snow and rice - both slow the traffic

I am sitting here grinning at the poetic beauty and the magnificently clever intended pun in the title above. It is short, sharp and incredibly witty.
I know you are now dying to get to the end of this missive just to share in the joke but be patient, I shall begin by addressing a few questions that have been posed of me.
First of all Clair, I would like to thank you for your comments and also for the fact that your attention has transferred from the exit to the entrance, figuratively speaking.
How do we get by for tea. Well, we are able to buy a variety of teas including standard "English brew". Mostly we shop at Bifpo as we affectionately call it. This is the BFPO office at the British army camp in Kabul, Camp Souter. Here they have a NAAFI that deals in such treats as Nescafe coffee, Tetley tea bags and Hobnobs. (which tea is never complete without). So under the guise of going to see if any important business mail has arrived at Bifpo, on a daily basis we take it in turns to visit the NAAFI and stock up. A little treat to break up the day.
Of course, getting into camp Souter is a trial, but always worth the effort, just to see the red post box that looks like it has been stolen from a country town back home and planted into this dusty, windswept base in Kabul.
There are other delights available here in Kabul as well, but the purchase of alcohol is always a bit fraught in a strict Moslem country. There are some Afghan shops that sell it "under the counter" and you have to know someone who knows someone who knows a shop that sells it. Then you have to go in and discreetly wait for there to be no-one about and then ask the shopkeeper and the transaction takes place in utmost secrecy as the goods are loaded into a bag behind the counter, the money handed over and the goods are not inspected until you get to the safety of your car/house. So you are never quite sure what beer you have bought or, more importantly its sell by date, (post sell by date beer is cheaper) until it is too late. Last night we wanted to get a case of beer and went to a shop we know sells beer, but they had none, but he kindly pointed us in the direction of another shop we had not been to before. We went in the shop and there were a couple of policemen idling away the day away in the shop. They were watching an Indian soap (these are very popular here and many shops, for some reason we don't know, have a small TV on, in fact, this is quite common in Indian shops in the UK, so not so strange).
So, I minced around looking at some pastries hoping the Police would leave but they didn't. In the end quietly, and very discreetly I asked if they had beer. The shopkeeper proceeded to wave his arms in the air and profess very loudly and with suitable indignation "No Beer, No Beer, No Beer" causing everyone in the shop to turn and stare at me. As I waited for the ground to open and swallow me up I went a bright shade of red. Oh well, another lesson learnt. In post-Serena Kabul people are becoming keen to be seen not to be fraternising with the foreigners.
Now where were we, yes, fruit and veg. Wonderful fruit and veg here. Most is sold on little barrows by the side of the road and each barrow will be full of an individual item. You will get a man with a barrow of oranges, next to the man with the barrow of apples etc. The fruit and veg are very good, especially cauliflowers. they have the largest cauliflowers you will ever see. The men generally are not stood next to the barrow, but clear a small area in the corner of the barrow and sit there cross legged all day waiting for business. I am told most of the fruit and veg comes from Pakistan and from the south and north of Afghanistan. It is very high quality and excellent to eat. Grapes are in abundance and, I am told the region around Kabul has 16 different varieties of grape (but no wine).
These are the areas and fields we are clearing from landmines. Each minefield cleared is a new field open for agriculture. As soon as it is clear the landowner will be straight out and the field will be ploughed or fenced. Within a matter of days crops will be planted (no, not poppies) or goats and sheep will be grazing. Another livelihood secured and another family that will shortly be self-sufficient.
Oh yes, you wanted to know about snow and rice. Ok, this week it snowed BIG time in Kabul, a good few inches fell and the normally chaotic, me-first Afghan style of driving came into its own. (A doctors report I read here once said "Driving is still the preferred activity of the Afghan male wishing to commit suicide"). You can imagine this driving coupled with bald tyres, no road sense, thick snow and ice all combined to create a maelstrom of chaos. To add to the excitement they have created gutters at the side of the roads that are around a foot deep and wide, so once you start to slide towards it, your wheel goes over the edge of the gutter and BANG - that is the end of your driving until you and a group of friends can find a way of picking your car out of there. So we have it, cars littering the edges of the road, we have cars coming BACK up the dual carriageway because they can't get across the gaps, we have cars sliding everywhere and, of course, the manic Afghan NEED to jump into the smallest of gaps if it gives you a one inch advantage. Oh yes, and a lack of proper windscreen wipers, screenwash and heated rear windows giving all this a surreal "looking through fog" appearance as everyone tries to see through misted up windows.
Inevitably this leads to a number of cars coming into contact with each other. The customary Afghan way to deal with this situation is both entertaining and amusing. Instead of exchanging insurance details, which obviously don't exist, it requires both the drivers (always male) to get out of their cars and shout and gesticulate until a willing crowd forms. then comes the ritual fight. This requires a lot of slapping arms around and generally appearing to fight without actually throwing a punch. The function of the crowd is to pull the warring parties apart and for everyone to agree that a bloodbath would have ensued without their intervention and both parties are satisfied now that they would have fought to the death and can now carry on their way. Honour is preserved and nothing is achieved - sound familiar!!
So that is how the snow and ice slows the traffic but where is the punchline with the rice, I hear you ask. Ready, here it comes. Yesterday, Condie was in town. Yes, Condaleezza Rice came to visit us and most of the roads in the centre of Kabul were closed for her convoy. Getting home took more than double the normal time. The Rice definitely slowed the traffic. Heck, I am getting good at this!!!!

bizzare at the bazaar

Once again, I feel the need to share with my faithful audience the experiences, the sounds, the smells, the cold, the sights, the feel, the taste of everyday life in Kabul. So, today's ditty is about a visit I made to the bazaar recently.
As an organisation we purchase enough food to feed 3000 people three meals a day. In terms of rice alone this is equivalent to 15 tonnes a month, not counting beans, peas, ghee, onions, potatoes, bread, meat, milk, tea, tomato paste and fruit. Yes, folks my shopping bill is around $20,000 per month. A very impressive one million Afghanis. So I decided to find out exactly how we go about making this purchase.
We send a man to the bazaar, he goes round the bazaar and gets the quotes. I inspect the quotes, choose a supplier and the purchase is made. BUT how exactly do you go about buying tons and tons of food in one go, so off I trotted to the bazaar to see how it all went.
Of course this requires the obligatory armed guard and armoured vehicle for the journey (which I am sure you are tired of me telling you, but it will become a relevant part of the story).
Now shopping in Kabul is fairly orderly, the stationary shops are all in one place, as are the motor parts, the dentists, the computer shops, the TV shops (again this will become relevant) etc. So we were heading for an area in West Kabul were there are the dry goods markets. West Kabul was the most heavily bombed area during the civil war and is still a collection of badly damaged falling down type buildings. Think of a demolition site that they stopped demolishing ¾ of the way through and this is West Kabul.

The bazaar is a rabbit warren of small holdings in narrow alleys with people running around everywhere and the noise of a thousand deals being struck. As you approach it you begin to be drawn into smaller and smaller alleys full of stalls with all kinds of dry goods. Hessian sacks are in front of each “shop” with the tops open and rolled down displaying the goods. Rice, lentils, peas, beans; a whole myriad of products. Each “shop” is no more than either a wooden lean-to or a 20-ton container with the doors open as a shop. Men stand outside each one calling you in, tempting you with chai (tea) and a seat to do your deal. I am led through by our buyer, walking along muddy paths with a gully in the middle, water and various other liquids slowly wend down the gulley as you take care not to misplace your step. There is snow and ice on the ground and slush where hundreds of feet have trodden there way through. Deeper and deeper he leads me, my armed guard following in my footsteps behind me until we reach the appointed seller. We are buying half our rice allocation, 184 sacks of rice.

At the entrance to the bazaar we have parked our enormous Kamaz 6 wheel-drive lorry. It is a beast with tyres almost to my full height. This will take our food back to base, but how on earth are we to get the goods to the truck. We must have come down 300 yards of muddy, narrow paths barely two men wide between the stalls.

From nowhere appears a group of likely lads with wheelbarrows. These lads, I presume, are the equivalent of Tibetan Sherpas. They are young, ragged, smiling, happy and willing. Wearing just barefoot sandals on their feet they march into the dark back of the stall and start appearing carrying the sacks. They carry them on their backs to the weighing scales, each sack is individually weighed and the sack inspected then they each load the sacks onto their wheelbarrows. The boys are small, slightly built but incredibly strong as they pick up sack after sack and carry to their wheelbarrows. All the while there is a ceaseless banter going onto between loaders, buyer and stall holder. I have been sat on a chair with a cup of chai and am left to watch the proceedings. Once they have 5 sacks on their barrows they are each off through the crowds, down the alleys racing to get the sacks onto the Kamaz, they return and the whole process continues. In the meantime, I go to inspect the bean and pea seller, soon the boys will move onto these to make the same transfer of sacks. Next we make a very civilized visit to the tea seller, in the tea corner of the bazaar. Wonderful smells of the various teas on offer, again with large sacks open out front for inspection. We are buying green tea and black tea, both of which have to be tasted and selected before the transaction can complete. The tea seller is a very jolly man with little English, but much humour. We pass a very agreeable 15 minutes trying teas, laughing and gesticulating about the various teas and generally around the bazaar. Things are going so well, what could go wrong?
Next we leave this market and wander down the road the the Ghee seller. Ghee is equivalent to butter, in a way but is used for cooking and is very important in eastern asian coooking. The Ghee seller is in a strange courtyard in what appears to be a block of flats. The snow is beginning to melt and water is pouring from the roofs onto the stairs, the area is filthy and smelly with rotten produce in the gulleys, it is not a place you would walk into without reason.
However, we meet the Ghee seller and all is well, the guard is standing outside the door and we are conversing, when all hell breaks loose. My guard is attacked by a group of men shouting, shaking fists and pushing him back. I go out with our buyer and try to work out what the hell is going on. In the end I have our buyer on the phone to my assistant in the office to tell him in Dari what the problem is and then he can translate and tell me what is causing this to kick off. It turns out some armed men (dressed as police) were in the market earlier and kidnapped a stall holder and they think my guard is one of the gang. This I am being told on the phone while the aggro is still going on in front of me. Once I have the story we beat a hasty retreat; getting your guard beaten up so far from base is not a good move. I grab the guard, the buyer leads the way and we are heading for the stairs with the shouts ringing in our ears and the fists being shaken at us.

We get out onto the street and I call up the armoured car. All is now calm and as the car comes round the corner we get in. The trip to the bazaar is over for today for me and the guard, the buyer finishes the deals, supervises the boys loading the Kamaz and pays the stallholders. This takes around another 2 hours. Meanwhile me and the guard head for the office. You see, I told you the guard was relevant to the story!!

Mountain climbing

Well, I was going to start this entry with a few more words about the security situation in Kabul, but this afternoon we went for a walk up TV Hill, which is not a hill at all, as it is more than 2000m high, but as Kabul is at 1800m it is only relatively a few hundred metres, but it is high, cold, windy, covered in snow and feels pretty much like standing at the top of Portavescovo, but without a nice warm restaurant!! It is called for no greater reason than the TV masts are on it, where is the romance in this world?

Ok, I will admit, we cheated and drove to the top but the views are stunning of the mountains around Kabul, the Hindu Kush to the North and the plain of Kabul laid out before us in the valley.

The journey up was very interesting, not just for the icy frozen road, but also for the houses we passed. As I have mentiond before something like 60% of the houses in Kabul are illegally built mud huts on the sides of the mountains. Well, today we got to see them and their inhabitants close up. We were lucky we drove up, as there is a road for the military and TV installations at the top, but the people who live in these houses have no cars or transport. Some have very basic electricity, but no water supply, gas, sanitation or shops. Everything, is carried from the city up the mountain by hand (mainly on peoples backs). We passed small children carrying supplies up the mountain side to their houses, mostly without coats or hats. Two small boys had a wheelbarrow with a rope at the front; one pulling and one pushing with two five-gallon containers of water in the wheelbarrow.

Life is hard, uncomfortable, tough and all about survival; nothing more, nothing less. Very sobering.

Anyway,we got to the top and the views were quite spectacular and well worth the journey. We walked the last few hundred yards to as near to the top as we were allowed and tried to spot the landmarks down below.

So, Friday was a funday!! and what else has your intrepid correspondant in Kabul been up to this week, you may ask, and if you do I will tell. Actually, I will tell anyway. This week I have visited the British Embassy where, I am pleased to say a photograph of Her Majesy hung majestically in the Portakabin that acts as the security entrance to the Embassy. A fine photo of our noble Soveriegn in full Regalia looking somewhat out of place in a Portakabin, but heyho this is Kabul and needs must. For a moment it felt as if I had stepped back onto the soil of dear old Blighty, but the illusion only lasted a moment as the sign on the door next to HRH is a red circle with a white background and a red diagonal stripe across it. A bit like a No smoking sign except this one had an outline of a Kalashnikov on it. Yes, it means "no firearms) Ok, this is Kabul!!!!

We also visited a Korean restaurant for dinner one evening this week. You remember my description of the bar last week with only four people in it? Well, the Korean restaurant had NO people in it except us. The good thing is it was so far off the beaten track and down a dark side street followed by a dark alley that no-one would ever find us there. When you get there, you get out the car, knock on the gate and get back into the car while you wait. A nice friendly Korean gentleman comes out to the gate, looks through the peephole and then lets you in. There is no sign outside or any indication this is a restaurant, in fact, it is clearly a house with a room set aside for people who wish to come and eat there. Even the takeaway menu has no address on it, it is purely "word of mouth" by invitation only!

We ate a relaxed meal (with Tofu, salads and a lovely soup with an egg in it) Now this was a real luxury for your humble veggie and was very welcome. The whole meal for three including soft drinks came to around £5 per head, so great value as well. We called our car, it came to the gate, we left, got in and headed back home. A bit weird, but weird is the norm here, it is funny how you go through these procedures without really noticing them. I only look back and see them as strange when I come to write about them. Am getting used to weird in this place.

Oh yes, I nearlky forgot, THE big news of the week. our delivery of duvets. Yes, boys and girls we have received a consignment of duvets. Can I put into mere words the joy, pleasure, happiness these duvets have bought to your blogger. The best thing was that I did not even know they were coming. I came home on Thursday evening and there beside my bed was a large package saying 3 in 1 duvet. Yes, in the package were two duvets, one for summer, one for winter and together a pair for Kabul!!! I have 15 big, fat, whopping togs of warm toes, yes readers, I have put BOTH duvets between the two blankets on the bed and dispensed with the sleeping bag. Oh joy, me and sleeping bags are not good bedfellows. You see, I am a very restless sleeper and the confines of a sleeping bag mean I am constantly in conflict with its tight limitations. I can't get comfortable and when I finally do, I feel the need for one more adjustment and hey presto, it all starts again.

So last night before I got into bed I prepared it. A sheet, followed by a blanket were first on and these were both tucked in tight to stop any air gaps that may upset my little toes. Then on went the two duvets, then the final blanket. I got into an ordinary bed (well Ok, it had two duvets and two blankets on it) for the first time since I froze through the night a couple of weeks ago. Oh bliss, I spread my arms, I spread my legs, I wriggled about, I turned this way, I turned that way and finally decided to settle. My toes were warm, my legs were warm, my body was warm, my arms were warm, I am so, so looking forward to going to bed tonight!!!

So there you have it, all is well-ish, I bought a toothbrush and five eggs today (and got change from 50p) and am going to make an omelette; after all, it is Friday and we like to indulge ourselves. Till the next time.