Friday is the Sabbath here in Afghanastan, so everyone has the day off. It was pretty glorious to sleep in today. There was a BBQ planned for the afternoon, so it was a nice casual day. Everyone has been walking around the compound in American clothing, and the females don’t need to wear head scarves. So, I put on a banana republic shirt short sleeve shirt because it was sunny and I wanted to get some vitamin D and not sweat like I have been the rest of the week. (long sleeves, head scarf and any temperature over 72 = too hot).
After about two-three hours of sitting around out on the patio reading, one of the women here (who I saw at breakfast) says to me “You know, your outfit is totally inappropriate for here.” I thought she meant the city of Jalalabad, which is very conservative compared to the capital of Kabul. I was aware I wouldn’t be able to wear the shirt outside the compound. But she actually meant for INSIDE the compound. She said that she never ever wears short sleeves (except she was today), and always has a shirt that covers her behind.
It didn’t even occur to me that I might offend someone, or that the guards were staring at me.In the evenings other females sometimes wear gym t-shirts with short sleeves, but when I thought about it, they didn’t go outside to get to the dining room. I did. I felt bad about it and made sure I changed my shirt into something more appropriate. I guess I figured since we didn’t have to wear the headscarf, then we didn’t have to worry about what we wore as much. Oops.
As I said before, Jalalabad is more conservative than most of the rest of the country. All the women here wear a burqa outside. Some of the older female children even wear them, but it seems most do not. The only skin that is visible is the face. The neck and ears are usually covered by the head scarf, and the rest of the body by clothing. Occasionally the girls wear sandals and show their feet. In Kabul, there were women out on the street without the burqa.Not many, but some. In Jalalabad there are zero.
The BBQ was a delicious feast of beef, pork, chicken, baked beans, corn, pomegranate seeds, hash, salad and eggplant garlic dip. There were also pomegranate margaritas! We had a few visitors from other guesthouses, who we met last night. This included the two guys who are riding their motorcycles from Turkey through Iraq and Afghanistan.
After lunch, we sat around and talked the afternoon away. I tried to teach the pups to fetch. At first they seemed to get it and be excited, but then they were distracted by a game of Bocce. It was getting pretty dark, like it was going to rain, and the wind was picking up. In a place that is generally dusty, you can imagine it was pretty bad. We went inside before there was sand coming out of our ears, and set up the projector to watch Charlie Wilson’s War. It was kind of gross to see just how much dust was floating past us in the light.
I realized a little into the movie that I have in fact seen it before. Don’t know when or where, but if not it was pretty bad déjà vu. The movie is more interesting this time around because one of our local friends here (Ishaq) was actually a Mujahedeen, Afghan fighter, at this time. He lived this movie, met Charlie Wilson and Ronald Reagan, and helped to defeat the Russians. He wasn’t watching with us, but had given us a play by play history lesson on Wednesday at the hospital.
It was also interesting watching the movie in country, with a bunch of expats who have been here a while. For those who haven’t seen it, the point is that Charlie pushed for this covert war to help the Afghans fight the Russians. It worked and they won. But afterwards, Charlie pushed to spend a little bit more money on building schools and roads. Instead, America pulled out and the country turned into what it is today. History is getting ready to repeat itself, if security contractors end up having to leave the country. Many US workers will be forced to leave, and not only will 30,000 local jobs be lost but many unfinished projects will remain just that – unfinished.
It’s really a shame because so many of the locals we interact with really do love Americans and the work we are doing to help their country. They are very gracious and appreciative, and feel safe with us here.
One of our fears about our project is that we will set it up and show them what to do, but they will not take the initiative to sustain it. That seems to be a common problem encountered here.We have to be careful to share the responsibility with the locals. We don’t want to just come in with everything and set it up. We need them to find supplies so that they will make a connection in town for stocking up. We can’t just do a book drive in the US and send the books over. Some fundraising needs to occur locally, to teach responsibility and hard work.
Speaking of work, maybe we will get to do some tomorrow. If we get the resistor, that is. The grand opening of the lab is on Sunday. Hopefully we will have a functional lab by then!
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