Friday's trip - english
As I already announced before, on Friday 18th of August at 8.30 a.m. , me, Jamshed and a group of his university friends head for the trip outside of Kabul. Firstly Jamshed and his two friends picked me up at home and then we drove to student dormitories to pick up other guys... there we were of course waiting for one of the guys. Then we picked up a couple of two Indian doctors of age about 50 who are working in Indian clinic in Kabul. And finally hurray outside the city.
On the way to our final destination we stopped at one of the shops with food... and had some kind of breakfast. We ate "boloni" (french style pancakes), yogurt, feferoni sauce, drink refreshing yogurt drink with some spices in it.
Around 30kms from Kabul we drove outside the main road and head through the road in between the fields towards the gardens with grapevine. Family of one of the guys has a garden in there and lives about 10kms from there. So, in the garden we picked up some 4 different kinds of grapevine, washed it under the water from well and started eating them on the way back from gardens. They were very sweet and tasty.
From the gardens we drove to some small village, it is a green oasis in the middle of dry fields. It lies on the small hill, you get there by very zigzag road .. worse than our 3rd class roads. In the middle of the village there is something like a park with kiosk. We sat down on the carpet under one huge tree, bought coca-cola, water, juice, washed some more grapes and had a break.
After half an hour our host got a phonecall from his parents that the lunch is ready so that we should start moving to their village, Istalif. So, in like 20 mins by car we got to Hakmal' s family. They live in big, ground-floor house...something like a farm house. There is a well in the yard, a pile of dishes, cow and of course line with clothes. Toilet is typical afghan hole in the middle of the floor... and no waste pipes so everything goes through a small cradle over the yard to outside... Hakmal' s family has around 15 members, there are parents living with their children, two ants and their children and husbands. Hakmal, his brother and two cousins are working and living in Kabul and coming home for weekend (Thursday to Friday/Saturday).
We had a very warm welcome and as guest we, ladies (me and the Indian doctor, Narika), had an opportunity to have a lunch with all male part of the group, this is not usual for normal afghan families. Normally, woman are eating separately in different room. For lunch we had two kinds of rice, 3 kinds of meat, fries, yogurt, vegetables prepared/cooked in different ways, fuits, puding as a desert ... it was soooooo gooood food :)
After lunch me and Narika meet up with the female part of the house. Hakmal introduced us to his family - mother, aunt, two sisters and two cousins. We got tons of questions like were where are u from, what are u doing/studying, are u married, do u have children, when do u plan to get married, how do you like Afghanistan...? Most of the woman in Afghanistan see their future in having and taking care of husband and children, and work around the house. Husband' s role is to bring the money to the family and have enough to feed them all. All children in Hakmal' s family are going to school, at least to the primary one. Hakmal, his brother and cousins are studying at Kabul university, his younger sister plans to study at university as well, the second sister wants to stay at the house and take care of the family. Both our under 15. It was very pleasant meeting with his family and I had at least a chance to get to know the life in the villages and what people are like and think about. I was suprised that during whole time were all the women, incl. children, wearing headscarf. ... maybe because of Hakmal, but this shouldn't be as he is a part of the family. Ladies were trying to avoid being seen by any male participant of our trip, according to Afghan traditions foreign male shouldn't see the women. After our short meeting we head to their garden just next to house where already the male part was enjoying tea (chai) and sweets. In the garden they normally plant flowers, vegetables, fruit trees (pumpkin, pepperoni, tomatoes, paprika, grapevine, cucumbers, peach...). We spent there around an hour by drinking tea, eating sweets and talking jokes and translating them from Dari/Pashto to English and the other way around and making movie out of that on video camera.... was a lot of fun. Then we head to our way back.
On the way we stopped by another grapevine garden, everybody picked up grapevines and fit them into big plastic bag to have for home, we also stoped by stand with ceramics ... really nice handmade stuff, but I didn't have enough money with me to buy something. But Narika got some nice plate. And then tradaaaa back home to Kabul.
We arrived at around 5.30 p.m., in the centre Waheedullah Safi meet up with me, took me for an ice-cream and then to his parent's house to meet his family and have a dinner.
W. Safi and his family is not traditional Afghan. Both of his parents and sister can speak English (mum was studying in India and his dad is working with a lot of foreigners and traveling a lot thank to his job). Sister is studying at the university, i think electrical engineering, ...poor girl has unfortunately most of the books in Russian.
Living room/guest room is equipped almost as European - seating set, low table, TV, DVD player, clock on the wall. German style toilet in the house ..but typical afghan sleeping conditions - just a matrace and carpets on the floor, couple of pillows and covers.
Family is living with aunt and her children, also othen brother is coming to visit with his wife and kids from Pakistan... I had a nice chat with his family members, ate really nice dinner (similar to what we had for lunch), after dinner ate some fruits and drunk tea. And then went home. I got an offer to stay over night but I had to feed the cat (my baby :) and I just wanted to go to my place.
Nicely tired from all day tripping and after almost no sleep from the night before (when I was cooking a rice for mike at 2 a.m. and until 4 helping him to pack for the conference in Turkey) I fall asleep immediately as a baby :)
On the way to our final destination we stopped at one of the shops with food... and had some kind of breakfast. We ate "boloni" (french style pancakes), yogurt, feferoni sauce, drink refreshing yogurt drink with some spices in it.
Around 30kms from Kabul we drove outside the main road and head through the road in between the fields towards the gardens with grapevine. Family of one of the guys has a garden in there and lives about 10kms from there. So, in the garden we picked up some 4 different kinds of grapevine, washed it under the water from well and started eating them on the way back from gardens. They were very sweet and tasty.
From the gardens we drove to some small village, it is a green oasis in the middle of dry fields. It lies on the small hill, you get there by very zigzag road .. worse than our 3rd class roads. In the middle of the village there is something like a park with kiosk. We sat down on the carpet under one huge tree, bought coca-cola, water, juice, washed some more grapes and had a break.
After half an hour our host got a phonecall from his parents that the lunch is ready so that we should start moving to their village, Istalif. So, in like 20 mins by car we got to Hakmal' s family. They live in big, ground-floor house...something like a farm house. There is a well in the yard, a pile of dishes, cow and of course line with clothes. Toilet is typical afghan hole in the middle of the floor... and no waste pipes so everything goes through a small cradle over the yard to outside... Hakmal' s family has around 15 members, there are parents living with their children, two ants and their children and husbands. Hakmal, his brother and two cousins are working and living in Kabul and coming home for weekend (Thursday to Friday/Saturday).
We had a very warm welcome and as guest we, ladies (me and the Indian doctor, Narika), had an opportunity to have a lunch with all male part of the group, this is not usual for normal afghan families. Normally, woman are eating separately in different room. For lunch we had two kinds of rice, 3 kinds of meat, fries, yogurt, vegetables prepared/cooked in different ways, fuits, puding as a desert ... it was soooooo gooood food :)
After lunch me and Narika meet up with the female part of the house. Hakmal introduced us to his family - mother, aunt, two sisters and two cousins. We got tons of questions like were where are u from, what are u doing/studying, are u married, do u have children, when do u plan to get married, how do you like Afghanistan...? Most of the woman in Afghanistan see their future in having and taking care of husband and children, and work around the house. Husband' s role is to bring the money to the family and have enough to feed them all. All children in Hakmal' s family are going to school, at least to the primary one. Hakmal, his brother and cousins are studying at Kabul university, his younger sister plans to study at university as well, the second sister wants to stay at the house and take care of the family. Both our under 15. It was very pleasant meeting with his family and I had at least a chance to get to know the life in the villages and what people are like and think about. I was suprised that during whole time were all the women, incl. children, wearing headscarf. ... maybe because of Hakmal, but this shouldn't be as he is a part of the family. Ladies were trying to avoid being seen by any male participant of our trip, according to Afghan traditions foreign male shouldn't see the women. After our short meeting we head to their garden just next to house where already the male part was enjoying tea (chai) and sweets. In the garden they normally plant flowers, vegetables, fruit trees (pumpkin, pepperoni, tomatoes, paprika, grapevine, cucumbers, peach...). We spent there around an hour by drinking tea, eating sweets and talking jokes and translating them from Dari/Pashto to English and the other way around and making movie out of that on video camera.... was a lot of fun. Then we head to our way back.
On the way we stopped by another grapevine garden, everybody picked up grapevines and fit them into big plastic bag to have for home, we also stoped by stand with ceramics ... really nice handmade stuff, but I didn't have enough money with me to buy something. But Narika got some nice plate. And then tradaaaa back home to Kabul.
We arrived at around 5.30 p.m., in the centre Waheedullah Safi meet up with me, took me for an ice-cream and then to his parent's house to meet his family and have a dinner.
W. Safi and his family is not traditional Afghan. Both of his parents and sister can speak English (mum was studying in India and his dad is working with a lot of foreigners and traveling a lot thank to his job). Sister is studying at the university, i think electrical engineering, ...poor girl has unfortunately most of the books in Russian.
Living room/guest room is equipped almost as European - seating set, low table, TV, DVD player, clock on the wall. German style toilet in the house ..but typical afghan sleeping conditions - just a matrace and carpets on the floor, couple of pillows and covers.
Family is living with aunt and her children, also othen brother is coming to visit with his wife and kids from Pakistan... I had a nice chat with his family members, ate really nice dinner (similar to what we had for lunch), after dinner ate some fruits and drunk tea. And then went home. I got an offer to stay over night but I had to feed the cat (my baby :) and I just wanted to go to my place.
Nicely tired from all day tripping and after almost no sleep from the night before (when I was cooking a rice for mike at 2 a.m. and until 4 helping him to pack for the conference in Turkey) I fall asleep immediately as a baby :)
posted by Svetlana Senajova | 4:34 PM
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