imagine that!

Hanukkah came into the blue room this morning with a thermos of green tea and I offered date bars and I took the opportunity to show him all my photos of Kandahar and pointed out there were no neighborhood people in my images. 

So, if anyone asks him he can say he saw no photos of the purdahed people and that will be that. 

Noontime on a groggy Friday, no city power, the battery on this pc has an hour or so left on it, I have lesson planning to do but it isn’t easy when you want to sit outside in the sun and chill and read a few chapters of Romanov history.  What to do, I don’t know.  Lunch?  Let’s wait a little longer.  Eat later and then dinner isn’t really necessary.

5.59pm—Younnis gave me a piece of gum that tastes like laundry soap.  And why am I still eating it?  Because the soap has sugar in it?

Thank goodness the sunset was ordinary.  I watched it from the kitchen window and then went outside for its last few minutes.  Then I asked Hanukkah to turn on the big solar and I followed him to see how he did it.  For the second time someone is showing me all the plugs and switches in a room with no light.  I practically had to bend over this dude so I could see what he was doing because he doesn’t care if you don’t understand a word of what he says he’s gonna just talk and that is fine with me.  He told me two stories today and even with hand gestures I didn’t have a clue.  He speaks a crazy Pashto that makes everyone laugh at lunch but even they don’t understand. 

Anyways, the potato and chicken heated up was good and with sliced bread I made a chicken sandwich and will have another one soon, perhaps the toaster will work with the big solar on.  Manana, Rezek.

10.31.15

The season’s first sore throat, thanks be for grapefruit seed extract. 

12:26pm--All lesson planning is complete, I stretched outside and walked around the gazebo until my feet were warm enough to remove socks.  I think I’ll lie down now.

11.1.15

Throughout the night mosquitoes closed in on my ears and I swatted and slapped at them towards my head sometimes a little too aggressively and the hours spent tossing and turning, maybe I have too many layers on, and I felt trapped in the silk-liner and fought to be free of it and I was concerned my alarm wasn’t working so I kept checking, 5:30, 5:45, 5:50, 5:55 why do I even use an alarm I don’t know but I had to get up and showered I did at six am in the dark and made sure I washed these blood thieves out of my hair.  What a terrible night of sleep.  I told the morning men cold weather brings pain to me, the older men just nodded, a sore left hip-back muscle and closed ears.  I told the class my ears were plugged and I may not know the difference between their English and Pashto.  Ha ha.  Ok. 

Welcome, November.  One of my favorite months as a child, today, I like the change of season.  I got specific dates for the break next month and gee wiz, what is the worst time to travel to the states?  Ya, I am looking at a crowded, delayed, cold journey, and with no medicine to meditatively guide me.  Balk.  A week on an island in the clear water sounds really good now. 

7:37pm—My new conversation class started this evening with four women and four men, hmm, let’s remain respectful and courteous and everyone was.  No one had their textbook and no one will until they register.  Tonight was a feeler, I guess, well they were told in the first hour we’d learn idioms and the second hour we’d have roundtable discussions and I started tonight with questions about gender in the workplace and in social settings.  

Six out of eight can have a serious conversation.  The teenager and the fifty-six year old man are gonna struggle and even tonight they broke into Pashto and I had to corral them in.  But it’s nice to have the girls, they appear very intelligent and sweet with the right formats three nights a week, things should be ok, but I wonder because we’re losing our coordinator in less than a fortnight it appears, and some, rightly so I think, fear the chaos having a new coordinator will bring.  Hell, if it’s really bad, I’ll leave.  Ha ha, everything is easy if all you need to do is simply leave. 

No internet tonight, I could meander through the curtains and see who’s on tonight or I could go check out the battery room and play with the white internet plug if that’s all it is.  I’ll wait a second.

11.2.15

7:30am—A very overcast sky and a spit of rain, temps are a tad warmer, take off the socks and the pashmina shawl, open the windows and breathe deep the clean air,  it’s spring! 

Sometimes I wonder how in the world I’ll ever stay here for a year.  Wali told me the crazy purdah dude told Hanukkah if he, the purdah dude, saw the American again with a camera he’d shoot me.   I’d like to take a photo of my killer, sure bring it on you Pathan hillbilly. 

Shanti Shanti, it is such a nice morning, the kind you always wish to have if you want to produce something magnificent.  Oh, I’m excited, what are you going to produce this morning? 

Last night one of the women, girls, I addressed them as ladies I don’t know what they think of the title, said when she comes to Aino Mina she imagines she’s in America.  Ya, California style homes for the rich and famous and that’s where the similarities stop.  But she refers to the general clean up-keep, paved roads lit with private electricity, flowers, markets, fountains.  On the way to Kandahar University I saw the low mud brick homes stretching for miles with no electricity lines, I can’t imagine how it's done, and I told them I know my experience in Afghanistan has been very limited to a neighborhood with 20 room houses and crazy fucks who want to shoot me and my camera.  Ya ya I know, it’s your duty to protect your possessions, it’s about honor, it’s about overreacting because you still live in a mental cave. 

There has been no internet since yesterday afternoon, imagine not knowing how bad the Lions lost to Kansas City yesterday, why there is one less wrinkle on your neck, you get a three months of life returned to you, reborn taste buds make that pecan ice cream oh so special,  your vision improves,  colors are restored, you smell fresh bread a mile away, you’re suddenly happy to pay your taxes, snow becomes cotton, rain becomes beer, sparrows and wrens rest on your shoulder tweeting the mysteries of nature, you sleep in the park more often, you stop shaving, you sell your car and buy surfboards for everyone in the family though you’re nowhere near water, all is good, life is once again clean and free of the Lions.

Yeah!  Go Lions!  Go to Mexico.  
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J65GxJ2v9Wg

Perfect music for an overcast day.  Temps are going to drop in the next few days, probably down to the low 40’s tomorrow.  That’s cold inside, dude.  I need to run to the shops, buy bread, nuts, biscuits, what else.  How about a nap until then?