Phil Sparrow’s Afghanistan.

For those of you who missed the interview last night – here it is. I think I advertised the time wrongly, so big eggs to me.

http://db.tt/42IdYFJX

 

Answer to Steven.

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.

Shameless self-promotion, but about an important issue

There is a heated, polarised and not very humane debate going on in Australia at present about how to deal with refugees, arriving by boat to Australian territories. I wrote about this in ‘From under a leaky roof’ (taken from the Afghan proverb, ‘He ran out from under a leaky roof and found himself in the rain’), published back in 2005. But the issues are still pertinent, and while the Howard Government at the time congratulated itself on locking up refugees and treating them as criminals, essentially, and outsourcing their accommodation to poor Pacific islands like Nauru and Manus, I closed the book by saying, something along the lines of, ‘this problem has not been resolved. Refugees will seek asylum in Australia again; this is but a hiatus in an issue that will grow in magnitude and intensity around the world, as people seek better lives for themselves. When it happens next, will we have learned anything?’

Well, it seems not, as the Labor Government is following, or was following, identical trajectories to the Liberal Government it so roundly chastised. Anyway, I wrote a book, and its all about this very issue, so go out and buy a copy, peoples!

And in case you don’t trust my judgement, here’s what the critics said:

Still heading roughly forwards, mainly, mostly

Shocked and sad and grieving the death of the Eye Camp team, some of whom were friends and colleagues. Disrupted too, at a practical level, as we are meant to leave in less than a week. But we are still, mostly, mainly, heading back to Afghanistan. It just seems that the journey is never straightforward.

The fourth time

The first time you go to Afghanistan, people think you are crazy.

The second time, they consider you heroic.

The third time, you are disciplined and committed

The fourth time, it confirms that you are, in fact, crazy.

Interesting the process of getting ready to go back. I tried to explain it in the last post: it is about a relationship we have formed, or that has formed around us. We can abandon that, but it would be like abandoning a child.

Does anyone understand that? I suppose parents understand loving a child, but I suspect most people we know find it hard to understand that we have come to love Afghanistan in that way. No matter. As I said, I am not really out to convince anyone. In the early times, yes, I was truly evangelistic for Afghanistan. Lots of compelling words and energy for not much result: I spoke with passion to any one, any group, any place who asked. Conferences, camps, Rotary clubs, radio. It earned us lots of warmth and praise, but I started to feel like I was television for people: entertainment, not engagement. And no one joined in, anyway.

Now, my response is less elaborate: If you like what we are doing in Afghanistan, join us. If you can’t join us, give us money to do the work. And if you are a person of faith, pray for the country, for us, for peace. If you can’t or won’t do any of these things, then don’t let yourself off the hook with gushing sentiments. We don’t want praise, we want company.

No surprise: Afghanistan. Again.

It should come as no surprise that we are thinking about heading back to Afghanistan. What else have we done these last 11 years, but be in and out of Afghanistan? It has come to define us in ways I first never believed in, then rejected, then resisted, and now, slowly, am beginning to accept.

I was talking today to the inestimable Greg Miller, and over a fine piece of woodwork, he asked if in returning, we hoped to make a difference. The fluidity of my response surprised me, but I think it was true. I said that no, I didnt think we would make much difference. Being in Afghanistan was no longer about making a difference. It was about a relationship.

Going back to Afghanistan, is for me, a bit like knowing that you have to visit that crazed, distant uncle of yours, the one in the hospital. The visit won’t be much fun, you certainly won’t change him, and he will probably forget you soon after you have left. Maybe even while you are still there. But you visit him anyway. Because of the relationship: you are honoring the relationship.

In this case, I am honoring the relationship that has formed between us and Afghanistan; the one I never believed would come to be so inescapable.

We might achieve something positive. We might not. Change, in those terms, is not really that important to me any more. Those who seek to impose change – ideologues – become, invariably, tyrants, cynics, morons, or dead – spiritually, if not literally. Not that I have ever been afraid dying for what I believed in. But an ideologically driven death in Afghanistan is still a death, and Afghanistan has had countless ideological deaths. Suicide bombers are dying ideologically every day, and being a great source of inspiration to others. Afghanistan is not a Martin Luther King-type place. And there are countless aid morons, who move relentlessly from one place to the next, being ‘rewarded by the work’, ‘making a difference’, ‘seeing small changes’, etc etc. It is mostly because such aid workers are a] fulfilling their own need to be needed and b] because they never stick around long enough to see what really happens, that they can persist in such self-important fictions. [more on this another time – I know of the importance of disaster work and emergency teams; I resile more against development whoring, as Ridwan disparagingly described himself as doing..].

No, ideology is not what brings us back to Afghanistan. Love does, I suppose. I don’t feel particularly happy about another move. Moving our kids – three now, our momentum, our energies. But that is where we are called. And in following that call there is rightness. We are exiles here, anyway.

An Afghan story

A few days ago, I got a phone call from Alberto at the Red Cross Orthopaedic Centre here. Alberto has been in Afghanistan about 12 or more years. I think he is Italian. I have never met him that I recall, but I am told he is serious about his work.  I would imagine that he has seen alot of things change, and a lot of things hardly change at all.

Alberto wanted to refer to us a girl and her mother. The mother is paralysed and wheelchair bound. The girl is about 17 or so. She is studying in the 10th grade at a school here. Her father died when she was 2 months old, killed in the fighting. The mother is cared for 100% by the girl, who I suppose leaves her each day as she goes to class. They survive on Red Cross assistance and zakat, the Islamic requirement to give alms to the poor. They presently live in a room at the mother’s brother’s house. His patience and tolerance are wearing thin.

Alberto called me because the girl is getting increasingly frequent, serious death threats. He didn’t know what it was about, but he considered it beyond his remit. He has been trying to assist the mother with her degenerative paralysis; death threats are not his area.

I asked our program manager to go see the girl.  When Karima returned, she filled in the gaps. She told me that the girl’s other uncle – her dead father’s brother – wants the girl to get married to a man of his choosing – possibly to settle some debt, or seal some bargain. She refuses. So he threatens to kidnap and forcibly marry her, or kill her. He lives somewhere in Western Pakistan: it is not like we can go and visit him.

I heard the story and felt what I have so often felt here: this sense of hopelessness, this inability to change what is wrong, to help people with their ordinary sorrows and griefs.

We talked some more, and then I wondered aloud to Karima how they had arrived at the Red Cross centre from C District, which is a long way away. I wasn’t really questioning the integrity of the story, though I do often hear great fictions here. Red Cross assessments are thorough and reliable. It was more an idle wondering as to how this girl and her mother got around. You can’t push someone in a wheelchair through the streets here.

In response, Karima told me that the mother is so frail and thin, that the girl, in order to move her about, simply lifts her in to a taxi. They leave the wheelchair at home. On arrival to their destination, the girl carries her mother again, till a chair can be found. This Karima had seen with her own eyes.

I thanked Karima and told her to leave it with me. After several hours work on other things, the only thing I could think of doing was giving the girl and her mother some money. There is a fund here, which many of the expats contribute to, for times such as this. We just put money in every now and again, and then when something arises, we can apply for a few hundred dollars. Sometimes it buys food, sometimes rent, sometimes  medicines. Sometimes it is abused, and sometimes misspent. But sometimes, a few hundred dollars at the right time, while not solving everything, can help a great deal.

I asked Rachel for some money from the fund, and after a few more phone calls, we had secured it.

So today Karima went and got the girl, and after some more talking, gave her the money. We know there is no solution to the danger of her being kidnapped, or forced into marriage, or being killed. I know well that it is no long term solution. But some money towards rent might help the uncle remain sympathetic towards the girl and her mother – his sister. Maybe it might also buy some things to get them through the winter.

We talked about it afterwards. We will stay in touch with them. If the threats remain just threats, then in a year or two, the girl may find a job, or get married. Meanwhile, it is just an Afghan story:  common, intractable and sad, and there is not much that can be done.

Migrating, leaving, goodbyes.

We are off for several weeks. To Africa. Needing a break, we are also taking the time to do some reflecting on our lives here, and to try to make some decisions.

The last time we did this was in August 2001, in the context of the Taliban’s increasingly onerous edicts, then enlarging to encompass foreigners in their dictation of how reality should look. We took time out to go to China, visit family, and think things through. While we were there, the Shelter Now workers were imprisoned. We read about it in Ning Bao, Southern China. Shortly after that, the agency we worked with was kicked out of Afghanistan, and all the expat workers given 48 hours to leave the country, or be imprisoned. The head of the organisation was summoned before a junior staffer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ‘You are the head of nothing. Your organisation no longer exists’, he was told. **

We had come back to Pakistan, and I had just negotiated a return to Mazar, when this went down. We watched, mutely, from Peshawar, as our staff arrived by plane and by vehicle, carried their small evac bags. Nothing was ever recovered from our home and life there, and it still hurts.

While we tried to work out the future of our organisation from the logistics office base in Peshawar, September rolled around. We were in a meeting, downstairs, when a worried colleague called us to the TV, and we watched as the Twin Towers fell.

We were evacuated to Australia a few days later, still with only what we had taken on holiday. A whole life, truncated. I have often wondered what different futures we might have had.

 

It has crossed my mind several times that such a scenario could easily be repeated. Partly that is why we live with a light footprint here: all it takes is one evacuation and the ensuing loss, to know forever that we are just visitors, and that we might be out of here at a moments notice.

So I am packing things up, mentally saying good bye. If we come back again, great. But I will not be robbed of the chance to leave properly again. 

 

** in a strange turn, it is the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that junior staffer who no longer exist. Our agency was the first NGO invited back by the new Government of Afghanistan in 2002, and has the registration number 001.

Jesus drove the Humvees

Years ago now, centuries ago, worlds ago, in 2001, eight workers with SNI, (a fairly evangelistic organisation here in Afghanistan –  which also did very good shelter work), were arrested by the Taliban. They were imprisoned. A week or so after that, all the other Christian/ faith-based organisations were kicked out of Afghanistan. A week or so after that, was 9-11.

I know that there are a few people who read this blog who are people of faith, and others who probably aren’t, but what I guess that all 10 of you have worked out that I am a person with a sort of faith (albeit a fairly uncertain, muddy, what-is-going-on-here? kind). I expect that you all know as well, that many of the excellent NGOs around the world were started by persons of faith. The Red Cross. OXFAM. CAA (now OXFAM in Australia). Christian Aid. CRS. Mercy Corps. And so on. They didnt start these NGOs because they wanted the beneficiaries to think or believe or act like they did, but because they believed that humanity had intrinsic, inherent value. They were humanitarians. 

My point is that not all Christians, or followers of Christ (as I prefer to call myself) are interested in religious tyranny or building theocracies. Some of us are here out of a commitment to take Jesus seriously, when he tells the folk around him to speak up for the voiceless and work with the powerless. To live like human life, everywhere, mattered. (Of course, faith based aid workers have never had a monopoly on doing good, and they have sometime had a strong suit in the doing-bad section too).

But, the agency I worked with in 2001 was an agency which took Jesus seriously, in the same kind of way.Life mattered, regardless of the individual’s persuasions. Anyone who wanted to evangelise took their business elsewhere, and that was ok too, though some of us were still uneasy. We just didnt share their assumptions. As it turned out, some of the SNI people imprisoned by the Taliban had been with my agency, but left, in order to be more free to ‘do the Lord’s work’.

Well, late August 2001, and we all got kicked out. All the agencies that looked, sounded or smelt Christian. We lost millions of dollars of plant and property. Projects were shut down, doors slammed shut, bags grabbed, as we were all given 72 hours to leave the country. Our Afghan staff went into hiding and were scattered to Iran, Pakistan, as the Taliban came hunting them, simply for working for us. We personally lost our entire home and contents, and a lot of irreplaceable stuff that we never got back and it has hurt ever since. Friendships I had made never recovered. It was a hard, pointless time.   

Sometime after the US invasion, the SNI workers were rescued. No doubt, they had had a bad time too. It can’t have been fun. But – they went home. And then, they became celebrities. Some of them met President Bush, some met our Prime Minister (I would have taken the opportunity to strike the man). They wrote books, they spoke at hundreds of conferences, some of them were paid tens of thousands of dollars for exclusive scoops. Two of them released an album. They were real celebrities. They survived the most evil people on the planet, the Taliban.

We survived them too, and meanwhile, we slowly went back to Afghanistan and picked up the pieces. We – the workers of my old agency, and others – paid a high price for their evangelistic enthusiasm. We, and countless other national and international staff. It took me years to regain my confidence. It was horrible and the smiling blitheness with which some people refer to that time as ‘God’s plan’ for this country makes my eyes smart with tears, and my gut recoil.

But as a result of that assumption, that it was Jesus driving the Humvees, there are here today, many people who continue to claim that it is God’s time for Afghanistan, that it is a harvest time. These people tend to work with agencies that are known world-wide for crusading evangelism, and as a result, these agencies have different names which they work under in Afghanistan. Some of their workers come here for short times only. But some are here for years, and have a fantastic commitment, to culture, to language and to service. Some of them do reasonable development and health projects. And they are nice people.  They also teach the Scriptures, pray in public, and win converts. (Interestingly, such agencies also often have pretty strong ties to the military. They take military funding. They use military resources. They get together for special national days and eat lunch together.) 

But this country is not a liberal democracy. This week, a 23yr old journalist had his death sentence commited to only 20 yrs imprisonment for  ‘blaspheming the Prophet’. Apparently. His actual crime? Sparking debate about the role of women in Islam, using downloaded resources. This is not an untraumatised country, where ordinary people have the chance to learn to tolerate and protect minorities, promote diversity and allow dissent.  It is an emotionally traumatised place, where fear, intimidation, bigotry and superstition still dominate. This country is not a pluralist society. Last year a bunch of South Koreans came here, believing it was God’s time, and several of them were killed. It is not liberal nor democratic, it is not free from trauma, and it is not pluralist, and someone will pay a high price for those who think so. We paid a high price in 2001, and yesterday, Gail paid the highest price. For her own actions, or the actions of others, I am not sure. But in this country, in these years, someone is always paying a high price for other people’s evangelistic fervour, ideological zeal and mistaken assumptions.

Security, insecurity.

I met up with an old friend today at the Security meeting. He was with us in Mazar back in 2003. He is a rough Australian, an ex soldier, and fond of expletives. He has been the security officer for a big NGO here in Kabul for the last few years, and now on Thursday is going home. ‘Tired, stressed, frightened’ were his words. Though they were prefixed with other, ‘colour’ words.

 

As alert readers will know, in early August we travelled to Cambodia for a week of meetings with the Hagar International Board and staff. Phnom Penh, much like our first visit, we found to be restful and renewing: green, cool, cheap, wonderful. We took in the bookstores, a ride on the river, the quiet and the peace. This was followed by several days leave in Bangkok. In Thailand and Cambodia Julie and I both felt very tangibly the freedom of not having to constantly monitor security issues. It was freeing at a very deep level, and it has given me some pause to think about how in only a short time – 3 months that we have been back here – that the tension of insecurity has embedded itself in my psyche.

 

In Kabul we need to consider security all the time. Even if it is in the background, it never goes away: being frisked on entering banks and offices, shut and gated roads, the sounds of explosions, helicopters overhead, armed guards, watchtowers, guns on the streets, troops, scanning for car bombs, high risk areas, places to avoid, security alerts via email (3- 10 a day). It is wearying. In Taliban times, there was a front line and we knew where the danger was. And in 2003-05 when we were here, insecurity was largely limited to Kabul and the south. So we are finding ourselves in place that is familiar, but with new and difficult dynamics to consider. We need to work out strategies to cope with this. 

 

The best way so far seems to take short breaks from here every so often. However this is expensive and can be quite disruptive. It is disturbing too, that within only days of being back here from an excellent break, the tensions of insecurity can so quickly make themselves felt. Out on the Jalabad Road today, the scene of many carbombs and targetted attacks, I felt this nervous twisting in my gut every time a military convoy went past. I’d like to think God offers some protection to those who follow him, but the evidence is ambiguous. 

 

 

A present for Jalil: Staying in Afghanistan part III

On Monday, I needed to go back into the crazy part of Kabul for a few things, so being the diplomat, I decided to drop in on Jalil and take him a present of a few files. I bought some on the way, and without too much difficulty parked in the Ministry of Economy grounds and went upstairs. (Now I know this may look like a bribe. And in a sense, you could describe it like that. Or you could call it an expression of thanks that he helped me with a file of his own when he didn’t have to. And that I was providing him with a spare file for the next person who came along in my position. Obligation, thanks, hospitality and reciprocity are perceived and enacted differently here. Julie and I once admired a carpet in someones guest room, and the next day he gave it to us. In relative value, it was probably worth about $2000 to him…)

I climbed the stairs to the third floor and with some trepidation, knocked on the door, and went in (you never wait to be called in in Afghanistan, you just knock on enter). Jalil was crouched (still) but behind a different desk. He welcomed me warmly and clucked as he took the files. We used one to put my documentation in, which, I noticed with chagrin, was lying precisely where it was left last week: on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, gathering dust. It clearly had not moved.

As casually as I could, I asked about when the High Commission For Approving New NGOs might meet and a crafty look crossed Jalil’s face. ‘Soon, soon’, he replied. ‘Maybe even this week’. A newcomer to Afghanistan would go away encouraged by this exchange, but I know better than to be encouraged so easily. ‘Maybe this week’ is shorthand for, ‘I have no idea. It’s not really my business. I have no control over it, and no interest in it. In fact, I don’t really know what you are talking about.’ I nodded to Jalil, feigning gratitude, and murmured ‘Good, good. That is very reasonable.’

Jalil and I chatted for a while longer, though he soon started using incredibly complicated Farsi which I was troubled to fully understand. I thought of telling him to eschew obfuscation and extraneous prolixity, but I couldnt think of the words in Farsi. No doubt he could have.

After a few more minutes I took my leave, and left Jalil to crouch again. I will call him on Thursday. Just to make sure my file is still where I left it.

This moment in time…

 

From 2000:

A short break in Peshawar.

It is certainly time I had a break. Its Thursday; I came out from Mazar yesterday. As I was waiting at the airport, some young Talibs came up.

’Do you speak Pashto?’ – they asked, in Pashto.

‘No’.

‘Why not?’ – in Pashto.

Me, in Farsi: ‘Because I speak Farsi. I haven’t learnt much Pashto yet. Maybe next year.’

‘Your beard should be longer.’

‘It’s not the rule in my country.’

‘It should be longer. Longer is better.’

 

I turned away.

«

 

I arrived in Peshawar about 1.30ish and walked down to the Guesthouse. Peshawar felt hot and slimy. Within minutes of leaving the Red Cross’s soothing, air-conditioned van I was struggling with my bags and Sabina’s box of books that I had agreed to bring out, I was limp with sweat and a comment from the guard at the American club had resulted in me calling him something unrepeatable.

 

Made it to the Guesthouse without further social infringements and found Julie to be out. Nonplussed, I ate lunch, read the paper, sat under the fan. 2.30pm Julie showed up and we were able to share a sweaty hug and then heaps of mail. Some new people coming on the team – Bern and his wife Verity, who is one of 17 children. They themselves have three already, 2 ½, 1 ½ and 6 months. ‘How many children will you have?’, Julie asked. ‘We’ll let God decide that’, Verity smiled contently.

 

Julie and I went out to the Pearl Continental that night for dinner. It being five star, we thought we might get the chance of a beer. Sure enough, we asked at the Taipan restaurant, where we planned on eating, if there was alcohol. Yes, came the speedy reply. Reassured, we sat down and I asked for the wine menu.

‘You must go up to the bar for alcohol.’

‘Oh. Right. Can’t get it here?’

‘No, in the bar.’

‘Can we get it there and bring it down?’

‘No, but you can take your dinner up. Or we can bring it up. Or you can have a drink then come down. Actually it would be better if you ate up there, as we are full tonight.’

‘Well, we’ll go up and see.’

 

We went up to the fifth floor and found the bar, which looked nice enough and had a few bottles of whiskey on the shelves. ‘What have you got’, I asked, leaning happily on the rail.

‘Whiskey!’

‘Great, what else?’

‘Nothing else sir, just there is whiskey.’

‘What, nothing else? What’s in all the cupboards?’

‘Nothing sir, just you have whiskey.’

‘Ahhh.’

 

A pause.

‘How much is a glass?’ Could I go a glass of whiskey? How keen was I?

‘Not by glass. Just you buy the bottle.’

‘What, the whole bottle?’

‘Yes.’

 

Another pause.

‘How much is a bottle?’, I asked, speculative and increasingly incredulous.

‘500 rupees.’

‘Ahhh. Thankyou, you have been most kind.’

 

We went downstairs and sat down again in the Taipan restaurant, much to the discouragement of the waiters and had some very nice chicken and beef dishes, washed down with a cleansing lemon juice. Meanwhile, at the packed tables next to us, a tour group of Japanese drank themselves silly on non-alcoholic beer.

Enormously funny

I just wrote an enormously funny post titled ‘Kabul Grossness part 2’, which involved witty, erudite comments and observations on the necessity in this country of frequent nosepicking, a regime which, if not maintained , over the course of a normal day, brought about by the dust and dryness, permits the rapid, continual and steady formation of nasal stalactites of cement-like material. Complete with references to myself (both droll and self-deprecating), and my children (tender and respectful), who can multi-task nosepicking with ordinary conversation, reading books, writing and other activities, this post was destined to draw appreciative comments from around the world.

But stupid Microsoft Word crashed and the nosepicking post was lost forever…

The Colours of Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back. Back in Afghanistan. Back in Mazar-i-Sharif. Back in the winter’s adhesive mud and bitter cold. Shivering showering in a bucket. Stinky, sooty diesel heaters that… no, no wait, that was 2003.

We are back in Afghanistan though. And we are showering in a bucket. But, it is great to be back, and we feel strangely happy. It probably seems hard to understand why we keep coming back to this place: you may have to come and visit to experience the particular beauty of this country and the pull it exerts on your heart.

We arrived in Kabul last Friday – a week ago. It was a long flight via Singapore and Delhi, but comfortable. On arriving in Kabul, we were pleased to find all our bags had come with us and not ended up in Bogota. Then began the long ridiculous trek from the airport to the carpark: because of security, cars are not permitted closer than a kilometre to the airport, thus ensuring a brisk trade for porters and an annoying end to the journey. While we were locating our transport, a fight ensued between two porters, which was resolved by a policeman wading in and swinging his fist; unfortunately on his backstroke he biffed our daughter in the face. Welcome to Afghanistan.

After a few days in a guesthouse, we flew in a tiny plane up to Lal wa Sarjangal, in central Hazarajat. This part of Afghanistan is easily the poorest and most marginal in a poor and marginal country. The town, Lal is a street with mud houses scattered either side, a scrounge of stray, violent dogs and a river. Onions and flat Afghan bread are generally available, as is tea, second hand clothes and a smattering of other goods – soap, rope, broken motorcycles and oil cans, tyres and shovels. My colleague here, Andy, needed a key cut – a modern type key that you would typically use for a door or padlock. He asked his Afghan co-worker where he could get another cut here, and the co-worker laughed, as though he’d been asked where the local gym and day-spa was. ‘You can’t do that here! No, no, no! you have to get that done in Kabul.’

Andy then produced another key, an old-fashioned one, the sort your grandmother used to lock her wardrobe with. Here, these keys are still in common use and are cast in cheap metal and then filed to shape. It is iron-age technology. ‘What about this key?’, Andy asked tremulously. ‘Ha! No! No, that you must also get done in Kabul. Here is it impossible. Send it on the plane that comes next week. In a few weeks he will bring you a new one.’

Such is life in Lal. We travelled out to a village last week, as part of the assessment Julie and I have been asked to do. This village is 40km away, and it took us two hours to get there. Andy was wearing a pedometer, wanting to know how far we walked around the village, but before we even got out of the car, it registered 5.2km in bumps travelled.

But our children are happy. Our son in fact told us he wants to buy the house we are staying in and live here when he is married. It is unlikely that even by then (he is 4), there will be running water or electricity: presently, we pump water by hand from the well and cart it to the house. A fair part of each day is simply spent filling buckets. But it is comfortable and clean and warm, unlike the homes of people we have seen in the villages. It is difficult to imagine how life in some of these villages goes on. It is something like -30 in the winter, and the ground so unyielding that only potatoes and onions might grow. The diet here, day in, day out, year in, year out, is bread and tea. People count themselves lucky to have a spud: meat and fruit are luxuries in the same way that a ride in a limousine might be in Australia. No, not a limousine. That is attainable for most people, and probably not novel. A ride in a private jet, is a better metaphor.

Poverty and peace. It is interesting: those parts of the country that are in some ways wealthiest from poppy crops, are also attracting the greatest donor interest, in an effort to stem opium and replace it with legitimate, ‘friendly’ crops. Peaceful areas, like Lal, on not on anyone’s radar screen for investment or reconstruction.

 

A look at a latrine

I’ve been up in the Panjshir, evaluating an aid project. Latrines, water supply and health promotion training.

I do wonder what the Afghans made of it. A group of men, wandering around their village. One of them bangs on the door of a yard and calls out that we want to look at their toilet (imagine the converse: you are sitting at home, and a group of Afghans bang on the door and call out they want to see your bathroom).

A small boy is deputised to run around the yard and hustle any women inside so the strange men (and I mean strange in several ways) won’t see them. We are then permitted entrance. My Afghan colleagues demure, but I am here to evaluate whether this significant sum of money has been well spent or not, so I stride over to the newly built latrine and switch aside the sacking that acts as a door and disappear inside. All that can be heard now is me taking a long deep sniff.

Some latrines barely smell at all, and they are clean. Fresh almost. That could be a sign of a well used, well built, properly ventilated latrine. A tick for the book. Or it could be a sign that the latrine is not used at all. Sometimes it’s not so hard to tell: I have discovered latrines used as storerooms, as chicken pens, as dog houses. One had a 500 pound bomb sat upright it in. Well, the answer there is obvious. But clean empty latrines?

So, undeterred, I exit and walk around to the back, where the cover is, where the dried crap is meant to be dug out and spread on the fields for fertiliser. It is no fun, examining a large pile of someone else’s poo. But it is a good way to tell if a latrine is being used or not. Except if the little chamber is dark. It can be hard to see then. The answer to that is the squat down and look deep inside, trying to assess the freshness of a pile of drying shit (something I have done in many meetings in countless boardrooms). If I was really keen, I would have brought a torch.

I am not that keen. I do not want to look like someone really freaky.

Meanwhile, the Afghans, both my colleagues and the local people look away embarrassed, or stare incredulously, or make small talk. ‘Where is he from? Ahh, Australia. That is a good country. Hmm, yes, a very good country.’ It would be easier if I didn’t speak the language, then I could be referred to obliquely, through a third party. But I force them to get involved, I turn to them, ask, ‘who uses this latrine? Who? You? Your family? All of them? Do you empty it? When did you last empty it? What do you use the stuff for?’   I am hard to ignore.

Anyway, I get the information I want, and we move on to another site. I have a phrase for all this in my mind, which makes it easier to hold together. DOA. Directly Observed Assessment. You want to know if an aid project has made any difference, you need to get close to it. Smell it. See it. Be ruthless with it. Most people who deliver aid want it to have all worked as intended. They want to know their efforts have been useful and valuable. They don’t want it to have failed, and they generally don’t want you to discover too many failings. But good aid is not about making people happy.