Christina asked about the expression ‘I don’t want

Christina asked about the expression ‘I don’t want my children to walk in the dust’.
‘Dust’, as used in Dari can have simply the literal meaning – i.e., ‘I don’t want my children to live in this dustbowl, this poor man’s house’.

But it also has a meta-meaning – a common curse here, is ‘Khak dar sat-et!‘ ‘Dust on your head!’ – which means, ‘May you die’ – the expression deriving from, when a person is dead and being buried, dust is thrown into the grave, onto their heads  - Muslims being preferably buried standing, so they can properly greet Mohammed the Prophet when he comes summon them.

So, the other meaning would be, ‘I don’t want my children to walk in death’.

 

I sell waistcoats.

We are in De Mazang, and half way up TV Mountain. The road was paved for the first section; now we are walking in a narrow alley, strewn with the litter of the households, and down the the middle of which runs an uneven channel of raw waste and sewerage. People are gathered around a tap stand, filling 20L yellow canisters, and then struggling on up the hill.

Higher up we stop, and Julie goes into a room to talk with the women. I stay in the yard and the husband comes over. In the small yard, three children bat a plastic ball around with a large walking stick.

We talk about the Self Help Group which his wife is part of. He only knows it by the name, ‘the group’. ‘It is good for her, she saves 10 Afs, 20 Afs every week. They put it all together, take loans. Why shouldn’t she do it?’ He tells how he has taken three loans from the group via his wife over the years.

‘And what have you used the money for?’

‘I sell waistcoats. I buy them in Mandaie, from the big underground market there. I carry them all the way up to Karte Se, walk down the bazaar selling them. If I have sold them all by the time I reach here, good. If not, I go on, past the zoo, and then turn around and walk home, selling as I go. That is what I do.’

I cannot capture the simple resignation with which he speaks. It was as though he was saying, ‘This is my life. That is all there is.’ I ask what he might do if he could take a larger loan, say 10,000 Afs ($200USD). He shrugs. ‘I would buy more waistcoats.’

‘Do you have any other skill, or work, or profession, or income?’

‘This is my qisb, my income.’

‘What do you want for your children?’

‘They they do not walk in the dust.’

*

These groups are doing valuable work. The houses and the alleys here are like the slums we lived in, in Delhi. People here are poor; in another group, a man and a woman, old, both blind, sit motionless, as another woman tells of how two of their children have died in the last years. The man next to me sells plastic tubs, in much the same way as the waistcoat seller. The return on such sales is microscopic.

It does take time for these groups to start working, but over 5-6 years the changes are evident; further down the mountain, people are working together, men and women, running small businesses, cooperating. Higher up, though, that process is just beginning.

The closer you get…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All five of us are enjoying being in Afghanistan for these two weeks, with some caveats.

1. the mud. While technically it is spring, it has rained every day since we got here. Julie was meant to fly to Mazar yesterday, and couldn’t because there had been so much rain, the airport was flooded. Yep, you read it right. And Afghan mud has unique and strange qualities. You can walk from the bedroom to the bathroom, and come back muddy. You can wash mud off your pants, three times, and it is still there! You can tiptoe carefully around a patch in the road where the mud is thick, only to find mud in your hair. Hours later!

2. the cold. We didn’t expect this, and had to make hasty trips to the bazaar, to buy jackets. Only their winter jackets are all packed away, because it is summer. So only T shirts are on sale now. So naturally, I bought T shirts. Now we are all layered up like lunatics.

3. the sickness. Within hours of getting here, Rachel had a fever. Elijah vomited carefully into his cupped hands last night at 3am and carried it to the bathroom, but couldn’t open the door, and had to stand there yelling/ vomiting till we came. (He then repeated this trick 2 hours later). Pieta has a cold and sore lips (eh?). Seems there is something about arriving here that activates bugs.

4. the way plans get cast aside. Twice now Julie has tried to get to Mazar. Rain and flooding has foiled both attempts. We have ended up sharing rooms with a couple trying to get back to Lal, who have been stumped twice now, because of weather. The upside to this is pleasant surprises – kissing your wife good bye for three days, only to have her show up two hours later. More time with friends. But it does make for low-level frustration, and traversing many low levels of frustration can lead you to the basement of despair.

All that said, it is good being here. The kids are loving seeing their friends. It is good to see Tom and Lyn settling in so well. We are doing good work. We have been welcomed back into a what is still a family for us. It is almost as though we never left.

Yes, the closer you get here, the more wonderful it is*.

 

*As long as you can expand your definition of wonderful to include some pretty annoying things.

Visas obtained, futility averted, frustrations receding. What next?

We got visas here in Dubai. A straightforward process, with only some ordinary, run-of-the-mill frustrations. We fly in on Saturday.

As they say, If you want it easy, don’t choose Afghanistan.

Afghanistan. Again. Almost. Maybe

Long time readers (all 3 of you) will know that we harbour a long, deep love for Afghanistan.

So it will be no surprise that we were to return there – albeit for only a few weeks – this April. I was to do a risk assessment, and Julie to do an evaluation. Our kids were coming because they were to do a reconnection – reconnect with their old friends, their old places. The country and the life where they have lived; each of them, for at least half of their years. And, they have been really, really looking forward to this.

In readiness, I submitted our visa applications a month ago. Bear in mind that the website says turnaround of visas takes only 5 business days.

After three weeks, I grew worried. A call to the Embassy revealed that Kabul had not yet given permission for us to travel. More days passed. Our departure date grew near.

I will not recount here the numerous – bordering on tedious – number, and content of calls, conversations and agonisings that took place over the last week, as we mulled, mooted and masticated the options. Delay flights? Try in Dubai? Call it all off? Give Canberra more time?

In the end, we gave Canberra more time. We also allowed for a second effort in Dubai. As the Afghan proverb says, ‘Trust in God. But you should still tie up your camel’.

–

Today, we heard that Canberra has not issued visas. Probably, the issue was simply time. Just now, a colleague and friend recounted that it took her five weeks to get her visa. Earlier this month, other friends were so late in getting their visas, they had their passports couriered to them directly to the airport, just prior to departure.

–

We are going anyway. We’ll hope for visas in Dubai. God oversees all this, somehow. This I believe. ‘Oversee’ doesn’t mean ‘control’, and I do not assume to predict that the outcome we desire will eventuate. We’ll see. ‘Being in control’ is less a reality than we’d like to believe.

But I am tired of anticipating disappointment when it comes to Afghanistan. We just wanted to get there. Do some important work. Let the kids have a good time.

We were not, you know, expecting a revolution.

Images of learning

We had a week of learning together in Kenya – 55 of TEAR’s partner staff from Sub-Saharan Africa. After the peversities and effort of Afghanistan, it was incredible to be with men and women together, learning, challenging us, taking the lead, initiating. Really inspiring. A week of hope.

Followed by 36 hours travelling to get home. Which is also great.

Kenya conversations.

I have been with some old friends for dinner. Friends, because we know them and they know us, but really, our friendship is short. They were friends of my sister, and we met them whilst visiting her in Kenya in 2009. We haven’t really corresponded since then. But tonight we met up. I was expecting it to be just them and me; a meal, some wine, some reminiscing.
Instead, I found myself in the middle of Irish/aid worker/ expatriate in Africa world tour, powered in equal measure by alcohol, boast, fact, nostalgia, hope, conceit and cynicism. A strange confection. Impressive people who have worked in some of the worlds worst places, over many years, with commitment and sincerity, who now in the evensong of their working lives seem less happy with what they have done than they should be. I dunno. I’m not there yet – what is it like to work in the world’s crappiest places, for a whole life, and see them remain mostly crappy?

Does faith play a role in this? Does a transcendent hope insure against such loneliness? Well. It was good to see my friends.

*

Conversation with the taxi driver on the way home:

Driver: Are you married?
Me: Yes, I have three kids. You?
D: Four. Two sons, two daughters.
Me: Nice. Perfect combination.
D: What about extra wife?
Me:…. uh…. what?
D: Extra wife. How many you have?
Me: (long pause while my brain reboots)… uh. Just one wife. That’s…. all… You….?
D: Huh! What you mean? Lots. Many. What do you mean, one?
Me: Uh… (beginning to sound daft)…. well, I just married one… That’s enough…
D: Huh.
(pause)
D: Here in Kenya, we have many wife. We need it. Long work, wife gets angry. I say what you get angry. You don’t get angry with me. I go out, get a woman. We all do this.
Me: Umm. Well. Yeah. But. Doesn’t she get angry? Number one wife, I mean.
D: She get angry? I get angry.
(pause)
D: Which country you from?
Me. Australia…. you see, if I did that in Australia, my wife would tell me to get lost. To go. To leave.
D: Australia is different. But what do you do about, wanting extra wife?
Me: I don’t. I don’t want an extra wife. I don’t want one. I’m happy with… I just don’t want… if I was your wife, I would feel sad.
D: Why?
Me: I would want you to love…. [this starts to sound weird, so I rephrase] I think your wife would want you to be faithful to her.
D: I am faithful! I send money. I put 20,000 shillings every month to my children’s schooling!
Me:….[realising, slowly, that we have different frameworks, different languages here]… uh….
D: I get lonely! She lives uptown, 160km from here! I see her once a month, maybe! What should I do? 25 years, we live like this! I go out, I am lonely…
Me:…

Colour in Kenya

We have left the Sudan and are in Kenya. A sleep-denying 3.50am flight, 90 minutes in a taxi and we were at the hotel by 8.00am, in time to be utterly exhausted and completely wide awake.

But Kenya is colorful.

In many ways.

 

After the austerity of Darfur, Nairobi seems some kind of decadent UN paradise.

I think I prefer the non-paradise option.

Development at a distance.

Here we are, on a brief walk in K. Brief, because we are pretty well forbidden by the National Security Service (NSS) from any actual interactions with real people here, and from doing anything public, such as walking in the street. Instead we are driven everywhere – the project site, where we hop out and talk to some project staff and perhaps a few community leaders – but not actual people, poor people – and then back in the car. Work release, as my colleague M calls it.

We are also forbidden from taking photos. So I have to keep using my phone to ‘make calls’, as we term it. Strangely, I never get through. Photos taken hastily with a phone though are very unsatisfying, rarely any good and mostly are blurred by my finger or my hat.

Some latrines. I will spare you the inside image. But imagine 100 children, all…

you get the picture. Communal latrines in IDP camps are always hard to maintain, and invariably poo is all over the place. 10000 people in a camp, 200ml per day – that’s 2000L of poo to deal with. It is a big problem, and unpopular. Much more fun to manage a water supply:

But even here, you can count – of 12 taps, only 5 are working. Who is responsible? the community? TEAR Fund? the Government department to whom it has been handed over? No one can agree.

Classroom. Be thankful for your data projectors and libraries and laptops, kids.

This man runs a public latrine in the market place. Originally built by TEAR Fund, and then handed over to a community management committee. Half a Sudanese Pound gets you the right to use the toilet, a jug of water to clean yourself with and bar of soap at the end to use. A cleaner is paid to clean them all daily, and with the profit they make, they are planning to make more latrines at the other end of the market. Private enterprise. I wondered aloud with the staff if the management committee could use this captive audience to do some public education – stick notices about civic rights, health, etc on the back of the toilet doors. I had forgotten that because Arabic is the holy language of God, they can’t have anything written in Arabic so close to a toilet – it would offend God. Interesting, the cultural problems we don’t see.

(I am cross about the above photo; it is out of focus because I had to rush, because the NSS flunkey was coming back).

In K.

For the last year or so, it has been relatively safe in K. Nonetheless, there is still a 6pm-7am curfew, and we do not go outside the office/ guesthouse compound anyway, except to visit the project sites. At nights, to reduce risk of robbery and kidnap, the compound are double locked, and we sleep behind barred doors. Too bad if there is a fire inside.

The links between the monastic life and the aidworker life in places like this are many: mainly male environment, simple food, rotten beds, basic amenities, austere conditions. And we share a kind of faith too, in the value of what we are doing, that it is somehow worthwhile, signficant. Then again, there are similarities with prison life too: locked in, basic amenities, mostly male, lots of razor wire, cycnism, .
Today is Friday. The holy day, and a day of rest. We seem to all be hunched over laptops, working.

I share my room with this little fella.

Darfur in a Mi8

We flew to K today, in a very noisy helicopter, and landed beside the helipad. We wore ear muffs all the way, but even so I could hear funny clicking noises that made me nervous. The crew were Russian. Rushing here, rushing there.

Sorry. Old joke. We got here fine and God and the Russians willing, we will fly out on Tuesday. Till then, we have some work to do. Some 100,000 displaced people from the various, ongoing genocides are living here in K, for several years now. While conditions are not appalling, it is a hard, sad way to live. Mostly, they probably just want to go home. That is not going to happen any time soon.

Images of a dust storm, Khartoum

At about 5pm last night, the wind picks up, and the city disappears in a cloud. Undeterred, the boys in the square beneath our apartment continue to play soccer. I head out into the storm to try to get my phone fixed.

At the repair shop, I fall into conversation with Azis, a Sudanese man who has lived for 10 years in NZ, and now works in Qatar. I ask him how he finds it being back here, and he bursts into panegyrics – ‘We have the best resources, the friendliest people, the most beautiful country. We are rich! My heart aches when I leave here!’

It is nice to meet someone so excited by this country. I hesitate to ask him about the obvious problems – there are watchers from the security office all over the place, but he brings them up himself: ‘A group of men who cannot believe their good luck to still be in power!’ I murmur nothings, surprise, interest, uncertainty. It is best not to have too strong opinions.

He tells me this wind is called ‘The Ten Days of the Shepherd’. A shepherd, concluding that winter was over (it is, despite 40˚ temperatures, winter here), sold his blanket and put out his fire. Then, a wind came – this wind – and the temperatures dropped, and for the next 10 days, he was cold.

Sure enough, today is mild – only about 30˚, and it looks like staying that way.

Image of the Sudan

I am here for some TEAR work.
Flying to Dubai feels like a real flight. People are calm, absorbed in movies or sleeping. Flying to Sudan is more like being in a bus with wings. Seating is more or less optional, business and economy class demarcations arbitrary. People wandered around the plane as though at a picnic, swapping stories, haranguing the stewards, snapping their fingers for coffee and tea. I would not have been surprised to see chickens and goats fall out of the lockers. The passenger next to me had uncontrollable flatulence, and the one behind me had restless leg syndrome. Or perhaps he was simply perverse, for he kept kicking my seat the entire flight.

We now need to wait till we get our travel permits to fly to K and N. Probably by Tuesday. In the meantime, we have mushy weekbix, English style for breakfast and instant coffee. There are lots of cockroaches, and speedy, vicious ants.

Get real, says the lady.

We are at Manning farmers markets. It is a beautiful Saturday morning, and we have stocked up on fresh vegetables, apples, cucumbers, and orange peppers. While Julie buys a coffee, the kids and I sit under a tree with our bags, enjoying the air and the movement. Because the markets are outside, many people have brought their little dogs, and in front of us two pretty mutts do the usual sniff routine. The lady who owns one of these dogs then moves on, and as she does, her small, furry dog cocks it’s leg and urinates on our eco-friendly canvas shopping bag.

‘Hey!’ I call out. ‘Your dog just peed on my bag!’

‘Ahhh. Sorry’, the lady mutters and continues on her way.

Incensed, I jump up and grab some serviettes from the coffee shop, and mop at the damp sprinkle left by this careless dog and its less-than civic-minded owner. My thoughts coalesce a bit more and I stride after the lady, and interrupt her.

‘Excuse me. But I think if I peed on your bag, you would be upset. When your dog pees on my bag, the least I think you should do is offer to get a tissue and help mop it up.’

The lady looks at me incredulously. ‘Get real! Get over it!’ She is almost, but not quite shouting.

‘That’s not a very mature response’, I return. Snappy, I know.

‘You’re the immature one!’ She does shout this time, and she is now walking away. I give it up and return to Julie, our shopping, the kids and the pee-stained bag. Julie has the coffee. She shares my outrage, as do a few stall holders who witnessed it all. We take our stuff and go and sit elsewhere.

This whole thing rankles. Apart from the illegality of exposing myself in public, how would she feel if I peed on her shopping?

The coffee is soapy and lukewarm. But the apples are delicious.

Recent article

Article about us/ Afghanistan recently published in our local newspaper. The point we were trying to make is twofold:

1. Australian is wasting a lot of money sending refugees to Pacific islands AND is looking dangerously like a racist, mean-spirited country in doing so AND probably leaves Australia open to charges of breaching international covenants to which it is a signatory. It would be far cheaper, better for the nation’s job market, generally more humane AND morally right to allow a long term (say 10 year) significant increase in refugee quota from selected countries. Grow up Australia! There are refugees in the world! Europe and America have been dealing with this reality for centuries, and are the better for it.

2. Growing up in, and living in a place like Afghanistan builds all kinds of good things into a person. A sense of mission, meaning, justice, global-mindedness, integrity between faith and life, a sense of what is important, opportunity to contribute and to care. Of course there are some security risks too. But growing up in Australia can be a real danger to a person’s moral development. And there are still security risks. Who’s to say Afghanistan is such a crazy choice of place to live?