Lake Qargha, twenty years ago

During my little research on Lake Qargha, I came across a rather old report about a rainbow trout culture project in lake Qargha. It was the final technical report of the project, written in 1990. I stumbled over the uncountable obstacles, which the project faced, and despite which FAO, the implementing agency, still pushed for the implementation of it.



The project coordinator had visited the place last in 1989, after which it was impossible for him to visit the area again due to the deteriorating security situation around the lake. Still, it was decided to continue the project until 1990, through local staff members. Though the growth of the trouts was better than anticipated, serious problems were already apparent in 1989:

1. An urgently-needed consignment of fish feed was held up at the Afghan border due to closure of the road by military action. Nets for floating cages were delayed for the same reason.
2. The Qargha area itself was experiencing daily military action, posing danger to staff working there. In particular, fire was frequently exchanged across Qargha Lake, making it impossible for fisheries personnel to work on the reservoir.
3. Due to tightening UN security regulations, including evacuation of all non-essential staff, the coordinator's visits were subject to shortening or cancellation.



Despite these difficulties, the project continued to make good progress, thanks to the creative solutions which staff members came up with in response for instance to the lack of imported feed (instead, they used a mix of livers, stomachs, lungs of sheep and goats). In spring, things looked good in the ponds: the fingerlings were big enough to be put into floating cages and moored in lake Qagha for the next few months.

Regrettably, the security situation at Qargha remained serious throughout spring and summer, and it was impossible to moor and work the cages in the lake due to the physical danger to staff. At the same time, the fish unfortunately came to the notice of soliders stationed at Qargha, in particular the militia. Large-scale thefts of trout from all the ponds by soliders continued through the summer, and the fish population of the swimming pool was wiped out by “fishing” with grenades. Senior officials of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reform did their best to stop the stealing without success.

In August, they decided to harvest whatever was left from the fish. Not much money could be gained, since the security sotation again didnt allow them to sell the fish in the market as originally planned. Instead, the fish was offered to UN and government employees and the diplomatic community.

As the report goes on, it lists as achievement that the project demonstrated the suitability of lake Qargha for trout culture activities. But since most fish was stolen, it was impossible for the evaluators to determine the economical sustainaiblity of the program. The report ends with the recommendation that the government may continue the project, and once the security situation improves, large scale fish farming should be initiated all over Afghanistan.



Twenty years on, and several governments later, I couldn't see much fish in the lake, instead, lots of Afghan families once again gathering around the lake on Fridays, drinking uncountable cups of tea and roasting goat over small gas cookers. I don't blame it on FAO that they didn't succeed in their big plans to support expand rainbow trout cultivation from Lake Qargha to the entire country; indeed, they didn't have the most conducive environment. But what makes us implement such sophisticated projects in such impossible environments? Is it our own little ego, our belief in saving the world, our trust in peace? Our ideals? Our commitment? Reports like this one make me wonder what will be left of my own efforts twenty years on.

Floating on Lake Qargha

Because Kabul is in many ways still a village, it isn't hard to coincidentally meet somebody on a popular place like lake Qargha. So I wasn't particularly surprised to meet one of my former colleague with kids, brothers and father during my walk there. Rather, I was pleased to be able to spend part of my friday in a family like setup. After a quick cup of tea (whatever it is, it always starts with a cup of tea in Afghanistan), we decided to try the colorful swan boats. How these made it to lake qargha is a bit of a mystery to me. I wonder whether they are a left over from the times before the war or a donation by aid agencies after the war. In any case, they are colorful, funny to look at and bring joy not just to kids, but also to adults. And whats more welcome after a busy week than some distraction?

Lake Qargha swans

Don't ask me where these swans are coming from, but they defenitely do add charm to lake Qharga!

Recreation

Not far from Kabul, still within the city limits, is lake Qargha. Weekends, this recreation spot is packed with Kabulis of all ages, not so much of all sexes. While driving up the few curves to the edge of the lake, we overturned tens of cars, mainly small corollas, each one carrying several men and uncountable kids. Women are rare to see in Afghanistan, even here, not far from Kabul, they are hardly seen in public space.

At the lake, much is going on. Half of Kabul (the make half) seems to have made its way out of the smog layers, to get an idea of the blue color of the sky and dip feet and sometimes entire bodies into the fresh looking waters of the lake. Activities of all sorts seem to be going on. Fishing, swimming, car washing, bicycle polishing, tee boiling, goat roasting, paddle boating, chatting, drumming and dancing, yelling, whistling (especially towards me and my friend, two of the few women around the lake), patrolling, we even saw a bicycle race and footballers running up a hill. Just like around any other big city around the world on a warm summer weekend.. .. to be continued...

Afghan dining

Dining in Jalalabad ... I had some issues with the bony fish (fish in Jalalabad for one or the other reason seems to consist exclusively of bones and skin!), but other than that, a splendid time with some of my colleagues during my recent trip to Afghanistan.

Little fellow

Little fellow, seen in my garden, while playing around with my new camera... Amazing how clever these little animals are in camouflaging themselves ...

And on top of it all, children

It's late morning in Jalalabad, the major city in the east of Afghanistan, not far from the border to Pakistan. I was woken up by the stiff air in my room at six o'clock in the morning, humid bedsheets sticking to my body. Once the generator is switched on, the aircondition had brought some relief to the heat in my room, and cooled down temperatures to a enjoyable 25 degrees celsius. But that has been four hours ago, and I am by now again all dusty and sweaty from the past four hours outside my air conditioned room.

It's my last day in Jalalabad, and I am just about to return to Kabul. I have stayed here few days to support my national colleagues to start up a livelihoods program for returnees in several communities around Jalalabad. Under normal circumstances, I would be able to reach Kabul within three hours. But the tarmacked road is currently closed, and all traffic from Jalalabad to Kabul and further on has to go through Lataband, a road without tarmac that crawls up and down the mountain ridge between Jalalabad and Kabul like a big, dust covered snake.
The first one and a half hours of drive are pleasant. We drive along a river, on a well tarmacked road, past small villages and road side shops. Few times I roll down the window, to take some pictures, but hot air immediately fills the car and the questioning look of my driver tells me to roll up the window again. The villages we pass are dry. Only those fields close enough to the river are green, whereas the remaining ones present themselves in sun dried yellow colors. Few people are working on the field, despite the heat.
After some time we reach Surobi, where I am supposed to change cars. Bad news start tripling in. After driving around Surobi to find a spot where we can find connection for our phone and HF radios, we learn that the two cars which left Kabul this morning to meet us in Surobi are stuck somewhere in Lataband, working their ways slowly down towards Surobi. We decide to wait. Heat immediately fills the cars as soon as we turn off the engine. I am not allowed to leave the car, and soon I get a sensation of how vegetables must feel when they are locked into a bottle to ferment and turn into alcohol. While fermenting inside my car, children stop outside my window, curiously looking at me. Some try to get me into buying eggs, sweeties, cookies, and all the other eatable and non eatable things they present to me. While I am observing the hustling and bustling of Surobi, my driver keeps contact with the two cars we are waiting for. Finally, after two hours, they arrive. Without granting themselves a break, they pack me into their car and decide to immediately drive back to Kabul. The first leg of our trip still follows the tarmacked road, but soon the road ends and we turn start driving on ravel roads. I notice that both sides of the valley are littered with white painted little rocks. Each of them signifies a mine that has been cleared by de mining companies over the past years. The entire mountainsides used to be mine fields, my driver explains. The road gets steeper, and traffic gets dense. Colorful Pakistani trucks are working their way up the Lataband, a slow moving centipede. They carry with them all kind of items: generators, wheat trashers, wheels, oil, bags with potatoes. They are moving slow, and many people walk next to them. Often the centipede comes to a complete still stand, us being part of it. People get out of their cars and trucks, breathing in the dusty, but fresh air. In between it all are ANA soldiers, gesticulating with their guns, trying to get movement into this monster that dwindles itself up the mountain. At the beginning I wonder about the trucks that carry a random collection of wooden poles, bicycles, furniture and on top of it all, children. It takes me some time to realize that these are returnees, returning from years, maybe even decades of refuge in Pakistan. Since the seventies, Afghanistan has seen one of the biggest exoduses a country has ever experienced. While one regime followed the other, there were little reasons for Afghans people to stay inside the country. Many Afghans settled temporarily in Pakistan and Iran, either in camps or in informal urban settlements. Since 2002, they are coming "home". According to statistics, over five millions have made their way back to Afghanistan. Pakistan, though it has been a relatively save refuge for many years, has become increasingly hostile against Afghans, forcing many to "voluntarily" return home. Looking at these trucks, I wonder what the kids, women and men who sit on top of their few belongings are thinking. What they own, is what they sit on. What Afghanistan offers them in this very right moment is a dangerous road, and dust. The grandiose landscape is hidden behind the cloud of dust. Few of them might have relatives they can stay with in urban areas. Few might try to go back to their native villages. Many might soon realize that what they have left many years ago has long disappeared. Although people returning home after decades could be a sign of hope, it is hard for me in that very right moment to see the hope in it all. What future can Afghanistan offer to them? What expectations do they have, and what will they receive in turn for their decision to return home?
After few hours we reach the top point of Lataband. While traffic has been dense up to now, it suddenly clears up, and we travel down the other side of the mountain ridge towards Kabul without problems. From the distance I can see the smog hub that covers Kabul. Soon we are inside of it, and I am thankful to my drivers for their skills and patience to manage a road like Lataband. While I am back in my own little world that I have created for myself here in Kabul over the past few months, part of my thoughts continues to be with these returnees I have seen on my way back from Jalalabad. I know that my work that I do in regard to reintegration support for returnees (one of the main focuses of the organization I work for) has gained a completely new dimension.

Women in Afghanistan

Few weeks ago, I developed jointly with another department of the organization I am working for a proposal for an intervention that looks at economic and civic empowerment of women in Afghanistan. Although I was quite pleased with the project idea we came up with (a combination of working with entire communities, in particular men, to create an enabling environment in which women and men can equally participate in economic and civic activities), I somehow doubt how much we are really going to achieve, given the slow pace of change in regard to situation of women in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban seven years ago. It was among others the article below that once again made me think of whether we will be able to achieve the targets we set ourselves, or whether our ideas on how to bring change into the lives of women in Afghanistan are mere day dreams of idealists.

"Afghan women still forced to cover upMay 16, 2008 Rosie DiMannoKABUL–Shrouds are meant for burial.But not in Afghanistan, where public life for women is still all about the covering up, the obscuring of femaleness.Six years after the fall of the Taliban, the cocooning burqa hangs on, even in a liberated capital rushing headlong into modernity, as if leaping millennia in one breathless hurdle.Tradition, family pressures, shyness and a sense of personal security without violation – all are given as reasons for clutching still to the metres of billowing fabric that cascade from scalp to ankle.The burqa remains stubbornly ubiquitous, if now worn by a smaller minority of women, at least in the capital. Beyond Kabul, and especially in the ultrafundamentalist Pashtun south, most adult females dare not venture outside without it, wouldn't dream of doing so.In truth, the burqa doesn't make women one bit less provocative – if that's the fear – because what's forbidden is always tantalizing, in the way of human nature. There's a kind of peek-a-boo coquetry just beneath the concealed surface, a flash of skin below the hemline, painted toenails in strappy sandals, bangles jangling at the naked wrist. Even the most conservative women, elderly ladies who wear old-fashioned pantaloons under the dress under the burqa, reveal a fancy frill beneath the voluminous swathing.Emancipation is an incremental thing in Afghanistan, literally measured in centimetres. Those women who tossed off their burqas after the Taliban were routed now wear skirts that cover nearly as much leg and long-sleeved tops no matter how hot the weather. And they always wrap scarves around their heads and shoulders, often lifting an edge to hide the bottom half of their faces. It's a gesture learned in girlhood.But at least they can see and breathe more easily. The burqa – so uncomfortable with all that weight of fabric affixed to the tight skullcap – muffles sensory perceptions, causing women to stumble and fall, never being able to see their own feet, the world dimly viewed through an embroidered slit.There is no religious justification for the burqa. It is entirely a product of paternalism and patriarchy, males asserting their ownership of females – what only they are entitled to see in the privacy of the family home.But the burqa, more than the chador or the veil, is infantilizing as well, like a newborn's swaddling. By wearing it, women are constricted and controlled, and this hindrance is not just symbolic. It's evoked in every burdened step a female takes [...]
Columnist Rosie DiManno is on assignment in Afghanistan, where she covered the Taliban's fall in 2001.

Welcome summer

Back in Kabul from R&R, I realized one thing pretty quickly: Summer has finally taken over from the cold winter months, with some good and some less good things attached to it.

The good things: it's daylight at 5 am in the morning, and it only gets dark at 7:30 in the evening; I don't have to run around in onion style (the multiple-layers-winter-survival-dress-code) any longer; I dont have to worry about not having enough (matching) socks in my cupboard, since it's too hot for shoes anyway; I can easily sleep without a heavy blanket; restaurants have put tables outside, meaning that I dont have to breath smoke from cigarettes any longer; pools have been filled with sparkling fresh water; there is no fear of frozen pipes anymore.

The down side to it: my office is a sauna (having two walls made purely out of windows is great for winter, but a nightmare in summer!); sandstorms carry dust everywhere; public power is only available few hours a day; I long for the mountains I can see from my office and yet not climb, due to security concerns; I am struggling to find cloths that don't stick to my sweaty skin after five minutes of putting them on.

At the end, I have to admit that both winter and summer here in Kabul seem to have their own unique charm, and their own unique stuggles :)

Bozcaada

"Once you are there, you will not want to leave anymore". This was the common statement by all people we met on our way to Bozcaada, a little island in the Aegean Sea, west of Turkeys mainland. And they were right. While walking from one side to the other, I endulged in thoughts of a) reasons not to leave the island anymore, b) making a living on it. I am wondering if they might need a german teacher in their one and only school?

Talking about wondering - readers of this blog might wonder why all of a sudden there are entries from Turkey instead of Afghanistan. I am tempted to say that I have transferred myself permanently to Bozcaada, but that wouldn't quite match the truth. Truth is that in countries like Afghanistan, most organizations who employ "expats" have some kind of R&R system - rest and recreation. This means that every three months, I am getting five days off, in addition to my annual leave, to recharge my batteries somewhere outside Afghanistan. What a luxury - some of you might think. But fact is that working for an american organization, my total annual leave is meagre 15 days, combined with R&R every three months, I reach a total of 35 days. Not a lot, but still better than nothing. And even better thanks to the existence of places like Bozcaada

And you see, the good thing is that living in countries like Afghanistan (and please dont misunderstand this, I really like living here!) makes you appreciate and realize the value in the most normal, daily things, such as walking on the street, staying out as long as I want, not having to do radio check at eight pm, not having to cover my head when driving around, ...

Memories from Bozcaada, Turkey

Feeling the fine sand under my skin, being touched by warm rays of the sun, seeing nothing else than deep blue sky, few clowds in between, a yellow sun, smell from flowers that grow at the edge of the beach, close and at the same time far sounds from waves and seaguls, realizing my own breath. Thoughts being carried away, until nothing specific but happiness remains as the only feeling.

Random Pictures from Turkey

No time for writing, but at least some nice pictures to share with you... they are pretty random, from various places and moments of my trip to Turkey, so apologies for not explaining them ... Will tell the stories to the pictures another time ...

Hagia Sophia - Istanbul

Hagia Sophia is really one of the most fascinating pieces of architectural greatness I have seen so far. Despite the flow of tourists that is funnelled through its interior every hour, the way in which the mosque/church/ museum is set up, you can all of a sudden feel completely alone in an extremely peaceful way, for instance by looking up to its ceiling, or by moving behind one of the sheer endless columns. I don't know how such feelings are possible, and wasn't really expecting it, when queueing outside, wrestling with other thousands of tourists to get a ticket to enter the building, but fact is that Hagia Safia has something special, a special something in its atmosphere that is there no matter how many tourists are rolling through. Anyhow, wanted to share this experience as I am usually try to keep myself away from touristy places; walking throug Hagia Safia has brought me a bit at peace with mass tourism.. :)

Sparkled

I guess the thing that amazed me most about Turkey was the wild flowers that sparkle the landscape in red, yellow, purple, and a million of other colors.

Travels

There is a reason for my recent quietness: a long longed for Rest and Recreation leave, which I used to hook up with my family and a friend midway between Italy and Kabul.

It's unbelievable how much energy one can gain from few days at the in Turkey :)

Above my favorite capture from my stay in Turkey: Seaguls, who accompanied our ferry for at least two hours, snapping breadcrumbs thrown out into the wind by passangers. More on Turkey to follow...