Photos, Etc

Finally some of our first photos. Photos include, roughly in this order, the Kabul cityscape, the flight from Kabul to Chagcharan (snow), watershed restoration sites in Ghor province (including a mapping exercise with a local shura--community leadership), a CRS staff party to celebrate the everyone’s hard work (it was a great party fueled by plenty of food, tea, and dancing, these guys were unstoppable, as was Chad), a visit to a cash-for-work project (designed to assist vulnerable communities most affected by the long drought through supporting them to do community selected projects), a hike to see the Kuchi camels, and the sites of Hirat including the glass shop, Friday mosque, rolling shrine, citadel, and mausoleum of Gowhar Shad.

We’re now back in Kabul for a few days (still snow on the mountains you can see from town, very nice). Today Chad attended an NRM workshop and I joined an NGO security meeting focused on the background and current situation of the conflicts/war that was insightful. If you’ve done any reading on Kabul, the city likely fits those images, crammed narrow streets at times with 3 ft drop-offs into drainage ditches on either side, bakeries full of giant flat breads, lots of burkas and turbans, great bikes with lots of accessories (horns, flaps, spoke decoration, etc), dust and wind that at times makes you wish you were wearing a burka, big mountains surrounding the city, lots of fortified walls, unmarked compounds, herds of sheep in the streets, and the occasional UN vehicle… definitely a lot to see.

On Saturday Chad will head to Bamiyan and I’ll return to Ghor for about a month for a short-term contract working with the watershed restoration project there (yea). Hopefully I’ll get to join Chad in Bamiyan by late July/early August. Chad learned today that a half marathon is being planned in Bamiyan for late summer and people have said I can run in Bamiyan on trails just above town, I can’t wait. ;)

The Constitution of Afghanistan Year 1382 (2004) Preamble

I have a bit of a fascination with Constitution Preambles and when I looked this one up today, I thought it was worth sharing. This current constitution is based largely on the 1964 Afghan constitution. The current version was drafted by a 9 member commission appointed by Karzai and reworked after a public consultation process. In December 2003, a Loya Jirga of 502 delegates vigorously debated the document. On January 4, 2004, the Loya Jirga ratified the Constitution by consensus in spite of complaints about the process.

Preamble

We the people of Afghanistan:

With firm faith in God Almighty and relying on His lawful mercy, and believing in the sacred religion of Islam,

Realizing the injustice and shortcoming of the past, and the numerous troubles imposed on our country,

While acknowledging the sacrifices and the historic struggles, rightful Jehad and just resistance of all people of Afghanistan and respecting the high position of the martyrs for freedom of the country,

With the understanding that Afghanistan is a single and united country and belongs to all ethnicities residing in this country,

Observing the United Nations Charter and respecting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

For strengthening national unity, safeguarding independence, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the country,

For establishing a government based on people’s will and democracy,

For creation of a civil society free of oppression, atrocity, discrimination, and violence and based on the rule of law, social justice, protection of human rights, and dignity and ensuring the fundamental rights and freedoms of the people,

For strengthening the political, social, economic, and defensive institutions of the country,

For ensuring a prosperous life and sound environment for all those residing in this land,

Finally for regaining Afghanistan’s deserving place in the international community,

have adopted this constitution in accordance with historical, cultural, and social requirements of the era, through our elected representatives in the Loya Jirga dated 14 Jaddi 1382 in the city of Kabul.

From Ghor to Herat

Today we flew from Ghor to Heart, 7400ft to 3200ft and much warmer temps. Our time in Ghor was great. It included visiting a camp of the nomadic Kuchi herders for a lunch of huge chapattis, yogurt, and sheep meat, climbing a ridge to visit their camels grazing on a rhubarb like plant, seeing a marmot (!) and snow, attending a CRS staff party with lots of dancing, drama, and games, visiting more soil and water conservation projects, and falling asleep on the roof under a sky incredibly full of stars. It was grand. After we arrived in Herat today, we explored the big city (relative to Chagcharan where a car on the road is an event) with one of Chad’s colleagues. Herat is considered the cultural heart of Afghanistan and sits at a crossroads on the silk road where routes connecting the Middle East, Central Asia, and India meet. On the streets there are carts full of peaches, oranges, giant melons, apples, plums, bananas, cherries, and more. And there are shops with pails piled with colorful spices, dried fruit, and nuts. We visited a glass shop and saw the glass-blower in action, a small man seated in front of a raging fire contained in a kiln. He expertly rolled, blew, and swung, the super-heated glass into cups and vases, an impressive art (and very hot). Across from the glass shop is the Friday Mosque, a beautiful blue and green and yellow tiled building over 800 years old. We visited after prayers but at prayer time the nearly 100x100yd courtyard is apparently full of people. From the mosque we proceeded to a shrine where you lay down and are rolled on a gravel field to determine if your intent is true. Turns out Chad and I didn’t roll that well but we generally rolled in the direction of the bush and that’s a good thing. We also visited an impressive citadel, a fort that’s been rebuilt numerous times but originally by Alexander the Great and first rebuilt after destruction by Genghis Khan in 1415. And finally a trip to the mausoleum of Gowhar Shad who is said to be one of the most remarkable women in Afghan history and was heavily involved in politics and lover of art. Today the park surrounding the mausoleum is the place where women of Herat go for picnics on Fridays.

Chagcharan, Ghor Province

Today we attended a meeting with a local shura (community council) to discuss the potential of doing watershed restoration work in their community. They fed us a lunch of whole wheat bread (huge flat rounds), sheep fat soup, and fresh, locally-made yogurt, then tea and crystallized sugar. The meal was served on a long tablecloth laid on the floor and each group of three people shared a bowl of soup, yogurt and bread. After lunch CRS watershed lead, Biparwa, discussed the project with the group, answered their questions, and assessed their interest. Negotiations went on for awhile before the group decided they wanted to move forward with the resource mapping and site selection. The resource mapping involved this group of 10 turbaned men and a few kids crowding around paper on the floor and using markers to designate springs, streams, ridges, canals, households, irrigated land, and rain-fed ag land. It was amazing to listen to them discuss and debate the details of the map. Mid-map making, a group a 6 large impressive men (more turbans, prayer beads, shalwar kameez, etc) entered the room. It turns out they were there to discuss a marriage proposal with the owner of the house. We wrapped up the mapping and the group chose two potential sites in need of restoration work. As they began the marriage proposal discussions we headed out to look at the sites with a few of the shura members. As we walked the watershed, we tasted numerous edible plants that the men showed us and I accepted bouquets of wild cumin and yarrow flowers (I could have never imagined this). The walk was beautiful, still some patches of snow in the mountains, brilliant green valleys, and hills that are reminiscent of the Missouri River breaks country. We finished the walk around 5pm and had to turn down two offers to come back to people’s houses to eat and sleep so that we could get back to Chagcharan. What a day.

We’ve also spent our time here visiting 3 completed watershed restoration projects. We’re learning a ton and are very impressed with the projects and staff of CRS. We’ll continue to spend the next few days in the field before flying to Herat on Sunday.

Arrival in Kabul

Our second morning in Kabul and the jet-lag is still kicking. I’m up at 3:15am with the imam’s singing from the megaphones and an occasional rooster. By 4am it’s getting light out, birds are chirping and the praying coming from the mosque is quieter and intermittent. Yesterday we drove around the city to and from the CRS office, the university, and the city center. It’s hard to write about first impressions knowing how naïve we are. But observing from the car window as we crawled along in traffic what I’ve read over and over finally really hit me, that this is a segregated place, men in one world, women in another. On the streets are groups and individuals walking, lounging, talking, selling something, perusing the street stalls full of fruit, vegetables, sunglasses, sandals… but never together and barely seeming to acknowledge each other. It was felt good though to see how many women are on the streets, dressed in anything from jeans to suits to burkas, always with hips and heads covered but many bright faces. Hard lives are also apparent, a woman in a burka trying to sell two packs of cigarettes on the edge of traffic, street children giving us beautiful smiles and grabbing our hands to walk with us wanting to sell dirty beat-up cards.

Yesterday we received a long security briefing from an Afghani who stayed here through the Taliban years, met with well-versed men and women at the Center for Policy and Human Development at Kabul University, registered ourselves in a dilapidated office full of worn registries at the Ministry of Interior, and bought me my second piece of Afghan appropriate clothing at a crammed shopping center. We’ve been advised not walk on the streets but at the University we walked through a large and green campus with trees, flowers, and grassy areas with benches. It had the feeling of any other University, students walking with books, relaxing on the grass, conversing on the benches. There are other parks and overall Kabul is much greener than I imagined. And we can see snow in the mountains from the city, an amazing sight. There is also an abundance of dust colored buildings, walls, streets, rubbish piles, and steep hills rising from the edge of the city that all blend together.

Highlights of our travel here were meeting a group of Afghani high school students who had just studied in the US for a year and seeing the huge snow covered mountains of central Afghanistan from the plane. One of the high school girls is from Bamiyan and we exchanged emails and look forward to meeting again. She went to school in Scott’s Bluff, Nebraska and was both nervous and excited to be coming home. I told her we felt the same was about coming to Afghanistan. It’s going to take awhile to figure out how to get around here and after just one day in Kabul we’re looking forward to getting to Bamiyan and the mountains. I spent my first day in a headscarf, definitely a little awkward and always a relief to take it off once inside. Tomorrow we leave for Chagcharan in Ghor province, then to Herat, each for about a week to learn more about CRS’s programs, then to Bamiyan. We haven’t pulled out the camera yet but when we do I’ll post some photos.

Christmas Honeymoon

Thank you to so many of you for your gifts that gave us a great honeymoon.  We spent Christmas day in Java exploring Hindu and Buddhist temples.  And New Years eve on the streets of Bali with drumming and fireworks.  When it started pouring rain soon after midnight it just added to the celebration.  In between and on either end we explored steaming volcanoes, rainforest, beaches, and Yogyakarta.  We watched a turtle come to lay eggs on the beach, biked through rice fields, walked through endless cultivated hillsides, talked politics with Muslim women, experience the Balinese kecak and trance dances and shadow puppets, ate food you just don't find in Montana, smelled cinnamon and clove trees, indulged in Javanese massage, and stayed at the "Honeymoon Guesthouse" in Bali.  And Laurie got her blood pressure taken; it was normal.  After amazing travels we returned to Timor Lest and remembered that we also live on a tropical island.  We had one day before going back to work that we spent on the beach, eating breakfast, kayaking, and playing frisbee, not bad.  Some pictures over on the right.  Thank you all for your support in so many ways!  We feel so lucky to have had this chance to explore Indonesia.  Love, L&C

Merry Christmas 2008

To our wonderful friends and family,

Two thousand eight has been a big year for us and it wouldn’t have been remotely as fun and exciting without you. Thank you. We miss you a ton and are incredibly grateful for your love and support. Here is a quick recap of our year that started in sub-zero temps in Montana, then got warmer, then hotter, until the tropical monsoons of East Timor finally provided just a bit of relief.

January—below zero
We got engaged in below zero temps during a full moon ski near Lolo Pass outside Missoula. We climbed up to the top of a clearing, sat in the snow, and celebrated with alpines and frozen champagne, talking and laughing in the moonlight. Finally we skied back to the car where we realized we’d been out in the sub-zero temps for four hours and never felt cold...

February—the snow is just getting better
Chad flies to Baltimore for an all day interview with CRS, an organization we’d barely heard of.

March—great skiing in the mountains
Chad heads to Memphis to present at the American Society of Applied Anthropology conference. A few days into the conference he gets an email offering him a job with CRS in East Timor. Chad calls Laurie. Laurie tries to look up East Timor in her 1990s era atlas but despite an index that takes up half the book, East Timor or Timor isn’t even listed. We madly research East Timor and try to decide if we want to move to a small tropical island nation in southeast Asia that just became a country in 2002.

April—starting to warm up
We learn that East Timor has had recent unrest including Feb 2008 assassination attempts on the Nobel Peace Prize winning president and the Prime Minister. On google earth we see internally displaced people camps in the capital, a result of violence in 2006 and 2007. Also on google earth we see beaches ringing an island with a mountainous interior of peaks close to10,000 ft. Chad accepts the position. Then he defends his dissertation, the culmination of five years of hard work and we leave with friends for a week of backcountry skiing in Canada.

May—spring time in Missoula
Chad graduates with a PhD and Laurie finishes nine years of work with incredible colleagues and students at the University of Montana Wilderness Institute. Laurie spends ten days floating the Missouri River with a great group of students to complete her year of classroom and field teaching in the Wilderness and Civilization program.

June—getting warmer
Chad is the best man for Adam and Erin’s wedding and we spend most of the month celebrating with them and hosting Chad and Adam’s raucous college friends. Laurie’s womens ultimate team wins the Eugene Solstice tournament. Yeah Special Forces.

July—85 degrees
Chad goes to a week-long training for his new job. We get married on an incredibly beautiful day on the banks of the Missouri River in Montana. We’re surrounded by wonderful friends and family who make us feel really lucky through and through.

August—90 degrees
We have our wedding reception in Caras Park in downtown Missoula with an amazing community of family and friends. And a few Hells Angels. We leave for nine days of backpacking in Glacier National Park. Back in Missoula, we get ready to move to East Timor, which includes painting our house the day before we leave. On August 31 we get on a plane for San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore, Bali, and finally, Dili.

September—95 degrees
We land on a tropical island that looks really different than Montana and listen the global financial crisis unfold via BBC radio.

October—100 degrees
Chad gets acquainted with a non-grad school work routine. Laurie looks for work; experiences unemployment. We practice Tetun (ami hanoin kona ba imi barak). We get scuba certified and proceed to explore the oceans and mountains of our new home.

November—100 plus degrees
We spend election “night” (our mid-day) at the US Embassy with a festive crowd of people from all over the world. Laurie finds a job working on the natural resource component of a water supply project. We have fresh fish for Thanksgiving dinner and spend a long weekend on the beach of Timor’s first and only national park.

December—95 degrees, 95% humidity
The rains finally come and cool things down a *little.* Thunder storms boom and nativity scenes go up every 100 meters complete with bamboo, thatched roofs, hip hop music, and an occasional Christmas tree. We spend a full day walking from the mountains to the ocean dropping over 1000m (about 4000ft) in 25km (about 15 miles). We experience our first Timor flash flood.

Now we’re packing our bags for our Christmas honeymoon in Indonesia. We miss you and are wishing you a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

Love,

Laurie and Chad