Report of a visit to Kabul, October 2008

In October 2008 SAWA convener Matthias Tomczak spent a week in Kabul. This is an edited version of his report, which he filed by email every day, augmented by photos taken during his stay.

Note: As an organization that promotes the separation of state and religion and demands that war criminals be brought to justice, RAWA is constantly under the eye of Afghan intelligence and in danger of being attacked by fundamentalists. Some of the events reported her may have been attended by RAWA members. To avoid placing people in danger, some names and images have been removed from the report.

Monday 27 October

4 am: I arrived in Kabul yesterday, after a long flight from Adelaide via Sydney and Dubai. I managed to sleep in until 10 o'clock South Australian time, very late on my standards but still early in the morning, 4 am Kabul time. The city is in total darkness. Occasionally I hear dogs barking, the first rooster calls - sounds you hear in Australian country towns. There is no electricity, and all the lights are out. I go back to bed and try to get some more sleep.

5 am: I wake up to the sounds of muezzins. It is still totally dark, but their call to prayers can be heard all over the city. I go out to the balcony and listen to the melodies. A dozen stray dogs run along the street in the darkness. There is not much to do without light. I go back to bed.

5:30 am: I wake up from the roar of jet fighters. There is no mistaking them for passenger planes; I know the sound from the 1960s and 70s when NATO fighters performed their exercises over northern Germany, flying low over the North Sea and the coastal villages. It may be 40 years ago but it is a sound you do not forget. The planes circle around the city and fade into the distance. I step out to the balcony again. In first daylight I can make out the shapes of houses. A blinking light turns out to belong to a radio tower. I can see the first mountain, one of many that surround Kabul, and notice that three bright lights have been burning all night. Who can have lights shining through the night in a city with no power? I hear noises in the darkness; people are already on their way to work.

5:45 am: There is now enough light that I can see the keyboard keys on my laptop, so I get up, have a quick cold wash in the crisp air and sit down to write my first report. The birds have woken up and dominate the sound of the city. I discover that the bright lights I saw during the night belong to a bus depot. It must run its own generator for security reasons.

6 am, and the day has truly begun. I can see smoke from a wood fire, probably a woman preparing breakfast. Trucks and 4WDs collect people for work; everyone is wrapped up against the cold, the women covered in huge white head scarves.

I wanted to visit OPAWC's Vocational Training Centre, one of SAWA's main support projects, and meet some women from RAWA to discuss SAWA's support activities for this inspiring organization. I was lucky that I was offered accommodation in one of the orphanages of AFCECO, the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization. Unfortunately SAWA's means are not enough to extend our assistance to this incredible and inspiring organization, and I have to be doubly thankful for the hospitality extended to me.

Tuesday 28 October

Life in Kabul is easy ...
... if you are a visitor from overseas and live in one of AFCECO's orphanages, where you are provided with a beautiful guest room with own shower and toilet and a beautiful Afghan carpet. It is then not difficult to imagine what Kabul once was, and what one day it will again be: the city of roses.

But what is life in Kabul really like? The ..... orphanage is in one of the better suburbs of Kabul, where some houses are only a few years old and have bright, large rooms with high ceilings and wide windows. They were all built through private initiative. But the streets, which are government responsibility, are like badly corrugated dirt roads bordered by smelly little creeks.

Street scenes in one of Kabul's better neighbourhoods. Dust from the unsurfaced streets settles everywhere.

More serious than the condition of the streets is the situation with basic services. There is no running water. Electricity is supplied every three days for 3 hours. There are no street lights anywhere, so the city goes dark after 5 pm. Those who can afford it have their private generators. The ..... orphanage has two, a small one that supplies power to computers and internet and a large one that comes on at 6 pm and runs for four hours to supply electricity to the house.

Those who can afford it have their own bore. The water has to be brought up from 30 metres, which requires a powerful pump. If you cannot afford a powerful generator you have to pump the water up during the day when the city supplies 3 hours of electricity. Usually the amount of water pumped during that time does not last for three days, so the water runs out after a day or two and you have to collect water from one of the public pumps.

The generator of ..... orphanage is powerful enough to guarantee that a trickle of water keeps coming out of the tap every day. I am told that tomorrow is the day of 3 hours public electricity supply, so that will be the opportunity to heat up the water in my hot water tank, which should then remain hot enough to allow a warm shower for the next day or two.

I am living in ..... orphanage, a large new building of four storeys. It is home to a couple that lives in the house with the 65 girls. (AFCECO has also an orphanage for boys and a mixed orphanage in Kabul.) There are also a cook, a caretaker and a driver for AFCECO's car but at the moment no guard. I was told when I came that the guard, a poor man from the country, had just returned to his village because it is not safe for his wife and daughter to live on their own, without a man in the house. Everyone was quite sad because he was the most dedicated man and everybody loved him.

Yesterday news came that his wife's brother had agreed to move in with the guard's wife and daughter so that he could come back. In the afternoon, when I returned to the orphanage from a visit, he had already arrived and stood at the door; a thin, prematurely aged man with weathered skin and darkened teeth, he was greeted with big hugs by everyone in the courtyard.

In the afternoon I go on a first visit to the Vocational Training Center for Women, SAWA's main support project. I watch three classes doing mathematics, in both Afghan and western number systems; the women had asked to be taught the western system as well because western numbers are everywhere, on digital watches, TV programs and many other places. At least one teacher has been a teacher for a long time and has taught in Naseema Shaheed High School before 9/11. After an initial period the classes were reorganized according to skill level. The Center supports mainly war widows but teaches also girls who are supporting families, for example daughters of illiterate shopkeepers.

Mathematics at the Vocational Training Center. Classes 1 and 3 use Dari (Farsi) numbers, class 2 learns to use western numerals.

Most women come to the Center in burkas to avoid identification. The headmaster says that she had walked from house to house in the neighbourhood to advertise the new Center and find students. She sometimes had to talk to men who did not want to send their women to the Center at some length but was mostly successful in convincing them of the value of education.

The three classes in the Vocational Training Center. I asked for permission to take photos; some women decided to cover their faces in front of a male photographer. They would appear less covered during normal class.

SAWA's aim is to give the women not only education but also a basis for income generation. A handicraft training facility is therefore part of the plan for the Center. The need for such a facility is so urgent that the Center has taken a loan from RAWA's operational budget and purchased the first sewing machines and material to set up handicraft training. This loan has to be repaid, and SAWA is challenged to raise the necessary funds.

To avoid identification of buildings and danger for individuals, this photo has been removed; but see the banner image at the Vocational Training Centre page.
The sign of the Vocational Training Center acknowledges SAWA's support through the use of SAWA's banner (left). The first sewing machines for the planned handicraft training course (right).

Wednesday 29 October

This morning Amena took me on a sightseeing tour. We went with two cars, Amena, I and our driver in one and two armed security guards with a driver in another car. Amena's husband says that the main danger for foreigners is to be kidnapped, so RAWA hired the guards for me. Later during the trip Amena joked that I should have just gone with the guards' driver, who had a white beard like myself and was equally bald, so everyone would have taken me as his brother.

We began with a drive through Afshar, the suburb where the Hazara live and where most of the women who attend classes in the Vocational Training Center live. During the Civil War of 1992 - 1996 this area had been the scene of a genocide; several thousand Hazaras were slaughtered during a massacre and their houses flattened. The survivors have returned and rebuilt their houses, but the government has not spent a cent on the suburb.

When I called the streets in the better suburbs badly corrugated dirt roads bordered by smelly little creeks, the streets here can only be described as washed-out bush tracks full of sewage and rubbish. Several times our driver had to get out of the car to test the depth of a sewage canal or the firmness of a pile of rubbish on the road before he was assured that he could get the car across. But wherever there was a problem the local people always volunteered their help. We spent several hours driving around Kabul, and there is much more to report, but that will have to wait for another time.

Streets in Afshar.   Children of Afshar (left), legaciy of the Civil War in hillside settlements (right).

Before I left Adelaide I had asked Amena whether I could meet with women whose personal stories had been reported in the SAWAN. I wanted to know how they had coped with the closure of Khewa Camp in Pakistan. Malalai (SAWAN 12, November 2006), who had taught in Naseema Shaheed High School, had returned to Jalalabad, the city from where most residents of Khewa Camp came originally. She continues to teach in a RAWA orphanage in Jalalabad. Shogofa, a year 12 student from Naseema Shaheed High School (SAWAN 14, May 2007), had always wanted to study journalism and is now enrolled at Herat University. Shukria, another teacher from Naseema Shaheed High School (SAWAN 13, February 2007), came to the orphanage to meet me. She had the finest white clothes, rings and bracelets and looked very elegant indeed. After the closure of Khewa Camp she had returned to her brother in Kabul, who was unemployed but could offer her a minuscule room. For several months she was unemployed as well and felt very bad about being a burden to her brother. Then her training as a nurse in RAWA's Malalai clinic got her a job as a nurse in a government hospital financed by an NGO. The clinic is good and the colleagues are nice but the pay is very low, and she has to travel two hours one way every day to get to work, taking four different buses. In addition to her paid work Shukria runs a free literacy course for women in a private home of her neighbourhood during the evenings. The course was her initiative; she saw young girls in the street and asked them why they did not go to school. She was assisted in starting the course by her brother, who has a degree in chemistry but supports his family through work as a casual day labourer; before 9/11 he had worked as a chemistry teacher in Khewa Camp's boy school but had to return to Kabul after the US-invasion to look after his parents and other family members. Shukria said that life in the camp had turned her life around. After the death of her husband she saw no reason to live, but RAWA gave her new hope, and now she wants to help others wherever she can. Although she is no longer in a RAWA project she will always support RAWA and feels that she is doing RAWA's work in her new positions. She knows that everyone who lived in Khewa Camp thinks the same, and now that they are scattered all around the country – Jalalabad, Herat, Kabul, and many other places – they will continue to spread RAWA's message. They all keep contact with each other.

Shukria in Naseema Shaheed High School, 2006.

Thursday 30 October

Kabul is getting prepared for winter. Soon temperatures will drop to well below freezing, and the streets will be covered in deep snow. Mountains of firewood are growing along the major roads, supplied from the provinces by trucks and carts. The orphanage is in a new house, but the heating system is the same as it has been for centuries: Every room has a flue outlet in the wall, and soon the wood stoves will be brought out of storage and set up in the rooms. Half a dozen small chimneys sticking out from the roof terrace will then send their smoke clouds upwards as their contribution to the general haze.

During my tour around the city I noticed a suburb dominated by large apartment blocks. I was told that they were built during the Russian occupation as accommodation for government members. They appear to be about the only buildings in Kabul with central heating. From my position on Palace Hill I could make out the power plant that provides the steam for the heating pipes. Later when we drove through the suburb I could see many bullet wounds in the walls and damage to the roofs, a legacy from the Civil War. But the trees that were planted between the houses are still standing, and people use them to attach their clothes lines to them.

View of Kabul. The appartment blocks are from the time of the Soviet occupation. The new face of Kabul: 4WDs and new mansions guarded by security contractors. Wedding palaces such as these have been popping up all over Kabul and are busy every night. Families go into lifetime debt to pay for grandiose weddings. Exploiting Afghan tradition to get hold of people's money seems to be a thriving business.  , Civil War remnants in Kabul's busy inner city (left); monument over the grave of Ahmad Zahir (1946 - 1979), Afghanistan's most famous singer whose politically charged songs were banned on radio; he died under suspicious circumstances and remains known and revered in Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India and Turkey (right).    The Palace Ruins, focal point of many television reports on Afghanistan. During the Civil War the Palace was used as an artillery base and heavily shelled by the opposing forces. The sandbag reinforcements can still be seen at the top of the stairs (right). The Afghans want the Palace retained in its present state as a permanent memorial to the dark years of the Civil War.

This is also the season when the second semester starts in the Vocational Training Center. Yesterday the students assembled in the courtyard to receive their results for their first semester. Some had brought their small children along; it was a lively scene. The principal had organized a small ceremony with poetry readings, songs and a short theatre play. All presentations were about the importance of education and the equality between women and men.

The students were proud to show their reading skills, struggling occasionally with their poems but leaving the stage under much applause. The greatest success was the theatre play. A girl was to be married to an uneducated boy. There was much argument, and no player had any problem with her text, since they only had to play out scenes that happen at home. The girl insisted that she would only marry an educated man, so in the end the boy agreed to get an education, too, so that he could marry her.

Then the results were handed out. One by one the students received a document and returned to their seats. Once everything was over the commotion started. Everyone congregated around the teachers and argued about the notes. Some offered to sit the exam again, "and this time I'll be first!" There were even tears - from the woman that had received third prize, because she had expected to be first. Amena became quite concerned and said that maybe it would be better to hand out only a pass but no notes. I said that the first exam of one's life is always an intense experience, particularly if you have to pass it as a "mature student" and had to fight for the right to attend the course in the first place. Maybe the students should be consulted whether they want marks or prefer a simple pass. Eventually calm returned, and everyone went home consoled with what they had achieved.

Friday 31 October

Amena had already told me days ago that I had chosen the right time to visit RAWA: The joint "Fun Party" of AFCECO's orphanages was to be held during my stay. It is a bit like a school fete and happens only twice a year. I could be part of it yesterday, one of many visitors for the occasion - relatives, friends and supporters. It started with the reading of a poem of Meena, RAWA's founder. Three girls had competed for the right to recite the poem and the girls had voted who was to recite it at the party. This was followed by debating, joke telling - even some of the youngest girls and boys proved to be quite impressive stand-up comedians - a theatre play, and dancing.

Friday is "weekend" in Afghanistan, and the sky over Kabul is full of kites. I have to prepare myself to leave tomorrow. It is a sad feeling; the sparkling eyes of the children in the orphanage tempt me to stay longer. AFCECO's orphanages are islands of happiness in a sea of misery. It is a visit I shall not forget.

So this is Kabul: the city where billions of aid dollars disappear into the pockets of warlords and corrupt politicians while the people still wait for water, electricity, sewerage and paved roads,

the city where a mere $300 can change the life of a war widow and her children through education and new skills,

the city of misery and despair,

RAWA is still threatened by fundamentalists, even in Kabul. To avoid identification of buildings and danger for individuals, this photo has been removed. and the city of happiness and hope.

You can help SAWA to defeat misery and despair and turn hope into reality! Go to the "How to help" page on SAWA's website and find out how you can change the life of Afghanistan's women and children!