More City Scenes

A-typical store on an a-typical day. Most stores in Kabul are of similar construction, but 1 story, not 2. Most days, the streets are overrun with people and cars and donkey-carts and horse-carts, but this was taken on a friday, which is the Muslim day of rest.

Also, this street is in much better condition than most. It is recently paved. Many streets are not paved, those that are generally are in much worse condition than this.


Two ladies crossing a street in Kabul. This area is unusual in the number of trees that are present.

This was taken near Massoud Circle. I'll post more about Ahmed Massoud in the future; a hero and martyr of Afghanistan and, indirectly, America too. He was assasinated by Al Qaeda September 9, 2001 with the blessings of the Taliban. He was the only "Warlord" still fighting the Taliban in 2001; the rest had capitulated.

See also: Wikipedia


This is another fairly typical scene; a big group of people riding around in the back of a truck in a way that would appear to be extremely unsafe (and really is).

The lack of trees in this photo is much more typical of the conditions.

You can barely make out the mountains in the background of the picture. They aren't that far away, the air is just that dusty. If you click on the photo so a larger version loads, you can even see a little bit of snow left on the mountain tops; it will likely be gone before summer ends, but Kabul is higher than Denver; just under 6000 feet up.

Kabul City Scenes

Embassy of Pakistan, Kabul.



Soviet-era Taxi, still hard at work on the streets. Notice the tricked-out ride: extra mirror on front passenger-side fender, jingle-chains hanging from sun-visor, roof-rack, and colored-wipers!

Just so people are aware...

The fact that I don't cover certain topics on the blog, or tend towards light-hearted or trivial posts is because I can't talk about certain things, because of my job, security, etc.

Busy

I'm still alive, but busy. And I haven't been out of the compound much, so I don't have any pics to post.

Things here are going just fine, though only having a 1-day weekend (& working for four hours on my "weekend") is starting to wear on me. I have a new found appreciation for the two-day weekend.

Not to be too negative, but the food here could also be much, much better. Variety is lacking, grease is too much, blandness rules the day.

Islamic Banks are cool!

So I was in need of some cash today, but I've maxed out my check writing for this 2-week period with the Defense Finance Office. Where to go to get cash?

The Afghanistan Internation Bank! The have an ATM Machine that does not charge fees. None. No ATM fees. Zero.

And it spits out dollars.

American dollars.


Of course, it's guarded more heavily than Fort Knox. Take a look at the pics on the website...

Magic Carpet

This is my new magic carpet.