Shalwar Kameez
Wednesday, November 15th 2006 - 8:14 AM
I went to Mehtar Lam again yesterday. I wasn't quite so enthusiastic about it this time, though, as it meant spending most of the day sitting in the back of a car.
On this trip, in an effort to make myself less of a target, i wore a shalwar kameez and a "pakool" hat i'd got when i was in Mehtar Lam last week. I didn't really think i would pass for an Afghan up close, but it might mean i didn't stand out as a foreigner so much from a distance. The point of this was to reduce the chances that anyone would get bright ideas about having a go at killing me.
Even though i didn't expect to pass for an Afghan up close, my skin's still fairly tanned and at least one person did appear to think i was Afghan, and a few others did double takes when they looked at me.
The shalwar kameez consists of a long shirt that comes down to about your knees and a pair of baggy trousers which are worn under it. They're both made from the same, fairly light material. The one i'd bought the day before wasn't very high quality and the trousers were badly cut - with seams down the front of the legs, curving round the leg a bit.
The pakool is made of some wool-like fabric. It's got a round top and the sides are a tube of the same material, which you roll up to make the thing into a cap.
When Khalil saw me, as i arrived at the office that morning, he reckoned i looked like a poor Afghan!
Two soldiers from the PRT pose for a photo with me and one of the building workers
There were four of us in the car on that trip - me, Khalil, Farid, and Nizam, the driver. We left a little earlier than last time, at seven o'clock in the morning. It was freezing and there was snow on the hills to the north west of Kabul, which you could see from our street.
There had been a landlslide a couple of days earlier, about halfway down the section of road that winds down the mountain side before Sooroobí. The road was still partly blocked here, but there was space for one lane of traffic. Fortunately there wasn't enough traffic, at the time we passed that point, to slow us down at all.
In Mehtar Lam, Farid went off to meet with the deputy governor or someone, and me and Khalil went to the RTA station.
Our reception there was lukewarm again, but after we'd given the station manager a bit of good news about what we hoped we'd be able to do for his station, he got someone to bring us some tea, and sent someone else out for biscuits. We were being treated like guests today, rather than unwelcome intruders.
Eventually Farid finished with whoever he'd been meeting with and joined us at the radio station. The three of us and the station manager then went out to the car and headed up to the site where we're building the new independent station, where we were due to meet up with a couple of the PRT guys from Kabul.
"PRT" stands for "Provincial Reconstruction Team", and there's one in each province in Afghanistan - attempting to rebuild the country after the war and to provide better infrastructure and services for the population. The PRTs are military operations, with soldiers from a number of different countries participating in them. Each team, though, is usually provided by a single country.
Work on the building had progressed since last week, and most of the foundations had been laid. There was a bit of an issue with the perimeter wall though, which had to be sorted out. The trench which had been dug for the wall was in the wrong place - which would result in a very small enclosed yard around the building. This wasn't how it was supposed to be and it would have to be changed. Fortunately, though, none of the wall had been built in the wrong parts of the trench, so it would be easy to change.
These are the finished foundations for the building. The space will be filled and the floor will be level with the top of the foundations.
After we left there, we dropped the station manager back at the radio station and said goodbye to him. The PRT guys had followed us down, as the station manager had wanted to show them his station. They were travelling in two unmarked white four wheel drives, and i stood at the window of one of them saying goodbye to the guy who was driving it.
He engaged me in conversation about some aspect of the building work, but i wasn't exactly keen to be standing there talking to him for too long. We were in the middle of the main street in Mehtar Lam - a town in an area that's known to be a little less than safe, and where the military are often targeted - and i was talking to a uniformed soldier. It was alright for him, he had a bullet proof vest on and a rifle on his knees. I had a bulletproof vest too - it was in the back of our car, a bit of a way down the street, which wasn't a lot of use! But i certainly didn't have a rifle handy!
Not far out of town, traffic was being diverted to a narrow dirt track through a small village. The policeman who was directing traffic told Nizam that there were five IEDs down the road and the PRT had disabled them. "IED" stands for "Improvised Explosive Device".
Not long after we got back on the main road, we passed a convoy of heavily armoured military vehicles heading towards Mehtar Lam. Khalil said they were the mine clearing squad.
At the junction with the Kabul to Jalalabad road, we turned left instead of right, and stopped for lunch at Darunta, which was about fifteen minutes away, just the other side of the border with Jalalabad province.
Darunta is on the bank of a dam and is another place where you can get good fish, like Sooroobí, where we stopped for lunch on the way home last week.
We sat by the water in a small restaurant, right next to the main road, and ate some very tasty pieces of fried fish. It was a pleasant spot to stop for lunch.
Back at where the landslide was, on the mountain road, the traffic was much heavier and was banked up quite badly. There were lots of trucks as well as quite a few cars, all trying to get past the spots where there was only one lane open.
When we eventually made it back into the dusty haze of Kabul it was after dark and the air and the traffic were as ugly as usual. It was a strong contrast to the slow pace and clean air of Mehtar Lam.
I got home just after seven o'clock.
You can see some of my photos of Afganistan at
WillKemp-Photos.com/afghanistan