Rule no. 9: What you really want is to live surrounded by donkeys and hills

After months of longing to start a new programme in a place where I wouldn't be tempted by all Kabul has to offer (opera, theater, walks on the banks of the Kabul river, the zoo, etc), my wish has finally come true. On the positive side, since I am starting this programme, it can by definition not have gone wwong by the time I take over. Not yet anyhow. Also I may be able to experiment with this wonderful new integrated strategy we are setting up, if only I manage to complete the concept paper I am sweating on. On the good side too, I will be commuting between some of these places that are best dedicated to religion and to watching the green grass grow. Wonderful hills in some of the areas. Donkeys and camels. High road robberies. Idyllic.

On the down side, after almost 9 months in and around Kabul, I find I have met some pretty nice fellow friends and the perspective of leaving them simply breaks my heart. Admittedly, I will be back once a month or so thanks to coordination working groups in the capital! But surely, that doesn't make up for it. No more catching up every night in some funky psychedelic bars in town (OK, Im just trying to impress non-Kabuli here), no more sleeping over at some other guest house, no shopping at Tarsian and Blinkley (girls, check this and cry: www.tarsianandblinkley.com) and finito all melted sandwiches lunches. Not easy, I'm telling you. My friend Nick was asking me yesterday why on earth I was leaving. I proceeded to come up with relly sophisticated explanations regarding the need to be more dedicated to my work, to have more time to learn, the virtues of hardly having a social life, the advantage of loneliness, the benefits of sensory isolation, the wonderfully free life cynicals used to lead in ancient times. To which he replied 'That's bollocks'. And I'm afraid he's positively right, so I just said all our new programmes are in the provinces, so no choice for me, that's where I'm going.

To make the experience a little more exciting, I've got a few things set already. First, in one of the two provinces I will live in, I am planning to sleep on the roof every night, until snow starts falling. There's a donkey out there that always makes a point to remind you of his existence at dusk and dawn. The stars are so numerous in the sky they look about to fall down and for a whole five hours before the first prayer, the place is really quiet. Although when I say really quiet, that's forgetting the flag of my organisation we put on the roof. Now you would't think you could be incommodated by the noise of a flag. You'd be wrong. For some reason, we purchased a plastified flag, one of those that survive the war, a locust invasion, the deluge and remains in a pristine state forever and ever. Driving me nuts. Phoushouh, phoushouh, says the plastified flag for the sake of irritating me when I go to bed. Phoushouh, phoushouh.

In the other province, the assets include the wonderful garden, the antz (great pets), the mosquitoes (ditto), the food, if you fancy chicken and fries on a daily basis, the heat, the social circle once a week and the outings every weekend to the very same shrine.

And of course I still have my two-week R&R every four weeks. Only kidding. And work. Aah work (extatic sigh). I also expect to make a point of participating in coordination meetings. Yes, also for the sake of work. And I guess it never hurts to meet new people, does it? Lately I've found I increasingly enjoy meeting up with colleagues from other organisations, for coordination's sake. After a few times, it feels like catching up with mates. The only difference is you're still sharing all information with your fundraising team. Plus my title of technical specialist in the absence of anyone else makes me feel really happy and self-confident. I mean after all, why should I not be considered one? I can tell a well at ten meters' distance. I can even tell you if there is a handpump. I can tell you if we're nearby a latrine in the dark at fifty meter's distance and whether it's a public one or not. I know what the water table is. Roughly anyhow. And I even know what a gravity pipe scheme or spring tapping system is. (Though you can tell the real specialists because if you show them pictures they go 'Well obviously that PVC pipe is 2 mm too narrow and the angle of that connection is obviously inappropriate. Obviously.) In fact, I have even developed a fascination for all sorts of water-related issues. Like recently, traveling in Tajikistan, I was marveling at the shape of the hills, which clearly indicate some sort of erosion, possibly caused by the movement of ice a few millenia ago (or so specialist me told myself anyhow) and started thinking I would truly love coming across some manual on geology, to understand the structure of the ground better. Man, the thought of it now and I'm boring myself.

I even started planning my personal adult learning programme. Management manual then, watsan manual then, back to a bit of humanitarian law and don't you dare tell me the list is a little eclectic. Then I remarked to myself I actually have my entire life for this learning process, so no need to rush it. And naturally there is still a lot I need to learn about Afghanistan in the first place, so as soon as back to the guesthouse, I returned to a thought-provoking, anthropologically relevant book called Pashtun Tales. To summarise it, it's a compilation of fairy tales resembling the 1001 Nights, without the intricate structure. A lot of princes marry a lot of princesses, some 43 at a time. (I am not kidding you. And don't you think the wives are jealous either. Nonono, they conveniently get along. Don't want any 5th century frying pans flying in a fairy tale now, do we?) Kings throw their daughters out for not praising them quite highly enough, but don't fear, once the daughters have married a virtuous man, got rich and come across their royal dad again, they have no other urge but to forgive him. Sarcasms set apart, I have also learnt some useful information. Like beware of djinns falling in love with you (yes, the djinn is the equivalent of some 19th century romantic fool, a kind of young Werchter, that lives exclusively to fall in love with a human who does not want to return the feelings), especially as they tend to just squat in your house forever. Don't lie, don't kill without good reasons (note for the reader: a man who was about to destroy one boat so no one could duplicate it was killed and that, apparently, amounts to a 'good' reason) and don't trust the menial tribe, for they are traditionally cheaters (sic!). The perfect guide to Afghanistan, in short.

OK, now is the time to go and pack my swimming suits, sandals and bollywood clothes, next to a couple of burqas and prepare to migrate north. If any of you live somewhere around (yeah, I strongly believe I already have thousands of blog followers, just about to turn the Way of the Samurai into some modern cult. Call me the new Zarathustra), I hope I'll catch you up in one of the crazy social circles in these wild areas.

Rule no. 8: Don't attempt Kabul-Dushanbe by road drunk as a donkey

A few days ago, I was informed the never-ending excitements of my job would take me for a week to Dushanbe. Vaguely excited at the thought of stepping once again into this almost normal country, with trees and houses and paint covering them and happy sheep and yogurt everywhere, I planned to pack on Fri, as we would head off by road at seven on Sat. For once, my Fri was used however particularly unconsctructively, ie working. I could hear the UNICA pool calling me. Alas! There was no getting away. Finally, sometimes past 7 pm, I was set free. I then proceeded to catch up with the nicest bunch of South Africans I have met in the area and, if I remember correctly, we basically talked and drank. Not necessarily in this order of importance. And I was informed that we'd finally have to drive off to Dushanbe at 5 am.

Sometimes around whenever it was that we went, we proceeded to all embark on board of a flying coach and go to the C. C. club, which has everything but a showgirl named Lola. Some said it was a private party, but I suspect that was just supposed to mean no one would come. Not bothered by the news, we all started dancing like Afghanistan's development depended on the number of calories spent on the dance floor. The music was overall rubbish, let's face it, (Yes, Junior, if you ever read that, I mean it. I love you, man, but god you've got terrible musical tastes) but who cares?

The good thing about the private party business is shots started going around, for free obviously. Blue stuff and Baileysish ones. Before you know it, although you've hardly eaten anything in a day, you've downed your weight in spirits but are still dancing. Anyhow, at some stage I asked some friend of a friend of a friend to give me a lift. Then I realised one of the South Africans (or well technically a Zimbabwean, but do you really want me to get into that much details?) in question has left and as I'm not going to see him ever again (burst in tears on her laptop, then pulls herself together and starts typing again), I decided to go to his place. Where it turned out he was not. Feeling increasingly not entirely sober, I then tried the othe nearby guesthouse where he could be hanging around, looked everywhere but zilch. So I decided to return to his house and wait for him. Though by the time I got to his house I was not quite able to align enough words to build a full sentence and the very reason of my presence got a little blury. I somehow then decided to sleep for a while. Then, I am afraid I cannot remember whether I did actually sleep or not. Yes, it was that bad. I do remember however receiving many phone calls, I assume from Junior, but can't remember what about exactly. I doubt he would either. I do recall nevertheless in hindsight that I may have got a little sick and well I'm not entirely certain the floor was in a pristine state by the time my friend got home. Then I realised it was 4.40, so I could as well consider going home to pack up my things. I called for a car, dressed up, checked in the early morning lights whether it had arrived, went down again, got back up again, by which time I did not remember why on earth I was outside checking whether there was a car. A call from Junior and he offered to send their car. I accepted and it was there in no time. Once I was in the car he called again to convince me to go to the intercontinental (why? one wonders), then come back because he's leaving Afg too. I apologised vaguely. Well no actually I didn't really apologise because I was in no state to do so. Too bad, no saying goodbye. I reached home and the guards told me the car was waiting for me in the guesthouse I just left. Then it struck me: that's why I was waiting outside. My talking skills were not exactly up to standards by this time, so I was not quite able to mumble apologies in Dari, English or else. I just went and woke up Vincent, who was part of the trip, threw a few things in my bag, fortunatley even remembered to take my passport, and off we went. By the time I was in the car, a thought crossed my poor sorry increasingly drunk brain in the line of 'Ooooooh my god how on earth will I survive the trip?'

Then I collapsed. One eye opened in the Salang. One eye opened down the Salang and another one in PiK. The nice driver stopped to buy drinks and gave me one of these sickeningly sweet cherry ones. I held it in my hand and fell asleep. By the time we reached Kunduz, I was finally emerging and downed the juice, which made me feel even more sorry for my poor poor stomach, trying to recover. By the time we reached the base, it felt however like most of the alcohol had been drained away. So a piece of nan, some tea, and back on the road all the way to the Oxus river. It is apparently unusually entertaining for all to have a lady crossing on her own, but anyhow most people were fairly nice. As you take bad habits, I ended up negotiating the price of the crossing with the captain of the boat, but since the only other passenger payed it, I finally gave the 10 USD. First thought once I set foot in Ladastan is apart from the Russian mafia, there's no one in the area I would find less trustworthy than custom officers. They turned out to all be quite all right however, if a little lame, and the only scam I have to face is a bunch of dodgy blokes trying to pass for my drivers. Obviously, it's not like my amazing Tajiki and Russian skills were of great help there, and fortunately. This said, I have a natural distrust for people with more than three golden teeth, so I became a little weary, until I finally found the real car of my organisation, which seemed much better than ending up robbed and thrown in a ditch or, more likely, paying a 50 USD fee for a trip to Dushanbe, as I expect was going to happen otherwise.

And finally I could enjoy all that Ladastan has to offer: its trees, its houses, its yogurt. A quick stop in KT and here I was trying to down a yogurt at 70 mph. I did consider for a while helping myself with my fingers, but first they were filthy and second, I did not want to give a worse reputation of the 'Afghans' we are to our Tajik colleagues than we have already. And finally for the last 1.5 hours ride, I sat back, relaxed, looked at a country that looks like a real country, with women around and all, and thought after all it would be a good week.