So many days

I'm back home in England now, and that feels awfully strange. The last few days went by quite quickly, and were fairly boring really...apart from having lunch with a member of the the Afghan Royal family, he was the nephew of the last King. The problem with last days is that invariably people have to cancel on you and then there is not enough time to rearrange another meeting, which is what happened with me. Tuesday there seemed to be some kind of security issue and the internet was down for a couple of hours...for everyone, that usually means something is wrong somewhere in the world, if not within the country. I think I was also sad about leaving. When I was there, I kept talking about missing home, and now I'm back I wonder what I was talking about, sure it was nice to have some chocolate and see my sister when she picked me up from the airport...but I miss being with all my new friends, and having no heat and snuggling under 4 thick blankets and hoping to get warm. To making people laugh, to hanging out in restaurants that I have to wear about 3 layers for in order to even get in the door. To finally getting the chance to walk around the neighbourhood the day before I have to leave and meeting some of the shopkeepers. There is an ache in my heart for this country and I wonder how I managed to leave, and how soon I can get back...and yet at the same time there is a fear of how I can cope with the conflicting, contrasting, claustrophobic nature of living there.

Dinner and an outing

I can't sleep. For a number of reasons really. I had a 4 hour nap this afternoon after coming back from our trip out of the city, and so just don't feel tired. There is also a lot of noise outside with aircraft and not the civilian kind either. I got up early this morning as four of us were heading out of the city. Before we had even started however, one of the four dropped out due to potential stomach issues - you don't want to mess with that when you don't know where the next toilet will be. The remaining three of us piled into the car and headed out. It probably took us nearly an hour to get to a sign that told us we were leaving the city. Mountains towered before us and we hit the countryside. It is amazing the change in scenery and just how much greener everything looked as we left the city behind, soon we turned off the main road and head up the hills to our destination, we tried to go up the main road but they were rebuilding so we had to take the side roads which involved lots of winding bendy roads full of stones and bumps and several reversing back the way we had come in order to take a different turning. It was quite an experience. We went along to an old derelict house that used to belong to the old king and sits on top of a hill which gave us a great view, then we head to the bazaar where there was a number of shops selling pottery...something this area is famous for, and which they have only started doing again in the last few years. After doing a little shopping we headed back down to the city and lunch in a local restaurant with local people that our driver took us to. It was quite a contrast to dinner last night. Dinner last night was both interesting, comfortable and quite disconcerting. We had to dress up in our gladdest rags and finery and then cover it all up as we took the taxi over. We got there earlier than we needed to so headed downstairs to the bar area. At first it seemed like no one else was around and we got a little worried that there would be hardly anybody at dinner, but soon people started arriving and they were dressed as fancy as we were which brought no end of relief. Finally at 8pm we headed upstairs for dinner. We sat with a number of different people all with very interesting jobs and even stricter security policies in place, but somehow we had all managed to convince our security guys that we would be ok and we had all made it out. It's a strange place this town, dinner last night would not have been at all out of place in Whitehall or D.C and yet today's trip out of the city brought back the reality of what everyday people are living in. It's a strange country but one I am growing to love.

Cinderella

So, I'm going to dinner and a ball tonight. I don't know exactly what that will entail except I know I have to hand over my passport and go through about 4 locked gates before I can get in. However when coming here I didn't particularly envision going out somewhere fancy where the dress style is black tie and medals!! So today after a morning visit I went shopping. Before I talk about the shopping, let me just mention a quick something about my visit this morning. It was to someone that I had seen last time I was here and I was just catching up and seeing if anything new was happening. Turns out something new is happening, something big and deep and solid in the middle of their compound...a bunker! I was quite surprised at this because last time I was there that area was just grass and garden. It seems that they should have had a bunker in the compound for like the last 4 or 5 years, but they only just got the tools, permission, labour (I wasn't quite sure what) recently, and so now the bunker is being built. It actually looks like something out of a movie, I mean seriously. I wish I could have taken a photo, however taking photos here is pretty difficult to do, just because you don't want to get shot or something. I try and take as many as I can, but it all comes down to taking through car windows or while I'm moving in the car. Ok, back to shopping. I hate shopping. I really do. But I have nothing to wear for this evening, and I stupidly checked what the dress code was, so now I have no excuse for not knowing what to wear. Which means shopping. I was advised where to go yesterday, and given instructions on how to get into the shopping centre (which for those of you who have been to India, it's a bit like one of those kinds of shopping centre!). My driver drops me off and tells me he will wait, and so I hurry in, passing by angry police who are harassing the money exchange people. Once inside I look for the easiest, nearest dress shop that might sell my kind of dress. Considering what country I am in, they have a surprising lot of what the Americans call "prom dresses" and what we in England would call "evening dresses". I am not particularly interested in what it looks like, but more about the price, and the size, and how quickly i can purchase it. As I get to the first shop, the power in the whole building goes out. Well that makes it interesting to see. I glance at the price tags and scarper pretty quickly out of there, I'm not looking for expensive. I look up at the next floor, and as they are closer to the ceiling, there is more natural light coming in and its easier to see the dresses. I go into the shop, point at a dress that looks fairly simple, and ask if they have it in my size. He shows me the tag and we both seem to agree that it might fit, I ask if there is somewhere I can try on and he shows me this little cupboard with a lock on where I can try on this potential new dress. Suffice to say, I took off my headscarf and black abiya, but pretty much tried on the dress over the rest of my clothes, I wasn't going to think this was Marks and Spencers changing room!! It was a nice dress, it fit ok, but when I went to ask the price, it was twice what I was prepared to pay for. I said no, hoping he would lower the price, but either because he could see I was a desparate foreign woman, or because other customers had come in, he refused to budge...I walked. Now I was beginning to get desperate. I had told my driver I would only be 30 minutes, and I really wanted to stick to that. I walked into a few more stores, but they didn't have the kind of dress I wanted. Finally I found a store, and the sales guy spoke some English. He had a dress in the window that looked nice and then told me that he had one in black as well with sleeves - I preferred the idea of the black dress, but when he looked for it, he couldn't find it. So again, I went into the cupboard/changing room and tried on the dress over my clothes. It fitted - perfect! Now to the price again. It was a cheaper price then the first guy offered which was a definite bonus, now to haggle it down...however I was very aware that I hadn't taken tea (always a way to establish a relationship here) and was also in a hurry and therefore my haggling skills weren't really up to par. We finally came down to a price that was a little nearer to what I wanted to pay and a little less than he had started with. Great. Cinderella now has a dress. I wish I could take photos of this occasion this evening to show you all, it will be full of foreigners who are working here, it's a whole different life to what poses as normal life here, but unfortunately no cameras allowed. I'll try and write about it tomorrow though.

Two days catch up

I'm trying to think what to write about the last two days. They have been really busy, but just with boring stuff of visiting people really. I did get to drive through what I classify as "real Kabul" today where you can tell that very few foreigners come to. The last few days have been quite exhausting really, I have managed to meet a number of Afghans which has been amazing, most of whom speak quite good English, but I had a translator with me today who did some translating from Dari to English and back again. The funny thing was that when he came to pick me up from my guest house, both the chokidar (guard) and the cook stood disapprovingly in the gateway wondering who this new taxi driver person was, and not sure if they should let me go with him. I think they were definitely reassured when I returned safely in one piece. Tomorrow will be a whole new experience, I am going to dinner and a ball - we will see what this actually turns out to me, like any experience here in Afghanistan, what you think it may seem at first is not always how it turns out. This does mean I have to go shopping for a suitable dress, which I am assured I can get quite cheaply at the mall in Kote Sangi that has 6 floors in it. We shall see what actually happens. I am also allowed out of the city on Friday, and so there will be 4 of us foreigners piling into a car to go about an hour and a half out of the city, to get out and look around and then pile back into the car for the ride home. We are all looking forward to it, but it does mean that I have to have a security briefing sometime tomorrow before we can go. I need to get some sleep, as I slept badly last night with all the dogs outside barking at one another! Hopefully I'll sleep better tonight.

Happy birthday Sister!

The security guy said no to the visit I had planned out of the city, however it may be possible for me to get out, just not to my first choice. He is going to let me know. I am only here for a short time so in some ways it doesn't matter too much about me not being able to get out of the city. I am trying to pack everything and everyone in quite tightly in order to be able to visit with everyone. I met some journalists today. It was really interesting hearing their point of view on life here, in some ways a little jaded, in other ways still very open and positive. Tomorrow is a busy day and I get to have dinner with friends which is always a benefit. Wednesday is turning out to be a very busy day, but I think that's because it's so close to the weekend, right now Thursday I only have 2 visits in, but everyone should be back from breaks by tomorrow and so I may get more response from my emails than today. We shall see how it all works out, I know it will in the end. Today was my sister's birthday, and we actually managed a 3-way Skype conversation between her in London, me here and my mother in Suffolk - hooray for technology, connecting the family!!!! Anyway Happy Birthday little sis!

Foreigners

With Saturday being a day of getting to be with the Afghans, Sunday turned out to be the opposite. A group of us piled into a taxi and went over to the more expensive side of town and the Design Cafe. This is a place where all the foreigners and expats hang out, you can get pizza, burgers, wraps, cokes, milk shakes, steaks, chicken wings and other foreign types of food. For many it is like a haven after being in their compounds for a while. They are places that are considered safe for foreigners to congregate - although unlike the Flower Street Cafe that I visited last time I was here, there was no body checking for guns. We had quite a bumpy ride over though as they are digging up a lot of the streets in the area, and re-laying them, apparently for winter. They are also digging new drains on the side of the roads, which just consist of deep channels dug out for the water to drain in to. In the evening we went to a more local restaurant, mainly Afghans eating there, but it was about 4 of us foreigners in there. The place was called BBQ tonight and one of our party was quite excited about the idea of BBQ chicken, of course when it arrived she was surprised how unlike BBQ it looked. A reminder that she was in a foreign country provoked much laughter and a "I guess" from her. It wasn't that the food wasn't tasty, it was that it wasn't what she expected. That happens a lot to foreigners here, and I think it's probably true for most places people visit. What something is called on a menu isn't always the same thing that you would call it at home. The food sure is tasty here though! It is good to be back in Kabul and I have spent this morning trying to fill my days while I am here with meetings. Unfortunately it seems that there are prime times of the day that everyone wants, and of course I have to think about getting from one place to the next which is very much dependent on traffic. I am trying to see some different people from the last time I was here, although there are some old contacts that I am hoping to touch base with. I am also hoping to get out of the city at the weekend, and I have a meeting with my security guy after lunch to discuss if that is possible. I'm really hoping yes, because last time I was here every time I tried to get out I was stopped because of various issues. I'm just trying for a day trip this time instead of an overnight somewhere. I figure that bodes better for convincing the security guy....are they supposed to be this paranoid???

Visiting

We went out on Eid visits today visiting about 4 Afghan families.  It was very interesting to see how each of them lived, and how in some places the women and the men were in different rooms and in other places we all sat together. It was such a fun and humbling experience, I drank lots of tea and ate cookies, fruit, cake and some other things which were really tasty but I have no idea what they were.  We had to drive all over the city to see all these different places and it was fascinating to see more of Kabul.  There were lots of goat pelts around, but thankfully I didn't see any of the actual slaughtered animals.  I should feel quite exhausted because we've been on the go since 9am but I actually slept quite well last night.  Tonight for dinner we have a girls night where a whole bunch of the women are getting together for supper and a movie.  Much fun today and fascinating seeing so much of the culture!  Eid Mubarak