Notes from Stephen, Wan, Kweilin, and Li

Li Tsun's homepage

Atom RSS for your feed reader

 

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