Afghan Culture

James - Things have been going well out here. Since coming back from leave I’ve fallen back into the routine of Army life and time does seem to go by fast. Winter is starting to fade into Spring. Dismounted missions during the winter were a pain because we would hike up mountains and get all sweaty. Then we would engage the elders of a village for about an hour. During that time our bodies would cool down and the sweat would turn cold. January and February made it even more miserable because it would rain on us. Thank goodness that I didn’t have to put up with the rainy season in Vietnam like my Dad. It may have been warm, but life is just miserable when you can’t get dry.

I do want to show some pictures from the culture here. Without the modern things we use (and take for granted) back home, these people to find some clever ways to get along. First off I remember my Mom telling me stories of the pioneers coming across the Great Plains. They would gather and burn dried cow pies because firewood was scarce. Never did I imagine that people in this world would still have to do that. Take a look in the following picture and you can see the little round cow pies spread out and drying. It started to rain about little bit later and when I passed by here again they were all undercover where they would not get wet.

I honestly wonder how sanity eating food cooked over cow pies can be. Then again why even bother when you get your food from a place like in the next picture. I wish I would have taken a picture when I first walked past this market. They had more of the cow on show. The scenic views here are amazing. The mountains are incredible. It is always a challenge to walk up them, especially with all the weight that I have to carry, but once I get to the top it’s always worth it. It is easy to see how they farm in the lowland down by the river, but I’m always amazed that people choose to farm the mountain sides. They use every possible inch to grow food.The lead man of every dismount mission always struggles to find the best route for everyone. It is no fun to scale four to six foot walls like the terraces when you are carrying a hundred pounds on top of your body weight. The locals often use wood for ramps, and sometimes they even build a kind of ingenious stairway into the wall itself. We don’t see many of these in the fields, but they are common enough in the villages. You will have to look close to see the rocks jutting out from the wall.People use whatever method of transportation that they can find. There are taxis that drive around. I don’t have any pictures of the bikes they use out here, but they are hilarious. They decorate them with fake flowers and all sorts of things that quite honestly we would call gay, and I mean that is the gayest sense of the word. We do still come across donkey carts from time to time though.Women should be thankful that they were not born here. You could wear a Burka whenever you go out in public. Women really don’t have any rights here. Whenever we hold medical clinics for the locals to get checked out it’s just men and children. We have women doctors here just in case a woman did come, but I’ve never seen it happen. Whenever we go into villages the women hide. Occasionally you’ll see one stick her head up over a wall, but as soon as you notice her she’ll hide again. The women would get beat or worse if she actually showed herself in public without being covered. Behold the blue ghost. They can see through a mesh by their eyes.Young girls are not covered, but almost everyone is camera shy out here. It’s not often that I can get pictures, or even bring out my camera without all the kids running away. Notice in the second picture several kids are hiding behind bushes, in the house or hiding their faces.If you live here you are don’t have any problem ‘going’ in public. I’ve seen other ‘facilities’ that offer a bit more privacy, but they all pretty much look the same. I think they burn the #2 after a while. At least that would explain the carbon marks on the wall behind this.

I’ll end things there, but I’ll try to get some good pictures of bicycles when I get a chance.