Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Various photos and thanks for care packages!




Venturing out into the districts...



Yesterday I was able to get out to a meeting with local farmers, veterinarians, and some government agriculture representatives. As much as anyone says otherwise, I can't help but truly believe that all people want the same things- a livelihood, access to basic services, security, and to be treated with respect, just to name a few of the key ones that came up yesterday. The meeting went well, as a good introduction for me to some of the leaders and local farmers. I was able to get some good baseline information for research that my team is conducting, but I won't bore you with my nerdy interests....

After the meeting we got to walk around in some local fields- we saw cucumbers growing, wheat, poppy (and poppy fields that had been eradicated by GIRoA), and goats! A ton of locals were gathering around and children swarmed this strange American woman. At one point, I had about 25 of the little ones surrounding me, and I was asking them their names, in Pashto. They replied, and one cute quirky one asked me mine. Proudly, I said, "Zma noom Christine dey" (meaning my name is Christine, in Pashto). The children proceeded to roar with laughter, much to my confusion and delight. I asked an interpreter if I had said it wrong or something. He giggled and said "No, you are correct. In fact your Pashto accent is really good." I asked what had been so hilarious then? He said simply the fact that an American woman had spoken Pashto to them was amusing. We played around, they showed me their goats and pointed at my sunglasses, as to ask if they could take them. This happened with pretty much every single item that I had with me, which as I'm sure you all agree, is heartbreaking to a sucker like me, who loves children, and people in general. It was quite the fun day, and I'm attempting to post some photos from the trip. Life in Farah lately has gotten quite busy, but has been quite the adventure as always. It still seems so surreal sometimes to go for a run around the base and see helicopters right over head, Italian military vehicles almost running me over (kidding), and many, many other small nuances that have occurred here to my amusement.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

A little something for everyone















































"The foundation of development I can put it in one word. It's education" Provincial Director of Education for Farah Province, Afghanistan.
Abel, notice the back of the light blue shirt. I took that photo just for you!!
Sandro, the Italian barista, who always has a smile on his face and helps me get through the long days with his amazing espresso-making abilities. And of course, the infamous Long, singing us a little rendition of...Nirvana, was it? We did do a nice tribute to Sinatra with a sub-par singing (on my part) of "My Way".
This doesn't even begin to dip into the adventures of the past few weeks- but at least I got some photos up! :)

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Many, many poopies

Just a quick funny for now. I'll post something for real later, since Friday is the lighter day here.

I was having a conversation with an Afghan journalist yesterday who works on base with us. He started talking about the plethora of poopies. Curious, I engaged the conversation, until he said that it is poopy season, and there are many poopy growers in the province. We need to work to get rid of the poopies, give people an alternative to poopy.

Obviously I knew he was really talking about poppy. :) Maybe you had to be there.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

...and I didn't bring a rain jacket

Soooooo, it's raining in Farah. Well, I didn't expect much rain to begin with, but no big deal. Spent most of the day in the office getting lots of good work done and things organized with my team leader. I went at around 4PM to go do PT (that's what these guys call working out, it is short for physical training). So, I had picked up my laundry, which is great! They are super nice and they do your laundry, fold it up, and get it back to you in 24 hours. I had to go back to my living quarters (aka, the tent) and change, get my iPod, etc. Excellent, I thought. Went back to my room, stepped my foot inside- squish!... other foot- SQUISH! Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the place had flooded, what a pickle! So I scrambled around to get as much as I could up off of the floor...anything that was dry enough I put on my bed. Anything wet, well, I dumped that in the room next door, which seemed to have escaped the flooding situation unscathed- of course. Some papers got wet, clothes, bags, batteries...but nothing too valuable, thank goodness. My team leader stays down the "hall" so he helped me come up with a mop. I spent a good while working up a sweat mopping the floor, to little avail. I was attempting to identify the source of the water... there didn't appear to be any leak in the roof of the tent... what was it? Ah-ha! The "floor" is a thin plastic tarp-type material, pretty much just laid on top of a pile of rocks. Well, the rocks had managed to poke some slits into the "floor" and the water was burping up through it! With each step I was actually making it worse, as the water came bubbling up through the small slits. So, to heck with it! I managed to get all of my stuff relatively secured away from the water between 2 rooms. I used one of my own locks to lock the other room, then went to the "Mayor's office" to ask them if I could utilize the other room (I doubt any flights are getting in soon!). Now, this was my next challenge. Surrounding the Mayor's office was a lot of water, with no path. Anyway, they were nice and seemed to have enough of their own problems, so I quietly left and went on my way. Then I ran into someone else and magically acquired a key to a hard room, a story which I will end there. Below are pictures of the flooding.