Unknown Kabul

Kids next to Darulaman, the palace build at the beginning of of the nineteenth century by King Shah Amanullah Khan. It's all destroyed by now, with ruins turned into a perfect playground for kids from the nearby squatters

Riders on the way Buz-kashi, the national sport of Afghanistan. Its basically throwing a killed goat over a football sized field, until one team manages to get it into the goal. Just like foot ball.

Romantic views at Kabul river Here they come: competitors in the buz kashi

Get some vitamins from the shops at the river

Backyard ally
Dresses which you would never see women wearing in everyday Afghanistan...
Shah - e - du shamshera: One of the oldest places in Kabul

Backyard streets in the old city of Kabul - muddy, but charming
Selling whatever is there to be sold

Kabul is not as bad as the news describe it. Last Friday I got invited by a friend for a guided tour through the city. Though the weather wasn't at its best, the fog added some additional charm to the already captivating views into Kabul's undocumented angles and corners. I wouldn't call it a beautiful city, but Kabul defenitely does have some corners that are worth to pass by and have a closer look at.

Finally home?

Land Allocation Site Taki Naki

Steadily over the past years, Afghan refugees have been flocking back into Afghanistan from neighboring countries. Some return to their ancestral homes, but for many, returning to Afghanistan isn’t anything close to coming home. Instead, for many the return turns into one more passage in their search towards life in a secure and peaceful environment. In 2004, a program has been launched by President Karzai with the aim to allocate land for those who have no option to return to their original homes, after they had lost everything when fleeing to Pakistan or Iran. Over twenty sites have already been announced, with five being used as pilot sites to allow the international community and Afghan government to identify best ways of assisting these artificial communities to stand on their own feet.
The organization I am working for is taking part in all this, too. In an attempt to unite various sectors, such as water, shelter, education, child protection and vocational training we try to contribute our share to the secure and peaceful environment its inhabitants are longing for. But fact is that these communities remain a challenge to live in, despite outside support: they are usually situated on these pieces of land that nobody would want to give a penny for anyway; transport to near commercial centers is typically scarce; agriculture not possible due to lack of water; schooling for kids is another challenge, not to mention the unavailability of training and employment opportunities.
Since its inauguration in 2007, several hundred communities have signed up for Taki Naki, but so far, only five have moved out to the site that is about 40 kilometers outside Hirat. It wasn’t difficult to understand why returnee families prefer living in rented houses in Hirat instead of owning a house in Taki Naki: an icy wind is blowing between the flat roofed houses, turning my feet into pieces of ice on the short distance from the car to the house of our interview partner. Inside the house it is cold too, with hardly any heating material available it is impossible to keep these houses anywhere close to warm during the winter months. It hurts my eyes seeing the kids standing bar footed in the middle of the room. While we discuss with the family what type of support we can offer to them, I have to realize painfully that my vocational trainings and support to livelihoods is just not at all what they need and would like to hear in this very right moment. The things I can offer are long term development, whereas people living in Taki Naki lack the most basic items and services to bear the moment. My visit to Taki Naki lies two weeks ago, but I still carry around in my mind pictures from this visit, joint by the question whether these communities will ever by anything else but an emergency. In all this, my respect goes to these families who decided to move out, despite lack of the most basic things and services.

Returnee family in front of their house in Taki Naki; kids inside the house, observing eagerly my discussion with the head of household; baby cloths produced by two girls who have participated in a tailoring course supported by my organization

Friday Mosque of Hirat

This is the front side of the Friday Mosque - also known as the Blue Mosque of Hirat, a town in Western Afghanistan

Around 1300 Ritschkas are currently cruising through the streets of Hirat

Blue Mosque

More pictures from the blue mosque and its blue tiles and the blue mosque

Once again: the hassles and beauty of flying in countries like Afghanistan...

Flying from Mazar to Kabul - I wasn't the only passenger who glued his/her nose to the window to capture the greatness of the mountain range in betweeen the two cities.

Hirat Airport - few huts, waiting area is under the open sky.

Maybe I should change the name of my blog from Johannistan to Flightistan, since every second of my articles seems to be related to flying. But than again, flying truly is an experience in countries like Afghanistan and Somalia. It's quite different from this straightforward flying in Europe and North Amerika where the worst that can happen to you is that your bag is getting lost (according to a recent study, that happens particularly often with British Airways, KLM, and of course, Allitalia) or that they run out of beer during a transatlantic flight.
In Afghanistan, it's different issues that you are faced with. For instance that the airport of the second biggest city in the country consists of few scattered buildings, with the passanger waiting room simply being the large area in between the shags. In order to get your bording pass, one has to wrestle with 200 adult men. Gentlemen ladies first seems a unknown concept to Afghanistan. Once you get your bording pass, you realize that it is simply a piece of paper that bears the name of your airline, but otherwise, no furhter information: neither your name, nor your seatnumber, nor the departure time. Looking at the actual ticket shows you that even there, your only mentioned name is your first name spelled wrongly. Amazingly, you still manage to get on the flight!
During a stop over in another airport, you watch out of the windows and see two fighter jets taking off with an unbelievable speed, and again you wonder if thats really the country you want to live in.
Flying, as much as it is an experience, it also remains a scary business here in Afghanistan.

Working in development isn't easy...

Numerous conversations with relatives, friends and random people over the past years have demonstrated over and over again that indeed, most inhabitants of the northern sphere still think that development is all about living in a mud hut in a community untouched by the evil of the western world and teaching poorly dressed little children with big bellies how to read and write, preferably under a big cedar tree. One might expect that since development is all about saving the world by assisting and empowering those in need, we all pull on one string, towards a better world.
But no, twenty first century development aid is not quite as romantic as some of you might think. I sometimes tend to call it a business, with losers and winners, with high competition around scarce resources and few good ideas. It’s also a kind of trial and error – constantly, new approaches to save the world are master minded, and if they don’t work out, another approach is released into the humanitarian world. After having worked inside this huge industry called development for almost three years , I have experienced certain frustrations and backlogs that have caused me to give up some of my ideals and beliefs (obviously not all, otherwise I wouldn’t be here in Afghanistan right now). Unexpectedly, Afghanistan is also not free from the usual hassles around development; one of my biggest current hassles is the source that provides funds to my department. This particular donor is actually one of the “National Priority Programs”, special programs launched by president Karzai to bring peace and development to Afghanistan. Working for the government is certainly not easy in any country, leave alone Afghanistan: people inside it are bureaucrats that take ages to review project proposals, screw up on contracts because they don’t know legal meanings of certain terminologies, and have in addition a fable for corruption (they tend to have this "kafkaesk" touch, as we would call it in German...). Being an implementing partner to a Government authority is truly not a pleasure, but more a tragic comedy. What makes me stumble in particular about this specific government program that funds my department are their internal contradictions which they obviously don’t realize themselves: Since my arrival, I have hardly heard anything positive from my donor. Whenever they see the smallest mistake in our program implementation, they stage an official complaint; financial reports have to be re-submitted in average three times until they accept them; they take ages to review project proposals; they cut down the project duration to a minimum number of months, taking away all the fun from program coordination; and last but not least, they constantly remind us on how expensive we are. The contradiction in all this is that whenever they can, they pouch our staff members: today I was told by one member of my team that a representative from my donor not only offered him a job, but at the same time stated that the doors are wide open for staff from my department. Though I feel a bit flattered by the fact that my staff members can easily get other jobs, it bothers me to see that while we have to take in groundless accusations that we lack transparency, the same organization that does these accusations is not only pouching people from other organizations, but taking them in without any formal interview process, leave alone application process. Certainly, that's not what we understand when we talk about transparency

I can tell by your eyebrows...

How do you tell whether or not somebody is married? Typically, I would peek in a unevasive way at the ring finger and see if there is a ring or at least a sign of a ring.

As I got to know today, that's not the way one would tell the difference between a married woman and a single woman in Afghanistan.

Today eight o'clock in the morning, with a slight hang over from Friday-night-social-sceneKabul, but otherwise fully motivated, I embarked on my newest project: learning Dari in one of Kabuls' few language schools. After obligatory question about name, country of origin and organization I work for, the forth question was "are you single"? A bit offensive to start with (though most of the readers might know about my slightly unsuccessful relationship history anyhow), but more than feeling offensive I wondered how she could tell. Do I look that desperate? Or like somebody who enjoyes the advantages of single life? The answer confirmed neither nor: it's my eyebrows who told ... As I got explained, Afghan women don't plug them as long as they are single, but once they are engaged or married, they plug them.... So to all girls who read this, plug your eyebrows if you want to be taken for a married woman! Funnily enough, I actually used to plug my eyebrows, but have to confess that over the past months, I got a bit lazy on that; other things to worry about :)

From Kabul to Hirat

Mountains close to Hirat
Somewhere in between Hirat and Kabul
Again, somewhere in between Hirat and Kabul

At least at the airport of Hirat he shows presence: Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan

Flying to Hirat

Winter has its impact on everything: not just on the skin of my hands, or the water in the pipes. It also has a huge impact on transport, by road and by air. Many locations are completely cut off by road, and flights are more likely not to materialize than to materialize these days. Despite this gloomy outlook, I decided to test my luck to set off for Hirat today. Frankly to say, I haven't been all that lucky lately, and I thus wouldn't have been surprised if winter magic would have cut my plans to visit Hirat short.

With or without bad weather, each flight is a unique experience in places like Afghanistan or Somaliland. Already I have written plenty of stories on my experiences with lofty planes (roughly a year ago, a plane I flew with lost its door), with russian planes (old Antanovs are not at all a rarity in Somaliland), and with planes that can't take off because their batteries are empty (it's not only cars whose batteries are empty after a night with lights on). The good thing is that flying just never gets boring in places like these. There is always something new to discover, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. You think you know your airline, and then, all of a sudden, your completely thrown off. Forget about reliability and "we bring you home" advertisements...

Today, in good hope and mood, I left my house at five forty five am. Bad news dropped down from the sky in form of innocent white cristalls. While sliding on slippery roads with our old Toyota towards airport, Said Rahman, our driver, kept on shaking his head and wispering "Johanna not going to Hirat today - snow no good for planes!" And he was right. All what welcomed us at the airport was a checkpoint guard outside the airport, telling us to turn back and go home again, no plane. The airport behind him was peacefully covered with snow.

Two hours later I learned that the plane was indeed going to take off, not at seven as indicated on the ticket, but at noon. As told, I went to the airport again at ten, this time I wasn't stopped by the guard at the main gate, but by guards just across the square in front of the airport building. A patient crowd of male Afghans, all dressed in the typical kamiz, wide trousers with a knee long short, and a brown shawel wrapped over their hair and face, covering to some extend the long beards, was already gathering there. An ordinary American might take a crowd like this for a suicide squad... Together we waited for another hour, in the cold, until we were told at eleven thirty that now, Kam air is ready to check in. So on we went, to the main building of the airport, paying our airport fee, handing over our luggage, getting checked ourselves, and finally moving on to terminal one, which is really just a room with a tiny Kiosk that sells nuts and raisins by kg and otherwise pringles and snickers. To my surprise I witnessed that the water for the hot coffee was taken out of the tab from the male toilet, but it actually tasted ok. On the electronic info board above the kiosk it said that the flight would take off at 12:30. At 12:15 the board said "boarding", but nobody moved. For ten minutes it blinked red, before it finally changed to "departed". Anxiously looking around the room, I realized that it was just me and another non Afghan who got nervous. All the rest leaned back and enjoyed nuts and coffee from the tiny Kiosk. As it turned out, it was a mistake from the computer, and at one o clock we were finally asked to board the plane. As boarding was nearly complete, a group of men run towards the plane, rushed into it, as I learned later, it was the governor of Western region, and his entourage.

Finally, we took off, climbing our way up through snow, wind and smog. Not much later, the sky cleared up and I could get a glimpse of the remoteness of Afghan rural life. As far as I could see, snow covered mountain ranges lay like an angry sea below us. In between, tiny villages, and one just wonders how people survive in this "middle of nowhere" places.

The rest of the flight was unspectacular, only getting my luggage was a bit rough. Cutting things short, the luggage was simply carried outside the airport in one of these airport waggons, and everybody started digging and grabbing for his bags. In all this caos I managed to secure my bag and move on to my office, where I spend the rest of the day talking to our field coordinator about programs in Western region.

In the next post, some pics from the Afghan winter...