Back from the Motherland

So I'm back from India and let me just say it blew my mind. I think everyone, at least once in their lifetime needs to visit India. The people, food, sites, culture, music and of course shopping. I fell in love with the country.

We left Kabul and flew directly to Delhi where we spent the afternoon and part of the next day. We stayed at a small hotel near the train station, nothing really fancy. Think bucket baths! The boys were insistent over the fact that we were going to "be local" as much as possible.

We had a chance to visit the Red Fort, a few mosques, several popular Bazaars and take in a huge part of the city on foot, rickshaw, subway and train. We ended up exploring some unique areas of the city where probably few if any tourists go. There was loads of butter chicken, masala chais, chicken tikha, bhel puri, naan, pakoras to keep us constantly stuffed for five days.

We took the train over to Agra on Wednesday evening which proved to be an interesting experience. We thought we'd deviate a little from "doing it local" and upgrade to a car with air conditioning. It was a good thing we did. After spending over an hour at the train station waiting, and then an extra hour on our train we were happy with the decision.

We spent the next day taking in everything in Agra. By far the highlight was being at the Taj Mahal during sunrise. We were within the first twenty people in. It is probably the most phenomenal structure I've seen in my entire life. We got some great photos. This local guy took a ton of pictures of us on our digital cameras. We also visited the Agra Fort and then spent the rest of the day in local bazaars, just people watching. There was a national holiday while we were in Agra, so we ended up walking into a couple of parades, people dancing in the streets, lots of music and just people, people, people, everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!

We headed back to Delhi on Thursday night and had a quiet dinner. The next couple days were spent shopping (of course!) and visiting some local tourist sites in Delhi - India Gate and Chantar Mantar. We also got a chance to check out the Delhi nightlife and checked out 3 of the most popular nightclubs, the most insane being Fashion Bar, which is hosted by Fashion TV. It made you forget you were India; it made you feel like you were partying somewhere else.

We arrived back in Kabul on Sunday and I'm having serious India withdrawal. In just five days I fell in love with all that is and was India. The good news is that I'm back in Kabul for another 7 days and then I'm going back!!!!! I leave for Delhi next Wednesday and will be spending time again in Delhi, Agra, Fatepur Sikri and Calcutta of course. The next 5 working days are going to be very tough.

Coffee with the FT: His Highness the Aga Khan

Check it out: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2e55dd3a-8b59-11dd-b634-0000779fd18c.html

The end is near….and then off to the motherland!

The end of Ramadan is near. Thank god! Only 2 more days to go (depending on this moon over here). It’s been tough, but a good experience so far. I think my favorite part has definitely been the spirit of it all, the amount of time everyone spends together, eating and cooking, there’s a huge community feeling in it. We had three very nice dinners this weekend – one with our local staff at a local restaurant, one in the compound, and then one at a friends place in the city. A nice last weekend of Ramadan.

I’m off to Delhi and Agra on Tuesday for five days with some friends from here for Eid. We have three days off here, so we thought it would be nice to do a short trip. There are five of us going and we are all counting the hours until we fly out. I’ve never been to India, so I am very excited!!!!!!!

It’ll be nice to get out of Kabul for a bit and to have the chance to walk around, eat good food and just be out. It’s scary how much you appreciate that; not having to get security clearance to go out, or face the possibility of a lockdown, or have to be searched each time you change locations. I’m back in Kabul on the 5th for 2 weeks; then I’m headed back to India again for what is going to be the trip of a lifetime.

My cousin and her husband have decided to adopt a baby girl from an orphanage in Calcutta, so I will be meeting up with them, as well as my uncle in mid-October to pick up the newest addition to our family, Zaleeya. To read their story check out Zaleeya’s blog: www.zaleeya.blogspot.com I’ll be meeting up with Zeena, Azeem and Mohammed Uncle in Delhi from where we will do a bit of traveling. We will then head over to Calcutta to pick-up Zaleeya and spend some time at the orphanage. I’m so happy that I get to share in this experience with them and I think it will be a phenomenal trip. Things are very hectic for the next month or so, but very exciting! I will try and write as much as possible and post pictures of course.

Back to the motherland I go!!!! (well sort of)

Officially half way through Ramadan

So we are on day 15 of Ramadan (Day 10 of fasting for me. I skipped some because I wasn't feeling well) and I can't say that it gets any easier. This is probably one of the most difficult things I've done and it has definitely tested my patience and strength. Having to work and be productive has been a challenge. My schedule has been redonkulas. I go to bed at 11pm after eating, wake up at 3:30am again to eat, go back to sleep at 4am and then wake up at 7:30am for work, work until 5:30-6 and then break my fast at 6:15. It gets quite exhausting. The weekends aren't bad because you sleep, but I hate being this lazy. It's so hard to eat properly. At least we are officially half way through the month :)

Otherwise things are going well. Work is busy and I have several big projects that are due in the next month or so. Things have been a bit quiet in Kabul in terms of security, nothing major, but we've had a couple of precautionary lock downs. The governor of Logar, one of the provinces near us was assassinated this weekend, but it hasn't really affected us.

I'm planning a trip to India (Delhi and Agra) for Eid, which I am very excited about because I've never been to India, so that will be nice. I also found out this week that I'm going to have a month off in December, so I am getting very excited about being in Canada (both Toronto and Vancouver) before the end of the year for an extended period of time.


There is a really need photo story a guy I know did for BBC, if you have some time take a look: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/south_asia_afghan_school_life/html/1.stm

Day One of Ramadan

My appologizes for not writing over the past couple of weeks. Things as always have been quite hectic with work and I was sick for a few days from some food I ate.

Today was the first day of Ramadan, so I thought I would try to fast, my first time ever. We had the day off work so it was not too bad fasting. I'm going to try and fast for most of the month, but we'll see how it goes. I think it's going to be rather difficult when I have to work normal hours.

The security situation has been pretty bad since I've been back, so we've been pretty limited in our movement. No day trips or exploring whatsoever. I'm hoping we can get one trip in at least before the winter, but I am seriously beginning to doubt it. I was supposed to go to Jalalabad this week because we are opening a playground there, but due to some attacks there I couldn't get clearance to go (and again today there was another attack in Jalalabad).

Nothing else exciting going on to report, everything has been pretty low-key. Hope things are well!

How to help those left behind

A must read from TIME magazine a few weeks ago....

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1828069,00.html

I'm back

Hi all -

Sorry for not posting. I just returned from my first home-leave and was pretty busy for the two short weeks I spent in Vancouver.

I'm back at work in Kabul and things have been quite hectic. There has been quite a lot of work to catch up on and lots going on. We launched a new SIM for youth called "Yaaran," meaning best friend in Dari and Pashto. The SIM card is aimed at youth and gives them good rates on their calls. Today we've launched the BlackBerry service in Kabul, so things are very hectic on the PR side over at Roshan.

As I'm sure you've all heard three girls were killed yesterday in the province of Logar - about 45 minutes away from Kabul. I was at the UN compound last night and people are pretty upset over the incident. Quite a few people I know met the girls in one way or another. One had only been here for 3 months, the other was on a 2 week visit to see if she wanted to work in Afghanistan. It's pretty scary and hit very close to home. A lot of the locals in the office are confused, because women are rarely ever targets in this environment. There was an attack on a house a few weeks ago, where the only man in the house was killed, but the 12 women were left untouched.

That is all for now, back to work.