal with Rachel
5.05 Rachel goes back to sleep
5.15 Call to prayer
6.40 Wake up
7.00 Pieta comes in ‘Shall I look after Rachel?’
7.01 Julie mumbles something
7.12 I get up
8.00 I record Pieta doing an audition piece for the high school she wants to go to back in Aus
8.15-9.15 In an effort to turn her audition recording into a DVD, I get very cross with iDVD, one of the more stupid Mac programs ever created. Finally get it finished and give to Tom and Lyn to post (they are returning to Australia today).
10.00-10.30 Go downstairs to talk to Tom and Lyn. Pack and repack our extra luggage bag that we want them to take home with them. Spend 30 mins talking to the airline to try to get excess baggage. This is denied. Unpack bag.
10.30-11.30 Talk to Tom about coming back to IAM long term, to work in Education support. Tom somewhat interested.
11.30 Coffee.
11.40 Go to work. Spend 40 mins talking to a Dutch guy who now works in Tajikistan, but who is interested in working here. Do a lot of enthusing. Can’t work out how to pronounce Dutch guy’s name. ‘Kher-jian’?
12.00 Lunch. Beans. Eat beans. Feel resentful.
1.00 Work. Send emails. Read about attack in Maimana, where a suicide bomb has gone off. Check our team is ok. Ponder.
2.00. Walk home to get ready to run Rangers for kids. Notice street is blocked by police. Ask Police what is happening. ‘There is a bomb over there’, says policeman, gesturing to house opposite our office. Note with alarm that while police have stopped vehicle, foot traffic through target area is still being permitted. Including me.
2.01 Walk more quickly. Phone our security guy. Phone neighbouring NGOS. Phone school. Walking quickly still. Get home. Issue radio alert to all stations. Phone more people. Look around. Feel a bit aimless all of a sudden. Like, waiting for something to happen.
2.45 Time for Rangers with kids. Road still blocked due to bomb, drive carefully. At Rangers, do tugs of war, trust falls, talk about moral vs physical courage. Large child falls on my recently-reinfected thumb, only just now healing. Say a bad word, but quietly.
4.15 Notification received that road is open. Advised that bomb has been dealt with/ disposed of/ found to be not bomb/ found to be a suitcase/ found to be a hoax. Keep doing Rangers.
5.00 Rangers finishes, kids happy. Thumb not happy.
5.30 Home.
6.00 Dinner.
6.15 Elijah has friend over for sleepover. Usual evening stuff starts. Email and phone calls to debrief bomb situation. Drink home made red.
etc…
Not normally into self-promotion, at least not regularly, but here’s an article I wrote, that got published, that I think says pretty much most of what I have to say at the moment. Read it all at http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/why-the-military-needs-to-leave-afghanistan-and-soon-20120402-1w8np.html
The last month has involved, in this order, me stabbing myself in my thumb knuckle, deeply, striking bone and rupturing the capsule and rendering me 9 fingered (temporarily); a nasty burn on my calf being the result of a hot water bottle (pathetic, I know); and a sense of being inflated by a bike pump, and a lot of time spent in the bathroom. And being really, really tired. And uncreative.
But things are looking up. Megan the wonder surgeon (taking over from Ken the super surgeon) sewed up my thumb on a Friday afternoon at the kitchen table as I held the torch (power went out as she made the incision). And here’s a tip: locally bought lidocaine is about 30% as strong as it should be. That is, it wears off after 20mins rather than two hours. Or, more precisely, when the surgeon is still stitching.) The leg burn wound thing is healing. Etc. And it is turning to Spring. A few markers of this: it is raining, not snowing. I have stopped wearing long-johns. I have stopped wearing mittens. I have moved back into my office at work (rendered uninhabitable over winter by the freezing temperatures, the leaking roof and the freezing temperatures. And the leaks.) We have stopped heating our home 24/7. The snow is melting. We played soccer and threw balls around in the yard and it was great.
Interestingly, today as I walked to work, some guys in a Technical drove past.
example of a Technical.
Ostensibly, I suppose, they were guarding a VIP. But it was identical in appearance and form to Taliban times, and it prompted in me an internal conversation about evidence of real changes over the last 10 years. There was a Government then – as now. Both are seen by a large proportion of the population as illegitimate or propped up by foreign regimes (Saudi/ USA). Both had or have limited power outside of Kabul. Both tried or are trying to win loyalty and support from – or at least create cohesion in, a country that is still not a nation, and where ethnic and tribal links are far more deeply rooted than any kind of allegiance to a central power. Neither has done anything much to improve the rights of women or ethnic minorities. Security under both has been terrible; arguably better under the Taliban. Both stimulated very piecemeal/ ad hoc/ ineffective economic and foreign policies. Ministries are run by commanders and warlords in both cases; both have been hostage to the religious power-brokers. I’m not arguing things were better then; but I don’t thing things are much better now. Not in an enduring sense. This is not what you could call a robust, well rooted, popularly-supported Government, not a Government with effective control and reach, not a country that is united and cohesive, not functional, not secure, not maturing. Not yet.
I am walking to our kids school for a meeting. A man is adjacent to me, and he looks into my face.
‘Mr Kim? You are Mr Kim? Salaam aleyikum!’
I return the greeting, though I have no idea who this man is. He senses that I am perhaps not Mr Kim and asks again.
‘No, I am not Mr Kim.’
‘Ahh, but you work with [our organisation], do you not? And now, see, you are walking to the school.’
I don’t like that he knows where our kids school is, but it seems pointless to deny it. I suppose it is pretty obvious.
The man goes on. ‘I used to work with your organisation. For 20 years! I worked with Mr Harri, and Mr Tom, the one who was killed in Nuristan. I worked with Mr Dan, who was killed with him. I worked in the eye hospitals. Now I am working in the Ministry of Public Health. I am like a doctor there. I control for quality. You are new in Afghanistan?’
‘No’, I say, ‘we came here 12 years ago.’
‘But I have never seen you!’
‘We were in Mazar.’
‘Ahhh, Mazar. I worked there as well. I worked in Mazar for 10 days! I supervised the eye hospital there. Perhaps we met then. There was that Finnish woman, there, a doctor…’ He gropes for the name. ‘Well, she was there. You remember her? And that other one, the… the.. Well, see, now, here we are at your school.’
Hamid, our school watchman opens the gate for me, and to my surprise, he greets the man with me with clear recognition, and they fall into an animated conversation.
The snow is deep in the school yard, piled into high drifts and though the sun is finally out, it will be weeks before it has all melted.
The man has left, and Hamid comes and stands beside me.
‘That man was a watchman, alongside me, for years. That’s what he was.’ Hamid says, answering my unspoken question. ‘He worked as a watchman at the eye hospital, with Mr Tom. And then he was the watchman for Mr Harri. When the Taliban imprisoned us, he cried like a baby. Now he is working at the Public Health Ministry. He told me he earns 25,000, sometimes 30,000 Afs a month.’
Hamid pauses.
‘In all my life, I have never earned that much. Here, at the best, I take home 8,000, maybe 10,000 Afs a month. Soon I will end my work and that will be it. That will have been my life.’
Hamid pauses, and then speaks again, but now with more difficulty, as though the memories are locked away, hard to chip out. ‘The Taliban locked us up for three months I think…But that man, he knew someone high up, and he cried and cried and then they took pity on him and let him go… The second time we were locked up was… when the Taliban tried to take Mazar [1998]. There were missile attacks here [when Clinton ordered strikes against Al Qaida training camps]. Everyone thought it was all war again, or maybe that’s what the Taliban thought.’
As I listen to Hamid, I look at him. I try to imagine the life he has led, the chaos and the violence he has seen. The scars it has left on him. He is an old man now, and the lines on his face and around his mouth remind me of my father.
‘After that time, I went to Pakistan. I didn’t want to be locked up again. When I came back, I came to Kabul, and worked at the school again. That other fellow, he is at the Ministry, doing his job. And I am still here.’
My old, good friend Steven read the last post here and commented: ‘I’d value your current insights; questions that others might like to ask too:
So, do you want Kabul to be like Perth or Dubai? If so, how?
If not, why not?
Is Perth poor? If so, how?
What are the Kabulites teaching you? Are they rich in other ways?
What do you want Kabul to look like when it is ‘finished’?’
Good questions, and it is true that it is easier to criticise than to find solutions, so here is my attempt:
So, do you want Kabul to be like Perth or Dubai?
Kabul, I think, doesn’t know what it wants to be. It lost 30 years to war, and the reconstruction process has been driven by expatriate Afghans and foreign advisors, who have imposed a hybrid Middle Eastern/ Western/ American persona on the city. It is a poor graft. I suppose I would like Kabul to become like Delhi; with a preserved and functional old city, and a new area where the business and political sector can function. But the old city is largely already destroyed, such heritage has little currency in Afghan eyes.
If not, why not?
I don’t want Kabul to emulate Dubai. Dubai is Babylon, the city that defies everything and attempts to show that money and engineering can overcome any environmental limitations and natural constraints. There is a saying in Arabic: ‘My grandfather rode a donkey; my father drove a car; I fly a plane. My son will ride a donkey.’ Something like that. They recognise themselves, at one level, their lifestyle is utterly, foolishly excessive and unsustainable. When the energy crisis comes, UAE will rupture. And they are doing nothing to build longevity into their culture: Arabs themselves do nothing in the UAE; all labour and technocratic work is done by Philippinos, Pakistanis, Indians and Europeans.
Is Perth poor? If so, how?
Yep. We have become almost completely a nation of aspirational materialists. Sadly, a globalised world has taken from us the chance to develop, slowly, our own culture; instead we have bought into a US model of society, based around consumption and the car. We preserve nothing of our own (post colonial) heritage (I mean at a personal level; not the corporate preservation of colonial era buildings), small though it is. We break down and build anew, history means little. We pay tiny, grudging reference to our Indigenous history and have anyway reduced it to smoking ceremonies and the Aboriginal tri-colour.
What are the Kabulites teaching you?
That’s harder. My encounters with poor Afghans make me reflect on my own wealth and power. My encounters with powerful Afghans (police, officials), make me aware of the corruptibility of any person. My encounters will small boys remind me of the mischievousness and hope of youth. My wife’s encounters with young men teach her that young men are pretty much the same anywhere, when it comes to women. Her encounters with Afghan women are mixed: some welcoming, some not. My encounters with Afghan women? I don’t have any. But what is real in all this? There is still so much pure survival going on here, though, that the best of the Afghan person is often not revealed, and such strong currents of fear, hostility, uncertainty that the public person is more a reflection of Afghanistan’s own chaos. I fear that by the time we are past survival, Afghans themselves will have lost something key to their identity, at least those in the big cities.
Are they rich in other ways?
I don’t know. I used to be greeted with wonderful hospitality in villages. I am less present in villages these days but I suspect this reverence for the guest is still strong, despite the latent, growing anger at Western military and social imperialism. It is hard for village people to be so welcoming when their last encounter with foreigners was from the wrong end of an M16.
In Kabul these days, most Afghans want little to do with foreigners, at least at a social level. We rarely get the invites to funerals, weddings, circumcisions, that we used to get: too close an association with foreigners now, in Kabul, will see you reported to the local Taliban, and lead to an interrogation, a threat, a visit. There is still great thrift, inventiveness and skill; but that is not unique to Afghanistan; rather it is pretty much common to most places that have been decimated in conflict.
What do you want Kabul to look like when it is ‘finished’?’
I don’t know. I find that sort of question difficult to answer these days. I feel little hope when I look at the big picture. I draw hope mainly from the small, lasting, positive changes our work brings. Mere tweaks at the edge of things, perhaps. But in a sea of poor quality work, bad development decisions, and careless spending, they are good things.
We are headed for Dubai. It is intended to a be a short break in the middle of winter, and a break that does not involve death or bush fires or crisis. I am badly overworked and Julie not far behind.
As we drive to the airport, Mohammed Ali, asks me where we are going. I tell him we are going to Dubai.
‘And then to your home?’
‘No’, I say. ‘Just Dubai.’ I don’t add, ‘for a holiday’ because I realise I feel somewhat guilty about all of this. Going to Dubai if we are in transit to home is one thing; a discretionary, gratuitously chosen break in Dubai is another. Mohammed Ali – who is not trying to imply anything, I am sure, and would not even understand about guilt in such a context – has more questions:
‘What is the airport like then, here in Kabul? Isn’t it cold? Is it heated in winter? Will you wait long? What about in Australia? Do you have to arrive three hours early there too? Is the security process similar?’
As I answer, it is immediately clear that Mohammed Ali has never gone anywhere by air. Well, neither have the vast majority of the farmers, labourers, herders and miners of the poorer parts of the world. But this whole issue of inequity is one Julie and I have been thinking a lot about recently, in part because it has been such a hard winter in Afghanistan. We have sat it out in minimal discomfort, complaining mainly about chilled toes and slipping in the ice. When we run out of kerosene to heat the house, we buy another barrel. When we get truly sick of the cold, we fly to Dubai.
Afghans just sit it out. Quietly or noisily, they just sit it out, trying to make it. Some don’t: there have been many deaths this winter. There will be more, yet. Quite a few Afghans we know ran out of wood to heat their houses weeks ago. They do not have the ability to simply ‘buy more’. A week or so back, Julie was talking to our watchman, and he cried, openly, in front of her. When she asked him the matter, he simply said, ‘We are cold and hungry. We ran out of wood. We just don’t have anything.’
While we are volunteers here in Afghanistan, we still, if truth be known, live like kings compared to 90% of Afghans. Like kings. We will go back to Australia one day, without having made any money on this whole venture, and that is fine – we are not here for money, at all. And sure, there are many expats here who live a whole lot better than us, on six week R&R cycles and $4K/ month ‘danger’ money; but the fact is undeniable: we live like kings. We all live like kings. When our watchman cries in front of us, we are wealthy enough that we can give him money, easily, and not even miss it.
I do the math as Mohammed Ali drives. Flights to Dubai: $1400. Hotel/ guesthouse for the week: $900. Meals: maybe $50/ day. We will buy unnecessary things there, like books, clothes and gadgets. We will go to a water park, a movie, a play-gym. The whole nine days will cost maybe $3500. Mohammed Ali makes $250 a month, our watchman about the same, and by Afghan standards, they are both doing pretty well.
We live like kings in the middle of awful poverty.
I have to go to Maimana. I am, to be honest, not keen. It is hard on my family when I travel; it is freezing, and it will be colder in Maimana; I have a cold coming on and I have a ton of work that has kept me up till 1.00am the last week.
I arise at 4.00am, and by 6.00 we are at the airport. The pilot tells us the weather is foggy in Maimana, with 8cm of slush on the runway. Secretly, I hope that the flight is cancelled. The pilot suggests we board, and see how things are when we land in Bamiyan. 20% chance, he tells us.
Unsurprisingly, I am very pleased once we actually get there. It is the travelling I find hard, not the being. Kabul is so toxic, so restrictive, so insulating, that to get out to the real Afghanistan is a tonic.
This is a hill just out side the office. It collapsed in the recent rains, obliterating several houses. One of our staff now lives in permanent terror of the rest of the hill falling on him and his family.
We travel out to visit one of our community development projects. Since the security crapped out a few years ago, we have been forced to work much closer to the town than we would want: the really poor people are a days travel away, but Taliban control those areas now. We can only work in safely within an hours drive of the town centre. Still, in a place like Maimana, there is no shortage of work. This town is after all, little more than a large village, with all the problems of a remote area: no proper latrines and open defecation, poor water supply, no understanding of safe birth practice, low literacy, rudimentary animal care and horticulture, only the most basic education, and only for boys: I could go on and on.
This is the expat advisor to the project. He is raised on a farm, holds a Masters degree in development. A thinker, a practical person, sensitive to the culture, considered in his application, persistent in the effort. His wife is built of the same quality. I wish we had 10 men and women like them.
Here, we have trialled improved orchards. You can see the saplings in the background. Tree spacing, pesticides, pruning, consistent fertilising. The plot is given to us for three years by a wealthier landowner, on condition that the people have free access to the orchard to learn better techniques. After three years, the orchard and it’s yield becomes his. As we drive home, A, the advisor wonders, ‘Is this the best approach? Should we benefit the wealthy further? But the poor can rarely afford to give us land to use for risky orchard trials. What about the middle people? Maybe we can work with them.’
I appreciate thinkers like this.
Charm-gari village. The leatherworker’s village.
And here it is: on a breathtakingly cold morning, they are still there, scraping the hides, breaking the ice off the pits where the skins will be tanned, hanging the leather to cure.
I ask, ‘Is it a high profession or a low one, leather working?’
The answer comes quickly, ‘Oh it is a high profession. But the market is ruined now. They cannot sell anything. Now, everything comes from China. Their leather is so much cheaper.’
I am grateful to be able to spend some time in Maimana.
I have a meeting at the Australian Embassy.
The person I meet with lives at the Embassy compound, maybe 200m away. The Embassy staff are driven to work each morning, in flak jackets and in an amoured vehicle. This, in the most militarised part of town, where they already are well within the green zone. Simply to sneeze here requires permission from the Secret Police.
Once inside the compound, they work within what is essentially, a bunker. Thick concrete walls, thick steel bars on the windows. They are not allowed out to shop, walk, meet Afghans. I invite my contact for dinner: our house will need to be security vetted before she can come. I show her photos of our work, that we, through various channels, get some AusAID money for. I offer her to visit the work: it sounds close to impossible. She would need armed escorts, security compliant housing, security plans and evacuation contingencies, a five legged stool and camel train with USB ports on each saddle.
None of this is surprising, but nonetheless, I leave perplexed that this is how my Government thinks to manage its aid work. These people are administering $160million worth of aid, and yet they have almost no contact with Afghans. Period. In a similar encounter a while back, a woman from the British Embassy signed a cheque for a aid group to build a chicken coop in Jalalabad. $10,000. I can only assume the chickens had individually air-conditioned rooms with massage chairs.
I think some of this must be because Australia is quite new at this type of work. We don’t, as a nation, have much experience in civilian operations in conflict countries, as so we assume it will all be terrible and tricky and end badly. Hence the precautions. Heck, for a long time the Aussies didn’t even have an Embassy here, and even when we did, it was hidden, with no details publicly available. Enquiries were referred to Canberra. The British and Europeans are far more at ease. I’d like to talk to the Embassy staff about how to be more effective, but I suspect it is a closed loop.
Later I go to Bush Bazaar. Butter is available, and I have learnt by now, that if you see something at Bush Bazaar that is worth while, buy it. Buy a lot of it. It probably won’t be there again. So that is our butter needs taken care of for a while.
My enjoyment at the thrift of this purchase is tempered on the drive back to Karte Se, by the sight of a woman begging in the Pul-e Sorkh bazaar. At her feet lies a grown man. I want to stop and help, but I allow the flow of traffic to carry me on home.
I’ve felt obtrusive for a while, toting my DSLR around Kabul, and I hadn’t realised how much I had missed using it: a camera on a phone is no substitute. So the other day, I wandered down the bazaar, searching for some hardware fittings, and I blew the dust of my camera and enjoyed the sunshine. Sadly, it wasn’t a great day for shooting – just the usual bazaar type images. I did come across the man with a barrow selling old stuffed toys. I imagine these are the sort that no one buys in the UK or Australia, and that wash up here. Though any child, I think, regardless of nationality, would be terrified by the pink gorilla.
Later, Elijah and I buried his rabbit. The winter has been bitter: temperatures down to -17˚ at night, for nights on end, and a few days back, Elijah’s rabbit just didn’t make it, despite the warm cage I had built, with an elevated platform and sleeping box.
Our watchman looked on as Elijah and I chipped through the frozen ground, and then with solemnity, laid Tickle in a box, and put him to rest. He and I talked as Elijah went to make a cross:
‘Elijah is getting to understand about death.’
‘Yes. I think he has questions about it, why it happens, why it has to happen. He misses his grandfather a lot also.’
‘Death happens to everyone. We are in the hands of God.’
When Elijah returns, Amir Mohammed leans in to him, and says, in an effort to be comforting; ‘Elijah. We all die. One day I will die too.’
I translate for Elijah. I don’t think he gets it.
I wonder, at how our watchman views all this. That we have pet rabbits, who eat chaff and scraps, and produce nothing but vast quantities of crap; that we are wealthy enough to have spend money in this way. As we have only females, they don’t even reproduce, so we can’t eat the meat. They are, in all respects, I have concluded, a complete waste of effort, because though Elijah was very sad at Tickle’s death, neither he nor Pieta paid the rabbits much attention after the second day of their becoming part of our family. My rationale, that through having pets, children learn the responsibilities of care, doesn’t seem to be bearing out, and all they have learnt so far is that if it gets cold enough, you can freeze to death.
Afghans are fluent in this metric: a family we know of were huddled around their gas burner a week or so back, when it exploded. The mother and father and three of the five children are in hospital; the baby is being cared for by a woman we know, and just tonight, the four year-old died of her injuries.
I am at our cash office, taking out some money. H, the diminutive finance officer asks me about my family back in Australia. He tells me his maternal uncle’s son has lived in Australia for the last 25 years. I suggest that the maternal uncle’s son come back to Afghanistan and contribute to the rebuilding and rejuvenating of the country. H tells me that he did return recently, for a short while: ’He said that in all the things he saw, only one thing had improved over the last 25 years.’
‘And that was?’
‘You can get good bread here now.’
I ponder this as I go upstairs. Part of me rejects it as a cynical comment, tossed off without thought. Of course if you left here in the early 80s, before the country was shot to pieces and if your baseline is Melbourne, then current Afghanistan does not compare favourably. But his remark reflects a deeper truth, which is that Afghanistan has dropped a long, long way from the high watermark of the early 70s, and it has not recovered. 35 years of conflict and still counting, we should not be surprised at the slow rate of change.
That said, there is plenty of evidence of similar cynicism: a friend sat next to a leader from the Panjshir Valley on a flight recently, and this leader told him how they have a shadow Government, primed and prepared to take over as soon as Kabul falls. These are not Talibs, but Tajiks. Competent, probably, and long-sighted, they are planning for the next decade. In contrast, aid donors and military planners think in terms of the next 6 months. There are multiple such shadow Government structures all around the country.
*
The ditches being dug around the place that I referred to earlier: an interesting aspect to these is that the drains used to be regarded more or less as the property or responsibility of the adjacent householder. Now that some donor has paid for the municipality to subcontract their construction, the ownership and maintenance of these ditches has become unclear. As a result, no one is cleaning them out. For most of the year they collect rubbish, rocks, dead animals. But when it snows – then they block, and flood. Was this foreseeable? Could a better process have ensured community ownership of the ditches? Because while a donor was happy to pay for their construction, no one has the money or willingness to pay for their ongoing care.
They do serve the purpose though of allowing you to shake your carpets out.
Meanwhile, it has snowed. This cleared the air and created a whole big great wonderful lot of fun.
Then it snowed more and yesterday when we woke up there was a foot or so on the ground. The children were delirious with excitement.
Easy for us to enjoy it, with barrels to kerosene to fill our heaters with, and thick snow clothes inherited from our Swedish friends. Not so much fun for poor Afghans. We have had a few requests for help, and have given away a bunch of clothes and jackets, following St Basil’s admonition:
‘The bread which you do not eat is the bread of the hungry; the coat hanging in the wardrobe is the coat of the one who is naked and cold; the shoes you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity you do not perform are the many injustices that you commit.’
We know that giving away money and clothes is a short term solution. It is, however, a solution to those who would otherwise go hungry and cold, until a better solution can be found. And that is not going to be anytime soon, here.
Finally, the Government must have decided that ‘illegal’ roadside installations are to be eliminated, because all the nice little shops and so on along the streets have been torn down. The guard boxes are being repositioned, as you can see. I can’t see this working for the shopkeepers though.
Down the road from us, in the bazaar, they are digging up the street. The ditch is about 3 metres deep, 2 wide, and stretches for a few kilometres. Shopkeepers and passers-by have multiple theories as to it’s purpose – water, sewerage, high pressure water (high pressure sewerage?), telephone. Whatever it will be used for, it is a huge mess. Not in this picture, but a little further up, behind me, the ditch has ‘necessitated’ the cutting down of all the old trees. Of course, these were quickly removed by the contractors and disappeared to someone wood yard. And in another example of the type of progress we are seeing here: two or three years ago, an extensive network of drains were built around the neighbourhood; concrete and stone, well made. You can see one such drain at the far end of the new excavation below, though it is unclear. These, which cost tens of thousands of dollars to build, are now being torn up. Along with the water mains, which were also laid a few years ago, and the telephone lines. I wonder how long it will be before this new ditch is torn up.
A (minor) annoyance that strikes us as a result of all this digging is that the phone line that provided DSL to our neighbourhood has been cut. A month is the estimated repair time. So until then, no internet access at home, and we are back to using a satellite connection at the office. So if you don’t get a quick reply, you know why.
