Afghanistan

Welcome to my first country report, which will basically consist of random facts that I found interesting in my research. No dry historical accounts here!

I've been reading and learning about Afghanistan this week. I chose Afghanistan because it came first alphabetically, but I will not be going alphabetically. I will be selecting countries to study as the spirit moves me.

So, Afghanistan. As I searched for information I felt very compelled to find personal stories, and I also felt myself responding to anything that added color to the stereotypical pictures we often have in our heads of gray, dusty, unyielding landscape.


In addition to news and encyclopedia articles, I've been reading The Bookseller of Kabul and I've discovered a couple of blogs, including the blog of an Estonian photographer who is living in Kabul while her husband works there and the blog of an Afghan interpreter for the U.S. Army.

Here are some tidbits that have stuck with me:

• Afghanistan is the place to find lapis lazuli. Jack, a budding geologist, was excited to learn that. He's got a special place in his heart for lapis lazuli.
• By law, of the 102 members of the Upper House of the National Assembly, at least 17 must be women. And in 2005, 68 women were elected to the 249 member Lower House!
• The tourist trap area of Kabul is on Chicken Street.
• More than half of Afghans are under 18.

One of the heartbreaking, somehow symbolic remnants of so many years of war and unrest are all of the land mines still buried in the earth, rendering whole valleys unliveable. I read in a 2007 UNICEF press release that they provided "training for 50,000 primary school teachers with a 10-day refresher course on language arts, pedagogy and landmine awareness." How wretched to have to make landmine awareness an educational priority!

In The Bookseller of Kabul, author Asne Seierstad refers to the land mines buried in the Shomali Plain north of Kabul, “Over the death traps the ditches are full of wild, dark red, short-stemmed tulips. But the flowers must be admired at a distance. Picking them means risking blowing off an arm or a leg.”

What always astounds me when learning about people who have suffered war and oppression is how they adjust, so quickly create a sense of normalcy, and squeeze as much living as they can out of life.

The spirit of Afghanistan is bold and colorful, not bleak and hopeless.



P.S. I stole the pictures that I included in this post from Õnne Pärl, the Estonian photographer. One of the projects she chronicles in her blog is photographing an architectural restoration project in Kabul spearheaded by the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. In her honor, I will be studying Estonia in the coming week.