culture

Fun with the Screamers at the City of Scream

Last Fri­day, Una and I went to Shahr-e-Ghol­gho­la which means the city of scream in Dari. It’s a beau­ti­ful old city ruins on top of a hill with a won­der­ful view of the whole city of Bamyan. We hiked to the very top of the hill and met a fam­i­ly. An old man came to vis­it Shahr-e-Ghol­gho­la with his chil­dren. He was a police­man who was sta­tioned on top of this hill a few years ear­li­er. Then on our way…

Celebrating Nowruz in Mazar-i-Sharif

We chose to cel­e­brate the Per­sian New Year, Nowruz in Mazar-i-Sharif because it is the epi­cen­ter of cel­e­bra­tion in Afghanistan. Over 200,000 peo­ple con­gre­gate at the Rowze-e-Sharif Mosque which the Afghan Shia believe hous­es the tomb of Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Tal­ib whom they con­sid­er Islam’s first Imam. Nowruz is offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized as a nation­al hol­i­day and high rank­ing offi­cials attend the cel­e­bra­tions. Although the fes­tiv­i­ties are cen­tered on the Mosque, Novruz is a pre-Islam­ic hol­i­day that is not mentioned…

Entering the FOB

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If you search for Jalal­abad on googlemaps only one road shows up, Hwy A01, the Asian High­way, a.k.a. Kab­ul-Jalal­abad-Torkham High­way.  That road is the main drag of Jalal­abad City, sport­ing twoish lanes of traf­fic flow­ing each direc­tion, packed with tuk­tuks, motor­bikes, don­keys, track­tors and toy­ota corol­las, all jam­ming for space. The main US army base in our region is FOB Fen­ty, locat­ed on the east­ern edge of Jalal­abad City. It’s a well-estab­lished base that’s been around for many years.  It’s main…

To lose and find a child in Afghanistan …

Rawed’s father Gulza­da brought him to Jalal­abad city to be seen by a doc­tor.  Sev­en year old Rawed was show­ing symp­toms of jaun­dice.  They drove into the city from a small vil­lage in the dis­trict of Sherzad.  As is com­mon prac­tice, dad tem­porar­i­ly left Rawed with a shop­keep­er from the same vil­lage and went to park the car.  “I’ll be back in a few min­utes, and then we’ll walk to the hos­pi­tal.”  When he returned the child was gone. Gulza­da is our friend Haji Najib’s ma’­ma’,…

Buzkashi

On a down day in Kab­ul, we decid­ed to take a road trip up to Pan­jshir Valley.  Lou has writ­ten about our expe­ri­ences in a pre­vi­ous post.  This post focus­es on the game of Buzkashi.   The objec­tive of Buzkashi is to gain pos­ses­sion of a goat car­cass, car­ry it a full loop around the field, and then deposit it into your oppo­nents goal (which is a cir­cle on the ground).  If at any time you drop the goat, you…

Urinals in Afghanistan

When con­struc­tion does hap­pen at Nan­garhar Uni­ver­si­ty, it usu­al­ly takes place in the sum­mer months when the stu­dents and fac­ul­ty are on vaca­tion and there is less inter­fer­ence with class­es and all that. Upon return­ing to cam­pus, there is a buzz of sur­prise among the stu­dents with each new build­ing. This is the vet­eri­nary build­ing in Nan­garhar Uni­ver­si­ty. The funds for its con­struc­tion were pro­vid­ed by USAID and its blue­print fol­lowed a stan­dard mold for such a build­ing, designed in…

Of Lions and Horses in the Panshir

Last Fri­day morn­ing we head­ed off at first light from the mud­dy streets of Kab­ul. We wound our way north, past Bagram, where ISAF is head­quar­tered, and took a sharp turn east in the vil­lage of Jebal Ser­aj. We’d decid­ed to take a day long pil­grim­age, of sorts, to the tomb of Ahmad Shah Masoud. His grave lies deep his home­land of the Pan­shir Val­ley which he so famous­ly defend­ed against the long and ardu­ous Sovi­et attack. Masoud is arguably…

How the Taliban hijacked our educational materials…

Our Malik Dave had a won­der­ful idea. The rea­son­ing went some­thing like this: Let’s employ the Afghan com­pa­nies that sprung up to print elec­tion posters. They are cur­rent­ly out of work because the elec­tion sea­son is over. Lest we hire them, they may be up to no good. We call this tech­nique weaponized shop­ping and it’s one of the tech­niques in the arse­nal of the Syn­er­gy Strike Force. Over the past month, Lou, Juan and crew have put them­selves towards select­ing and optimizing…

Tile Porn

Pre­sent­ed here for your visu­al enter­tain­ment and aes­thet­ic enlight­en­ment are images from Her­at’s Fri­day Mosque, one of the gems of Islam­ic Architecture.

Teleconferencing Medicine

Tues­day was one of my most reward­ing days in Afghanistan.  I wit­nessed some­thing unde­ni­ably and irre­versibly pos­i­tive. In the morn­ing an ambu­lance came to pick Dr. Pete and me up from the Taj.  We crammed along with the dri­ver in front, while 5 female OBGYN doc­tors and a male ward direc­tor sat in the back, occu­py­ing one bench and the patient cot.  I’ve rid­den in the back of this ambu­lance before and know that the cot slides around and the…

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