An Important Greek Historical Legacy

Yeah, I thought this was an unfortunately named landmark as well.

More on the Effectiveness of Greek Guard Dogs

 Lest the previous post give an inaccurate and partial portrayal of the abilities and daily efforts of dogs guarding important Greek historical monuments, another set of photos is in order.  The first is the dog at the entrance of the Temple of Olympian Zeus; the second guards the entrance to the Agora; and the third, from the "Tower of the Winds," is easily the most active and fastest-moving animal we encountered at a monument site.

Greek Guard Dogs

 Literally every monument space we have visited is protected by very large, if somewhat tired, guard dogs.  The first is on the steps next to the Parthenon.  The second is at the entrance to steps leading up the Acropolis hill.  The third is outside the National Acropolis Museum.  This may have something to do with the origins of the phrase "let sleeping dogs lie," though I'm guessing the rest of the saying is, "because it would be plain rude to wake them up."

If It's May 1, and You're in Greece

The public workers will all be on strike.  So tomorrow we have a flight, supposedly, but there will be no public transport to and from the airport.  We don't know if the taxi drivers will go on a sympathy strike, or if the airlines will be open.  So tomorrow could turn out to be interesting, but not in a good way.

Greek Textile Stores

Are apparently at times called Davina, for those of you keeping track of such things.

More Reading Practice for Mallory

 A church, a random building, a street sign,

Wildlife in Athens

Ok, the photo doesn't really capture it, but this was the longest-legged cat we have ever seen.  It was freakish.  I didn't get a chance to actually measure its height, but I'd say we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of a short NBA guard.  We saw two taller ones later, prowling the abandoned grounds of some old broken columns and foundations, but they ran away too quickly for me to get a photo.

Usual Antics

 Here we are in Athens. I don't know how the wine got there on the table, but we sure didn't order it.

On the Importance of Good Parenting

OK, so there was that period in Prague when we thought it was funny to get Mallory for Christmas that movie about the woman whose life was destroyed by absinthe, and then get her a bottle just for laughs.  But we take our parenting duties seriously.  Children, pay attention to the terrible effects absinthe has had on Vincent Van Gogh, or at a minimum, on your vision, and be forewarned.

Signs for Mallory

 OK, hot shot, start practicing your Greek.  I think it is very cool that as you drive in on the highway from the airport, the signs for the exists are labeled "Exodus."  Also, I took a picture of a church where the word seems to be "Ecclesiastes."  There was another building with the engraved title, "Demos Athinoi," which I believe means "Athenian People," so maybe it was the city hall or something.

My Next Set of Dishes

I don't usually pay attention to dishes.  However, we had one of the best filet mignons ever in Dubai, and all the plates were designed like they were the menu of a French restaurant Tout Heures.  Also, this cappuccino was delicious.

And on to Greece

We left Kabul Wednesday morning with an early morning flight to Dubai.  We were very lucky, as we later found out; there was an incident at the airport less than two hours later that shut down the whole place.  We got out more or less on time, then had a very relaxing day in Dubai.  Yesterday afternoon we came to Athens.  We are staying in a very tiny hotel very near the Monastiraki Square, right at the foot of the Acropolis.

More from Mazar Airport

 Yes, that's our plane again.  It's not like there's a lot of other air traffic to photograph there.  Though in the second photo you can see the German cargo planes on the military side.

Here's Our Ride

 Mazar's airport is quite tiny, so you just walk from the parking lot through one room and you're on the tarmac.  The Beechcraft is our usual airplane.  It seats 18-20, and makes disturbingly loud noises as it struggles to get enough power to take off at higher altitudes.  Mazar itself is down on a plain, and so while it has fairly high mountains on one side, the city area itself is pretty flat, and the lower elevation means it's quite a bit warmer than Kabul.

Lincoln

There are a couple dozen or more "Lincoln Centers" set up around the country.  These are basically very small walk-in libraries with a few internet terminals, magazines and reference books, mostly in English, a bit in Dari or Pashto.  They host small lectures and roundtables, mostly for high school and college-age kids.  There are separate sections for the males and females.

Mazar Bazaar

 Nothing special here and I didn't buy anything; I was here for about 30 seconds while we picked up the rest of our group to rush to the airport.

The Flags of RC-North

ISAF divides Afghanistan into five regional commands (RCs).  North is headquartered in Mazar-e-Sharif.  It's led by the Germans, though I think there are as many if not more US troops there now, plus a bunch of other countries have forces there.  On the civilian side, the PRTs in the region are led by Sweden, Norway, Germany, Turkey and Hungary; the US has civilians at all those.

OK, So Maybe I Bought a Ring, Too

Stone is lapis, metal is silver.  This one is sized correctly, so it actually fits.

More from the Swedish PRT

 Easily one of the nicest PRTs in the country.  Not much dust, very nicely laid out, very good living conditions, and I don't believe they've taken fire during my whole time here.

So We Got Some More Carpets

 These are, if the carpet dealer can be believed, lamb's wool, Turkmen style, from NW Afghanistan.  The red one is actually quite a dark red, with the color based on pomegranate juice.  The yellow/blue one, I don't know what was used for the coloring.  This makes three carpets we've gotten here.  I'm pretty much done, I guess.  One of the guys in my office bought forty.

Abba Abba Doo

So I went to Mazar-e-Sharif, two weeks after the attack on the UN compound.  That compound is closed now; i believe all the remaining staff were evacuated right afterwards.  But I did go the Swedish PRT and saw something I hadn't noticed before.  You don't see signs like this very often in Afghanistan.  I can't say I've seen it before.  But the Swedish PRT has a sun deck (and a sauna, and unisex bathrooms and showers), and apparently there were concerns that women sunbathing topless might not send the right message.  So it's been banned.  In solidarity, the first couple of days, the Swedish men, it is said, went sunbathing wearing bras.  The Swedish PRT also has a fantastic Saturday mid-day meal with shrimp, roast meats, cheeses, breads, various fish products, etc.  No one was topless in the dining facility either, even though it was over 90 degrees.

On the Frequency of Vacations

Everyone here is given five trips out per year, for a total of up to 65 days.  (If you don't "make your 300," you are obligated to stay longer until you have at least 300 days in country.  We are leaving two weeks earlier, but by taking shorter vacations, we will have 302 days in country.)  If you take, say, 12 days per trip, including the travel time (inevitably at least three days, because it's pretty much impossible to get anywhere from Kabul without an overnight layover in Dubai or Delhi, the only international destinations other than Tehran that airplanes fly to out of Kabul), then it works out to about seven weeks working, two weeks out, then back to work.  You repeat that five times, then do you last seven weeks working, and it's time to go. We have discovered the wisdom of whoever decided you need a break every other month.  We are in week ten since our last vacation, with 11 more days to do.  And it is too long.  People better hope I run into a Taliban before long, because I'm certainly disposed to kill somebody, and it would be a shame if it were an innocent office mate.

Now time for the regular "How are things going?" update.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Afghan-Suicide-Bomb-Blast-Kills-9-119971004.html

Yeah, still not going so great.

We Represent the Lollipop Kids

The Ghor version thereof.

More Ghorican Photos

 OK, I'm running out of ways to make an adjective out of Ghor.  Ghor is sometimes spelled Ghawr on maps here, but it's pretty much pronounced like "gore."  Apparently it's the Farsi word for mountain.  You can see the foothills of the Hindu Kush, still with snow, in the backdrop of the first photo.  The last one is of houses in downtown Ghor, right across the street from the Governor's compound.

Ghorovian Flood Canal

 So here's the canal they're digging, and using rocks to reinforce the side walls.  I'd say it's about nine or ten feet deep, maybe 12-14 feet wide, and they said it will be about 450 meters long once they've finished.  The second photo is the concrete crew; they're mixing fairly sizable stones (fist-sized or so) into the concrete. 

Ghoresque Workers

 The first place we went was to an underway flood channel, or humongous ditch, take your pick.  Ghor doesn't get much precipitation, but when the snows melt, the town tends to flood.  So the idea was to dig a very deep, very wide channel to redirect the flood waters away from the town and toward the river, which will probably overflow its banks and flood the downtown part.  There are always trade-offs.  Anyway, these men - that's right, only men; women can't dig ditches here - are the workers.  The first photo shows a hundred or so men just standing around, while the others are actively digging and pushing wheelbarrows filled with large rocks and what looked like very poor quality concrete toward the ditch.  Who are those guys standing around, you might ask?  No, they're not the foremen; there are no unions here.  These guys are waiting to get paid.  It's Thursday, and that's when everybody gets paid.  There's a guy in the white tent with a big bag of money and a book with everyone's names; he's the paymaster.  They come up to the tent in groups of a dozen or so to get their money.

Ghory Kids

 I'm experimenting with different adjectives based on "Ghor."  I don't know that there's a standard form.  Anyway, these kids in traditional dress were waiting in front of the Governor's Compound with flowers and a portrait of President Karzai.

Women in Ghor

I didn't see any women in burkas in Ghor.  Most women wore this long robe + head scarf that was black with a pattern of white, almost crescent-shaped objects.   The taller women toward the right isn't Afghan; she's with the Japanese development agency.

Housing Opportunities

So if you are interested in buying property in Afghanistan, you should consider Ghor.  You can't beat the location - this is about a five minute drive from downtown Chagcharan.  OK, so technically there aren't any roads to drive over - that's not entirely fair; there is one stretch of two kilometers that has been paved, the first and only paved road in the entire province, which is about 450 kilometers wide and 220 or so tall.  On the other hand, there's not much traffic to deal with.  On this stretch of hilly dirt, people have sketched out rectangles where they will put the walls around their houses, and some of them, as you can see from the heaps of rocks, have even brought from the hills the raw materials for their walls.  Rock walls are fancy; most people just have mud walls.  Anyway, if you're interested, let me know, and I can probably get you a good deal.

Ghor is Not the Manhattan of Central Asia

 Yesterday was Ghor, where we have a small team with the Lithuanians at their PRT in the capital "city" of Chagcharan.  Ghor is probably the most isolated part of Afghanistan, so isolated that even the insurgents don't often go there.  It doesn't have mines, trees, or much vegetation at all, though one of the people there was telling me that the soil is in fact quite fertile, if only there was water.  There's a book called "The Places In Between" that describes Ghor as "one of the only places in the classical world not to be names or recognized by either the Persians or the Greeks."  It is defined by tribal conflicts, and when we asked what tends to cause the tribal conflicts, the answer was, "Someone steals a sheep, and then the tribe retaliates by kidnapping a person."  I didn't see any sheep, probably because they had all been stolen, but I did see one herder driving a group of maybe six devilish-looking goats.  I also saw of flock of four turkeys.