Editors’ Note: Richards wrote a series of letters from Afghanistan during her stay in May and June, 2008. The first, second, third, fifth, and sixth provide snapshots of daily life in Herat and Kabul. This letter is the fourth of six. Also, ePluribus Meda staff writer, Roxy Caraway, interviewed Richards about her experience.

June 13

Hello everyone,

It’s Friday, the weekly holiday, so pretty quiet thus far. Things will pick up as the day goes on, but there’s less traffic, more people staying home, relaxing, eating. Many men get up early before the heat sets in and go to Friday prayers at the mosque.

Finishing Up Our Work

Yesterday was a busy day. I taught the second year class again. One of their tasks was to explain, in English, the most important points of history for Afghanistan.

Learned lots of things, including the meaning of the word “Ariana,” which I see on many of the jitneys. Apparently that was the country’s name before it became Afghanistan. I knew I’d seen the name a lot. I thought at first it was referring to a jitney driver’s wife or daughter. Then after seeing it on about 100 jitneys I thought, hmm, maybe not.

The students enjoyed teaching me about their country. We talked about early farming settlements, the northern vs. the southern provinces, heat, cold, trees, etc. They are amused by my attempts to spell place names and fascinated by the idea of going to a beach (they asked what people in Connecticut did in summer to cool off). Many have never been out of the country and so have not seen an ocean.

There was plenty going on in the office. The computers and other equipment for the distance learning system are arriving, at long last, and getting installed. And my colleagues are getting the computer labs and mechatronics and circuits labs set up in the engineering building. That means getting lab tables, computer tables, etc.

After shopping at the “pre-fab” stores, where the furniture is imported from China or Dubai, the guys started looking at the local carpentry shops. There are many woodworking and metalworking shops in the city, and they do beautiful work. So my collegues ordered a lot of tables, making one carpentry shop (and the 16 brothers, in-laws, and cousins the owner hired to do the work) very happy. The only down side was having to go yesterday in the noontime heat and check on progress. Oooof.

Sightseeing

We did do a little bit of sightseeing last night, about 6:30 p.m.—it had cooled off, ahem, to about 98 degrees, with a breeze—warm, but a breeze.

The market was hopping. It’s hard for us from the U.S. to get used to the number of bodies, bikes, scooters, taxis, donkey carts, push carts, jitneys, and wheelbarrows that can be put into a space. Think Times Square, New Year’s Eve. Then, add all of the above, throw in a couple of buses, add some heat and dust, a few thousand flies—and you have the bazaar on Thursday night. And everybody’s having a blast. I saw more smiles last night than during the rest of the week. People are out shopping and talking and haggling, and having a good time.

When I say “sightseeing” that doesn’t mean walking around and seeing sights. It’s a taxi ride, and you have to be careful about taking pictures. But we did get a look at the outside of the “blue mosque” which is the city’s main mosque. It covers about 3 blocks by 3 blocks. One block is a large garden area where people (um, guys) can walk and talk. The inside area can hold more than a thousand worshippers. There’s a men’s section and a women’s section. Some people go every day. Some go to walk in the garden and meditate.

Most folks go on Friday, at least most weeks. The key is to get there early and get a good seat on the outside of the pack, rather than in the middle of hundreds of bodies as the day heats up. Whew. As an outsider and non-Muslim I am not encouraged to visit. Other modes of worship? Not that I've found.

We also saw the old palace, which is a massive turreted work—all clay and brick. There are times when you can go in and see the grounds (there’s also a large park) but yesterday wasn’t the day. All around the palace is the old town market, which was teeming with people, taxis, etc.—think of a two-lane street that suddenly developed six lanes of traffic.

There are carpet stores, a small hospital (with a doctor advertising “ganacologic cheks and x-reys”), many food stores (50 lb bags of rice and flour, stacked floor to ceiling), a vegetable market that stretched for a block, the phone card hawkers who are everywhere—and one entrepreneur who somehow had rigged a cart with a small motor that made ice. He was doing a very brisk business in something resembling slushies/snow cones./p>

Then we went over to the other side of town and saw the famous “leaning” minarets—ancient prayer towers that wobble about five stories up into the sky. They are crumbling, but still have bits of the original bright blue lapis tiles on the sides. The neighborhood is one that’s definitely not open to “roaming around.” Traffic access near the minarets also has been cut off: the vibrations from vehicles were making the towers crumble even more. I didn’t get any good pictures, but did enjoy seeing the towers. They’re beautiful.

On the way home we stopped at our regular little market, got mast (yogurt) and fruit; my colleague picked up his beloved buttermilk, which is infused with a touch of mint. Last stop—the nan store.

A bunch of loaves had just come out of the oven and were hanging over the door to cool—the baker threads them on a stick and then jams the stick across the open doorway. That means—bread’s ready! So had some of the bread for dinner; had the rest this morning for breakfast. Oh, it’s good.

Although Friday’s the weekly holiday, we’re still working—not at school but here at the Tejerat hotel—to try to finish all the stuff we have to finish. We depart Herat City on Tuesday—always build in a “cushion” day for travel in case flights get delayed or canceled, since there’s just one flight from Herat City to Kabul each day. There’s a rumor that circulates periodically about a flight from Heart City directly to Dubai. Oh, that would be a luxury, to avoid the hurly burly of the Kabul airport. But, not this trip. In the meantime, there’s an assessment workshop to run, meetings with the president, trying to finalize some curriculum (engineering and English) and putting things in place to try to ensure that work continues forward even when we’re not here.

A Living Wage

Some of you have asked what people earn here. It varies, just like everywhere else.

It takes 49-50 Afghanis (which the locals call afs) to equal a dollar. Engineers do pretty well—the faculty doesn’t get paid that much but they do contracting on the side and call pull down good money, even by U.S. standards. They’re happy to get paid in dollars.

Asking around, we found that the “average” sort of work earns about 2,000-3,000 Afs a month; that’s about $60. Dinner here at the hotel (soup, chicken, rice) costs 450 Afs, or $9, which is steep, by local standards. A slab of nan is about 10-15 Afs, or about 20-30 cents. Again, pretty cheap to us but if you think about earning just a few bucks a day, those Afs begins to add up. Plenty of people, of course, make less than 2,000 Afs. On the plus side, nan is about the only processed food people buy. The vegetables and fruit at the markets are plentiful and reasonably priced.

Most people eat meat rarely—it’s expensive. Bread tends to be the staple, but they eat rice also, when the price isn’t through the roof as it is now.

So this morning I actually finished the third of four course plans, with readings and exercises. There’s one more to go, but I really can’t do it until I get back home to some more resources that I can’t access online. So have to get the printer, start printing and proofing, and getting that part of the work wrapped up. Whew. Feels good.

You all have a great day. Be cool.

Discuss these notes from Afghanistan. 

About the Author: Beth Richards is the Director of Rhetoric and Professional Writing at the University of Hartford. Responses and questions about her experiences and the program can be sent to her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

All Photo Credits: © 2008, Beth Richards