Ethiopia has the lowest number of cell phone subscribers in Africa.
The country where my husband is has the lowest number of internet subscribers. While what is wrong with Liberia might be easily explained by years of war that decimated the infrastructure, Ethiopia (besides a few skirmishes with Eritrea) has not seen the conflict on the scale of say, Sierra Leone. No, the situation in Abyssinia comes down to three letters: ETC. Ethiopia Telecom will not allow competition--all of the telecommunications systems go through the government. This is why it took four months for my employer to take pity on me and give me the "consultant" SIM card (the whole time I was in country there were none available and ETC refused to issue new ones) and why, as I write now, I am on a slow dial-up.
The government shut down Skype, blogspot.com, and streaming video seems at least three decades away.
Last week the internet, cell phones and land lines shut down for the whole day. My Ethiopian colleagues thought Somalia had invaded. After living in Afghanistan, I believed them.
So, as you all know, Somalia did not invade. However, after this post I this blog might be shut down.
Here are the rules that were in effect in Afghanistan until November 2001:
General Presidency of Amr Bil Maruf. Kabul, December 1996.
1. To prevent sedition and female uncovers (Be Hejabi). No drivers are allowed to pick up women who are using Iranian burqa. In case of violation the driver will be imprisoned. If such kind of female are observed in the street their house will be found and their husband punished. If the women use stimulating and attractive cloth and there is no accompany of close male relative with them, the drivers should not pick them up.
2. To prevent music. To be broadcasted by the public information resources. In shops, hotels, vehicles and rickshaws cassettes and music are prohibited. This matter should be monitored within five days. If any music cassette found in a shop, the shopkeeper should be imprisoned and the shop locked. If five people guarantee the shop should be opened the criminal released later. If cassette found in the vehicle, the vehicle and the driver will be imprisoned. If five people guarantee the vehicle will be released and the criminal released later.
3. To prevent beard shaving and its cutting. After one and a half months if anyone
observed who has shaved and/or cut his beard, they should be arrested and imprisoned until their beard gets bushy.
4. To prevent keeping pigeons and playing with birds. Within ten days this habit/
hobby should stop. After ten days this should be monitored and the pigeons and any other playing birds should be killed.
5. To prevent kite-flying. The kite shops in the city should be abolished.
6. To prevent idolatory. In vehicles, shops, hotels, room and any other place pictures/portraits should be abolished. The monitors should tear up all pictures in the above places.
7. To prevent gambling. In collaboration with the security police the main centres
should be found and the gamblers imprisoned for one month.
8. To eradicate the use or addiction. Addicts should be imprisoned and investigation made to find the supplier and the shop. The shop should be locked and the owner and user should be imprisoned and punished.
9. To prevent the British and American hairstyle. People with long hair should be arrested and taken to the Religious Police department to shave their hair. The criminal has to pay the barber.
10. To prevent interest on loans, charge on changing small denomination notes and
charge on money orders. All money exchangers should be informed that the above three types of exchanging the money should be prohibited. In case of violation criminals will be imprisoned for a long time.
11. To prevent washing cloth by young ladies along the water streams in the city. Violator ladies should ‘be picked up with respectful Islamic manner, taken to their houses and their husbands severely punished.
12. To prevent music and dances in wedding parties. In the case of violation the head of the family will be arrested and punished.
13. To prevent the playing of music drum. The prohibition of this should be an-
nounced. If anybody does this then the religious elders can decide about it.
14. To prevent sewing ladies clothes and taking female body measures by tailor. If women or fashion magazines are seen in the shop the tailor should be imprisoned.
15. To prevent sorcery. All the related books should be burnt and the magician should be imprisoned until his repentance.
16. To prevent not praying and order gathering pray at the bazaar. Prayer should be done on their due times in all districts. Transportation should be strictly prohibited and all people are obliged to go to the mosque. If young people are seen in the shops they will be immediately imprisoned.
It always starts innocently enough.
Last Sunday my husband, cat and I were enjoying a sunny day in the yard. I was slightly hungover from the five gin and tonics I had consumed during the course of our Thanksgiving dinner and subsequent Thanksgiving trip to the Platinum nightclub the night before and thought that lying around in the hammock would be a good way to recover. We had only been outside for about ten minutes when my husband yelled, “sweetie, look!” and I turned around to see this on the wall behind me:
Alright, it was actually more like this:
Who knows how long the evil primate had been surveilling us. It had something furry and long-dead in its hand, which it threw down on the ground and came after us, its teeth bared. We sprung up and ran towards the porch and the front door. (A girl I went to high school with died from monkey poo--I shit you not and no pun intended.) Thinking quickly, my husband grabbed Snega (our cat) and threw it at the rabid monkey, but it was not deterred. It came closer and my husband picked one a metal chair over his head ready to knock the living monkey shit out of it. It scampered up one of the porch columns to a monkey friend waiting on the roof (a coordinated attack).
After the narrow escape we went over to examine the dead furry thing. It was a baby monkey. Abush, our guard, picked the carcass up with a stick and flung it at the monkey who then jumped over the neighbors’ fence.
So, what was learned from this experience?
1. Monkeys will rip your face off without notice or provocation;
2. Monkeys are sneaky little bastards and surprisingly quiet;
3. Chucking white cats at monkeys will not save you (however, cats of other colors have not been field tested and may prove effective);
4. If you are hungover from drinking too much gin the night before you are better off staying in bed.
Ah, the excitement of living in Africa…
The Culprit
Here I was, Saturday morning, minding my own business, when I spotted something gray in my front yard. Thinking it was another cat trying to pop a squat in my marigolds, I ran outside. It was a monkey. I saw the first couple of monkeys two weeks ago. They were walking along the front wall of my yard, not bothering anything.
I live in the capital of Ethiopia. I live in the city. I am truly puzzled as to how these primates are making their way into my yard. Moreover, I am pissed off that the little motherfuckers are eating my flowers.
I used to like monkeys--buy pyjamas with monkeys on them, subscribe to Monkey Wire news alerts, enjoying looking at them in zoos--but when they start destroying my property by pulling up plants whose seeds my husband brought from China, well, a monkey ass is going to get a hammer thrown at it.
It's on.
The Culprit
Here I was, Saturday morning, minding my own business, when I spotted something gray in my front yard. Thinking it was another cat trying to pop a squat in my marigolds, I ran outside. It was a monkey. I saw the first couple of monkeys two weeks ago. They were walking along the front wall of my yard, not bothering anything.
I live in the capital of Ethiopia. I live in the city. I am truly puzzled as to how these primates are making their way into my yard. Moreover, I am pissed off that the little motherfuckers are eating my flowers.
I used to like monkeys--buy pyjamas with monkeys on them, subscribe to Monkey Wire news alerts, enjoy looking at them in zoos--but when they start destroying my property by pulling up plants whose seeds my husband brought from China, well, a monkey ass is going to get a hammer thrown at it.
It's on.
It was Saturday before I heard something had happened. Already for 72 hours dozens of baby faced teenage boys with bullets in their shoulders, and pregnant women with gunshot wounds to their knees had been bundled over the border by family members. Thousands more stood waiting in no man’s land by the time Al Jazeera reported on the shootings on Saturday morning.
At the time I wasn’t surprised—after all, things like this happen in Kyrgyzstan regularly now. The point about ethnic conflict was not really being reported until Monday morning. Even at that point the media said the violence was due to some gang activity, they didn’t mention men in Kyrgyzstan military uniforms were the ones setting Uzbeks on fire and pulling out their eyes.
By Monday, I was writing indignant emails to friends about how I had not one single message or phone call about the situation, and I work for the main aid organization in Uzbekistan! My boss sent an Uzbek colleague out to review the situation on Sunday and he returned Tuesday with sterile facts about the camps: 3,248 people in Jalalquduq, 4,200 people in Poktabod. My colleague didn’t mention anything about the rapes or the mutilations. He also didn’t mention anything about the toilets, shelters or meals at any of the 40-odd refugee camps being set up along the Kyrgyzstan border. My boss sent me out to investigate along with our health project manager, Adolat.
By then, late on Tuesday afternoon, I had some idea of what was going on. I knew the basic facts—37 camps, 80,000 refugees, mostly women and children—but I also had heard some of the rumors that were being reported, about the decapitations, shootings, and beatings of Uzbeks. I and my colleague drove the 5 hours out to the Fergana Valley and settled into our hotel in Margilan about 10pm. We had no idea what exactly we were doing, with whom we were supposed to meet, or what the implications of this trip (I am talking on a personal level) might have.
At 9:00 we reported to the Andijon airport where the main coordinating center had been set up. Adolat and I sat there for 3 hours waiting for someone to be identified by the government to accompany us to the camps. In the small “press center” where we were waiting, a DVD was being looped showing men and women being carried into the Andijon emergency hospital with gunshot wounds. The time stamp on the footage read June 10, 3:10am. Until this point, I thought the shooting had started on Friday rather than Thursday. Yes, the three press men sitting next to us confirmed, it started Thursday. The DVD lasted for an hour and showed at least 100 people dead and dying, and was accompanied by a small set of laminated, bound pages of pictures of corpses. These photos included men with gunshot wounds to the head, women severely beaten and the charred corpses of toddlers wrapped in blankets.
Our first stop was the emergency hospital where the injured were brought. We donned the requisite white coats (Adolat's actually an MD) and visited the wounded. Everything was white, clean, quiet and bleached. Young men stared languidly at the ceiling while doctors explained their treatments and the surgeons produced before and after x-rays to show to the American what action was taken. Thankfully, we were spared visits with the rape victims but were allowed access only to the ICU where the worst injuries were still recuperating. 170 people were brought to this hospital with gunshot wounds.
They said there were six VBIEDs in the city that the Taliban is just waiting to set off.
This morning's makes number two.
I was sitting at the computer when I heard the explosion (which must have been big because we are across town). Then I got a message from my friend at the Embassy: "Can't make it to dinner tonight--we have been attacked". She thought it was a rocket, but it was a suicide car bomb.
Kabul, you look more like Baghdad every day.
I know what you are thinking: Yes, you live in a shit hole, but what do you smell like? So, since this is a forum about BPAL after all, my top ten:
1. June Gloom
2. Persephone
3. Grog
4. Lady MacBeth
5. Queen of Sheba (which I named--look it up)
6. Bordello
7. Black Pearl
8. Jailbait
9. Trick or Treat
10. Maiden
I also wanted to share something cute I saw yesterday. Strangely enough, it rained for about 20 minutes in Kabul yesterday which never happens in July. While I was driving home, I saw a little girl about eight years old standing on a balcony with her pink and blue child's umbrella. She was out in the rain singing to the people on the street. It is refreshing to see a kid act like a kid for once in a country where most children are working and not going to school.
A fitting beginnging to my last full day in Afghanistan: a window-shaking explosion at 6:45am. I had just gotten out of bed when I heard it; 20 minutes later and still no news on whether it was a rocket or an IED. (Actually, in the end, it was a gunpowder storage shop that exploded on accident.)
On a lighter note, something happened that made me laugh until my sides ached yesterday. See, there are these poor kids who hang out by the US Embassy/USAID/ISAF base in Shash Durak trying to sell things. Usually they sell newspapers or copies of the Afghan Scene, or chewing gum. These kids are RELENTLESS, springing into action at the sight of a foreigner, repeating "gum, madam? Gum? Madam, one dollar, gum?" Yesterday, I was running to have a quick beer with my friend Sas who is stuck in the USAID compound when I had to pass ISAF and the throng of kids. One jumped out in front of me with a plastic snake. "Snake, madam?"
So today is my last day. Praise to Allah.
I am not really sure why I did it; I already had one from when I was 23 (and one is usually enough for most people). I was in-between jobs and desperate, so I took a drastic step: I got another Master’s degree.
After three years of running off to take exams while my husband lounged by the pool in Kigali, lugging statistics texts to my office in Kabul, and declining friends’ Friday night invitations to Harlem Jazz so I could write reports, it’s all over. Now my business cards read:
Confection Marzipana MA, MPH
A tad anticlimactic, no?
Three years of my life, countless hours and thousands of dollars for three little letters. And--get this--I am not even employed in the sector of my new degree (but rather in the discipline of my former Master's).
Yeah, so now that it’s all over I am a little bit at loose ends. Without the demands of writing a thesis and taking courses I am not sure what to do. However, I have some ideas (in no particular order):
-Get a pilot’s license (impossible for Americans in former Soviet Union)
-Write a cookbook
-Take up violin again
-Learn to kick-box/cage fight
-Improve my Russian grammar
So heed my advice: if you have one Master's degree and are considering getting another, don't. It's really not worth it. Plus, you get yourself worked up into a frenzy of being active and studious on weekends that is really hard to undo.
Summertime is wedding time in Afghanistan. Long, boring, hot, segregated wedding parties are as unavoidable as dirt and scorpions this time of year. While the men sit downstairs drinking tea, eating mutton and listening to music at the wedding hall, me and the other “females” are upstairs, all painted up, dancing to the live band and trying to avoid the children running buck wild all over the place. While I have always been skillfully adept at fleeing Afghan weddings, I have seen enough to know that few social events anywhere in the world are as strange and tediously predictable.
Things to know when you go to an Afghan wedding:
1. There will be no ceremony. The ceremony takes place in a mosque a few days before. The “wedding” you are going to is really just dancing, food, music and no alcohol (while the men can get away with sneaking a few sips, this is strictly taboo for women).
2. If you bring your significant other and he/she is of the opposite sex, you are not going to see him/her all night. Men sit downstairs, women sit upstairs. Don’t ask questions.
3. If you are a woman, wear the brightest outfit you have, the highest heels and lots of make-up (when in Rome…).
4. Expect to see the bride and groom together for only a few minutes, after they have greeted guests for hours.
5. The bride and groom will be related.
The weddings are always held at a huge wedding hall that is covered in mirrored glass and neon colored bas-reliefs. The hall is rented out solely for such occasions. The food is thrown at you by 15-year-old Afghan boys on large, communal plates. Dishes at weddings always include rice, mutton, chicken, a salad of tomatoes, hot peppers and cucumbers, fried eggplant, spinach and some type of gelatin dessert. Green tea will be served without fail.
While I cringe when I see the pink frilly wedding invitation on my desk, sometimes it is good to get out and see what the Afghans are up to. It is refreshing to see women dressed in their finest, talking and laughing with each other without being self-conscious. For many of them with houses to keep and children to look after, weddings are the one event where they can come and (literally) let their hair down.
If you are un/fortunate enough to be invited to an Afghan wedding in your lifetime and decide to go, be prepared: practice your basic Dari, make sure you look good (everyone will be staring) and get ready to eat. It will be an event you will never forget.
I love MSG. I think that people who decry its use are stupid and ill-informed. I worked in a Chinese restaurant throughout high school and college, and bloated customers would saunter in and order entrees with NO MSG and then order fried rice. "But the fried rice has MSG", I'd explain; they didn't care, "a little wouldn't hurt".
To this day, all I can say in Mandarin is "bu no wei jin"--no MSG.
At long last, I AM VINDICATED. Today's NYT has an article about MSG:
March 5, 2008
Yes, MSG, the Secret Behind the Savor
By JULIA MOSKIN
IN 1968 a Chinese-American physician wrote a rather lighthearted letter to The New England Journal of Medicine. He had experienced numbness, palpitations and weakness after eating in Chinese restaurants in the United States, and wondered whether the monosodium glutamate used by cooks here (and then rarely used by cooks in China) might be to blame.
The consequences for the restaurant business, the food industry and American consumers were immediate and enormous. MSG, a common flavor enhancer and preservative used since the 1950s, was tagged as a toxin, removed from commercial baby food and generally driven underground by a new movement toward natural, whole foods.
Even now, after “Chinese restaurant syndrome” has been thoroughly debunked (virtually all studies since then confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people), the ingredient has a stigma that will not go away.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go boot up for my daily dose of MSG.
There is a reason why you never hear the words “dentist” and “Africa” in the same sentence. There are few places in the world where you would be better off letting that rotten root fester than actually seeking professional help and pretty much the whole continent (except for South Africa and one hospital in Nairobi) qualifies.
Let me start from the beginning: about a month and a half ago, I was lying on the couch one Sunday night, watching Dr. Phil, drinking a St. Georges and eating popcorn when I broke the back off one of my lower front teeth (which was cracked during a raspberry verenyi incident in 2004) by biting down on a kernel. Since I had been medevaced back to my cute little Tennessean dentist, Dr. Gregory, less than a month before for an abscessed tooth, I had little choice but to suck it up and visit a dentist in town.
During the said abscessed tooth episode, which involved a lot of swelling, pain and visits to the dickhead South Asian dentist Dr. Raina (yeah, that’s right, I used your real name) who withheld information about treatment options, I was advised by an American working for a Christian aid agency about a Chinese dentist on Bole Road who did good work. Crumpled in my chair during the food security workshop from the pain, I decided I had nothing to lose by visiting Dr. Ling. Although she could do nothing to help me with my abscessed tooth except pull it (since a root canal had already been done) or “make a little window” to clean the roots by drilling into my jaw, she decided it was in everyone’s best interest to send me back to Dr. Gregory and promptly filled out my insurance paperwork (which Dr. Dickhead Raina refused to do).
This episode solidified the bond between me and Dr. Ling. Inside I swore that if any other dental problem arose I would go to her.
Back to the broken tooth—in August I went to see Dr. Ling who drilled down my two front teeth to little nubs before I knew what was happening or was able to ask for anesthesia. She then made impressions of my teeth, put in temporary (but nice looking) caps, and informed me that my new ceramic teeth would be back from China in a month. Those teeth came in last week and were installed. They looked good, but were a little too big. Dr. Ling told me to wait a week and see if I still thought they were too big and she would sand them down. That visit took place today.
This morning I got up, threw on some jeans and got in the car to Bole. By 9:00 Dr. Ling had ground down the teeth and I was on my way. Looking in the rearview mirror, I realized a mistake had been made—there was a considerable gap between where my top and bottom teeth met in front. I thought about it for a while, got ready and went into the office. By 11:00 I was distraught. Here I had fucked up the only front teeth I would ever have-- I went back to Dr. Ling. She was reassuring, we would fix it, she told me. The next hour was the worst, and nearly the most painful, of my life.
I have a high pain threshold: I have suffered peptic ulcers, burst ovarian cysts, and dry sockets and taken them all like a Pionerka. Something about this visit today made me squeal like a five year old. It took Dr. Ling about 35 minutes to drill the teeth, crack the ceramic, reassure me, shoot me up with anesthesia, and do some more drilling. I screamed, I cried, I squirmed, I bled. I was ashamed of myself for acting like such a big baby. I was mad because I was having this done in East Africa instead of East Tennessee. After what seemed like an eternity, Dr. Ling took impressions and put in temporary caps. I decided there was no way I could work for the rest of the day and packed it up to come home. Here at my dining room table, four hours later, my jaw and teeth are still aching. The pain and the humiliation of the whole day ranks only behind the riots in 2006 and losing my job three years ago. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Never see a dentist in Africa, NEVER.
Nothing left to do but light up a sheesha and have some wine.
Yes, indeed: Fuck the World.
I have been really pissy today with due cause: some of the stuff which was not stolen in the riots has since gone missing although we packed it up and brought it to the new house ourselves. My brand spanking new mandolin (no Shaker pie any time soon), brand new frying pan and knives. All imported from the US, of course. Fucking brilliant that I got my shipment from the states exactly four days before the riots. Allowing me time to unpack everything and lay it out in neat little rows for hoodlum Spandi kids to get their grubby mits on after they busted through my front door.
Adding to the irritation is work. There is a certain foreigner with whom I work who is about to find out what time it is. Maybe I am placing all of my frustration on her, but other people I work with are corroborating my assumptions and it is not long before there will be a mutiny. She (being in a position of authority higher than me) hired her friend for a senior expatriate position, takes the credit for every time I bust my ass and turn out something extraordinary, alienates the Afghan staff and talks shit about them when they are not around, and has personally attacked me. What can I do?
So, fuck the world. At least this anger is fueling three mile runs after work.
Dear Crocs Fans,
I want to send a message out to all of those people who wear these hideous things: stop. Stop now. Crocs are ugly in a nefarious, soul-sucking way. No one looks good in them and no one gives a fuck how comfortable they are. I don't care if you are a nurse, waitress or lunch lady--invest in some Danskos and retain your dignity.
And to add insult to injury, they now have charms for them. I swear, when I get to Tennessee in four days and see these things schlepping around my local mall, I am not sure how I am going to restrain myself. People: I live in Afghanistan. I see starving children, dead kittens, amputees and sheep being beheaded on my way to work everyday. There is so much ugly in the world. Please take the time to make wise shoe choices so that when I come back to America I won't have to BEAT YOUR ASS.
Warmest,
Confection
(Ain't none of y'all going to get this.)
In East Africa, you have two options for satellite TV: either the European stations that have CNN and ESPN or the Arab stations that have I.Q.-reducing shows like Dr. Phil, Rachel Ray, Wife Swap and Cheerleader Nation (Dubar won, by the way). For all of these reasons, my husband and I chose the latter.
Anyway, there is this juice comercial that runs approximately 300 times an hour on the Saudi station. It features a cross section of Arab society--flight attendants, school children, women in hijabs, Arab men in Kiffeyeh on their knees with arms outstretched--all of them pleading into the camera with varying levels of distress: "Mafi da naw?"
Since I don't speak Arabic, I have no idea what they are saying, but nonetheless, I have somehow absorbed the sentiment. Now, whenever something is unexpected or upsetting, I automatically yell, "MAFI DA NAW?!?!"
Like today, I found out that the Great Ethiopian Race might be postponed from September 9th. (MAFI DA NAW?!?)
And last night Shoa Supermarket did not have fresh strawberries. (MAFI DA NAW?!?)
See? I knew none of y'all was going to get this.
Not sure why, but all last Monday and every day since, I have that song "Terror!" by The Rakes in my head:
And my job in the city won't matter no more
When the network is down and my flesh is all torn
Every plane is a missile
Every suitcase a bomb
There's no reason in my head now
Only fear in my bones
So now things are getting back to normal. I am packed into a cramped office with my colleagues, with no air conditioning, bad connectivity and no privacy. Oh yes, and there is lots of B.O. too. I am becoming an involuntary mouth-breather to survive.
There are lots of promises about which agency will pay for all the stuff I lost. But really, I am not that concerned. Every morning we sit out on the lawn and have a meeting (finance took over the conference room) and talk about what is going on. It is what is revealed in these meetings that is foremost in my mind. Some of our staff were tied up and all of their computers taken out of town and set on fire in one of the provinces last night. They were warned not to associate with international organizations (these staff implement an education program). There have been more aid workers killed in the first six months of this year than probably the last three years put together and I can't help but wonder, was this riot an abberration or is something worse on the horizon?
I have been in Afghanistan for over 14 months now. I have dealt with the kidnapping of a colleague, the riots, daily stares and harrassment and yet it has not even occurred to me until now that maybe it is time to pack it up. But packing it up is not that easy. I love what I do. I really feel like I contribute, like I am helping people. I like the Afghans and the foreigners I work with (except for one, but more on that later) and my husband, for once, likes what he does as well.
A few weeks ago I was compiling the results of a survey from our widows' program. One of the beneficiaries wrote, "God bless you people. I pray for you every day". Is it worth it, to have job satisfaction if I have to deal with the potential of having all of my shit looted, my office burned and to be kidnapped? I honestly do not know.
This isn't Iraq--things get done. We are building houses for returnees, digging wells so schoolchildren have clean water, educating little girls and boys, helping widows to live in dignity and trying, generally, to get the people of Afghanistan back on their feet again after all of these conflicts. It's like it doesn't matter anymore who you are or what you do; if you are preceived to be on the wrong side you could get killed. I think that is the part I am having problems with.
Maybe this is just an expected after-effect of all of the "Terror!" I've been through lately. But the good news is that on Sunday the old man and I are off to Bangkok for a conference and then a week on Koh Samet. Hopefully my pallid ass in a bikini will not incite some terror of its own.
This was in the news today. And while all of the ISAF, American and British forces are focused on the Southern Provinces like Helmand, Uruzgan, Zabul and Kandahar, the Taliban has gone and set up it own governmental office in the Southeastern province of Ghazni.
This is a big deal: mostly because Ghazni is not on the front lines. While there have been bombings and assasinations in Ghazni this year, there are no foreign military troops there to keep peace, but this is the new front. Especially when these Southeastern provinces are on no one's radar (no pun intended) and the Taliban can hang out a shingle without anyone stopping them. There are also reports that the Taliban have met with men over 60 in Ghazni center to ask them to become suicide bombers.
What's more, in talking with some of the Afghans I work with, apparently in Peshawar (in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan), the Taliban is openly recruiting people with storefronts to travel to Afghanistan to carry out bombings, kidnappings, etc.
All of this really saddens me. When I came to Afghanistan in spring 2005, Ghazni was the first place outside of Kabul that I visited. It was gorgeous: the fruit trees were in bloom and the fields were bright green. The mud walls of the buildings and the remnants of the ancient empire that once ruled parts of India made it seem like I was in another time. It bothers me that the little girls I visited in their classroom might not be able to go to school much longer and the peaceful, sleepy town I visited might be irrevocably changed for the worse.
I just heard something strange from an Afghan guy I work with and a co-worker who speaks Dari corroborated that she had heard the same thing.
Apparently, the American forces are supplying the Taliban. The guy I talked to said with food, but my co-worker said munitions. Also, there are stories about Afghans fighting the Taliban who capture Taliban fighters, turn them over to ISAF (the International Security Assistance Force) and then capture the same guys fighting for the Taliban weeks later at which point the Taliban tell their captors, "you guys are stupid--the Americans are supporting us too!"
This could all be bullshit. But why would the Americans be supporting the Taliban? Is it a tactic of spreading these rumors among Afghans so that they will not support Americans and NATO/ISAF troops? I wonder.
I just got a text that someone has left me a voice message on my cell. None of the mobile providers in Afghanistan provide that service, but it was nice for them to let me know that somewhere out there someone has left a message for me.
No one ever wants to hear a doctor say the word "larva" when making a diagnosis.
It seems I brought a little something back from my two-week trip to Africa.
The CDC describes hookworm (ONE of the MANY possible parasites I MIGHT have):
These barely visible larvae penetrate the skin (often through bare feet), are carried to the lungs, go through the respiratory tract to the mouth, are swallowed, and eventually reach the small intestine. This journey takes about a week. In the small intestine, the larvae develop into half-inch-long worms, attach themselves to the intestinal wall, and suck blood. The adult worms produce thousands of eggs. These eggs are passed in the feces (stool). If the eggs contaminate soil and conditions are right, they will hatch, molt, and develop into infective larvae again after 5 to 10 days.
Fantastic. But one must also consider that the doctor "never sees these things in Afghanistan" and might be wrong about the diagnosis.
If I spend only two weeks in the Horn and come back with worms what will happen when I live there for two years?
How Snegurochka might look at two months
I just found out that the pregnant cat across from my office gave birth this morning. My little Snegurochka was one of the four.
Now I am not really sure what to do. When is the right time to take a kitten away from its mother? Four weeks? Eight weeks? Can I make her food myself or should I buy the hella expensive cat food they import?
So many questions. I have never had a brand new cat before!
This is a big deal.
Like the UN getting blown up in Baghdad, this incident portends much worse for Afghanistan. Thank Allah (most merciful) I am not living there anymore.
The only question remaining is: how can someone who works for Save the Children afford gym membership at a 5-star hotel?
You say matatu, I say FUCK YOU GET OUT OF MY WAY!
I never thought I would put this into words: Afghans are not the worst drivers in the world. That honor belongs to Ethiopians. While in Kabul drivers had to contend with crowded streets, one traffic light and men on bicycles and drove like fucking lunatics, Ethiopians have paved roads, traffic lights and traffic police and are still unable to get their heads out of their asses to drive down the road without 1) venturing into my lane or 2) pulling out in front of me without looking. Plus they are slow. Now I have stated before that Ethiopians are officially the slowest people on earth, but, overall, this does not concern me at the bread store, at the restaurant, or at the gym; but it bothers the hell out of me on the road. Added to the ignorant people in regular cars are the minibuses (matatus? Marshrutki?) of which there must be at least 500,000 in Addis alone. These little beat up junk buckets are blue and white, ill-maintained focal points for my scorn. They pick up people every ten feet, not pulling off the road to do so, and pull out into traffic without any forewarning. Plus, most do not have break lights. Just today, one pulled in front of me while I was hauling ass down Djibouti Street (that’s Mazoria 22 for all y’all old school folk), so I laid on the horn for at least 20 seconds, after which, someone in a passing car yelled, “slow down!” to which I replied, “your mother!”
Sadly, people are always telling white-girl-in-red-car to slow down. Often, when I am in first gear. Lord, people.
But let us not forget the Ethiopian PEDESTRIANS. I think the years of famine have stunted the cerebral growth of these people. They walk in the street, they stand in the street, they run out in front of my car while it’s in the street, they see how close they can get (someone actually told me these pedestrians try to get as close as possible to speeding cars for “luck”!). Sometimes, I am ashamed to admit, I will speed up when I see these people. While attempting to run down pedestrians is simply fun for me and my mom in the parking lot of our local Tennessee Wal-Mart, such actions are cathartic rush for white-girl-in-red-car in Addis Ababa.
And don’t even get me started on the donkey herds roaming the public roads.
Alas, I think I am becoming notorious. There are only so many times white-girl-in-red-car can ram vehicles who pull out in front of her on purpose on Djibouti street without attracting some vigilante justice.
I think I need to switch cars.
From the NYT--I knew that the Ethiopian Government was restrictive and authoritarian, but sanctioned rape and torture?
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June 18, 2007
In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
IN THE OGADEN DESERT, Ethiopia — The rebels march 300 strong across the crunchy earth, young men with dreadlocks and AK-47s slung over their shoulders.
This is the Ogaden, a spindle-legged corner of Ethiopia that the urbane officials in Addis Ababa, the capital, would rather outsiders never see. It is the epicenter of a separatist war pitting impoverished nomads against one of the biggest armies in Africa.
What goes on here seems to be starkly different from the carefully constructed up-and-coming image that Ethiopia — a country that the United States increasingly relies on to fight militant Islam in the Horn of Africa — tries to project.
In village after village, people said they had been brutalized by government troops. They described a widespread and longstanding reign of terror, with Ethiopian soldiers gang-raping women, burning down huts and killing civilians at will.
It is the same military that the American government helps train and equip — and provides with prized intelligence. The two nations have been allies for years, but recently they have grown especially close, teaming up last winter to oust an Islamic movement that controlled much of Somalia and rid the region of a potential terrorist threat.
The Bush administration, particularly the military, considers Ethiopia its best bet in the volatile Horn — which, with Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, is fast becoming intensely violent, virulently anti-American and an incubator for terrorism.
But an emerging concern for American officials is the way that the Ethiopian military operates inside its own borders, especially in war zones like the Ogaden.
Anab, a 40-year-old camel herder who was too frightened, like many others, to give her last name, said soldiers took her to a police station, put her in a cell and twisted her nipples with pliers. She said government security forces routinely rounded up young women under the pretext that they were rebel supporters so they could bring them to jail and rape them.
“Me, I am old,” she said, “but they raped me, too.”
According to Georgette Gagnon, deputy director for the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, Ethiopia is one of the most repressive countries in Africa.
“What the Ethiopian security forces are doing,” she said, “may amount to crimes against humanity.”
Human Rights Watch issued a report in 2005 that documented a rampage by government troops against members of the Anuak, a minority tribe in western Ethiopia, in which soldiers ransacked homes, beat villagers to death with iron bars and in one case, according to a witness, tied up a prisoner and ran over him with a military truck.
After the report came out, the researcher who wrote it was banned by the Ethiopian government from returning to the country. Similarly, three New York Times journalists who visited the Ogaden to cover this story were imprisoned for five days and had all their equipment confiscated before being released without charges.
The violence has been particularly acute against women, villagers said, and many have recently fled.
Asma, 19, who now lives in neighboring Somaliland, said she was stuck in an underground cell for more than six months last year, raped and tortured. “They beat me on the feet and breasts,” she said. She was freed only after her father paid the soldiers ransom, she said, though she did not know how much.
