Christmas in Kabul

Today and PM from BBC Radio 4 are broadcast live on BFBS – British Forces Broadcasting Service which is available wherever there are British troops. It's nice to get the Radio 4 news – even though Today is on at lunchtime and I listen to PM while getting ready for bed. In the run-up to Christmas, I listened with interest to the discussion about how the putting up of Christmas decorations in schools and offices could be offensive to people of a different religion/culture.

I am part of a minority in a country with a different culture and religion. Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic and its Constitution states that no law can be passed that contravenes Islam. It is a country that is still fighting the Taleban, where many women still wear the burqa (and in some cities you don’t even see women in public) and recently an man was given asylum in Italy after narrowly escaping the death penalty in an Afghan court for converting to Christianity.

Many of my Afghan colleagues have wished me a Merry Christmas and have asked about how I would celebrate Christmas if I were at home – and why do we wish for a white Christmas? And in a few days when it is Eid Zuha I will wish them in return, Eid Mubarak. There are no concerns about being offensive; all that is important is that we have respect and understanding for each other's culture.

How was Christmas in Kabul? It snowed for most of Christmas Eve, and this is what greeted me when I open the door on Christmas morning:


For those of us working with the UN/international organisations it was an official holiday. Though many internationals are away on leave (and some only just managed to depart as fog and then snow descended on Kabul a few days ago and the problems with the airport are not yet fixed (in bad weather planes can take off, but have problems landing; see post Destination Kandahar…?). We who remained had a couple of options – to go to one of the restaurants who were offering special Christmas menus or gather together and do it ourselves.

I had Christmas lunch with 14 other people (of varied nationality – Australian, Canadian, British, Brazilian, El Salvadorian and Swedish) and it was an amazing spread. There were 2 kinds of soup, turkey, roast vegetables, slow-cooked chicken, prawn curry, seafood risotto, nut roast, vegetable lasagne, turnip bake, salsa and then orange cake, Christmas pudding, pavlova, nutballe (a Swedish confection), chocolate brownies, Christmas cookies. And by the end of the afternoon we had the traditional feeling of having eaten too much... Apart from the turkey, salsa and chocolate brownies it was all done in one kitchen – with one oven. One room in the house was turned into a walk-in fridge – the windows were just left open, proving that there are some advantages to the weather being 0°C.

I provided the chocolate brownies, but I had originally been tasked to make mince pies, but I was unable to find mincemeat in Kabul – I even asked a British Lt Col at the main ISAF base.…but no luck, obviously I was overly optimistic to think that I could find it here in Kabul! The Christmas pudding came from Marks and Spencer (bought in London back in early October) and the pavlova instead of the traditional strawberries was decorated with pomegranate seeds. It and the chocolate brownies had a thin burnt crust on the bottom – which is not an indication of how bad the cooks were – but a symptom of attempting to bake in difficult circumstances. Both were cooked with gas, but the ovens here don’t have graduated temperature settings – so you have to guess which setting you need by how much gas you see. And at 2000m above sea level the gas does not burn effectively, so it is difficult to get the hottest setting – and added to this is the fact that the gas is already very cold (as the bottle is kept outside, no mains gas here).

Despite a few minor obstacles we had a splendid (and white), though short Christmas... back at work today :-(

Keeping warm

Today the maximum temperature in Kabul will be O°C and it has started to snow - so Kabul at least will experience a white Christmas. (Though it is quite easy to forget it is Christmas at all here, as the reminders are few...) Instead, the pre-occupation for most at the moment is how to keep warm. Houses do not have central heating and the insulation is poor. Though sometimes you do see plastic sheeting taped to the outside of windows which provides a little extra insulation. And in some houses only the bedrooms and living rooms are heated, leaving the hallways and even the bathrooms and kitchens cold.

The main source of heat is from a traditional bukhari (heater in Dari), which uses different types of fuel - diesel, wood or sawdust. When they work well the room is lovely and warm, however they cannot be lit by a thermostat or timer! The wood or sawdust bukharis have little regulation, especially the sawdust one - once lit it burns until all the sawdust is gone.

This is the sawdust bukhari which I had for a while, but I am going to switch over to a diesel one for when it gets really cold. The sawdust burns slowly over 5-6 hours, which means that in the morning your room is COLD and getting up is an unpleasant prospect (or perhaps I should say more unpleasant than normal...). A diesel bukhari with a full tank can be left burning on a low setting overnight and the room is still warm in the morning and there is no need for relighting upon getting up, you just increase the setting. It is much harder to regulate the burning of the sawdust - I found that a hour or so after it was lit it became extremely hot with the metal glowing red - not the safest thing to have in the middle of a room without a fireguard; which I discovered when plastic controls of an oil radiator which was nearby melted... ooops! However, the problem with diesel is that it smells, and the holding tank of the bukhari is not the best placed, so when filling, diesel often slops around...mmm, lovely.

And so from a snowy Kabul on Christmas Eve, I wish you a warm and peaceful Christmas.

Destination Kandahar...?

I was supposed to fly to Kandahar yesterday to visit our sub-office there, but was prevented by bad weather. It is very irritating - I jumped though all the required bureaucratic hoops and then the flight was cancelled because of snow (which had arrived in Kabul a month earlier than normal).

To travel outside of your 'duty station' (and mine is Kabul) you need two things, security clearance from UN Dept of Safety and Security (UNDSS), and an internal Travel Authorisation (TA) form signed by your immediate supervisor, the chief of mission, HR officer and the security officer. The security officer will only sign once you have been granted security clearance from UNDSS in all relevant locations. To go to Kandahar I needed clearance from UNDSS in Central region (Kabul) and in the Southern region (Kandahar). The request for security clearance needs to be submitted at least 48 hours in advance and includes information on mode of transport, length of visit and where you will stay at your destination. It is only granted if you travel by approved means (no dodgy local airline) and stay in approved guesthouses (no local 'cheap and cheerful' hotels). So once I had confirmed seats on the UN flight and a booking at the UN guesthouse in Kandahar, my clearance was granted and I got the last signature required on my TA.

However, as the signatures were being gathered and the bookings getting confirmed, the weather deteriorated, tipping the balance of the likelihood of me travelling towards nil. It started snowing in the early hours of Saturday morning and continued in the following days with very little let up... It is only today that the clouds have cleared and we once again see the sun. Flights were cancelled on both Saturday and Sunday, and so it was a sense of just 'going through the motions' that I packed my bag and ordered a car for early on Monday morning. On arrival at the airport I checked in - making sure that all sharp objects and liquids were in my hold luggage and I received a boarding pass. Seeing all this I began to feel positive, especially as it wasn't snowing at the time and the visibility was better than the previous day.

The moment was cut short when the man at the check-in said that there was no guarantee that we would travel as the plane that was to go to Kandahar, was coming from Islamabad and it wasn't clear if it had actually departed Pakistan yet due to the uncertainty of landing conditions in Kabul. But a glimmer of hope reappeared when passengers were called to a flight going to Bamyan; they left the departure lounge and boarded a small bus to take them onto the tarmac. But within 10 mintues hopes were dashed once again as all flights were cancelled (and the passengers to Bamyan returned to the terminal building). We were told that the flights were to be rescheduled for the following day. So I gave back the boarding pass, picked up my luggage and had returned to me the 50 Afganis (GB£0.60) that I had earlier paid in departure tax.

Later on in the afternoon, I was informed that the rescheduled flight for the following day was cancelled. Though unhappy to hear this, it didn't come as a huge surprise given the heavy snow that was falling and at least it stopped me from going through the same charade this morning, pretending that I might just fly.

With my forthcoming work commitments (and official holidays), it is now looking like that I won't get down to Kandahar until early January. Which will require a fresh round of signatures and requests for security clearance...