Lunch in Kabul
Monday, November 6th 2006 - 12:03 AM
It's lunch time here in Kabul, and i'm eating at my desk at work. I've often hassled people about eating at their desk, in front of the computer, etc, because it's not good for your mental or physical health. But, well, i'm doing it now...
There are about fifty people working here and there are three kitchen staff, who provide us with tea all day and make lunch for us. The kitchen is two rooms in the single storey building at the back of the block here. The office i work in now is in that building too. All the rooms have doors to the outside, rather than an internal corridor.
Tea comes in a big vaccuum flask type of thing, with a spout and a large button in the top that you press to make the tea come out. Each office gets one of these in the morning and they're topped up later in the day.
Most offices have green tea, or chai sabz - which seems to be the favourite drink in this country - but some have black tea, or chai siah - which is made fairly weak and not normally drunk with milk. Personally, i prefer chai sabz - which is what we have in this office - and i drink about ten gallons of it through the day.
Every morning, each office also gets a little bowl of sweets ("lollies" for the Australians reading this) with the tea - which has helped me develop a bad sugar habit since i've been here!
Lunch is a bit of a hit and miss affair - sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not so good. Today we've got a sort of cauliflower "curry" dish - overcooked cauliflower with spices and lots of oil and salt. It tastes good, but i do prefer my cauliflower a little less squishy. Along with the small bowl of cauliflower, we get a large mound of rice and a decent sized bit of bread.
Yesterday, lunch was spicy lamb kebabs on big steel skewers, with a very large piece of bread. That was it. No vegetables. Some of yous might be surprised to hear that i ate it.
Yeah, i'm eating meat while i'm here. And bread. And i must say, i seem to be starting to get fat from it!
I'm not sure if i really want to be eating meat and bread or not, but it's certainly made my life considerably easier than it would have been if i wasn't. And it seems to have made it considerably easier in some ways than it has been for many years!
You can see some of my photos of Afganistan at
WillKemp-Photos.com/afghanistan