48 Hours out of Kabul

I realised my posts have all been negative, negative, negative since I arrived here...and always the fan of the positive outlook, I want to share my biggest Afghan smile with you...

I'll be brutally honest, I've been in Afghanistan a month and I so far I haven't been that fond of it. Apart from the last couple of days of unrest, my life here has got in to a very nice rhythm, I have friends, work is hard but interesting, I get invited to parties, I go out for dinner in a pick of international restaurants, I'm not in any way unhappy, but it doesn't resonate or gel or fit with me in anyway.

And then on Sunday (pre-riots) I left Kabul.

And I suddenly realised that I haven't been in Afghanistan a month at all. I've been in Kabul a month, and Kabul is dusty and restrictive and cynical and walled and not walkable and ridiculously segregated (ex pats and Afghans) and there are riots!

It started at 5am and a drive to the airport through a Kabul before the cars and the noise wakes up. Chiselled road sweepers (again I am blown away by the sheer beauty of average Joe – or Abdullah – here) and women and half skinned, headless cows...cart and donkey contraptions and a sense that maybe this was what Kabul was like before we all turned up.

When my colleague and travelling companion Mustafa and I arrived at the airport, we were ushered through an empty departure area and out on to the tarmac, where I was weighed with my luggage and Mustafa and his luggage. Having successfully passed the weight test (weight gain and kabul food do not exactly go hand in hand) it was just a matter of waiting around for the pilot aka Tin Can Bob and our 2-seater plane to be literally pushed out of the hanger and faced in the direction of the runway.

If i thought the planes in Nepal were small, they were nothing compared to this teeny contraption. Now that I am safely on ground again, I'd like to say that I was cool and unconcerned by the fact I was taller than the plane...but the truth is I was a silent 'I'm ok' bag of nerves. Nerves were not helped by a) the fact I knew the pilot's nick name was tin can Bob b) that the seats came with full on shoulder straps and lots of clicking and tightening of various seatbelt mechanisms were required c) that T-C-B (pilot) proceeded to put a helmet on d) that on the taxi up to the runway he kept muttering quietly in to his headphones, then touching dials, then muttering again (in hindsight he was just checking with airport control that the runway was clear but in my increasingly paranoid state, I was convinced he was saying "I keep flicking these dials but nothing is working, I think we're leaking fuel, guess we should just take off and see what happens, what d'ya reckon? Give it a shot?"

And then we were in the air flying, eye level to the mountains, over Afghanistan. All I can say is this is a beautiful, vast mountainous country. It's not particularly green, but there are valleys and brown rolling mountains that look like they are made of sand and black craggy mountains covered in snow and red rock formations that look like they come from another world. But if I thought the flight out with T-C-Bob was cool, imagine my huge Afghan grin when on the way back (with tin-can-Jim) I got to ride shot gun (as in NEXT to the pilot) and I got to wear the headphones and touch the buttons and listen to air traffic control conversations AND we flew over a collection of brilliant blue lakes at the end of a vast, deep valley. Having not seen much colour for the last month, the green of the valley and the crystal blue of the lakes took my breath away and made my stomach flip (that and the fact that the plane was bobbing about in the wind...but I was cool co-pilot lady by then!).

So that was the bread to my eye-opening afghan sandwich. The filling was Lal Sarjangal. A rural town / village / collection of compounds, mud huts and wooden shacks nestled in the mountains in Gor province. We were there to conduct a field assessment for a human rights radio project we are launching soon. Conducting a field assessment basically means talking to everyone from the provincial governor, to the local Oxfam head, to women's groups to find out what the issues are with regards to human rights and women's rights and how a radio and training project can have the best impact. While doing this I realised 3 key things...1- that I miss the 'talking to the people' element of my work so far here, in Nepal we were always in the field or talking to various Nepalis but here in Afghanistan I have felt like I only talk to other NGOs or the UN in a big self congratulatory, lets all pat each other on the back kind of way. 2 – That sometimes water, fuel, education are more important than human rights, and perhaps human rights and empowering Islamic women, is a cooler, sexier concept in the West...I'm not saying this project is worthless, because I think in lots of ways it is very worthwhile but when you have a room full of angry women gathered and one of them comes up to you, shows you her grazed knuckles and says "I wasted 7 years of my life under the Taliban, my life is still pointless now, look at my hands, I spend all my days searching for bits of wood, you want to empower me, give me fuel so I can cook and keep my family warm, give me water so I can tend my land"...you've got to wonder why more projects aren't putting money in to these basic needs.

3 - is I need space around me and fresh air to breathe and Kabul is giving me cabin fever. Oh and 4 is Afghan food in the field is bad. I hate to be the picky foreigner, but it is just nasty, oily, tasteless and based around mounds of greasy rice and stale bread.

So that was my 48 hours outside of Kabul. I returned with colour in my cheeks, a smile on my face and a new positive outlook and faith in why I came...and then 3 hours after landing in Kabul, the rioting started!