Download woes...

So we all know I am an avid supporter of the South African national sport of rugby. And we just so happen to be in the midst of my favorite tournament, the Tri-Nations (South Africa, New Zealand and Australia battling it out for the king of the Southern Hemisphere). Alas I have not been able to find a screening venue in Mazar, surprisingly not even the only security compliant restaurant that we frequent, which happens to be a British establishment.

Either way, whenever I am in Kabul I get to watch the games with Chris and the plethora of Aussies, Kiwis and Brits around - yet when in Mazar, I am religated to receiving regular updates via sms, as I did yesterday from a new-found Irish friend.

After a bit of research I learned that you can indeed download these games online, so I immediately signed up to download yesterday's match, fully planning to enjoy it on my computer tonight after work. I even waited until after hours to not take up any bandwidth at the office....but ALAS - turns out there is not enough bandwidth in all of Mazar to slaughter this 905MB beast....how I miss broadband. At the moment I am looking at 63 hours 21 mins and 15 seconds of download time left - heck, I'm not even sure I can keep my power on for the next 63 mins!

So much for a good idea, for all my rugby-compadres out there in South Africa, Santa Monica, New Haven, and yes - Kabul - keep the sms's coming! Go Bokke!

The man at the mosque

Shot this one evening driving home from the office. The Blue Mosque is usually abuzz with people in the gardens, children running around, and vendors selling their goods on the sidewalks.

Quick update

Just a quick note that I am back in Mazar e-Sharif. Yes, yes, I have lots to tell and I have not written in a few days. And it has been a busy few days indeed. Recent trips and meetings include a visit to Kabul University to meet with a lovely old professor of History, a visit to the National Museum of Afghanistan to discuss the Cultural Center I am planning in Mazar with the director of the museum, and a visit to the amazing Turquoise Mountain Foundation (TMI).

TMI was founded a few years ago by the award winning author of the New York Times bestseller "The Places in Between" (recently lauded as one of the ten best books of 2006) that traces the steps of his hike across Afghanistan (yes, ALL of it) in 2003. Among other things he was the summer tutor to Princes Harry and William in the 1990s, for a pretty impressive cv thanks to our friends at Wikipedia, click here. And all that to tell you that I met with him as well to discuss our cultural center, since - well, he has a very successful one!

Back to Mazar via ICRC flight, piloted this time by Captains Jan en Jaco from Pretooooooria, it was a stunning flight aboard one of my favorite planes, the King Air. I sat in the very front seat so I could get the full view of the runway as we charged down to rotate at 85-knots. Okay, I won't do a whole plane post again.

Things in Mazar are good, although it seems I was gone for three weeks, not ten days. Amazing how things can just seem to move on so quickly when one is not around. It is also about 42 degrees Celsius (haven't exactly confirmed that yet, so could be hotter) - particularly fun without air conditioning. But no worries, I have grown accustomed to the dabbing of tears in eyes due to fan blowing full-speed on face. No wonder I packed a suitcase full of moisturizers.

Alas, I have much to tell, and little time to do it now, but tomorrow I will write about my visit today to an all-girls school to watch one of our Hygiene Education Trainers in action, really cool.

Heavy load

I snapped this sequence of photographs near the big mosque in Kabul. I have long been amazed at the size of some of the loads that the Afghans carry...here you see a man helping another to his feet as he struggles to lift a heavy load of goods onto his back.

The beggar of Kabul

The car slows to a crawl at one of countless ineffective traffic circles scattered throughout Kabul. Left-indicating vehicles sporadically swerve right, while hazard-blinking vans force their way straight, all the while bicyclists risk it all for point B.

Near the yet-to-be-completed “pink” Mosque (not officially known as such, but it seems fitting since Mazar has a “blue” version), she emerges from behind a large official vehicle with tinted windows. Her dirty blue burqa outdone only by the filthy rag wrapped around her left hand. Her right hand extends in my direction. The hand is much older than she. Dirt occupies the thickened nails and prominent cracks in the skin. When last did this hand see water, or a decent meal?

Entering the campus gates of Kabul University, amazingly on time for my meeting with the good professor of History who agreed to see me on such short notice, the hand haunts me. Passing a smattering of burqas, but clearly more young women enrolled in a more modern outlook on life, I wonder about it. This hand so permanently cupped in the action of begging for survival. This hand caked in the dregs of society’s unwanted discards. This hand so randomly attached to this image, this woman, this person. Has it ever been loved, and has it ever loved someone.

This woman comes to represent not only the poor, not only the women, but much more of Afghanistan to me. I don’t even know what she looks like, but I think of her today shielded from the world, or perhaps the world shielded from her, as the beggar of Kabul continues with her day, and I have to with mine.

Where is Afghanistan?

A chuckle for the day, courtesy of my cousin in Pretoria...

THE GEOGRAPHY OF A WOMAN
1. Between 18 and 20, a woman is like Africa. Half discovered, half-wild, naturally beautiful with fertile deltas.
2. Between 21 and 30, a woman is like America. Well-developed and open to trade, especially for someone with cash.
3. Between 31 and 35, she is like India. Very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty.
4. Between 36 and 40, a woman is like France. Gently aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit.
5. Between 41 and 50, she is like Yugoslavia. Lost the war, haunted by past mistakes. Massive reconstruction is now necessary.
6. Between 51 and 60, she is like Russia, Very wide and borders are un-patrolled. The frigid climate keeps people away.
7. Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Mongolia. A glorious and all conquering past but alas, no future.
8. After 70, they become like Afghanistan. Everyone knows where it is, but no one wants to go there.

Project updates

Take a look at our reporting department's blog for some recent news and updates of our projects in Afghanistan. I hope you enjoy reading about these, and if you have any questions, let me know. You can access the blog here.

Moving on

After an exhausting week complete with run-ins with unprofessional funeral planners and family I have never met, I am in Dubai on my way back to Kabul in a few hours. The funeral was really nice, as far as funerals go. We kept it very personal, family members spoke and my sister and I sang my grandfather's favorite song Kinders van die Wind (Children of the Wind) by legendary Afrikaans songwriter Koos du Plessis (pretty much the Afrikaans version of Bob Dylan).

On top of the funeral Thursday, I spent all day Friday moving my grandmother into the Alzheimer's unit at her nursing home. A devastating thing to see. It took me about two hours of reading to her from ma Bible study guide to calm her down enough for me to try and leave to pack.

Saturday saw me relaxing for the first time this week when I joined my father at the rugby match between the South African Sprinboks and the island nation of Samoa at Ellispark Stadium in Johannesburg. Not the best piece of rugby ever played, but spending those few hours not worrying about anything and relaxing with my father was really worth it. We sat in a private box of one of his contractors and spent the first twenty minutes trying to locate my mother and my aunt's family in the stands on the opposite side of the field via text messages. South Africa won the game comfortably 35-8.

Of Dubai, I am still not a fan. After touch-down at 0530 yesterday morning, I grabbed a taxi around 0600 and headed straight to the UN Humanitarian City to pick up my visa letter that was hand carried from Kabul, and then went looking for the Afghan Consulate, which took us an hour and a half. On the drive over there I was once again appalled at the conditions that south Asians work in here in Dubai. They are bussed to the hundreds of construction sites around the city in old dilapidated buses, leaning their heads against the bars for a few minutes of shut-eye. I saw dozens of these buses with hundreds of passport-less workers who form part of modern slavery, powerlessly building this surreal playground of the middle East.

One last espresso and off to Terminal 2, the Terminal of Doom at Dubai International where aid workers and PSDs linger to board flights to places like Kabul, Baghdad and Khartoum. Back to reality.

Peaceful parting

My Oupa decided to leave us on a wintry Sunday afternoon as the sun set prematurely over the thorny trees of Pretoria east. At 1640, six hours after I touched down from Kabul, he went peacefully and without fanfare, as he lived his eighty-six years here on earth. Present was his oldest son, my dad - and his oldest grandchild, myself. In true fashion he waited until we were discussing the engineering specifications of the latrines we are constructing in the returnee camps in Afghanistan. He is after all, an eternal engineer, like both his sons.

Some think he waited for me to arrive. I believe he waited for the right moment. I will arguably never be able to cork a great red wine without thinking of him for an instant, for he taught us all. I will cherish this moment, and his presence at the head of our family Sunday supper table, for ever, and will miss him deeply.

Tata Oupa.

How much for a moment of silence?

I agree, I have a pretty great job, an incredible experience, and a wonderful opportunity. Again. And yes, it is wonderful, I love it. I love even the parts I don't love because it makes me stronger and builds my character and teaches me tolerance. Yet some things you can never get over. Particularly all things family.

If I have to count the anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, disappointments and accomplishments that I have missed in the past few years while pursuing my dream of working in post-conflict zones, I will invariably crack with guilt. And so it is today.

At a barbeque of a UN friend in Kabul yesterday I struggle with the string on my purse to adhere to the screaming mobile phone. I miss it. Damnit. The number is that of my sister's South African' cell. I instantly know what this means. Oupa.

I frantically text her from Chris's phone (mine cannot send or receive international texts at this time) to call me again - which she does. The news is not good. Oupa (my 86-year old grandfather) who has been in intensive care, has acute pneumonia and his heart is giving in. The doctor has ordered all meds and feeding to be halted. It is, I am told over the crackling line to Kabul, a mere matter of time.

A colleague has called for a car. We join him back to the residence. At the guesthouse I flash between emirates.com and my mobile to get hold of my country director for clearance for the emergency leave before she herself leaves on R&R the next day. Of course it is all cleared. We call in a favor with Chris’ UN travel ops guy, who's brother happens to be one of my most competent base managers in the northwest.

An hour later I have the last emergency seat on the UN Humanitarian Air Services (UNHAS) flight from Kabul to Dubai, with a connecting direct flight on Emirates from Dubai to Johannesburg. And so I find myself at Dubai airport at 2230 tonight. After some emergency shopping for family-guilt reasons, I booked in to the lounge. I could have had a hotel room, but I prefer being here - somehow I feel closer to home texting my father from an airport lounge for updates, than peacefully slumbering in a hotel room somewhere in this fake and painfully oppressive city.

The reality of my life is all around me. On the news the Arabic announcer goes between Iraqi militias and Lebanese military planes bombing refugee camps in the north of that country. My table-mate comments on my Afghanistan book and wants to know if I have "been there” informing that he has “been to over a 100 countries but not Afghanistan", I write my email down. He will not write, but thinks I'm interesting.

I think of Oupa. I drink wine. He is a wine collector. I think of him filling his seat at the head of the table as recently as March. What happened. How different things will be, can we recover? Of course we can, people do it every day. Yet not today. Today we mourn.

These are the times when I question the wisdom of my life. When missing events and opportunities. Would I have done it differently. After all, it is always coming. But tonight, shielded from this reality by my iPod and my wifi, surrounded by suits and underpaid South Asians mopping the parque floor, I wonder. Is the price sometimes too high. Will I see him tomorrow? Or will I not. I work with pain for a living, but it is not my own. Sometimes I unintentionally think or believe that it is, but in the end, it belongs to somebody else. But this, my Oupa, is my pain.

Five hours 'till boarding.