Well, as you can probably ascertain from my introduction, I got to leave the cosy environs of the compound to go into town – I grabbed the loan camera (i.e., the big, conspicuous one) and hopped into one of our cars with P**** (a VERY slim Pakistani guy, who’s a great guy but not the most secure defence against violence) and jumped into the car with our slightly burlier driver to head into town to pick up the computer bits and bobs, and to visit a construction site that HOPE is overseeing.
Before I go into the adventures of town, its worth saying a couple of things about the morning meeting – Sunday here is the first working day of the week, so we had our customary transport (ie, who’s going where) meeting, and then we had the start of week “big” meeting. This was a bit of an emotional affair, as D**** had to announce the laying off of one of the engineers here. One of the reasons for the laying off is financial – the are simply not enough ongoing projects that can support the guy (a local, and one of the highest paid of all the staff) - which meant that D**** had the tricky task of explaining the layoff in financial terms whilst trying to assure the rest of the local staff that his priority was to keep their jobs secure – and try to avoid getting them panicked and start to go look for other jobs for themselves. It went fairly well, and the Engineer (****) was told by the local staff that he was always welcome to come and eat lunch with us, and that he would always be a friend – and it was also said that as a professional – an engineer, that finding a new job should be relatively easy. Still, a tricky meeting nonetheless.
The issue is that there are two sorts of funding that **** Afghanistan receives – restricted and unrestricted. Restricted is the type that generally means fairly large money, but it’s all tied to very specific projects, and can only be spent in explicitly prescribed ways – and they generally don’t cover administrative or ongoing costs. Even things like IT components can be recalled at the end of a restricted budget project. Unrestricted funding is the sort that comes from individuals donors, or group donations like church collections – this money can be used far more flexibly – from the slightly boring day to day ongoing costs, which tend to keep the local workers employed and secure beyond the limits of a restricted budget project, to the more attention grabbing projects which present themselves out of the blue – things like the rescue of the **** Orphanage, and various other little - but important – things that come up – things along the lines of the prison initiative I’ve mentioned earlier. It’s easy to hear the big numbers involved in the restricted budget awards and wonder what difference a small personal donation can make, but the flexibility of unrestricted funding means that sometimes a lot more meaningful and long term – and personal assistance can be given to projects and people that might just otherwise slip under the radar.
Ok propaganda over, back to the adventure of the town trip – we took the back (i.e., more bumpy) way into town as we had to inspect the progress of a maternity unit that P**** was responsible for. The sad fact was that there wasn’t much – Peter was understandably annoyed at the lack of progress and cut through the excuses of the local foreman who was there, but without his workforce. He did offer us a cup of tea. I’m glad to see that some things are the same in Afghanistan and the UK. The offer was refused – quite a show of annoyance in this part of the world. I’d taken my camera out to get a picture, but I felt a bit bad about picturing a scene where I’d just witnessed another sort of a scene. So no scenic building work shots here. Just imagine unplastered fairly rough brickwork of a light mud colour, placed between concrete uprights and lintels, and you won’t be far off.
Slightly unsettled, we headed into the chaos of the city centre, where all the joys of street life represented themselves to me – fish hung up on boards on the pavement, bicycles parked hub deep in filthy water in the open gutters along the side of every road; street vendors cooking pretty much anything on tiny portable chimneys, people on underpowered motorbikes negotiating the traffic in suicidal fashion with 40 gallon battered drums of oil (or similarly flammable material) bouncing around on homemade jigs behind them; occasional women, occasionally dressed in blue burkas drifting along like ghosts, invisible – unknown appearance, age, ethnicity, comfortably anonymous amongst the hustle and bustle. In fact, it was only when I happened to see someone with her burka pushed back over her head (for some reason or other) and I saw a deeply lined, totally characterful face, that I appreciated the anonymising power of the burka – who knows what you’re like underneath? It’s almost like a personal invisibility cloak. I’m not saying that I’m all in favour of them, or that everyone who wears one wants to wear one; but I can see how some people might actually appreciate some of the things it gives them – especially in such a male dominated place as here. Of course, the problem is just that, if you want to take a sociological view – male dominated. I have seen, however, groups pf women walking comfortably together as friends, some wearing the burka and others not. There seems to be a slightly more relaxed attitude than we traditionally associate with Afghanistan back home.
Of course, to see evidence of the (sometimes quite cheeky) individualism of the Afghans, you really need to start looking at the vinyl decals they’ve attached to their white Toyota Corolla. And believe me, it’s going to be a white corolla. Unless it’s a Taxi, in which case it’s a yellow and white corolla. They’re all pre-owned (I suspect referring to them as second hand would be being a bit too generous) and the majority of them come from Germany. There’s the occasional Town Ace MPV (Toyota again), but any other make is more than likely to be an NGO vehicle. Of course, you’ll know its NGO because it’ll have the NGO (or army or police) logo in huge letters on the side, it’ll be a new vehicle, and, crucially, it’ll be clean. They’re usually very big as well, and if you’re lucky, it’ll have a huge antennae on the front bumper. Needless to say, I was in a dirty old white Corolla – nice and anonymous, just the way I like it. But I was talking about decals, wasn’t I? Yes – the cars have all sorts of decals on the back windows – eagles are popular, as are wildly inappropriate claims (in English) about the power, or ability of the vehicle – or, as I found particularly intriguing just after going past a group of burka clad women, a particularly attractive woman’s face. I say face, but it was really the eyes and top of the nose, because you’ve got it, it was a decal of an attractive woman wearing a veil. I couldn’t quite get my head around it.
We got to our first computer store – the one in the courtyard tower, and the guy had managed to get us a genuine Toshiba power lead – good news indeed – not the usual Chinese generic product they get over here. The first thing people ask when they buy something electronic over here is “is this western Chinese, or Afghanistan Chinese?” – because there are two, quite different standards of manufacture for the same brands. Like Sony – there’s the good quality “Japanese” (and you can bet it’s actually Chinese) Sony, and then the far more dubious “Chinese” Sony – so beware of any real bargains. Mind you, the adapter we got was a fair bargain at $30 – I’d be pushed to get a genuine charger replacement for the same price – but I do suppose the chances of getting a new one would be higher. Still, I was pleased. And I managed to get some street scenes from the first floor – hanging over the balcony, hoping that I wouldn’t fall.
I may not get the pictures up tonight – the power got cut at 11 last night and I’m cutting it pretty close right now) (ok, so this is obviously out of date now, and I did get the pics up, but I think I'll leave it right threre as a reminder of what it's like here!)
I hate to think what happens when it rains. I'm guessing these things don't come with a worldwide warranty.
Then we went to City Centre, where I was convinced I’d spotted that bargain RAM – and it was still there. Unfortunately, it didn’t fit. We found a 1Gb card that did, and when I tried to use the 512s ridiculously low price to lever the price of the 1Gb card down, they spotted their mistake! Still, they gave us a good price on the 1Gb module – but we had to stay for about 40 mins whilst a utility I’d hooked off the net did a through job of testing the RAM – I didn’t want to fork out other peoples money on something that wasn’t going to work. I made a bit of a deal about looking at their laptops; which I think might have helped the price to come down that little bit more. I also exchanged a couple of photo opportunities with the young sales assistant you see below:
Hello sir, how may I be of assistance? Perhaps you need instructions with your camera?
I think this kid may have a future. Nice composition!
On the way back, I managed to snatch some pictures of Kabul, though I chickened out in the market again – I was determined to get at least one picture, but I never felt quite confident enough, though I had been very jaunty with Peter when we had been waiting for our driver to turn back up, standing around waving laptops and cameras around with an air of unworried bonhomie. I swear I’ll get at least one meaningful picture of the market before I go! I was pleased, however, to get a couple of close-ups of the crazy hill clinging houses on the side of the road.
I know I said I got two pictures, you only get the one. Only the best for you guys!
Yeah, strolling across the road is like a national passtime here. No rush, mind you.
The afternoon was a lot more laid back, although I had a lot of work to do in the office – and it turns out that at least one of the voltage stabilisers is probably up the spout. Probably Chinese. Afghan Chinese, that is. It looked like I might get out the **** Orphanage this afternoon as well, as the director showed up for a meeting with D**** – unfortunately, we didn’t have a driver available, so I’m going to be going tomorrow.
There was a bunch of other stuff I wanted to talk about today as well, like small buisiness advertising, the meaning of adverts in English with high production values scattered round town – i.e., who are they really for; and the idea (and reality) of NGO branding – a good or bad thing? Have a guess what I think.
