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…
read more »Entering the FOB
If you search for Jalalabad on googlemaps only one road shows up, Hwy A01, the Asian Highway, a.k.a. Kabul-Jalalabad-Torkham Highway.  That road is the main drag of Jalalabad City, sporting twoish lanes of traffic flowing each direction, packed with tuktuks, motorbikes, donkeys, tracktors and toyota corollas, all jamming for space. The main US army base in our region is FOB Fenty, located on the eastern edge of Jalalabad City. It’s a well-established base that’s been around for many years.  It’s main…
read more »To lose and find a child in Afghanistan …
Rawed’s father Gulzada brought him to Jalalabad city to be seen by a doctor.  Seven year old Rawed was showing symptoms of jaundice.  They drove into the city from a small village in the district of Sherzad.  As is common practice, dad temporarily left Rawed with a shopkeeper from the same village and went to park the car.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes, and then we’ll walk to the hospital.”  When he returned the child was gone. Gulzada is our friend Haji Najib’s ma’ma’,…
read more »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…
read more »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…
read more »Urinals in Afghanistan
When construction does happen at Nangarhar University, it usually takes place in the summer months when the students and faculty are on vacation and there is less interference with classes and all that. Upon returning to campus, there is a buzz of surprise among the students with each new building. This is the veterinary building in Nangarhar University. The funds for its construction were provided by USAID and its blueprint followed a standard mold for such a building, designed in…
read more »Of Lions and Horses in the Panshir
Last Friday morning we headed off at first light from the muddy streets of Kabul. We wound our way north, past Bagram, where ISAF is headquartered, and took a sharp turn east in the village of Jebal Seraj. We’d decided to take a day long pilgrimage, of sorts, to the tomb of Ahmad Shah Masoud. His grave lies deep his homeland of the Panshir Valley which he so famously defended against the long and arduous Soviet attack. Masoud is arguably…
read more »How the Taliban hijacked our educational materials…
Our Malik Dave had a wonderful idea. The reasoning went something like this: Let’s employ the Afghan companies that sprung up to print election posters. They are currently out of work because the election season is over. Lest we hire them, they may be up to no good. We call this technique weaponized shopping and it’s one of the techniques in the arsenal of the Synergy Strike Force. Over the past month, Lou, Juan and crew have put themselves towards selecting and optimizing…
read more »Tile Porn
Presented here for your visual entertainment and aesthetic enlightenment are images from Herat’s Friday Mosque, one of the gems of Islamic Architecture.
read more »Teleconferencing Medicine
Tuesday was one of my most rewarding days in Afghanistan. Â I witnessed something undeniably and irreversibly positive. In the morning an ambulance came to pick Dr. Pete and me up from the Taj. Â We crammed along with the driver in front, while 5 female OBGYN doctors and a male ward director sat in the back, occupying one bench and the patient cot. Â I’ve ridden in the back of this ambulance before and know that the cot slides around and the…
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