Afghan Chicken

So I live in Kabul. How crazy is that? I am still having trouble getting my head around that reality. Although, to be honest, I don't actually live in kabul. Kabul is my day to day backdrop. I don't walk in Kabul (you're not allowed), the only times I have stepped in Kabul is the driveway to my house or the driveway to my office, oo I also stepped briefly on the pavement on my way into a shop. I see Kabul through a window, correction I see Kabul through a car window, you can't see Kabul through normal office or home windows because all the buildings I have been in (even the restaurants and supermarkets) are surrounded by a high wall. So I live in a bubble known as Kabul. I think that is why I am having such trouble getting my head around the reality, because my reality is not a normal reality.

I live in a house (surrounded by a high wall) where everyday dinner, a side salad and a dessert (apple pie, victoria sponge, fruit salad...) has been cooked and left out by a middle aged male cook with brilliant green eyes, where my washing and cleaning is done by a heavily pregnant lady who is the second wife of the guard (a guy with cheek bones that frame a ridiculously sharp jaw line and again those National Geographic eyes) who basically takes care of any other needs after eating and washing. Everyday I am driven to work by a driver, who picks me up at the end of the day and brings me home. If I need to go anywhere, there he is in his car, and while I eat in a restaurant or have a meeting with a UN agency, he waits in the car until I want to go home, or go shopping, or go to the bank. I am not quite sure what to do or think about this life. I know that it is very difficult to be Western here and live any other way, I guess it is pretty easy to be Western here and get used to living this way but something about it doesn't quite sit with me. Maybe if I could speak the language, so far I have mastered 'thank you', I would feel less colonial about it all. Maybe I should just get over my 'colonial guilt', maybe I should fight the system, maybe we're providing necessary jobs to locals who need money, maybe we're taking advantage of local people. who knows.

I work behind a different wall to the one I live behind. Work is no less surreal. I share an office with my boss Michele (who I also live with), the rest of our team are all male and all Afghan. And they all seem lovely, but I still figuring out what they do. Lots of men with huge beards and turbans visit the office everyday; I have no idea who they are. I've had meetings with Afghan Ministers who spend most of the meeting drumming the table, looking around the room or leaning across the table to ask me "so you lived in Nepal?", even though my boss is speaking directly to them. I've had to chair meetings where no one sticks to agenda and everyone just talks in Dari, while the only other Westerner there tore out her hair before yelling at everyone (including me!) I've been in meetings which include female high court judges and I just want to say "wow, so how did you get to be a high court judge in a country where women are rarely even let out of the house" but I can't, because I don't speak Dari and she didn't speak English, so she said "judge" and i said, "I am very honoured to meet you".(but I could have just as easily said "apples taste good in spring"), I've been to UN meetings and thought, 'do you even know what happens outside your high walls?', I've sat with colleagues and wanted to bang my head against a wall, as I know full well that "of course - inshallah" does not mean that any of what I spent the last half an hour explaining has registered, I've sat alone and wanted to bang my head against a wall because I don't want to be one of those ex pats who gets frustrated with their Afghan colleagues – it's a totally different culture, language, way of life, and do I really know better?

And I've only been here a week...or is it a year? I don't know anymore, all I know is that I've eaten lots of Afghan Chicken and Jase, for you information, it tastes GOOD. (Although not as good as jerk chicken).

ps the title of this blog was in honour of the lovely Mr JJ Codrington, who requested it to be so. Had he not requested it, I would have called it Kabul is so passé. This was said in my presence just 3 hours after landing in this rubbled, war torn country. This claim was followed by "actually Iraq is pretty passé too...isn't the Darfur the new Iraq?" Insanity!