Winter in Kabul

Winter in Afghanistan means hardship for many, but it also has it's own charm: the sky turns blue, smog disappeares, the mountain ranges that embrace Kabul all of a sudden appear out of the usual smog, water in the river washes away the usual dirt, children and adults (including my staff members) use free time in between work and school to have a quick snowball fight... It's strange, but winter also seems to bring some normality into town, besides the hardship it brings along for so many.

Freezing

It wasn't really til mid of January that things got cold over here. But when the winter finally hit Afghanistan, it seemed to hit with full energy. I have already posted some info about snow fall and the sad impact it had on the lives of over 300 people.

My own experiences with winter are less dramatic, but still of rather uncomfortable nature. Coming from the Alps, I am naturally used to cold temperatures. But as much as I am used to minus degrees, I am also used to central heating and insulated houses. None of both seems to be a known concept here in Afghanistan. It seems that people found other ways to cope with temperatures than to build well insulated, warm houses (these alternative coping strategies remained up to date a mystery to me...).

My house, though beautiful from the outlook, has its own dynamic to deal - or not to deal - with cold temperates. To keep out cold temperatures from the gaps in between glass and frame of the windows, I put heavy curtains. Instead of central heating there is one so-called buchari in my room, constantly burning petrol and drying out the air inside my room. To ensure that I will not gently sleep away one night due to carbon monoxide poisoning, I have a carbon monoxide alarm right next to to buchari, joint in by a smog detector. The buchari does it's job fairly well by warming up my room somehow (I still sleep with two covers and a sleeping bag), but stepping outside my room is like jumping into siberia: white breath escapes my mouth on my run (its too cold to walk) from my room to the bathroom. By now I stopped using the shower in the bathroom all-toghether, since pipes are frozen and thus warm water a dream to become true. Instead, I stay over when ever possible at the house of a friend who at least has most of the time warm water and better insulated walls. The fact that my house is indeed a little siberia became once again obvious when cloths, put to dry over the balustrades in the second floor, turned into ice sheets.

Another effect of the cold weather, coupled with dry air of the buchari, are the cracks. Cracks in my hands and lips, which just don't want to go away no matter how much vaseline (the only cream I still believe in) add. When waking up in the morning I am unable to talk or smile, until I put a layer of vaseline on my lips.

Another effect is the onion style that I adapted over the last weeks. Instead of one or two layers, I am by now wrapping my body into at least five layers of cloths, that I only take off to sleep. Even in the office I hardly ever take off my jacket, though I have unfortunately to take off my gloves to be able to type into my computer.

Thats winter in Kabul. So far, nobody could really tell me how long this snow and winter tale will continue. February? March? Who knows. In the meantime I can only hope that work continues to keep me busy and thus away from worrying too much on the cold temperatures and the cracks in my skin and walls of my house... :)

Winter tale?

Winter finally hit Afghanistan....
(source of map and article: www.alertnet.org)

Afghanistan was one of many countries in southern and central Asia suffering through extreme cold and snow in January 2008. Most of the country was covered with snow when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite captured this photo-like image on January 20. It is not unusual for snow to blanket the peaks of the Hindu Kush, which run down the center of the country like a spine, nor is it unusual to see snow in the rugged northeastern corner of the country. However, in January 2008, the snow extends south to the Pakistani border and west into Iran. Only the low-lying deserts in the southwest escaped any long-lived snow cover.
The bitter cold and heavy snow left more than 300 dead throughout Afghanistan, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on January 22. Hardest hit were the southern and northwestern provinces where snow and extreme cold are less common. Western regions were experiencing their harshest winter in nearly 30 years, with temperatures that fell below minus 25 degrees Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit) and unusually heavy snow, said OCHA. In addition to causing human fatalities, the extreme cold killed thousands of livestock, the main source of livelihood of many in the region, said OCHA. The heavy snow cut off access to many communities.

More on my personal interaction with the Afghanistan winter tomorrow....

What home means to me

The visit to Barik Ab made me once again think about the concept of home. A concept that has taken up my thoughts for many years.

When I was a kid, I dreamt that only the whole wide world could be my home. Studying books of Alaska, Africa, and inner Asia, I got obsessed with the idea that the place where I grew up is just too small to be a home. Aching on all real and imagined walls, I tried to break out, to find home. As soon as I reached the right age, I started traveling, in diameters of one hundred kilometers around my home town at the beginning, widening these diameters with every travel and every year. On each of these travels I learned something about myself, and about home. Eventually I wrote my thesis about the relationships that urban migrants in Nairobi had to their hometowns and villages, to their “left behind” relatives. The title of my thesis was “in Nairobi I have my house, upcountry I have my home”. I remember one interview partner telling me that “in life, one can have many houses, but only one home: The home where one has been born and the home where one will eventually return to, either alive or for the final travel”. For a while, I adapted this concept of home, and as a result got closer to my home region and home town than ever before. It seemed that by living far away, I was able to build up a feeling for home. Over the last years, though, I reassessed my concept of home, and if I would be asked again today, I wouldn’t answer anymore that South Tyrol is my home. I would answer that certain elements of that region are, have always been, will always be home: for instance, the lake not far from my house that has its own magic at each day of the year, each hour of the day; few coffee-shops in the next bigger town; the train station where I have arrived so many times, from so many different directions, with so many different memories; the house of my parents, where I still have a room, currently only inhabited by my contrabass and my books. But more than anything else, I came to the conclusion that mountains are my home. I can watch them for hours and hours without getting tired, I can climb them up without getting exhausted. There is something unexplainable that attracts and connects me to everything that is higher than its surroundings; landscapes that display a certain elusiveness and roughness. So, in many ways, I feel more at home here in Kabul than I did in Somaliland or Nairobi, merely for the fact that I am able to see mountains as one of the first things in the morning when driving to the office (given that the sky is not covered with snow or smog). But the fact that I see them also awakens a restlessness in me, knowing that I want be able to follow the routes that I imagine up through the snow covered flanks of these mountains when watching them from the far distance. There are these moments when I simply feel like screaming to break the walls around me, knowing that a city cant offer in the long run the elements that I need to feel home. And so, my plan actually is to work for a while, before taking a time out for an extensive trek in some of the mountains I always wanted to visit: inner Asia, or maybe Patagonia. Who knows where I will end up eventually.
Who couldnt feel home in a place as miracolous as the lake shown on the picture above? :)

Coming home?

Through the traffic of Kabul, through the grey industrial suburbs, passing endless fields whose only trees are chimneys; chimneys for brick production, leaving no trace of nature, just few meter deep cracks in the brown landscape, from where the clay for the production is taken. Seen through the frozen window of my car, this is the way to Barik Ab, one of roughly thirty “land allocation schemes”, areas allocated to returnees and internally displaced persons, following a presidential decree issued by President Hamid Karzai in 2005 to address the serious problem of landless returnees. Many returnees from Pakistan and Iran as well as persons who got internally displaced during the decades of war and construction had been landless since their return to Afghanistan, living in tents, temporary shelters, public buildings, unable to return to their original homesteads due to a variety of reasons. So, here they come, the land allocation schemes, meant to give a piece of land and future to all those left homeless. Just as many other schemes dedicated to returnees, Barik Ab is reachable on a road that takes away any remaining illusions that this site could be a better place than where refugees and IDP’s had lived during the years of their flight. The site is about 35 kilometers north of Kabul, along the road to Bargram.

Its winter, and the landscape is snow covered, but the little brown islands of clay and mud that break through the white blanket offer a glimpse on what this land looks like when the snow is gone. From the main road, which is asphalted, we turn to the right, towards the mountains. Our car slides from one side of the gravel road to the other, barely making its way to Barik Ab. I wish I could get out of the car and walk the remaining distance, but as it is, that’s not the way expats like me are supposed to approach communities. Once we reach the community, we are welcomed by a group of elders, members of the “Shura”, the local authority of Barik Ab. They welcome us into a house, we sit down along the wall of the room, embracing with our bodies a stove that hasn’t any wood in it. The room warms up by the heat of our bodies, while the stove remains cold. We introduce each other. We listen. To the concerns and needs raised by the community. It doesn’t need many words to explain their needs. A look around is enough. Breathing out into the room, seeing the air of my lungs crystallizing into a small cloud, is enough to know that there are needs. I am here to discuss livelihoods, though. A longer term intervention that should help the community to get self sustained and away from dependency on temporary support that focuses on the immediate needs. But where to start? Listening to them, it seems like listening to a fish that has been thrown on land, in a small bag of water, and told: now, here you have your new aquarium; adapt! It reminds me of a similar project in Guatemala, where I had worked many years ago: refugees and internally displaced people who had originally lived in the highlands where given land in the low lands after their return to Guatemala. The problem was that agriculture in low lands and high lands is something totally different, with different products, different seasonal impact, and different markets. I don’t know how many of these returnee bubbles succeeded. But back to Barik Ab. Together with the Shura members I and my colleague try to brainstorm over possible support that could have a sustainable impact on the livelihoods of the community. It turns out that many have skills, acquired before the war and during their flight. Next to me sits an engineer. A younger member tells me about an English and computer course he had had to interrupt when moving out to Barik Ab. It’s the interruption that strikes me the most. Its like gathering a crowd of people, putting them into a boat and driving them to an island where they are supposed to develop into a well functioning community. But to me it looks more like another displacement, trading off certain vulnerabilities for others. As a result, the sites soon turn into a playground, where government bends down to international pressure by providing land to those landless, and where aid organizations experiment their approaches to community development and reconstruction; where shelters will be branded with logos from UNHCR and schools with emblems of UNICEF. But what does it really need to turn these places into an environment that offers a future to children and a save retreat for older generations? I am thinking about the challenge ahead, of creating livelihoods that offer a future. Looking around the circle, the future seems far. Lack of transport is one of the obstacles that divide the community from the future. Though there are commercial centers not far away, that might offer an opportunity for employment or a market for products produced in the community, they remain out of reach as long as there is no transport that would allow inhabitants of Barik Ab to go there. Lack of integration into the local market is another obstacle. Again, it is this isolation, this artificiality that makes me despair. Is this the home the people of Barik Ab where looking for? Or is it yet another displacement? I know I shouldn’t get emotional; after all, I am here to coordinate a program and not to endure emotional outbreaks. But sometimes it’s hard to stay aloof from the places I work in, the people I work with and for.

"An oasis of luxury in a war ravaged city"

As most of you might have heard, the Serena hotel in the heart of Kabul was attacked yesterday evening by militants with suicide vests, AK 47 and grenades. In the course of the apparently well planned attack, they succeeded to break through several laywers of security measures at the gate of the hotel and opened fire once inside. Six people have been killed, nationals and internationals. The hotel that used to call itself "an oasis of luxury in a war ravaged city" has proved that the artificial world which Westerners have created for themselves and influential Afghans in Kabul is indeed an artificial, fragile bubble that can easily be hit no matter how much it is secured. It leaves much questionmarks for the numerous other restaurants and bars where I would go to for a drink after work, and which are far less protected and secured.

By the time it happened I was just on my way home from office. I could hear the explosion from inside the car, and not much later got notification by our country director that there has been an attack at the Serena. Again not much later I switched on the TV, and saw the headlines already talking about the attack. You see, while I have read about hundres of suicide attacks on TV and radio while living in other countries like Kenya or Italy, the fact that I now HEAR the attack and not much later READ about it suddenly makes it all so much more real.

Return to Kabul

There is an end to everything, even to two wonderful weeks at home in Italy. I eventually had to pack my bag again and fly back to Kabul. Now, if you look at the map, Kabul isn't really that far away. It's only our minds that trick us and make us believe that Afghanistan is somewhere far away (which mind would like to admit that after all, a destroyed and unsecure region like this one is closer to Europe than let's say New York or South Africa). But still, despite the fact that Afghanistan isn't all that far away, it still took me two full days to reach my - for now - second home Kabul.

I left the house of my parents at middayof day one, carrying with me their continous requests to stay in Afghanistan for "only" one year. I travelled by train to Munich, and from their by metro to the airport. Four hours I waited at the Airport, then my half empty plane (it's the first of January, a day not many people seem to choose for travels) took off with destination Dubai, where I reached on the second day. It was six thirty in the morning but the air outside the plane was already sticky. A glossy taxi with on board audio-visual entertainment (one area they seem to invest their petri dollars in...) drived me first through the pepped up avenues that lead from the airport into town. Then we turned to the right, into a less shiny neighbourhood. I had booked a cheap hotel, and a cheap neighborhood seemed what I would get as a bonus. But the neighbourhood wasn't that bad after all. Not far from the old port, and in close proximity to the suq, the market. Just that high prices took most of the fun out of it, and half naked tourists cavorting in between the market stands crashed the brief impression to be in a somewhat authentic town. After my first visit, Dubai remains how I had suspected it to be: an artificial bubble for rich people.

After one day and one night in this bubble, I eventually moved myself and my few belongings to terminal two, where planes to destinations like Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan are departing. For one or the other reason, the Dubai Airport authorities decided to divide all "normal" destinations from the less secure destinations. To go from one to the other terminal, one has to check out, get a transit visa, pay 20$ for a taxi, and drive to the other terminal. A way to avoid reminding the average traveller that after all, Dubai isn't that far away from Iraq and Afghanistan?

The plane to Kabul was, as always, full, and as always, it didn't take off on time, but with an obligatory delay of 20 minutes. Surrounded by square shouldered (and generously paid) private security contractors, I flew back to Kabul, enjoying breakfast with view over snowcovered mountain ranges of Iran and Afghanistan. After two hours, we started descending, and while for another ten minutes, white and blue remained the dominating colours of ground and sky, all of a sudden we dived into a brown, foggy, intransparent soup: the sky above Kabul. Training hard not to be overrun by one of these security guys, I found eventually my way out of the airport, and breathing in the brown air of Kabul, I knew that I was back. And I also knew that I wouldn't get rid of my running nose and my cough before leaving this place again. This is Kabul.

Our clan

For four years, my family, consisting of myself, my sister kathrin, my brother micheal and my dad and mum and not to forget our family dog Argo hadn't succeeded to meet all together. this year Christmas it was thus the first time that all of us where united in the same place for a few days. I admit that I felt a bit anxious beforehand, not knowing how it would be to be together with all family members at the same time. Ultimately, it worked out extremely well. It felt good seeing everybody again in my home town instead of hopping from one place in Europe to the other to see them (my sister lives in Switzerland, while my brother stays in Vienna).

Making use of this unique opportunity, we immediately revived old traditions, such as a trip to lake Garda south of my region on the 26th.

Myself, preparing Christmas dinner - another family tradition I haven't adhered to in years
My brother, trying on his Christmas present, brought exclusively to him from Afghanistan

Walking

It wasn't really our intention to reach the peak when we eventually managed to collect ourselves and all our equipment and leave for a day in the mountains. Eleven o'clock in the morning we started walking towards a hut that was supposed to be open for customers during winter months (most huts in the alps are closed during winter months, except those on close proximity to a ski area). Hot tea and coffee being incentive enough, we walked straight up through the forest, for one and a half hour, awaiting a warm lunch once we reach the hut. But instead of warm soup, a cold and snow covered bench was all what awaited us, while the interior of the hut remained closed to our desires of hot food and drinks. Not felt very welcome by the cold bench, but still to early to descend again, we decided to continue walking for a bit, trying out the capacity of our snow shoes (they look like tennis rackets, and you simply attach them to your shoes). The first half hour was horrible, but at one point the peak was closer than the hut, so why not continue walking? And so, without planning at all for it, we reached the peak at 2 pm, surrounded by a breathtaking, unforgettable panorama. Isn't it always the things we don't plan for that eventually turn out to be the best?

Happy New Year!

I wish you all a happy, prosperous, peaceful, successful, satisfying, and much more 2008!