Going on a trip

With only hours left of my first visit to Agfhanistan, I'd like to share with you one of the best days I had during this time. Just a few days ago, I went for a long trip with one of our drivers who had a day of and his friends from the army to the provinces around Kabul. We had picknick in a valley, swam in the river, visited warlords and just enjoyed life, which only a persons who lost most of their friends in the war know how to appreciate. This mix of joy and sadness is what I will take with me when I now leave for studies in Japan.

I hope you have enjoyed these glimpses of my life in Afghanistan this far. There might come more when I come back, but as always, that will be inschallah.

A trip to Mazar-e-Sharif

About a week ago, I suddenly got a call saying that there were free seats on the German plane to Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, where the Swedish Provincial Reconstruction Team is located. I accepted the offer and stayed in one of the rooms in the camp and went to the skolmatsal, the church and did all the other things Swedes do when abroad. The camp is actually really nice, so nice that many like to stay there instead of going out to 'the real Afghanistan'. However, the Swedes are among the bravest - the Germans won't leave their camp unless they are accompanied by loads of others.

The city of Mazar is really beautiful with a famous blue mosk in the centre. My camera was not working to well though, so here are some of the few pictures I managed to snap.

Finding the Christmas spirit

Being totally absorbed by the immense workload put upon us because of our move to the new housing, I have not been connected for quite a time. What was supposed to be our fantastic new home-sweet-home apartments has tuned out to be a total mess. At the moment, we have neither electric power nor water. And that is not the first time. Add to that some flooding, burning fuses, bloody accidents, lockouts, malfunctioning heating, returning noises, crazy animals, delays, delays and delays, and you get the picture. I'm sure it will be nice some day though.

To calm ourselves down and to get into the Christmas mood, we went to a glögg-event hosted by Sara at Save the Children. After a few hours of intense cooking and baking, we found ourselves surrounded by tasty (more tasty than beautiful) saffron buns, refreshing home made glögg and an improvised chicken-farm-themed ginger bread house.

I hope you all are having nice and snowy days back home. If you get some extra, could you please send the snow to us instead of to Las Vegas next time?

Eid al-Adha

Since about half an hour, we celebrate in Afghanistan that Ibrahim (Abraham) had the courage to kill his son when God told him to.  As you probably know, God sent a sheep to be killed instead, and now all Muslims sacrifice (and eat) sheep to remember how brave Ibrahim was.

The whole city of Kabul is tense at the moment, because everyone expects something big to happen during the holiday. Roads are blocked and security increased. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

The Eid can in some ways be compared to our western Christmas, and although the Muslims rather give each other visits and food, I have a gift for you: The popcorn man.

En busschaufför...

When the world came to help Afghanistan, one of the things it did was to put up some traffic lights at some random locations. They work great, with numbers showing how long they plan to be red or green. However, driver's licences in Afghanistan are bought rather than earned, and the meanings of red/green and roman numbers are probably unfamiliar to most. Just like with any other rule or law in Afghanistan, no one really cares about the traffic lights. Neither do they care about driving on the right hand side of the road if it's empty on the left, or using the roundabouts if they can shortcut.

 

That might be one of the reasons why most buses in Afghanistan have been put on a pile in the bus graveyard. Without any proper service or functioning traffic, they probably do just as much good there as on the roads. 

A stroll in the city

Two days ago, I decided to get out and see some other areas of Kabul, which is quite a huge city when you start exploring it.

Here is the voter's registration for the election which will be held in May according to Afghans, and in September according to the international community.

In the bazaar, you can find it all. And they are pretty good at recycling also, just look at those fabulous tire-pots!

The bird market is the place where men (only men of course) buy their birds. There are three kinds of birds. Some twitter and are great as pets. Some fight and can earn you lots of money if they survive a few rounds. Some become really loyal and go out in the evenings to find friends, friends which you can sell when they have come to your house. I didn't buy any birds, but I bought the cage on the picture which will be great as decoration in my upcoming huge apartment.

Through armoured windows

I thought it was time to share with you some of the views I get from the back seat of our Landcruiser. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but if you have read "Bokhandlaren i Kabul" you might find it interesting to know that it is the one in the last photo.