Where's Dara?

Here is the first of some older entries that I wrote before the invention of da blog.

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November 11, 2006

Today, I woke up happy to find our electricity still on. Until two days ago, we had had almost 24 hour electricity in Kunduz—something unheard of in Afghanistan. Kunduz benefits from its proximity to Tajikistan, and imports much of its electricity—or so I am told. When it rains, snows, or there is a wind storm, however, the luck has run out. There is no electricity.

Two days ago, Thursday, I woke up and there was no sun streaming through my thin brown curtains. I thought this strange, and looked at my clock. Nope, it was 6:30 am. Sun should be blaring into my room. Hmm. I crawled out of bed and pulled the curtains back and looked out. No blue sky. In fact, I could barely see the clouds. It was all fuzzy, gray. Not so good.

We had been lucky. It was just getting a bit cool at night, but a week into November, it was comfortable, even, at times, hot during the days. In Kabul, it had been cold—sweaters and jackets needed, and the first snow had fallen on the Salong Pass a couple of weeks before. No, it now seemed the winter had arrived in Kunduz. Sigh.

A bit groggy—as one can only be on an overcast day, I got ready, called for the car to pick me up, and stumbled out the door when it arrived at the gate. When I walked out there was a strange mist or fog. Sort of brown everywhere. In my state, I could not place what it was. The air was heavy with moisture, and the blanket of clouds ominous. The weather had turned.

As the morning wore on, the wind came. Lots of wind. In fact, I soon figured out what the strange mist was: dust. We were in the midst of a 15-hour dust storm. Yup. A dust storm.

Apparently I had missed the first one when I was relaxing in Bali a couple weeks prior. Now, after months without rain, in a place naturally full of dry, the winds that come before a storm kicked up a dust storm.

It was everywhere. It snuck through window joints, swirled through frames and got into your hair, nostrils and settled on anything it could find. It snuck in—it did not force its way into these places. The dust hung in the air rendering visibility almost nil, forcing people to cover their noses and mouths with the ubiquitous scarf or turban, and brought the city to a crawl (Boy was I glad I was not needing to fly that day!). There were no tornadoes of dust, like I had seen before. It just saturated everything—so much so that when the wind kicked up from its slightly more than gentle steadiness, you did not really notice the dust moving. It was there, though.

The wind and the dust, and the impending rainstorm coming from Mazar-I-Sharif, east of us, meant that the powers-that-be decided to cut the electricity—or so I was told. By the time I went home in the evening, once the rain had started coming down, our house was pitch black.

Being a newly established house hoping to get a generator lent from the organization, we, in our venerable wisdom, had not yet procured a generator—of any size. I guess we were gambling a bit, but like I said, we had electricity but for a few minutes a day.

Our luck just had run out.

When I arrived home, I found one candle. “Saleh (our chokidor/house helper),” I called as a stumbled into the dark house, “do we have any more candles?”

Close behind me, he responded: “No.”

“Aleks!!!” I yelled as I walked up the stairs to our house manager’s room. Had to think fast. Stay in the dark and feel my way to some dinner or…

“Yes, Dara” he answered in his Bosnian accent. [Yes, I managed to find a Bosnian from Sarajevo even in the wilderness of Afghanistan!]

“Have you eaten? [It was after 7 pm so he usually would have.]”

“No.”

“Let’s go eat at the German Restaurant”, I said. The German is the only restaurant in town for us expats. And the only place with beer.

“OK,” he easily acquiesced.

Off we went, driving through the wet, dark city to the light. Or so we thought. At some point the restaurant’s generator went—for 45 minutes. But they had candles. And food, beer, and people. Right before we left, the generator was back online. Alas, no city power.

Back to the house we went, with a few more candles around, courtesy of Saleh. Nothing else to do but say good night and go off to bed.

The next morning I awoke, with hope—which was immediately dashed. No sun. No electricity. And it was our day off. Sigh. I stayed in bed and read.

At about 10:30, Aleks knocked on my door. Sitting in the living room we looked at each other, and he, as the fearless house manager said, “I think we need to buy a generator.” I immediately agreed.

“Usually,” Aleks said with the authority of someone having lived in Kunduz for 2.5 years, “this will last for 2-3 days. It rains, they cut the electricity, they have to fix something, and we wait for 2 or 3 days.” That just horrified me. “How much?” I asked.

As we lamented our plight, both of us, we soon found out, had taken showers not knowing if we would have hot water the next day. We laughed at each other and then got to business. There were only 3 of 8 housemates in the house. Everyone else was on leave—can you believe that! [Everyone is on a 6 week leave cycle—after 6 weeks you have a week leave and everyone flees.] So, we consulted with our only other present housemate and made the only decision possible: get a generator.

We would get the ‘back-up generator’-- 4-5KW, as we were still holding out hope for one from the organization. Such a small generator would not run the boilers, but it would run everything else—like our housemate’s private freezer in which hundreds of dollars of food was going bad.

Aleks made arrangements to meet our engineer (Afghan) after Friday prayers and have him call the electrician. “Don’t worry—we prepared all the wiring for a generator before. All we need is the generator. And that should only cost $300-400.” OK, I said and left it to him and went to the office.

Friday’s, you see, are a nice day to go to the office. Our Saturday but in commerce terms more like Sunday, it is catch up day. Organize your life (or pretend to), clean out your inbox, file, catch up on personal emails. Yes, that it what Fridays are for.

Not this Friday.

The driver dropped me off in the compound. It was a bitter, wet cold, and I had my heavy fall jacket on—only 48 hours earlier I had had on my summer jacket. I walked up the external stairs, opened the door to go to my desk and saw it...

A big plastic garbage can by the door, where normally there was only carpet. That was the first thing I saw. Then I turned right to head to my desk. The bookshelf, I noticed was, well, no longer against the wall. Instead, it was angled out into the hallway, almost touching my desk.

I should explain--my desk is literally in a corridor, by a door connecting with another corridor. In this series of corridors sits 5 on my side, and 6 on the other. Not so conducive to effective work, but a place to set your things. Or so I thought.

Following the back of the bookcase back to the wall, I saw a huge water stain, and two more big plastic buckets almost as big as me. Then I pulled my eyes towards me and saw that the printer and digital sender were gone. And I then walked towards my desk and saw wet papers and destroyed binders. Yup. The roof—the mud roof— had leaked. And only yesterday, men where banging over my head fixing it.

And to top it off, I was Officer-in-Charge (everyone being on leave and all). Wouldn’t it be lovely if the building collapsed on my watch. I called our Admin guru…”Um, Anvar, I just walked into the office and it appears that the roof has leaked.”

“Yes,” he responded, “we thought something like that might happen. We put plastic over everything last night.”

“Hmm.. well, don’t think it worked.”

“No worries, they will work on it later today.”

“Ok. Thanks,” I said, at a loss for a better response.

After assessing the damage, I turned on my computer (thankfully unharmed) and went to work—unable to print anything. An hour later I heard “plip”. Then “plip”. And another, and another, closer together. What is that, I thought. I tried to ignore. Nope, gotta figure it out.

I got up, walked towards the sound. Looked around. Yup. The roof was leaking again. The rain had started again—and it was a downpour. I sighed and went back to work, with the “plip”, “plip” adding ambience. What else to do?

Then the phone rang. “Um, Dara, Aleks here.” “Yeah?” “I have been to 3 places and only working generator I can find is 5 KW generator for $500.” “That’s a little much, isn’t it?” “Yeah, but the guy won’t budge. All the others are Chinese. This is Korean. It is quality.” We chatted a bit, trying to figure out what to do. Then a half hour later chatted again—at that time he had him down to $470—after walking out. 45minutes later, we got it for what it was worth--$400. Aleks is our house manager for a reason—never mess with a stubborn Bosnian.

At 4 pm I called Aleks. “Power yet?” “Well, we have the generator, the fuel, and the generator works… it just does not power anything in the house.” “Great.” I went home an hour later. The generator was still not connected. But the rain had stopped. And there was Aleks, holding a massive MagLite, Saleh and John looking on, and two electricians standing on a flat ladder playing with electrical wires in the fuse box on the side of the house.

Water was dripping into the fuse box. A calamity waiting to happen. 30 minutes later, with no electrocutions, we got the generator working.

5 minutes later the city power went on—but only on the first floor. Why? Good question.

In a normal place, if the power was on the whole house would work—all the fuses were on, etc. Yeah…not in a normal place.

Apparently, we have 3 different wires running from the city power into the house—1 per floor. Each one represents a different ‘phase’ of the power company. Whereas in normal places (and I cannot believe I am putting Pristina in this category), one ‘phase’ runs to one area of the city, in Kunduz you get the benefit of each phase all over the city and one floor having electricity while the other two do not. Hey, at least there is electricity in the house, right? Hmm.. not so fast. It went out almost as soon as it came.

Later that night, after having dinner guests suffer through the loud generator, the city electricity went back. And thus, I woke up to electricity this morning.

Having begun the morning well, I thought, let’s go to the Youth Civic Participation Conference in town. I walked into the dubious Kunduz Hotel and into the conference room where around 100 young people from all over the Northeast region were sitting, listening attentively to their peers talk about what youth civic participation meant. They were demanding a voice, dismissing ethnic differences, and decrying the lack of employment opportunities. The MC was a young woman, and each province spoke through a man and a woman.

Then some of the young teenagers did a skit, mimicking a family chat, a neighbor drop in, and commentating on the need to be environmentally conscious (throwing your trash in the street is so disgusting), and encouraging civic participation.

The goal of the conference is for the region’s youth to develop an action plan. I must say, they appear to be the most organized group I have seen--including the adults.