There are two things that really enliven overseas travel. Local food and their bathrooms. Obviously they go hand in hand, er, right hand then left hand in many places. First world countries have pretty much resolved this huge issue by ensuring clean water and providing central sewer systems in all their major urban areas. The rest of the world is playing catch-up. Visiting third world countries requires you, the traveler, to be aware and be wary of what you eat and where you go to relieve yourself…but this very real concern should not paralyze you or anyone else into locking yourself into a 5 star hotel during your stay abroad. Concerns should not prevent anyone from sampling local cuisine and, out of necessity, using a public restroom…well not so much. It is part of the adventure, part of the experience.
Eating local dishes in a third world country always fills me with anticipation, dread and hope. A new cuisine forces you to re-educate your taste buds, and if you are open to the exotic flavors, you will always learn to enjoy what is offered. I have had the pleasure to savor indigenous foods from many parts of the world. In Mexico I salivated at tables full of locally grown fruits and fresh caught fish. There is no way to compare the flavor of eating fresh food served in the area where it is grown, raised, harvested and/or picked. In Castroville, California, which calls itself the Artichoke Capital of the World, you can have artichokes made in every way imaginable. A veritable Bubba Gump shrimp-like menu for artichokes. You can eat artichokes on the half shell if you want. Did you know that Norma Jean was the first ever Artichoke Queen? (a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe) I won’t even go into the “native” foods I ate in France or Italy because they use pounds of butter and garlic so that is cheating and doesn’t count. In India, I fell in love with Samosas and Tandoori oven cooking…yummy.
The issue is how your digestive system reacts to the foods (thus the need for decent bathrooms) and the quality of their preparation and the inherent spices. Going to visit relatives in another state can and sometime does disrupt the workings of your bowels. This is especially true if you live in a city and you go to the country and have some fresh, locally grown produce. The reason I specifically discuss a city person going to the country is because a they are used to drinking chlorinated water. Country people usually have wells and they are not chlorinated. Chlorination will kill helpful bacteria along with the e coli and cholera. As you know, our systems are infested with billions of intestinal bacteria that aid our digestion. If you have ever had the pleasure of looking under a microscope you will be fascinated by this idea. In fact, without these good guy bacteria, we could not process anything we eat and we would die. This symbiotic relationship allows our bodies to get really good at utilizing local bacteria for processing the food we eat every day. It is a down home thing. When you move from down home, you have to re-educate your guts.
The staple of the Afghan diet is long grain Arabian rice and large platter sized slabs of leavened oven baked flatbread, called naan. My first days in Kabul were filled with huge serving trays of this rice and piles of flat bread. I like rice, being a Cuban and all. Rice everyday for me, is very nice. Other expats would not agree. Some days we had green rice called quorm and a delicious steamed rice with raisons and carrots and lamb called qabli pulao. Additionally we would be served a watery vegetable soup called shorma. These dishes were the staples we encountered everyday, rain or shine. The problem was the additional meat that would be presented with the staples. In Kabul we would be given unending amalgams of “yellow” or “electric green” chicken. The brilliant color of the chicken is the source of mind numbing snide remarks and bitch slapping admiration by all of those who eat it but do not enjoy it. Kentucky Fried it is not. Mystery meat never looked so oddly colored. There must be some truly special herbs and spices that the Afghan cooks use to attain the absolutely unreal tint and undeniably weird flavor. Definitely takes some getting used to.
The Kabul guesthouse menu was enhanced by a weekly serving of chicken fried “plank” fish, which was cooked so well that knives were useless against it. It was as hard and as tough as a board. If you stuck it into the microwave with a little bit of water, you could soften the fish up enough to enjoy it. At first we were served no other fresh food like green salads or vegetables due to the concern over the contaminated water everything is washed in. The few times I forgot this fact and tried some fresh vegetables that were not peeled, I suffered for a couple of days. I mean it is so wrong to be afraid of a zucchini or a tomato. We did have cooked vegetables, which were boiled to the point of extinction but anything fresh had to be examined carefully. The food in the Kabul guesthouse was nothing to write home about, (the Herat food is something else) so I will stop writing about it, and illuminate you on our dinner table discussions.
What to do in Kabul when you are NOT working.
It always amazed me that workplace feeding zones always revolved around “shop talk” discussions. It is totally like there is nothing else to talk about. After all these years, I have to admit that for a lot of people, the only safe subjects are sports and sex and work, not that there is anything wrong with that. My years of construction site lunches always seemed to degrade into a “fu**ing this or mother fu**ing that ” verbal assault on the English language contest. It amazed me that reasonably intelligent guys would lose their ability to speak in complete sentences without cussing like a sailor on leave. I surprise myself when I use only three or four words to describe my world. In the end, it was always safe to talk about work related shit, provided you don’t name names and get too pissy about it. But it is not safe to talk about personal feelings and/or any political, religious or social opinions. Just like conversations at home, difficult subjects are not to be broached in polite company. Fuck that. It was easier that way I understand, but come on, here we are in a war zone and somehow there are things we cannot discuss like mature adults. Then it dawned on me…the mature adult thing…maybe not so much, doesn’t matter where you are.For example, when I worked at the hospital is was impossible for the nurses to discuss anything but the most repulsive procedures they had been involved with that day. (this talk is for you Annie) It was a badge of “I-will-not-hurl” courage to flippantly detail the grossest parts of “healing the sick” day while stuffing our faces with food that looked like the fluids we recently extracted from some drug addled, fetid corpuscle of a human being. You know what hospital food used to be like. Remember? It blew me away how the nurses would laugh uproariously when discussing the latest enema explosion, with a mouth full of food mind you. This was so absolutely wrong yet it was absolutely hysterical at the time. Women in white outfits, with silly starched hats, talking about dysfunctional bodily functions is the essence of “shop talk” gone totally dysfunctional. I guess the fuck-all-this-shit discourse common on construction jobsites is a relief compared to the life and death failing body parts homily of nurses on the floor of a hospital. It still makes me laugh out loud…
In all truth, trash talking about “work” during lunch “at work” always drove me crazy. Discussing details concerning issues demanded by our paying jobs, should not be rehashed ad nausea during off time. I mean really? Here we are, in a heavily fortified compound, talking smack about our jobs. Wouldn’t it be better to have dreamy discussions about best vacations, family, funny jokes, silly stories, new technologies, cars, boats, bikes, whatever? Anyway, the liveliest discussions surrounded food choices in the Kabul guesthouse. After finally getting “scrubbed” fresh green salads served regularly, the group huddled up and decided to create a “menu”. The way it was supposed to work was that a couple of folks would go out and purchase whatever foods we wanted at the grocery store and give the company the bill, which they would reimburse us for. Since I was in Herat the majority of the time, I didn’t really get into the menu details except to say that we should request local foods like lamb and kebobs. At some point the geniuses upstairs decided that they would give us all an individual monthly food stipend to avoid the accounting “confusion”. Within a week, we added up what we usually spend vs. the newly imposed stipend, and we discovered that we would be getting $300 MORE than we usually invoiced the company per month. We all had to laugh long, hard and quietly at this absurd solution, but now we had more money to spend on beer and vodka. It was a good trade for us.
When asked by my compatriots what the menu was like in Herat, I would always answer, “It is awesome. The soups are much heartier and savorier, and the double daily dose of rice, bread and “it is not neon green” chicken is never ending.” Breakfast consisted of yesterdays’ rice and a couple of watery eggs which after a few weeks, I started frying myself. Then I would laugh. Except for the couple of times that I went out, that is exactly what I was served everyday at noon and again at dinnertime. Don’t get me wrong, the soup and chicken was really tasty, much better than in Kabul, so I really didn’t get too upset about the redundancy of my feeds. What did concern me about the Herati food was that after a day or two, my guts would get into a roil.
My stomach would start gurgling and “Mohammads revenge” would maliciously befall me. Mind you, I have always had a pretty strong ironclad stomach, so I usually take different foods in stride with little or no discomfort. This scene was really bothering me. Part of my job is to travel to the remote project sites that require me to be in a vehicle for a couple of hours each way. Unloading on the side of the road in the land of no trees did not appeal to me. I could not be away from the bathroom for more than fifteen minutes, so that made my site visits during these days impossible.
It took me several weeks to discover why this tasty food was upsetting my stomach. I would stop eating any chicken and/or soup once the distress signals from my stomach started up. I would just eat the rice and bread with the never ending pot of green tea. My cook would then ask me why I was not eating anything. He does not speak or understand English so our “conversations” were a combination of charades like hand signals and the use of simple words would culminate in me holding onto my stomach and frowning. Universal for my gut is fucked. What ensued after this exchange was predictable and not very helpful. One of my co-workers, who did speak English, would ask me if I needed to see a doctor. “No, thank you, but thanks for your concern, I'll be fine in a couple of days” I replied. Properly trained doctors in Afghanistan are rare and I had already found out that there were no trained doctors anywhere in Herat. “Do you need medicine?” they would ask hopefully. The Afghanis were always very interested in helping me however they could. I know it was part of their job to take care of me but it seemed like they took special care, which I sincerely appreciated. “No thank you, I have my own drugs.” I would answer quietly. “I will be fine in a couple of days”. The frightening part of their offer for medicine was that they would go to the nearest pharmacy and buy “stomach” pills, better known as the “pink pills”, no prescription needed, ever. Well, these pink pills are flagyl (metronidazole) which is an antibiotic used to treat giardia lamblia, a water borne parasite. They would try to push them to me for what ever perceived ailment I had. The pink pill was their cure all and they were not afraid to use it. A lot. Hmmm.
What my Sherlock Holms-ing discovered was that my food was being cooked in boiling lard…after they cooked the chicken in the lard, they would use the left over "drippings" as stock for the soup. I had already observed quite an oil slick on my soup if I let it cool down a little. Everyday they would save the used lard by straining it, setting it on the counter, covering it with a towel and using it the next day to cook more chicken. The problem was that they were using LARD! Duh. They were not refrigerating the used lard, so it sat in the heat (over 90ยบ inside during the day). Basically, it would get rancid. I pointed this out to my Director of the Herat office, Rafi, as delicately as I could. I did not want him to fire the cook. (this is unfortunately what usually what happens when I point out some problem, someone gets canned) Rafi proudly showed me a gallon of corn oil which he told me would be used once to cook my meals and disposed of. Unsaturated corn oil. Oh well, it was better than rancid lard. After this, I stopped having stomach distress upon my arrival to Herat. Yah!!! Small but substantial victories help make life in Herat more palatable.
No father's day to speak of out here. I am the only expat at the Western Zone office. The rest of my “peoples” are in Kabul. The nearest Americans are at the army base south of the airport which is about twenty five minutes away. I have begun to make a few acquaintances with the army regulars and who knows, maybe this will blossom into a friendship or two, which might be cool with the 4th of July coming. Do you think they might have some “shit that goes up and blows up” on an Afghanistan army base? Whoa daddy, it could be epic. The possibility of whacking a few rounds out of a 50 cal machine gun makes my eyes tear up…we will see…
So, Father’s Day was surreal and reminded me of my isolation. I have had a couple of the Afghani men visit me in my guesthouse in Herat and those times were very pleasant and may turn into deeper friendships in time. Fortunately, my kids, especially Max, have chosen to include me in their day to day activities/experiences which truly touches my heart. Unbelievable really. I have no expectations that I will/should be a big part of their adult lives. But I must say, the first time Max skyped me to ask my opinion about something or other, I welled up. He skyped me and we talked about how different it was not getting together with the family to celebrate. We have been very good at keeping those kinds of traditions alive. Max is currently doing an internship at UCLA for the summer, getting paid to conduct robotic algorithmic research with a proff and a grad student. He has decided that he really likes the work and the challenges it presents and was very proud to tell me that his newest test worked out well, way beyond expectations. Coolness I say, way cool it is, too proud I feel.Natalie is in Peru attending a community service camp near Machu Pichu. Her ability to communicate is very limited but I have heard from her that she is loving the people and the camp and Peru...I am very jealous of her South American sojourn since I had always planned to travel the continent...one of my top ten bucket list items. Maybe in the next life if I am not too late...I miss them both and will enjoy catching up with their budding lives and adventures in the near future.
I have something very surprising and stunning to share with you…next time…
Love, hugs, misses
create more peace everyday
