Embassies and Public Toilets

17th August 2012

Well it's been a while since I've last posted, had my share of interesting and uninteresting things happening...

My Uncle had to leave me in Kabul last Tuesday while he went to Bamyan because he couldn't get me on the flight there, So I had a couple of days by myself where I just watched movies because there isn't anything else to do. On Wednesday night I tried ordering a pizza from a place called Everest Pizza, which we had ordered from on one of our first nights here in Kabul, and they had decided since then that they didn't deliver to the area of Kabul that I was in. So instead I went out to a place called Bella Italia with an English guy called Dominic - he used to work at the British Embassy but they started pulling out of Kabul and so he found another job with a private company here.

The bill at the end was about $40 US each, and a quarter of that was one can of beer each!

Tony was back again on Friday morning, so he picked me up on the way from the airport to the bank, where he had some papers to hand in. After that we went to a restaurant called Boccaccio's for lunch and to use up time before going to the US embassy to discuss plans for a future solar power project. We were stopped at the gate because my name had only recently been added to the list of people the embassy was expecting and the guards' copy of the list had been printed out early that morning.

As we were waiting an Afghan was admitted through the gate and started talking to us from the other side. He introduced himself as "Akhmed the American", and he did have a very strong American influence in his accent and spoke English very fluently, though you could tell that he wasn't born an American. He had a several projects running which tied into each other. One was breeding goats and getting better prices for the Afghan farmers selling goats,because they earn about US$3 per goat they sell. The other is getting better rights for women. 48.8% of the Afghan population are women and 90% of them are unemployed! It is going to be really hard for the economy to improve when there is over 40% of the population without jobs!

We still hadn't been admitted through the gates, so Akhmed talked to the guards and managed to get us in, which was a very bad security breach really but we didn't mind. Then one of his friends picked us up in a little Jeep and drove us down to where we were meeting this guy called Jim. I thought that the restaurant that I talked about in my last blog was an island in the middle of Kabul, but the embassy was an even greater contrast! American accents everywhere, air-conditioning, free drinks, a pool, and later for dinner that night was steak and lobster! Unfortunately we couldn't stay for that though. I would have taken photos of it all but they confiscated our phones while we were inside.

After the American Embassy we went to the New Zealand embassy to meet our Ambassador. He was a big Maori guy and it was so cool to hear a New Zealand accent again! I didn't realise how much I had missed it! While we were waiting for a taxi to take us back home after seeing the New Zealand ambassador Tony had to go to the toilet, so he had a look at a public toilet that was close to us, then quickly decided he didn't really need to go, and besides, nothing else would fit in it! That toilet must be one of the scungiest places on earth, short of going into an actual sewer...

And that brings us to today, we were going to go to the palaces they have here in Kabul, and have a look at this swimming pool where they used to execute people. With all the water drained out they used to make people jump off the highest platform there, and at the bottom you can see all these bullet holes from where I guess people didn't die fast enough...

But we aren't going there, that might be for some other time. Instead we are going out for lunch at a place called "The Flower Street Cafe", hopefully it lives up to its name!

One of the funniest things I have seen here

A lizard in the shower

I don't even want to think about what the pink and yellow bits are...