photos
That’s what I do
I was in Dara-e-Noor, a district far to the north of Jalalabad city. My team members and I were there for a mapping survey for which talking with a local resident helped us make better and more accurate maps for any given area. Here, we ran into Baghcha Gul. We were talking about the village and names of the roads, public buildings, etc. and my colleague, Akbar asked this random question: “How many children do you have?” “I have only one…
Team Work
Photo credit: Najib Bismil People in rural Afghanistan build their mud houses with thick and high walls, Qalla. They usually tie two or more ladders together to pass the mud to the mason.
Crowd Sourcing: Reporting and Mapping Incidents
Crowd sourcing tools and applications that are used to report incidents and map them: they can be used in disaster response and relief, election monitoring, reporting human right violation incidents, creating a detailed visual report of an organization’s projects, etc. Following tools and applications are integrated for the above mentioned tasks: FrontlineSMS: to collect raw data and incident reports Facebook, Twitter, E‑mail, phone calls, a GPS for exact locations and other means can be used to collect data as well. Ushahidi…
A T‑shirt in Kabul and a T‑shirt in Islamabad
An Afghan in Kabul, Afghanistan wearing this T‑shirt that says, “ONLY A DEAD TALIBAN IS A GOOD TALIBAN”. And in the bottom it says, “Republic of Afghanistan” in Pashto. A store in Islamabad, Pakistan selling these T‑shirts that have a photo of Osama bin Laden and under the photo it says, “Well-known” in English and in Arabic.
Signs in Islamabad International Airport
Translation: All pilgrims are kindly requested to pray for the betterment of their people and their nation (Pakistan). Pakistani pilgrims waiting on a line for their flight to Saudi Arabia Translation: “Warning: Smuggling drugs into Saudi Arabia is death penalty.”
Celebrating Nowruz in Mazar-i-Sharif
We chose to celebrate the Persian New Year, Nowruz in Mazar-i-Sharif because it is the epicenter of celebration in Afghanistan. Over 200,000 people congregate at the Rowze-e-Sharif Mosque which the Afghan Shia believe houses the tomb of Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib whom they consider Islam’s first Imam. Nowruz is officially recognized as a national holiday and high ranking officials attend the celebrations. Although the festivities are centered on the Mosque, Novruz is a pre-Islamic holiday that is not mentioned…
Goodbye Jalalabad
The wind picked up on our final morning in Jalalabad. It was soon strong enough that we locked our windows and yet it howled through the cracks. By the early evening the gusts were so strong that they broke windows on the upper deck, broke our deck furniture and knocked over many plants. We were about to leave Jalalabad, our adopted home, where I spent 1% of my life. Before heading back to San Francisco, we decided to do some…
Buzkashi
On a down day in Kabul, we decided to take a road trip up to Panjshir Valley. Lou has written about our experiences in a previous post. This post focuses on the game of Buzkashi. The objective of Buzkashi is to gain possession of a goat carcass, carry it a full loop around the field, and then deposit it into your opponents goal (which is a circle on the ground). If at any time you drop the goat, you…
Etymological Weaponry
Two representative symbols of Afghanistan, grenades and pomegranates, come from the same etymological root. We discovered yesterday that the word “grenade” is taken from the French “pome-grenate.” French soldiers gave the handheld explosives their name because they looked like the seeded fruits, both in their round shape topped with a crown, and in their inner workings consisting of lots of small seeds, prepped for activation.  We keep a stock of both at the Taj. Meanwhile, “RPG” is usually miss-translated as “rocket propelled grenade.” Its a memorable term…