Notes from Stephen, Wan, Kweilin, and Li

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Birthday party at a family's house in Kabul

From Kweilin:

Last night we went to Sherdil's for his birthday party.  It was fun because we went to an average Kabuli family's house.  There were 18 people in the house, but only two of them were men-- one father and one son.  The other 16 were women or children and didn't work.  They had one 75-foot well that they used to get water up everyday.  Just pulling up one bucket all that way left us huffing and puffing.  And they have to wash themselves, wash dishes, wash clothes, and do everything else with that water!  Twice a week (at random times-- they're never sure when it will be) they get city water, and even that just started a week ago.  They were pretty happy about that.  Also, once a week they get electricity (that also happened within the past two weeks), but otherwise they use a weak generator for their lights and other things. 

We visited their kitchen which was TINY.  There was a clay oven in the ground to cook bread, but other than that, there was just a propane tank with a metal thing that allows you to put a pot on top of it and a bunch of plastic and tin buckets and containers.  I can't imagine how they cook enough food for 18 people in that kitchen! 

Their rent recently was raised from 4,000 afghani to 8,000.  These drastic rent increases are primarily because so many NGOs are in the area and are paying exorbitant prices for houses and everything else.  "Soon," the son of the family said, "Kabul will be NGO city and everybody else will have moved out because they can't afford it."  We asked if any of the women worked and they smiled shyly and (through an interpreter) said "no."  When we asked if they would work if they were offered a job and if their rent went up so much that they needed more money in the family, they said "no" again.  It was clear that the question itself was embarrassing and to work would be a clear sign of shame for the family.  All of the women (around eight of them and the rest were children) wear burkas whenever they go out and see out of the small net for their eyes.  Even if their husband didn't want them to, they said, they would wear it.  ! Otherwise they might bring shame on their family if they looked at somebody the wrong way, etc.  Whenever they go out (even to go shopping for groceries to cook later on), they have to by LAW ask for permission.  All of them seemed quite content with the situation-- primarily because they have never seen or heard of doing things a different way.  It was a really eye-opening experience to meet them, and I'm really glad we did.  We asked a few of the women if they knew their husbands before they got married, and they said that the first time they laid eyes on him was at their engagement party.  Luckily their husbands were all pretty good looking.  I've heard of instances, though, where the bride is pretty disappointed with the fiance at the engagement party and she just needs to get used to it and be happy with him.  When we asked: "Do you like your husband / fiance?" they looked away shyly and somebody explained to us that they cannot answe! r a question like that.  It would be shameful to appear to like o r lust after somebody-- even your own fiance or husband.  In fact, at both engagement parties and at weddings (which are big affairs if the families can afford it), both sides are supposed to look sad or afraid even if they are really happy about the match.  Otherwise, to appear like they really like and want the other person would be shameful.  It was definitely a different world.

posted by Li at 12:37 AM (0) comments

 

Mr. M

From Kweilin:

   We got home around 4:00 p.m. and talked with some interesting MSH
   people.  One of the Afghans that Daddy works closely with came to
   visit.  His name is Mr. M (I forgot his full name).  He is Muslim and
   had a really interesting story.  He is the first one in his family to
   go to university and now he has an MSH job ....  He is in
   business with his brothers who sell colorful cloth and other women's
   items in three different shops in Peshawar, Pakistan and Herat and
   Kabul, Afghanistan.  He is obviously quite well off, but when he gets
   his pay check, it goes directly into the three brothers' family fund.
   He can spend whenever he needs to (i.e. if he is paying his child's
   school bill, it will come from his account).  At the end of the year,
   they tally who gets how much of their one-third share.  If they have
   spent more during the year on differen! t purchases, they will get
   less at the end of the year when the business shares are settled.  We
   asked him whether there was any suspicion or anything of other
   brothers, and he said: "No.  Because Islam teaches that whether or not
   somebody knows, you should never take something that doesn't belong to
   you.  Allah will always see."  He is a really honest guy, because he's
   worked for the UN and other places like MSH a lot, and there have been
   rampant opportunities to take money for his own personal use.  He's
   always refused.
   He also told us that he folllows the Islamic teaching that you should
   donate 2.5% of the money that you are not using (or the jewelry or the
   cows or the wheat-- however you store your wealth) to the poor.  He
   actually records it when he pays the rent of a relative or helps a
   beggar on the street.  If he gets $100 this year for his family and he
   needs $60 to live, he will give 2.5% of the the remaining $40 to
   others as! alms.  If that same $40 (or whatever is left of it) remains
   in s avings and is not used the next year, he will also give 2.5% of
   it again-- it is an ongoing thing every year.  It was an interesting
   practice.  I think most religions teach their believer's to do good
   and give to others, but I liked the idea that it was so specific in
   Islam (what to give was written in the Quran and some scholars did the
   calculations and it came out to about 2.5% of what you're not using,
   so that is widely used now).  Of course Mommy was fascinated and
   thought it was a great idea.

posted by Li at 1:15 PM (0) comments

 

Photos

With much difficulty, I've uploaded some photos.
posted by Li at 3:07 AM (0) comments

 

Panjshir, Afghanistan

From Kweilin:

   Panjshir is supposed to be the most beautiful valley in Afghanistan
   and it definitely lived up to its reputation.  There was a gorgeous
   river and LOTS of mountains.  The entire road was completely unpaved
   and had lots of potholes and rocks.  There were so many times during
   the day that we were banging our head against the side of the car
   because the road was so bumpy.
   During the day, we stopped by the nomads' tent.  They roam across the
   valleys with their camels, donkeys, and hundreds of sheep.  They never
   shower and live under their tents.  They move every few weeks and walk
   for a month or so before they settle down again.  It was fascinating.
   I finished my entire first tape on the camcorder -- a full hour of
   taping!  I love having the camcorder because you can capture so much
   more and you can also show what you've taped to people and especially
   kids, and they love it.
   We had lunch at the same place as yesterday-- it was rice with beef
   kebabs.  Since we are women, we sat in a special section with a
   curtain pulled and only the waiters came in to see what we wanted.
   The food was really good.
   There are SO many kids along the road.  They are really very cute kids
   and so good natured.  None of them have toys are anything, yet they
   amuse themselves and take care of themselves.  Today was saw a bunch
   of girls as they were getting out of school.
   It was a really exciting day today.  Tomorrow we're going to explore
   Kabul some more with our translator Somah.

posted by Li at 8:20 PM (0) comments

 

Soccer game in Kabul

From Wan:

We went with a driver to the only sports game in town, a soccer match
between the English soldiers and the locals. It was at the stadium where
they killed the former Prime Minister, dragged his body behind a Nissan
pickup truck     cut off his balls and then hanged him at the goal post for
all to see. It was also at this stadium that the Talibans shot and killed a
lot of women who they accused of having a close relatiohship with men they
were not married to. thieves had their hands chopped off for stealing and
many other atrocious crimes and punishments.At this game , the locals won 1
to 0 . We were the only females in the group except for the female soldiers
from England. It was an exciting match for us to watch the Afgans screamin
and running around the stadium after the first and only goal. However all
around us at the stadium were soldiers   with submachine guns on the ready
and tanks poised to the sky ready to shoot an incoming plane. Part way thru
the game , there was a sonic boom and all the soldiers rushed out to see if
there was an attack. If there was an attack we would all be dead cos there
is so much artilery around us and there were thousands of us stuck in that
small stadium. However if we are overcautious as many Americans are, Kabul
would literally become a prison.The US embassy is barricaded like for a war.

posted by Li at 7:53 PM (0) comments

 

Outside Kabul: schools, children, land mines

From Kweilin:

   We had a GREAT day today.  This was our third day in Kabul and our
   first two days we stayed pretty much inside the city and went around
   to markets and to the outskirts of town.  Today, Daddy arranged
   through a friend of his (the same people he went to Bamyan with for
   that three-day trip last week) to have two day trips around Kabul.  So
   today at 9:00 a.m. we went to the north of Kabul on the road to
   Mazar-e-Sharif.  There were at least 100 rusting and decaying tanks
   all along the road, and some rusting trucks too.  A lot of the houses
   were crumbling and full of bulletholes and the vineyards had been
   burnt when the Taliban fled.  Almost all of the families outside of
   town are very poor, and there were a lot of small stalls along the
   road.  There are SO many kids here.  I think an average woman has
   around 8!  But then child mortality is pretty high too.  With the
   growing number of cars and trucks, a lot of the! kids are getting hit
   and hurt by them.
   The countryside was really beautiful.  There are huge snow-capped
   mountains and brown hills on all sides of Kabul.  And we drove along a
   beautiful river today too.  On certain parts, the bridges are bombed
   out, so you have to take a detour around.  The roads were so bad that
   we had a flat tire half way through.
   The highlight of the day was visiting a school.  The schools here are
   held in big tents (open air things held up by poles with some desks
   and a very small basic chalkboard inside).  Most of the students are
   so poor they cannot even buy a notebook to write things down in, and
   the kids sometimes don't have pencils and pens.  The school we visited
   had 1600 students and it was just two big tents!  There is a morning
   session for the younger boys and an afternoon session for the older
   boys.  There is a separate girls' school.  Each class has about 200
   people, so half the students are out in the sun at any one time
   because there isn't enough room under the tents.  And then every so
   often they have to stop teaching because a big dust storm will start
   up and nobody can see.  And there are no classes during the winter
   because there is snow and they can't be outside in an open-air tent in
   the snow.  So Mommy was g! oing to give them money to buy notebooks,
   but we decided we should just buy the notebooks and deliver them
   ourselves.  So we'll probably do that sometime over the next week.
   We'll have to go the market and buy some notebooks in bulk.
   We had a GREAT tourguide today.  She is 24 and just came back from 6
   years in Pakistan where she fled when the Taliban was in power.  She
   was lucky to get away.  She speaks pretty good English because she is
   an English teacher and she is really nice.  She just got married a
   year ago, and when she found out that we wanted to go outside of Kabul
   today, we had to stop by to ask her husband's permission.  By Aghan
   law, she can't go anywhere without her husband's permission.  She had
   an arranged marriage but is very happy with her husband.  She is going
   to join us for our day trip tomorrow too.
   I videotaped a lot of stuff today.  The kids at the school were
   great.  They were really funny and really energetic.  Just fifty feet
   behind their school are three overturned and decaying trucks.  It
   really is such a stark contrast to see this beautiful country and then
   see these tanks all over the place and bulletholes in everything.
   All along the road there are stones that mark whether the area has
   been searched for landmines or not.  They say that Russia put in
   roughly 10 million landmines and they have found and removed 4 million
   so far.  They go in with a big thresher-looking machine and then the
   landmines explode like popcorn.  Sometimes, when they hit a reall big
   landmine, the machine will be disabled, but it never blows up because
   it is so heavily protected.   They mark the area with stones that are
   painted red (that means it is NOT demined), stones that are painted
   white (that means that it IS demined-- although nothing is ever 100%),
   and stones that are painted half white and half red (that means that
   the area is partially demined).
   The day was amazing.  It was really nice to get a sense of the rest of
   the country.  It has been an incredible three days.

posted by Li at 7:43 PM (0) comments

 

Poverty in Afghanistan

From Wan: as I travel outside Kabul, I realize how unequal the "wealth " from donor countries have been. We see scores of young children with multiple buchets or pails in line and the water trickling out of a 4 inch pipe was hardly a trickle. It would take over half an hour to fill up a bucket. And then they carry it up the hill where they live in the mud huts .Water is a major problem here and especially in the outskirts. Education is a major problem here too . Yesterday in our drive into the hinterlands, we saw tents which acted as schools. We stopped at one just as the kids (all boys) were getting out. The teacher talked to us and told us the situation they are faces with. The school has 1600 students, divided into the morning and afternoon sessions.Each tent the size of the ones we get from Home Depot to park our cars, holds 200 kids. 50 to 60 in each class. So at any one time, half the school has to sit out in the sun on the gravel for their class. Even for those under the tent , only half have desks. The others sit on the floor too. Half the students have no notebooks or pencils.Each notebook cost 12 afganis which is about 25 cents US and of course this is beyound the reach of a lot of families whose income is less than US$30 a month.The teacher asked if we could help with notebooks, pencils and ballpens.We wanted to give cash to the teacher to buy for the students but the translator that it would be much better if we brought the notebooks to the school ourselves and distribute it out ourselves.Everywhere we went we met with such dire poverty. Kids at the age of 10 working at tire shops for 20 afganis a week, which is less than 50 cents US.we gave them money to buy icecream which cost 1 afgani each and they loved it. You feel you want to give everything you have just to relieve the poverty for a minute.

posted by Li at 7:29 PM (0) comments

 

Day 2 in Kabul

Another update from Kweilin in Kabul:

   Hi Li,
   This is our second day in Kabul.  The weather is warm and dry but
   quite cold in the evenings.  This morning we woke up early and stayed
   around the house until 9:30 p.m. and then we took a driver around and
   went to the market and walked for quite a while.  It was very
   interesting and there was a lot of stuff there.  The river here is one
   of the dirtiest I have ever seen and people live right by it and kids
   play in it.  There were spices, ice cream machines, kebab stalls,
   banana stalls, lots of used clothes stalls, shoe repairmen, plastic
   things from China stalls.  Everywhere we went there was a crowd of
   about 20 or so guys following us.  It got tough to move around and
   take pictures after a while, but it was fun and interesting.  At one
   point a guy pinched Oongie's butt and then was trying to slink away
   and right away a policeman caught him and hit him.  It was good to see
   that they were watching out for us.&! nbsp; It did feel oppressive
   sometimes, but most of the time it was fun.  I am on the lookout
   somewhat here, but much less than I remember in India.  Towards the
   end of our long stroll in the market, we sat on the second floor of a
   restaurant and had tea ...
   The women all wear baby blue burkas around, and they truly look like
   giant penguins in the street.  Somtimes they'll take up their burka to
   look at something that they want to buy in the market, but for the
   most part they keep it down.  We also saw a few land-mine victims with
   one leg today.  There are also a number of women blue penguins
   begging.  One was on the ground wailing and begging at the same time
   today in the market and quite a few people were giving her money.  A
   lot of the women beggars have a kid, so they are probably widows.
   After the long walk in the market, we got a ride back in the MSH van
   (it is so convenient to have a driver here-- it really makes a big
   difference).  Then mommy cooked eggs and tomotoes and we had fresh nan
   at the house.  It was really good and SO much better than the
   restaurants here which are really nothing to write home about.
   This afternoon we're meeting two people who might be arranging our
   trip to Mazar-e-Sharif later this week.  Then we'll head out to the
   soccer game and then to an MSH person's house for the BBQ later on.
   ...

   Love,
   JAY

posted by Li at 2:28 AM (0) comments

 

Kweilin, Steve, Wan in Kabul

My sister and mom are visiting my father in Kabul, Afghanistan. Kweilin wrote the following update.

Hi Li!
It is 9:00 p.m. here and we had a really full day. Kabul is poor and
quite dusty and everything has been bombed really badly over the past
few decades-- by Russians and Afghan rebels and then recently by
Americans.  Most of it was done by the Afghans themselves as they
fought for power.  I used the camcorder A LOT, so you'll be able to
see it.  It is really hard to believe things are in such ruins.
The people are beautiful here-- very striking.  They have dark
features and green or blue eyes.  They are honest people but they all
have pretty difficult lives.  Most women walk around in light blue
burkas.  I bought one today for $5.  They actually use mostly dollars
here although they will also accept afghans.  The burka covers
EVERYTHING.  There is a lace-like opening for my eyes, but that is a
really minimal view.  I can't even see my feet with it on!  I don't
really have to wear it, though, because most women here just wear a
scarf and long sleeves all the time, so I can get away with just
covering all my hair and neck-- everything except my face.  I think
I'll do that for a while.
Yesterday we got to Delhi at 9:00 p.m. and spent the evening at the
airport.  There was a nice Sheraton hotel lounge that we paid $15 each
to be in (including drinks and snacks!), so the night was quite
comfortable-- we slept on the couches there.  In the morning we
rechecked the boxes of Chinese food and other ingredients that mommy
brought along and then got onto the flight for Kabul.  Kids and adults
were walking around the flight and not paying attention to the "fasten
seatbelt" sign the entire time.
Flying in we saw all the mountains around Kabul-- everything is so
dry!  All day long there are small sandstorms when you have to close
your eyes and turn your back to the sand.  Apparently these are
nothing to the big ones they get later in the year.
The MSH people are very nice.  It is a small world and we've met most
of them already.  Today is Thursday and at 1:00 p.m. Daddy started his
1.5 day weekend.  So we went with a driver around town and saw a lot
of things.  There are bombed out planes and falling-apart buildings
everywhere.  We went into someone's house to see their living quarters
and I taped a bunch of kids laughing and playing.  The camcorder is
great because I can play it back for them and they get really
excited.  Tonight we went out to dinner (not so good-- quite oily)
with some other MSH people.  There are surprisingly a lot of fruits
and vegetables here-- mostly imported from Pakistan.  There is also
excellent "nan" or Afghani bread.  We can put peanut butter and kaya
and other things on it.
I think we're going to visit a traditional Afghan wedding tomorrow--
that will be fun. On Sunday we might be leaving for a three day trip
to Mazar-e-Sharif in the north (it is safe and we're getting a driver
who really knows the area).
We have email access in the house (we're all staying in the MSH
compound), but it is quite slow.  We will keep writing, though, so
definitely send us an email every so often!

Love,
JAY

posted by Li at 1:25 AM (0) comments