A few Moments with Baba Jan

This is Baba Jan in the beau­ti­ful dis­trict of Kama. I was out with my map­ping team when we met him. We were pass­ing by his hut he gave us a shout and offered us water­mel­on. We stopped and sat down with him. He asked us to wait for him to fin­ish his hash. “I enjoy the con­ver­sa­tion then,” he said. Baba Jan has a small store right across from his hut which is run by his 9‑year-old daugh­ter. He hard ever leaves his kut, the bed in the hut. He is a very hos­pitable per­son. There are always a bunch of young­sters sit­ting around him and he tells them tales of his youth. He asked what brought us to their place and we told him about our map­ping project on the open source site of Open­StreetMap. I told him about our endeav­or to map the whole province for human­i­tar­i­an and edu­ca­tion pur­pos­es. He was hap­py and offered to show us around next time we were in town. At the end I asked him for his phone num­ber to vis­it him next time. He did not have a phone. Fun­ny sto­ry how Baba Jan gives hash to a mem­ber of his gang in return for every phone call he makes from his phone.