photos

Nangahar Public Hospital

The first time we came to the hos­pi­tal, the staff apol­o­gized pro­fuse­ly for not being able to host us. They were deal­ing with the wound­ed of a sui­cide bomb­ing inci­dent in the dis­trict. There was one casu­al­ty. Five peo­ple were in the OR. And they were embar­rassed in front of us, that such things hap­pen in their coun­try. We left, and came back yes­ter­day. Nan­ga­har Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal (NPH) is a Region­al Post-Grad­u­ate Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal for the East­ern Region of Afghanistan.…

Soccer with the Boys

The cook scored 3 goals. The mechan­ic Sadik stayed in goal. The guard Metin scored 7. I scored 9.

Happy New Year!

Thanks to Anselm for com­ing up with it, we have a new tagline: Adven­tures in Khy­ber­space! Get it? We’re focused on bring­ing tech­nol­o­gy to the Khy­ber Pass. Just a few days ago, we took a dri­ve to it’s West­ern Edge, the Torkham Gate. This street scene brought to you by JD, a friend of the TAJ:

Afghan National Dresses

I found this scanned cal­en­dar of Ari­ana Afghan Air­lines from 1973 and am repost­ing here. [flickr-gallery mode=“photoset” photoset=“72157625559950781”] Click­ing on an image will bring up a light­box. Then you have to click on the sides of the light­box to pan around. And you should take a look at this pho­to series from For­eign Pol­i­cy Mag­a­zine, which will total­ly blow your per­cep­tion of Afghanistan’s recent past: — Biol­o­gy Class in Kab­ul Uni­ver­si­ty, cir­ca 1960s

Merry Christmas from Jalalabad

This is Dave. He’s our trib­al elder here at the Taj Guest­house — Malik Dave. He runs the Syn­er­gy Strike Force, which Peretz and I are now part of. He’s a US tank gun­ner turned MD PhD turned hip­pie-human­i­­tar­i­an aid-tech guru. He’s respon­si­ble for the flex­i­ble, organ­ic nature of the projects we work on and gets batch­es of mon­ey to make them hap­pen. Last night at our bar (the only bar in East­ern Afghanistan) he decid­ed to take a holiday…

Panorama of Jalabad Valley

Panora­ma of the val­ley where we are liv­ing, tak­en from the top of a Bud­dhist bur­ial mound. You can see the Kab­ul riv­er in the dis­tance with the caves Osama Bin Laden lived in when he first came to Afghanistan behind it.

Explosively Sweet