One afternoon in Herat

4.00am

BAIRES ABRIL 13, originally uploaded by frida world.

It is four in the morning. Part of me wants to write that I'm awake because I've just arrived home from a marvelous adventure. A little fantasy for tomorrow's Sunday Scribblings. But the truth is that I've been lying awake in bed for five hours. Tonight my mind is on a wild taxi ride, speeding through city scapes both familiar and unknown. Oddly, it wasn't until I got out of bed and sat here at the computer that I suddenly thought of the one thing which may be behind the alertness. Tomorrow I will probably be left as Officer in Charge of the Western Region. Last time I was Officer in Charge I had only been in the job a month and when the Head of Office left he said: "You'll be fine, as long as nothing goes wrong in Shindand, you will be fine." Last time, my OiC duty started on a Sunday and at midday that Sunday a successful assassination was carried out in Shindand, killing the most powerful commander in the district, Amanullah Khan, and his son. In retribution for these killings Amanullah's men attacked the villages populated by tribes aligned to the people believed to be responsible for the assassination. I heard about the fighting at about 1pm. By nightfall we were receiving reports of any where between 12 and 70 people killed. This came at a point when our national staff were all on leave for Eid, and all of my more experienced colleagues had taken the opportunity for an short break as well. I was out of my depth and felt as though I was drowning more often than I was floating. This was also the period when I first starting using this blog as an outlet for thoughts and feelings which had nowhere else safe to be expressed. In the midst of the craziest week I've had since I came here I even posted my first attempt at the Self Portrait Challenge.

I drew on every once of self-belief I could find and spent the week punching well above my weight. It began to emerge that a disproportionate number of the dead were children, boys aged between 12 and 18 years. Then, just when I thought it was over, it found a new lease of life and kept me in the hot seat for a few more days.

Looking back, I now notice that it was soon after these events that I started to suffer from the symptoms I described this week. One week after the worst of it all, the insomnia started. Two weeks later I was taking sleeping pills. I'm only now really seeing this. It seems blindingly obvious, of course, in retrospect. So, here I am, awake at 4.00am and it suddenly occurs to me that tomorrow, Sunday, there is a very good chance that I will once again be left in charge. More than that, this past week tensions in Shindand have been at their highest since that outbreak of fighting in October. The situation is considered to be unstable and the risk of further conflict is very real. But I haven't been lying in bed all night thinking about Shindand. I have a pretty strict rule about not lying in bed thinking about human rights cases. I've been lying in bed thinking about Enid Blyton's "The Faraway Tree", thoughts triggered by Laini's prompt for Sunday Scribblings this week: Fantasy.

I'm always up for climbing the Faraway Tree, I always have been. When I was 17 years old I left the small rural town I grew up in and headed off solo to Europe. Since then I've picked up my bags and moved to the Gaza Strip and to Afghanistan. But the thing with the Faraway tree is that you never know whether you are going to get The Land of Birthdays or The Land of Dame Slap. I developed this 'travel rule of thumb' when I was back-packing solo through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt about 12 years ago. I decided to always expect the best of people, places and situations, but to always be prepared to deal with the worst if it came.

I don't think I was prepared to deal with children getting killed while I was Officer in Charge. I'm not sure if you can ever be prepared for that. But this time at least I can be a little more prepared for the possibility that events could escalate very quickly to a point where I would no longer have any power to influence or control them. I can also be a little more prepared for the possibility that if this were to happen, it might take a much heavier toll on me than I have previously admitted. A good friend wrote to me this week and told me, amongst other incredibly helpful things, that depression is very prevalent amongst humanitarian workers. Others of you have told me the same thing. Does that mean I should get out of this place? Out of this line of work? Possibly. But first I want to see what difference it makes to be more conscious of the impact that events and experiences here are having on me. I want to see whether that awareness can be used to more intentionally process the thoughts and feelings that arise within me in response. I want to see what happens when I take the time to work through those thoughts and release those feelings, through writing, through creating, through moving my body more and through this business of sitting still every morning (I'm building up to the day when I can say "I meditate" without feeling like I'm faking it). Today is Saturday, I can sleep as much as I need to today. So this sleepless night hasn't made me anxious or distressed. On the contrary, during those five hours somewhere in the space between full consciousness and sleep a new understanding found its way to the surface.

Gratitude

Space! I barely even realised how much I had been craving it until I got some and felt such an incredible rush of happiness. From the moment the plane took off I felt as though I had been set free from a kind of prison. Space! As we flew over the plains of Herat and then up over the mountains of Ghor, I had this huge, silly grin on my face and my spirit felt lighter than it has in weeks. This week I was grateful for space and the freedom to move through it. Cheghcharan, the provincial capital of Ghor is a small, poor town. I spent some time this week in the bazaar, trying to buy decent clothes and shoes for the orphanage, because I hadn't brought enough with me from Herat for the number of kids that I found when I got there. Here are some images from the market. This week I was grateful for my income and what it enables me to do. Most of these children are not orphans, although many would come from women-headed households. Some even have fathers, but their families are too poor to care for them. On my first visit the Director explained all this to me, and shocked me with his announcement that they had between 250 and 300 children in the orphanage (I suspect some of the children come and go from their family homes, hence the approximate number). I realised that I couldn't possibly give enough for all the children on this visit, so I suggested that most of the clothes and shoes I had brought would fit the youngest children. Next time I visit I'll take something for the older children, probably books and pens, I think. So we agreed that the Director would sort the clothes into approximate sizes and I would return on Thursday morning so we could distribute them together to the smallest children. When I arrived on Thursday it was snowing. The Director brought me into the yard of the orphanage and as I stood there, not quite sure what was going on, all the children filed out of the buildings and stood around the yard, in the snow, looking expectantly at me. I desparately tried to tell the Director that I didn't have enough clothes for all the children, and that in any case they shouldn't be standing out in the snow. Just as I was beginning to feel completely overwhelmed by the terrible situation I had created in my clumsiness a car pulled up and my fabulous colleague/assistant got out, he had finished his meeting with the Governor and decided to come and see how I was doing. As he stepped out of the car I burst into tears, explaining that I had got myself into this horrible situation and begging his help to fix it! He was great, we explained to the Director that it was too cold for the children to wait outside and he explained to the children that this time we only had clothes for the littlest children. He helped me organise for all the children to go inside and then come out in small groups so that we could fit the clothes and shoes properly. My other colleagues arrived - Muna and Harry - and they were fantastic. I watched Muna gently trying to fit the tiny, cold feet and arms into our second-hand boots and jackets. Meanwhile Harry was slipping polar fleece hats onto cold little heads and checking which children didn't have socks so that we could make sure they got the best we had. This week I was grateful for my colleagues, good hearted and hard working people on whom I can rely and with whom I can have fun. This little girl was being helped by an older boy. From what I could make out he was not her brother, but he was beautifully gentle with her and a very good advocate for her, making sure she got everything he could find that would fit her. The little boy on the left has his new hat, boots, jacket and fleecy shirt and pants on as well. In the end, things became a little chaotic again, as the older children all made their way out into the yard and wanted to get somethings for themselves. I had bought six footballs and so we told the teachers to let the children play with them, we also found a box of clothes donated by someone from the Lithuanian PRT which had not been distributed so we were able to give some of the older children clothes, hats, gloves and shoes from that box. This week I was grateful for the chance to give and most of all for the fabulous Commander, whose idea this was in the first place and whose generosity and kind-heartedness help me keep my faith in the good. Another highlight of this mission was my visit to a community-based girls' school in Dowlatyar. The girls were studying mathematics, chemistry and physics when I arrived. When I asked them how many wanted to be doctors, teachers, lawyers and engineers respectively, most of them said they wanted to be doctors. Which means they are aiming to get the highest grades possible in their exams. I told them about Maria Bashir, the women who was recently appointed to be the Provincial Chief Prosecutor in Herat and said I wondered whether the next Director of Public Health for Ghor province was in the room. Perhaps this beautiful girl? This week I was grateful for my education and everything it has brought me, including the chance to work here. And finally, just to prove I was there, here is a photo of me with my fabulous colleague Reza (on the right) without whom I wouldn't be able to do anything useful at all, and our counterpart from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Mr Hakak. This week, as always, I was grateful for Reza! We stopped for a photo op on our way to Dowlatyar, and I felt free as a bird after these weeks of restricted movement in Herat. I also got to walk from one village to the next through the snow in Dowlatyar - much to the astonishment of the locals who seemed to expect a foreigner like myself to collapse in a heap of helplessness as soon as I stepped away from the 4x4! This week I was grateful that I can walk with ease. One final set of photos - the rest are on flickr if you want to see more. These men bring the wood in from the country-side to Cheghcharan town every morning to sell it for fuel. Their donkeys are piled high with dried scrub and wood. I worry about the environmental impact of this practice, but have no better option to offer them right now so I am grateful for the warmth given off by the wood stoves that I found in every office I visited, and (thank goodness) in every prison cell as well. This week I was grateful for bukhari (stoves) There are some strange loud noises going on this morning, it sounds like explosions somewhere in the city. More often than not these are controlled explosions, getting rid of unexploded ordinanaces found by the demining teams, but it reminds me that I'm back in Herat and won't be able to go out walking as I please until I go home to New Zealand in February or when I return to Ghor, whichever comes first. This week I am grateful for being able to travel.

Why I love going to Ghor

Ghor Mission Jan 2007 - little girl after 01 Originally uploaded by frida world.

Okay, so my nails are all broken, my lips are chapped and my feet are blistered but I am happy. I love getting out of the office. I love working in Ghor. I love flying in the little plane, I love the sense of space that I get from leaving the city and heading up into the mountains. I love walking from one village to the next through the snow. I love visiting girls' schools in the middle of nowhere and finding them in the middle of chemistry and physics lessons. I also love getting back to Herat to my lovely man, home cooked dinner, a long hot shower, a bottle of red wine and Scrubs on DVD. Thanks for all your comments, I promise photos and details tomorrow (if the internet is working). PS: Yes, this is one of the little girls at the orphanage, with her new jacket, hat and tights. More about that soon - but I won't deny I was in tears at one point - instead of the 30 children I was expecting I found almost 300!

Yoga, shopping for orphans and sushi - what I did on the weekend.

Afghan school boys in winter, Badghis Originally uploaded by frida world.

This is the "what I did in my weekend" post. Sometimes I forget to simply describe daily life here.

This weekend started out with a report that flyers had been distributed in Herat city calling for a demonstration against the execution of Saddam Hussein. Our security officer decided to take no risks that we could get caught up in a demonstration where anti-Western sentiments would be likely to be running high, so we had a movement restriction until further notice. That means we stay in our guesthouse compounds except for "essential movement". This is the third Friday in a row we've been on "essential movement only". It gets tired.

The first time we had this restriction I asked the head of the office whether going to the gym could be considered essential movement if I felt it was essential in order to maintain my mental well-being. He basically laughed me out of the room. I guess it is always possible to skip rope in the compound, or run around in small circles like a caged animal.

I spent the day with the Commander, playing cards, writing emails, reading, and watching The West Wing. In the early evening the restriction was lifted (there had been no demonstration), but there isn't really anywhere to go at night anyway.

This morning I woke excited, I had a date with a woman who teaches yoga back home in the USA, she has agreed to take me through my practice a few times a week (until she goes on leave in two weeks). I got there and realised that the practice room heater wasn't working so we had to start off in the cold, ouch. But once we warmed up it was great - apart from a moment in which I couldn't get into the Crow pose and suddenly, without warning, felt tears welling up in my eyes. Well, maybe that was also a good moment in its own way.

I wanted to get back to the lovely boy's house before too late because today is his birthday. I had a present for him and planned to make him breakfast. But as I walked out to where my driver was waiting I suddenly heard a noise that makes me very nervous here - it was the sound of a crowd of men shouting. I got in the car and asked the driver what was going on, he had no idea but suddenly we saw a large crown of men walking along the street in front of us. I asked him to quickly retreat into the guesthouse where I had been doing the yoga and called my security officer and our radio room.

For the next hour the driver and I sat in the car, snacking on some dried peas and raisins that he found in the glove box and talking about the Iranian pop music on the radio. From time to time I would get a call from the security officer updating me on their progress in identifying the reason for the demonstration (it turned out to be angry motorcyclists protesting some licensing decision by the government but the police initially told him it was the Saddam Hussein protest). As I was sitting there I realised how much more patient I've become since I arrived in Afghanistan. And how much better I am at accepting that my plans are often going to be interrupted or totally changes by circumstances out of my control.

After an hour we got the go ahead to move so I decided to make the most of movement while it was allowed and run some other birthday related errands. The first was to the Italian army base, to purchase some wine and beer. Yes, that's right. If I want to buy alcohol I have to go to an army base and be escorted by an army officer into the PX ( duty-free store). I bought a bit more than I could carry, but none of the charming Italian soldiers could help me carry it out to the car because they are not allowed out the front gate of their compound without their full protective gears on (including helmet, body armour and a big gun).

My next errand was back at my house. Last night I asked the Commander hat he would like me to make for his birthday dinner. He said "sushi" imagining it to be an impossible dream. But it turns out that last time I was in Portland with him I stocked up on all the basic ingredients for making sushi! Of course we don't have any fish, but I'll make it vegetarian, I have everything else. That's next on my to do list.

When I got to his place he opened his present, and I cooked him up some eggs and made coffee (instant, ugh) for brunch. Then we had fun doing silly on-line quizzes like 'Which super-hero are you?" (I'm Wonder Woman, he was either The Hulk, or Cat Woman, an equal tie between unlikely alter-egos). I then made him do "Which super-heroine would you marry?" and he was probably relieved to get the right answer (WW!). It carried on for sometime, (Which famous poet? He is Dylan Thomas, I am e.e. cummings) before we decided to go and have some fun shopping for orphans.

Okay, the pun is bad. But it was fun buying warm clothes, hats, socks, stockings and gloves for the orphans in Chegcharan. If you missed my earlier post, this was one of the Commander's ideas. Our Christmas present to ourselves was to buy as many warm clothes as we could find and give them to the orphanage. Some of our friends also gave money. Thanks!

I was amazed how far the money went. Here are some rough indications:

• warm jacket $4
• fleecy suit (top and pants) $3-4
• fleecy hats $1
• gloves 50c
• socks 50c
• stockings $1

So for $10 we could get a complete outfit for one child. When I get up to Chegcharan I'll go to the market and buy rubber boots, we have limited space on the small plane we'll be flying in so we couldn't get them here. We have money left over, so our next idea is to buy soccer balls and other sports equipment for the orphanage here in Herat. Oh - and we could get art and craft supplies! This is fun!

Well, I'm going to get started on that sushi. But that's what I did on my weekend. Hope yours were fabulous and full of as much fun and love as mine was.

Reasons to stay

Because when the cruelty, selfishness and arrogance of the bad guys make me feel so angry and helpless that I want to escape this country, escape those feeling, I know that there are Afghans who feel so much angrier but who have so much less power to make a difference than I could have if I work out how to use it. Because I'm remembering how miserable it can feel trying to fit my square peg self into a round hole but I'm also remembering that there are better ways of responding than either: raging against the injustice or stupidity of the round hole; or rubbing off my jangly, sparkly edges until I fit in. Because I'm learning about Afghanistan. Because I'm persevering until I figure out how to do a job that doesn't come naturally to me, how to give my best even when I feel a hundred others could do better. Because I'm learning about how hard it can be to translate the rhetoric into reality. Because I have the following essentials for my survival:

• Lovely and long-suffering boyfriend
• iPod filled with NZ music
• iBook and an internet connection
• Moleskine journals
• Pastels and paints (courtesy of the aforementioned lovely boyfriend)
• Digital camera
• Aveda Replenishing body moisturiser
• Hema face cream and oil (100% deliciously NZ organic)
• Bodyshop hemp hand and foot cream (see a pattern? it's dry here!)
• Jarrah Chocolatte hot chocolate
• Lady Grey tea
• Scented candles
• Ugg boots
• 100% NZ made puffy jacket
• Yoga mat (somewhat neglected of late but always there when I'm ready)
• DVDs (The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Northern Exposure and Scrubs)
• Poetry books (Rumi and NZ's Janet Frame)
• Small collection of novels (including Rachael King, Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood)