View from a Street

This is the main thoroughfare in sub-district nine.  We parked up near the end of the road as it leads up the hill, then walked down away from the hill and toward the center of the city.  As soon as we got out, throngs of little kids, mostly boys but a few girls dressed in very colorful clothes with sparkling glittery things peppering the garment, clotted around us and stayed glued to us.  Most were too shy to talk to us.  We also talked to some shopkeepers; if you bought a soda or a water, they would talk.  The older men either didn't bother to look up at us or made it clear from their expressions they had no interest in talking.  The big problem in this district, we learned, besides the absence of a school or sewage or electricity or jobs, was drainage; when it rains, all the water comes rolling down from the hill and overflows the ditches along the side of the road and floods the street and shops. Speaking of electricity, most people simply don't have it and thus don't buy the things that would need it, thus helping keep demand low, thus reducing the impact of the erratic supply.  The city gets about 2-3 hours a day every 2 or 3 days, and most of that is directed toward the small industrial part, not to the residential districts.  People charge their cell phones with their car batteries.  As you'll see in the photo, too, anytime you take a walk like this, you're also escorted by some heavily armed friends.

View from a Helicopter

As usual, we went from the Kandahar airfield to KPRT via helicopter.  (I've only known one person who went via ground, and it took over two hours to go less than 10 kilometers.)  We flew into Kandahar a different way. Normally we fly over the rocky barren moonscape desert.  But this time we veered far to the south, and I saw for the first time sandy desert, a weird dark orange color.  You see the muddy river, and the narrow bands of wet clay on either side of it, and then dramatically abruptly, it stops and becomes sand dunes, and there is nothing, no buildings, no roads, no tracks through the sand.
Anyway, back to the helicopter.  We're doing the usual flight, though this time without another helo flying escort, when suddenly the gunner opens fire for about twenty rounds at an empty hill.  Nothing was shot at us - or if it was, nothing close - and none of the rest of the crew made any movement, so for all I know he was just test firing or bored or something.

View from an MRAP

Yesterday was Kandahar again, this time for the city walk in sub-district nine.  To get anywhere, you have to go in the armored vehicles.  You'll notice the cracked windshield.  All the windows were cracked.  None of the damage was from IEDs or bullets or rollovers (though at one point the driver damn near did roll us over; she was trying to take a curve too fast in order to get out of narrow section and she came very close to the culvert, which would have tipped us upside down in no time flat).  Anyway, all the damaged windows, which of course are bullet- and explosives-proof, came from rocks.  Turns out the kids in sub-district nine have pretty good arms and an endless supply of rocks, and so as we passed, you hear clunk-clunk-clunk-chink!-clunk as the rocks rattle against the armor or occasionally ping a window.

Also, a Ring

 Also bought what was supposedly a ring of silver with a ruby stone.  Who knows?  Anyway, the design of whatever bird that is, is Kuchi.  The Kuchi are the nomadic goat and sheep herders who roam across Afghanistan.  They're so nomadic, they basically have separate voting rights to cast ballots wherever the heck they are.  You see them going through Kabul occasionally, driving their herds.  You see them a bit more on the outskirts of towns, grazing their animals.  And we once had a PRT whose internet reception was blocked because on the mountain overlooking the PRT, right where their line of sight would be, a Kuchi group had erected a big tent that completely blocked their signal.  Maybe they had stopped to make rings. Anyway, this was the best photo I could get, because the ring is currently seriously stuck on my finger and will not move at all.

The Ghazni Rug

 I don't know much about rugs.  I know that it's a big deal that this is made from Ghazni wool, because somehow the knitting is much stronger and heavier than other rugs, and in fact, having carried the rug back from ISAF, yes, it's pretty damn heavy.  It's also very tightly wound or bound or whatever a rug is.  It's kind of a butter-color with dark red, almost crimson, patterns; that would be the pomegranate juice used to stain it.  And of course it's hand-woven, not machine-made.  Otherwise, maybe we'll learn more in the future; maybe we'll get another rug someday, maybe not.  But this is what it looks like. 

Our First Time

So today was yet another day off when we had to work.  But it was the frustrating kind of work, because they kept sending emails rescheduling the events I was on the hook for.  At the end, every event wound up being canceled.  On the bright side, we bought our first Afghan rug, a very unusual one.  It's from Ghazni wool, very heavy, with a design of pomegranates, but what's more remarkable, it's actually dyed with pomegranate juice.  It's around 4 x 7 or so.  Anyway, we haven't even paid for it; I told the shopkeeper I didn't have any cash, and he said it wasn't a problem since we had shaken hands on the price, and that I could bring the money - $700 - next week.  He then wrapped up the rug and gave it to me.

Voting in Marjah

 For local councils.  There seems to be a slight disparity in terms of gender participation, but I'm sure that's just the camera angle.