still here!

still here!

I knew I had to update my blog when I made chocolate cake.

One has to have chocolate cake. Not having an oven is inconsequential. I’ve heard about dutch ovens but I’ve never really used or made one before. I figured I can make one out of an oversized pot that the Afghans use to cook rice. I found one in the storage room and thought, “This could work!” The cake, turning out very well, turned me into an excited twit. “OMG, I gotta tell somebody I made chocolate cake in Chaghcharan!!!”

We finally made our move to Chaghcharan, a city of approximately 15,000 people. At 2,280 meters above seas level, it is the place to be when in the middle of an Afghan summer. Chaghcharan City is the administrative seat of Ghor province and it is or if not one of the poorest provinces in Afghanistan. None of the city’s roads are paved and the city has one bridge that spans the Hari-rud (Hari River), connecting the only hospital in the province to the rest of the town. Electricity from a city generator runs from 6pm to 11pm everyday and there is no running water. We pump our water from a well and buy bottled water (expensive and shameful!) for drinking.

I buy our summer vegetables from a band of boys (ages 5 to 13) I’ve dubbed the “wheelbarrow gang”. At 4pm they all line up in a street corner with their wheelbarrows filled with fresh greens. Bundles of leek, bundles of bright pink baby radishes, bundles of shallots and heads of lettuce... each for 5 Afs a bundle. To share the wealth I buy one bundle from each wheelbarrow and in the end leave with crisp lettuces, radishes, leeks and a smile on the gang’s faces. Fruits I buy from a fruit-seller who imports all of it from Herat City. I meticulously pick the ones that survives the 8 hours bumpy and dusty drive... while 8 to 12 boys and turbaned and bearded men watch me and my every move. My presence is a curiosity and a novelty. Apart from the Lithuanian military who run the provincial base called the PRT, there are not many foreigners in town. Right now only two, Paul and me. The fruits are very expensive, but there is NOTHING out here. Summer is the season of frugal bounty and every winter, when the dirt roads that link the city to Herat or Kabul are blocked with snow, people in Ghor starve. It is a very water insecure region reliant only on farming that are either inefficient or undeveloped.

In an Afghan household it is the women who cook the meals but when the hiring of cooks for the CRS staff house was posted it is the men who applied for the job. It is no wonder that the Chaghcharan staff house cook’s repertoire of dishes consist only of chickpeas and potatoes swimming in sheep’s fat and red beans and potatoes also swimming in sheep’s fat. You’ve got to eat your beans before it gets cold otherwise you will be chewing on chunks of congealed fat! Yum, yum.... I do my own shopping of fruits and vegetables because I’ve decided that for the next three months of our stay here I will do the cooking myself. It’s tough on my culinary skills given the limited options but we’ve been eating better and healthier since I’ve taken charge.

There are two adorable kuchi puppies here namely Deputy and Mubarak, they will grow to the size of a small car, probably an exaggeration, but close. This team of overgrown puppies are always up to no good. They just tore a roll of toilet paper to shreds and are moving on to chewing a hole into our grout plastered wall for their calcium supplement. I will post photos when I get them to sit still for a photo shoot. They are growing big so fast that they are so inelegantly clumsy. They have no sense of how long their legs are or how big their bodies are and just fall all over themselves while walking. They invade our bed and pushes Paul and me to the sides while they make themselves comfortable. I’m smitten.

Looking out our bedroom window I see a shepherd and his herd passing through a hill in our backyard. I am really enjoying our new space. Quiet, peaceful, simple and raw.