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Confection

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  1. Confection

    One Less Friend

    By Confection,

    I knew what had happened when I read the subject line of the email from Stas: “Chon”.
     
    I had met Chon about four years ago when he and Stas began dating. Well-traveled, fluent in English, British educated, funny and sarcastic, we all liked Chon immediately. Witty and vulgar, he never really cared who he offended and we would spend long nights at Stas’s kitchen table or at the local Kazakhstani gay club drinking and stirring up drama. He worked at a law firm and was one of their top attorneys, even though he was only in his mid-twenties. Successful and determined, he moved from Almaty to Astana to further his career and then returned back to Almaty at the beginning of the year.
     
    Upon returning to Almaty he bought an unfinished apartment and moved onto Stas’s couch in the interim. Two weeks turned into months, and when I visited Almaty in February the strain in their now platonic relationship was beginning to show. One night, after being out at the club until 4am, Stas and I dragged our vodka-soaked asses back to his apartment on Masanchi. Stas brought a guy home which clearly displeased Chon. At 8am Chon was up, coughing, singing and strutting around the apartment in his high-cut black bikini briefs and tight black tank top. Chon never was one to let someone else have a good time at his expense.
     
    I didn’t realize it at the time, but Chon was really sick then. He was such a damn queen I thought it was an act. He died yesterday.
     
    I will never meet another friend quite like him. I can just see Chon now, in his bikini briefs and tank top with a set of matching black angel wings.
  2. Confection
    (Ain't none of y'all going to get this.)
     
    In East Africa, you have two options for satellite TV: either the European stations that have CNN and ESPN or the Arab stations that have I.Q.-reducing shows like Dr. Phil, Rachel Ray, Wife Swap and Cheerleader Nation (Dubar won, by the way). For all of these reasons, my husband and I chose the latter.
     
    Anyway, there is this juice comercial that runs approximately 300 times an hour on the Saudi station. It features a cross section of Arab society--flight attendants, school children, women in hijabs, Arab men in Kiffeyeh on their knees with arms outstretched--all of them pleading into the camera with varying levels of distress: "Mafi da naw?"
     
    Since I don't speak Arabic, I have no idea what they are saying, but nonetheless, I have somehow absorbed the sentiment. Now, whenever something is unexpected or upsetting, I automatically yell, "MAFI DA NAW?!?!"
     
    Like today, I found out that the Great Ethiopian Race might be postponed from September 9th. (MAFI DA NAW?!?)
     
    And last night Shoa Supermarket did not have fresh strawberries. (MAFI DA NAW?!?)
     
    See? I knew none of y'all was going to get this.
  3. Confection
    How Snegurochka might look at two months
    I just found out that the pregnant cat across from my office gave birth this morning. My little Snegurochka was one of the four.
     
    Now I am not really sure what to do. When is the right time to take a kitten away from its mother? Four weeks? Eight weeks? Can I make her food myself or should I buy the hella expensive cat food they import?
     
    So many questions. I have never had a brand new cat before!
  4. Confection
    Hit the road!
     
     
    Since it is almost time for all Americans to travel for the Memorial Day weekend, I thought it was time to pass on the knowledge I have gained in my travels.
     
    On the road:
     
    1. Check your tire pressure and fluids before you hit the road. Take a cell phone and make sure your ipod is charged.
    2. Time your trip to avoid rush-hour traffic in urban areas. While this usually means 5:00 pm, take into account lunch traffic and church-goers heading to buffet restaurants on Sundays.
    3. When your tank gets to ¼ full, pull over and get more gas. You never know when there is going to be a slow-down on the interstate and you definitely don’t want to be the dumbass who ran out of gas and is stuck on the side of the road. Use your fill up as an opportunity to powder your nose and replenish your supply of Diet Coke, Camel Lights, Rold Gold pretzels and Ephedrine.
    4. Only pass in the left-hand lane, even if you are the only one on the road.
    5. Use your turn-signals, even when changing lanes. Truckers appreciate this.
    6. Truckers also appreciate if you blink your lights to let them know they can pass.
    7. Scan stations when you hit college towns. There are usually good college stations out there, or at the very least you can catch some NPR.
    8. If you turn off and the next gas station is over a mile away, get back on the interstate and go to the next exit. Trust me.
     
     
    In the air:
     
    1. Before you check in, call the airlines and let them know your seating preference. Ain’t no need being in the middle if you can have the window!
    2. If you have a small bladder, take the aisle seat.
    3. If you are on a short flight and have only carry-on luggage, be the first one on the plane. This way, you can guarantee that your carry on is in the bin above you and not somewhere in aisle 55, thus ensuring you can jump up as soon as the plane hits the ground, grab your shit and muscle your way to the door. (By the way, all of that blather about people traveling with children boarding first is bullshit. They never check.)
    4. If you are on a long-haul flight and have checked bags, be the last one on the plane. This way, if there are extra seats on the back of the plane, you can take a few and stretch out.
    5. Order a special meal. Special meals come first, so you can eat, take your Xanax, drink your wine and be ass-out before the rest of the plane has gotten their meals.
    6. After meals everyone goes to the bathroom. Be first to avoid the post-meal rush: when you hear the food cart a rumblin’, get up and pee. Having a special meal makes this easier.
    7. If you are traveling on an African airline, be sure to confirm your ticket at all stages of the process—when booking, prior to departure, at check-in and at the gate. African airlines sometimes have trouble accounting for their passengers, so these steps are necessary (perhaps Afghan airlines should take a lesson!).
    8. Wear shoes that you can slip on and off easily. Danskos are ideal. Crocs might cause an international incident.
    9. Be sure to bring your eye mask and earplugs if you plan on sleeping. The airline knows how much you hate screaming babies and will place you directly behind one without fail.
    10. Never get behind Russians in the security check if you can avoid it. Russians will NEVER remove any article of clothing without explicitly being told to do so and they always wear lots of spangly, bedazzled items that set off the metal detector. You will know they are Russians because the men are wearing off-white, pointed, fake crocodile shoes and have tucked in shirts. The women have bleached hair, high heels, egregious eye make-up and tight pants. It will take them and their requisite two children at least 15 minutes to be cleared by security, all the time bitching at the security people in Russian and acting like they don't understand what is going on.
    11. Getting schnockered before a flight originating outside of the US is perfectly OK and flight attendants are usually more than happy to facilitate this process. However, no more than two drinks before you board in the US. (Haven’t you all seen the TV show “Airline”?)
    12. Xanax. Never fly without it.
  5. Confection

    Going Home

    By Confection,

    One of the questions I was asked repeatedly before leaving Afghanistan was, “So, are you going home before heading to your new post?” To which I would reply, “I just spent a week in Kazakhstan. That was my break.” Generally, people who don’t know me very well think it is strange that I would take a break from Afghanistan in another Central Asian ‘stan. But this is how it is: I have spent most of my adult life in Kazakhstan and I have family and friends there. Most of what I know and how my adult character has been shaped is due to my time in the former USSR. I can’t bear dirty shoes or wrinkled clothes, bring a gift whenever invited to someone’s house, take my shoes off at the door (and put on slippers) and even last night caught myself sticking a cork under the metal handle of a pot lid. It is more than these habits, though, and this is what sucks about my lifestyle and my line of work: it is the relationships you form with the people you have to leave.
     
    I first came to Kazakhstan with the Peace Corps, just out of grad school. After only three days in-country, with quick and intense Russian lessons, I was handed over to the people with whom I would live for the next three months. Hating children, I had requested to live with a couple about my parent’s age with adult sons. Reihan and Syrail came to pick me up at the sanitorium with their daughter-in-law, Ranosha (who spoke a little English). In a rented Lada, they took me away to my new life in a small village near Talgar. What I remember most about that day was watching my future husband walk off with his Russian host family and wondering when I would see him again.
     
    The next two months were all about acclimating. I spent eight hours a day in Russian lessons, after which, Stas (another Volunteer in my village) and I would drink fortified wine and watch 18-year-old village boys play soccer with their shirts off. Reihan and Syrail treated me like their own daughter: the taught me pidgin Russian, made sure that I was well fed, and built me a shower in the backyard (they only bathed at a neighbor’s banya once a week and they had no running water). They took me to graduation ceremonies and to visit relatives. Syrail told me about how his father died in World War II before he was born and Reihan told me about her childhood emigrating from China with her 10 brothers and sisters. I was the first American they had ever known and they were anxious to tell me all about their people, the Uighurs. For those of you who don’t know (and most of you don’t), Uighurs are an ethnic group who live in the northwest of China in the area bordering Kazakhstan. Because they are Muslim and seek an autonomous state called East Turkestan, they have been persecuted by the Chinese government, labeled terrorists, forcibly sterilized, tortured, and generally experienced all of the other terrible fates that befall minorities in China. (Some of you might recall that there were some Uighurs held in Guantanamo; the US had no further reason to hold them but knew they would be sentenced to death in China, so they sent them to Bulgaria after their release.)
     
    After my initial three months with my new family, I was sent out on my own to live in Siberia. Before I left, Reihan gave me a freshwater pearl necklace which she had gotten from her mother, “I never had a daughter, but if I had, this necklace would have gone to her” she told me, “you are my only daughter.”
     
    I wrote letters to Reihan and Syrail (now “Mama” and “Papa” with the accent on the last syllable) and called them, and of course visited when I traveled to the Southern city of Almaty. When they found out I was getting married, they bugged me about having children, even offering to raise a child for me whom I could visit on the weekends. When I finished my two-year stint in the Peace Corps, leaving Mama and Papa was heartbreaking. As we were all crying and hugging goodbye, I took a petal from one of Mama’s rosebushes in the courtyard for safekeeping, somehow hoping that a small charm would bring me back to them.
     
    It was almost a year before I came back to work in Western Kazakhstan. Then, luckily, was offered a job in Almaty, only 40 minutes from Mama and Papa’s village. For the next two years, I saw them nearly every weekend. Once, my husband was building a fence around our Almaty yard and Papa and one of his sons came to help. A nosy Kazakh (drunken) neighbor ventured over several times asking questions about me and my husband and what we were doing there. “I was in the military in Belarus, where I met the girls’ mother,” Papa told the neighbor about me, “she is my biological daughter, but her mother moved to America right before she was born.”
     
    Nearing the end of my two-years in Almaty, my host father had a heart attack. Mama told me the prognosis was poor; we went to see him in a truly Soviet hospital in Talgar. I remember driving up in the snow in my beige Neva, and walking down the long, dingy hallways. Papa was lounging in the room in a track suit with another patient. He was feeling alright (Mama had not told him what the doctors said) and once assured that he would be OK, I proceeded back down the stairs. On the way down, I heard him tell his roommate, “That was my American daughter”.
     
    During my time in Kazakhstan, their first and second grandsons were born. Abdullam and Rabkhat, now six and four, have known me all of their lives.
     
    When they found out I was leaving once again, they were upset. When they learned I was going to Afghanistan they were just as anxious as my American Mom and Dad. Luckily, there were direct flights from Kabul to Almaty, so I was able to visit three times during my two years in Afghanistan. The last visit was just a few weeks ago, right before coming to Africa. I took a marshrutka (minibus) from the central bus station in Almaty to the village, bearing gifts for everyone and when I got there, Mama was not around. “Where’s Mama?” I asked frantically. “She’s at the hospital, we will go and see her tonight.”
     
    After finishing dinner, and spending time with Abdullam and Rabkhat crawling all over me and vying for attention, my host father broke the news: Mama’s youngest sister, whom I had met several times and visited, had died of a sudden stroke ten days before. Mama had high blood pressure and that is why she was in the hospital. Rustam (the older son) and Papa drove me back to Almaty about 7:00 pm to the hospital. It was a nice place—the Presidential hospital, where Nazerbayev has his own ward—the complete opposite of where Papa had to stay a few years before. Mama was crying and upset when we saw her, putting aside her grief, the first thing she asked me was, “did you eat?”
     
    Mama told me again about her sister, about what a good person she was and how she had saved her whole life (her sister was a surgeon at the Veteran’s Hospital) and was just at the point in her life where she could relax (her first grandchild had just been born) when she died. I realized that it was the stress of her sister dying that put Mama in the hospital. I promised to visit a few days later.
     
    That next Sunday, Stas (the Volunteer from my village, now an old friend who can’t seem to leave Kazakhstan) and I went to see Mama at the hospital. Anyone familiar with the Soviet system will tell you that the hospital stay is TEN DAYS. No more, no less and most people go to the hospital to relax or recover from a cold. Mama was sharing a room with a Russian war veteran and another talkative old lady. After giving me money to buy candy (Mama knows how much I love sweets) she took us around to introduce me to everyone on her hall. “She doesn’t look like you” the talkative old woman said.
     
    Saying goodbye was hard. I knew that I was leaving Asia and I was not sure when I would be back. Even living in Bangkok or Delhi I could fly back to Kazakhstan for a week easily, but my new position in Africa makes visits to Mama and Papa almost untenable. I broke down as soon as we walked out of the hospital. “Come on, let’s go get a beer,” was Stas’ reply.
     
    So this is my Uighur family from Kazakhstan. It’s strange how you can form relationships with people who have such different backgrounds, cultures, and languages, but grow to care about them as much as the people you have known your whole lives. It really sucks when you have to leave, but I am sure I will be back.
  6. Confection
    No one ever wants to hear a doctor say the word "larva" when making a diagnosis.
     
    It seems I brought a little something back from my two-week trip to Africa.
     
    The CDC describes hookworm (ONE of the MANY possible parasites I MIGHT have):
     
     
    These barely visible larvae penetrate the skin (often through bare feet), are carried to the lungs, go through the respiratory tract to the mouth, are swallowed, and eventually reach the small intestine. This journey takes about a week. In the small intestine, the larvae develop into half-inch-long worms, attach themselves to the intestinal wall, and suck blood. The adult worms produce thousands of eggs. These eggs are passed in the feces (stool). If the eggs contaminate soil and conditions are right, they will hatch, molt, and develop into infective larvae again after 5 to 10 days.
     
    Fantastic. But one must also consider that the doctor "never sees these things in Afghanistan" and might be wrong about the diagnosis.
     
    If I spend only two weeks in the Horn and come back with worms what will happen when I live there for two years?
  7. Confection

    The Scream

    By Confection,

    Dear Crocs Fans,
     
     
    I want to send a message out to all of those people who wear these hideous things: stop. Stop now. Crocs are ugly in a nefarious, soul-sucking way. No one looks good in them and no one gives a fuck how comfortable they are. I don't care if you are a nurse, waitress or lunch lady--invest in some Danskos and retain your dignity.
     
    And to add insult to injury, they now have charms for them. I swear, when I get to Tennessee in four days and see these things schlepping around my local mall, I am not sure how I am going to restrain myself. People: I live in Afghanistan. I see starving children, dead kittens, amputees and sheep being beheaded on my way to work everyday. There is so much ugly in the world. Please take the time to make wise shoe choices so that when I come back to America I won't have to BEAT YOUR ASS.
     
    Warmest,
     
    Confection
  8. Confection
    At 3 am exactly: boom. It sounded like a thunderclap above my house but without the crackling sounds.
     
    “Did you hear that?”, I asked my husband. Before he could answer, boom, boom, again in quick succession. The house shook. “Should we go downstairs?”
     
    I grabbed my laptop (important work information) and we ran down the stairs, afraid to turn on the lights and possibly make our house a target (although strange that the one night we have electricity all night there are rocket attacks). At the bottom, I missed a stair and went flying on to my face and my laptop landed with a smack. We decided to turn on the lights and go back up to bed.
     
    This was the second rocket attack in so many weeks, but this was close. It sounded like it hit district 10, over near Butcher Street. Last week the target was the district 5 police station.
     
    It’s only been about five hours so no news yet on what happened or where the rockets hit.
     
    There are only two fucking hills in Kabul. It looks like the ANA/ANP (Afghan National Police/Army) could get a few guys together for each hill to apprehend the motherfuckers when they shoot these off. You’ve let me down again, GoA!
  9. Confection

    Oh, hell no.

    By Confection,

    Alright, Government of Afghanistan: I have turned a blind eye when you allowed one of my co-workers to be kidnapped, let it slide when you stood by as rioters looted my house and burned down my office, but the provision that has recently gone into effect is where I draw the line.
     
    Yeah, I know about it. I found out when I spent 35 minutes in a hot car riding down the IED-prone Jalalabad Road to the PX to pick up some beer. The security guy at the door looked at my passport and pointed out the sign
     
     
    Effective August 16, 2006, by decree of the Ministry of the Interior, only individuals with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force, aka Coalition), UN or diplomatic identification will be allowed to purchase alcohol.
     
    You thought you had me, right? I know you've got something to prove: regular Afghan shops selling beer and the resurrection of Vice and Virtue Office mean that you have to cut back and show you have power. Plus, your new Minister of the Interior was a runner-up--the Parliament rejected him from the Supreme Court because he is a conservative whack job. Well listen up: nothing keeps me from my Pino Grigio, not a decree from the Ministry nor some South Asian cashier at the PX.
     
    I bought my beer and liquor in open defiance of your decree (with a little flirting with a guy with an ISAF badge) and I will not be deterred. There are few things I am willing to fight for, and my dear friend Ron Bacardi is one of them. It's ON.
  10. Confection
    Summertime is wedding time in Afghanistan. Long, boring, hot, segregated wedding parties are as unavoidable as dirt and scorpions this time of year. While the men sit downstairs drinking tea, eating mutton and listening to music at the wedding hall, me and the other “females” are upstairs, all painted up, dancing to the live band and trying to avoid the children running buck wild all over the place. While I have always been skillfully adept at fleeing Afghan weddings, I have seen enough to know that few social events anywhere in the world are as strange and tediously predictable.
     
    Things to know when you go to an Afghan wedding:
     
    1. There will be no ceremony. The ceremony takes place in a mosque a few days before. The “wedding” you are going to is really just dancing, food, music and no alcohol (while the men can get away with sneaking a few sips, this is strictly taboo for women).
     
    2. If you bring your significant other and he/she is of the opposite sex, you are not going to see him/her all night. Men sit downstairs, women sit upstairs. Don’t ask questions.
     
    3. If you are a woman, wear the brightest outfit you have, the highest heels and lots of make-up (when in Rome…).
     
    4. Expect to see the bride and groom together for only a few minutes, after they have greeted guests for hours.
     
    5. The bride and groom will be related.
     
    The weddings are always held at a huge wedding hall that is covered in mirrored glass and neon colored bas-reliefs. The hall is rented out solely for such occasions. The food is thrown at you by 15-year-old Afghan boys on large, communal plates. Dishes at weddings always include rice, mutton, chicken, a salad of tomatoes, hot peppers and cucumbers, fried eggplant, spinach and some type of gelatin dessert. Green tea will be served without fail.
     
    While I cringe when I see the pink frilly wedding invitation on my desk, sometimes it is good to get out and see what the Afghans are up to. It is refreshing to see women dressed in their finest, talking and laughing with each other without being self-conscious. For many of them with houses to keep and children to look after, weddings are the one event where they can come and (literally) let their hair down.
     
    If you are un/fortunate enough to be invited to an Afghan wedding in your lifetime and decide to go, be prepared: practice your basic Dari, make sure you look good (everyone will be staring) and get ready to eat. It will be an event you will never forget.
  11. Confection

    Got my order

    By Confection,

    After being carried from the Midwest to South Central (Asia), I nearly lost my order when Schwig's housekeeper threw it in the trash. Luckily it was salvaged before garbage pick-up.
     
    But it made it. I ordered large bottles of Queen of Sheba, Lady MacBeth, Persephone, Lolita and Embalming Fluid. There were also about 7 imps thrown in for free. I got Embalming Fluid smell unsniffed, but it turned out well: a little piney-limey on first application, but then it dried down to Body Shoppe's grapeseed soap. Not bad.
     
    However, the imps I am not to sure about: it seems that many of them seem like 1980's Coty imposters (Emeraude, anyone?). Perhaps the new scents are retro, but they do not seem as innovative as the ones rolled out two years ago when there seemed not to be such a frenzy to put out new scents.
     
    Not to offend, but this is my opinion. That's why I keep ordering the old standbys over and over.
  12. Confection
    I was reading Christina Lamb's blog and came across this.
     
    My favorite quote is about the Ariana Airlines hijacking: A few years ago when a group of Afghans hijacked an Ariana plane and flew it to Stansted to demand asylum, I called the Ariana head office in Kabul for a reaction. The man I spoke to was stunned. “I didn’t think any of our planes could fly that far”, he said.
     
    True.
     
    If you don't know much about Afghanistan, especially under the Taliban, I suggest you pick up Lamb's book The Sewing Circles of Herat.
  13. Confection

    A Public Apology

    By Confection,

    To the Diners at the Mac Restaurant, White Sands Beach, Koh Chang, Trat Province, Thailand:
     
    I am writing to apologize for the involuntary act I perpetrated at 8:30pm, Thursday, June 22, 2006. If I had been given a choice, I would not have projectile vomited without notice in front of at least twenty individuals who were enjoying their dinners, facing the sea, when I walked across their field of vision, yakked, and then kept on going without pause. Yes, it was rude; but I maintain that I had no control at that point and I thought that I was safe to walk the few hundred meters back to my bungalow as I had vomited less than 90 seconds earlier behind a palm tree at the Lagoon restaurant (adjacent to the Mac).
     
    No, I was not drunk. I had consumed less than half of a (small) Singha that evening. Also, I had not overeaten, as I had only taken two bites of my red curry vegetables before the obscene event took place (which was done just to appease my husband who was offended that I ordered food which I had no intention of eating). I blame the amount of sun I had been exposed to that day; while living in Afghanistan I rarely have the chance to run around bare-assed naked all the time, everywhere, so my body was not able to process the copious amounts of Vitamin D in my system.
     
    In sum, I am sorry for ruining your meals. I hope this incident was not the worst of your vacation.
     
    Sincerely,
     
    Confection
     
    P.S. Confidential to the lady who said “revolting” as I shuffled past: fuck off.
  14. Confection
    The next day (today) was the day of reckoning. Today I had to go and see for myself just what had happened. I choked down some Nescafe and went to my office. It was like a scene out of a war movie. The entire building was burned; the roof had caved in and there was the smell of an electrical fire in the air. I walked around to the side of my office and saw that it was still smoldering. There were papers and parts of computers scattered all over the ground. A few Afghan colleagues came up with sad faces and put their arms around me. I started to cry. It was so sad, all of the things that we do to help people in this country and this is what happens.
     
    After the office visit, it was time to survey the house. A crowd of neighbors watched us drive up and walk through the gate. It was a complete mess. The windows were broken, there were chocolate chips smashed into the carpet, cans thrown around, furniture broken. The pearl necklace my parents gave me for my birthday was gone, but luckily my diamonds were still there. They had taken everything out of the cabinets and closets and turned them over. They stole mine and my husband’s shoes, our DVDs, our laptop, two digital cameras, two DVD players, two TVs, an iron, two satellite receivers and dishes and an external hard drive. I was so mad. It wasn’t as bad as I had imagined, but it was still terrible.
     
    We cleaned up what we could and decided to never stay in that house again. I guess this is what it feels like to be robbed—you just feel so violated. I came back to the guesthouse and that’s where I am writing from now.
     
    This is the official news of what happened:
     
    Police sources have reported the following detail regarding the civil disturbances in Kabul on the 29 May 06.
     
    The initial RTA involved 22 vehicles, several of which were overloaded buses. Six persons were killed as a result of the RTA and a further 5 were killed in SAF that immediately followed.
     
    A total of 300 individuals were detained during the disturbances, of these 92 remain in custody. ANP claim that 12 of these persons were 'ringleaders' and 3 of them were armed at the time of there arrest.
     
    NDS state that they arrested 6 Pakistani males in the Karte Char area (PD3). The individuals are believed to have been rioting in the area and were in possession of combustibles at the time of their arrest.
     
    So far today the city has remained calm, a planned demonstration at the Kabul University has been dispersed through negotiation between ANP and rally leaders. A second demonstration in the vicinity of the Serena hotel has also been dispersed.
     
    The immediate area of Sarae Shamali (RTA location) has been sealed of by a large number of Afghan Security forces in order to prevent any demonstrations in the area.
     
    A curfew will be in place tonight 2200-0400hrs. Any persons stopped after this time will be detained at an ANP station until the reason they have broken the curfew is ascertained.
     
    There are a lot of stories from my ten colleagues who stayed behind to fight. More on those in the next few days.
  15. Confection

    One Year On

    By Confection,

    Today is the one-year anniversary of when it all happened.
     
    At 8:30 pm on Monday, May 16, 2005 I got the call. Mark, a guy who works for me, phoned crying and said, “there’s been a kidnapping. It was C”. C was the manager of a program for vulnerable women and widows at my organization. I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless and distraught and phoned a friend I’ve had for years who is also living in Kabul. I was screaming and shouting and my friend, and having heard that someone from my organization had been abducted, she thought it was me. I calmed down enough to let her know what was really going on and to let her know the details: C was traveling back from yoga class. Mark and another woman had been dropped off when two white Corollas blocked the road, men with Kalashnikovs broke the passenger side window and dragged her out. They went in the direction of the British Cemetery—that’s all we knew.
     
    Although there had been warnings and at least three prior attempts, we were not sure who had taken her or what they wanted. Was it the Taliban? Was it a gang? I sat on the patio in the Qalala Pushta house and drank wine and smoked cigarettes all night, waiting for the phone to ring. My husband came out and put his arms around me. “It’s going to get worse, so prepare yourself”, he said.
     
    I thought back to the staff meeting we had had that morning. I remember seeing her there, all of us crowded around the table in my cramped office. She looked great; wearing a new black blouse that she got from my favorite shop, Crystal Light. I wondered what would happen to her. Would they rape her or kill her? What did they want? I kept saying to myself that she was such a nice person, how could this happen? The ironic thing was, she was supposed to leave Afghanistan three weeks earlier but had decided to extend her contract. The morning that it happened I went to Chicken Street to buy her a silver bracelet for her birthday party on Wednesday night. We were going to have a cookout for her 33rd birthday.
     
    The next day at work was useless. All of the international staff walked in, zombie-like and feigned being busy. I went out on the back stoop to sit with the guys while they chain smoked. The Director called a staff meeting at 9 to tell everyone what he knew. He had been up all night—in contact with the Embassy, with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), with C’s family and with our headquarters in the states. No one had any idea what was happening. We filed into the conference room and the Director explained the situation: no demands have been made; we do not know where she is or who has her; two groups are claiming responsibility. While the Afghans in the room were threatening to find the people responsible and do all kinds of nasty things to them the Director’s phone rang. It was the kidnappers. The negotiations began.
     
    I felt like I was in an action movie or a documentary: sitting around the table in the dining room at the office talking about what had happened and what we were going to do. The head of security for our organization came out from the states and took over my office; two people from International Risk arrived to develop a strategy; there were reporters. Different groups started making demands: remove international troops from Afghanistan, shut down Arman Radio (a progressive radio station that plays heathen music such as Britney Spears); but soon we were able to determine that Timur Shah had her. He was calling from her cell phone.
     
    Timur Shah was a murderer. He had killed and been found guilty, but since the police could not find him and put him away they had incarcerated his mother instead, hoping that this measure would force him to turn himself in. However, he did not turn himself in, but decided to kidnap a foreigner instead to secure his mother’s release.
     
    The next few weeks were a nightmare. Timur Shah had said that he had strangled her at one point (which all the media in Afghanistan reported), then took it back. The guys at my work bought time with the local cell phone company to send instant messages to all subscribers asking for information. Stickers and posters were made and distributed. The widows from C’s program rallied. (One funny point was when the widows carried a sign at one of the demonstrations that read, in English, “C made us widows!”) We were on the international news. Consultants came and went. Negotiations dragged on. Two times in the first two weeks we were close to a release and then nothing.
     
    The only reprieve for me was a trip to Bangkok for a conference. I thought that I had gotten away from all of the stress and anxiety until I picked up a Wall Street Journal during a coffee break. There, on the front page, was a short paragraph stating that a video had been released. It was on the news that night, but I refused to watch it. I just couldn’t take it because I knew what the inevitable next step would be. In the video, which I saw later, she was rolled in a carpet with a scarf on her head (which she never wore) and an AK-47 pointed at her. They asked her to state her father’s name and then her brother’s. When she said her brother’s name Timur Shah replied, “I am your brother now”.
     
    After 25 days, she was finally released on June 9. No one called; I saw it on CNN. She was immediately whisked out of the country. We watched Euronews as her plane landed and she was greeted by her Prime Minister. Surrounded by her family as she walked off the plane, she was wearing the black blouse that I had envied at our staff meeting nearly a month before.
     
    Two weeks after her release, we got an email from her telling us what had happened. After being abducted she was taken to a house not far from the spot where the kidnapping took place, in the same neighborhood where many of our staff live. The kidnappers did not hurt her in any way; she had only lost weight and gotten a lot of mosquito bites. There were children in the house who would come and peek at her from time to time and she could hear women’s voices. She tried to time her bathroom visits (the toilet was a latrine across the courtyard) to the sound of passing helicopters, but soon they caught on. Timur Shah would ride his bike far away to use her cell phone so that he could not be tracked. And, most amazingly, she saw on television the rallies the widows were having for her release.
     
    All of us at work signed big banners to be sent to her in Europe wishing her well. Although the worst was over, some of us will always remember what happened on May 16. Mark still feels guilty that he was dropped off first that night (a consultant in Kabul when it happened placed the blame squarely on Mark) and many people from my work feel terrible that it happened and they could not do anything about it. C says she wants to come back to Afghanistan, but her government will not let her, at least in the near term.
     
    Now whenever I go out after dark, I am wary. Kidnappings still happen; one Nepali died in captivity not long ago after being abducted with a colleague at dawn in Kabul, and there have been several kidnappings and murders linked to the Taliban throughout the South since the beginning of the year. There is a fine line between living your life and playing it safe. While you won’t see me at the Coca Cabana [sic], the local “club”, anytime soon, I still have my share of nights getting drunk and playing pool at the Uzbek place or going out for dinner with friends. It’s a risk I have to take.
  17. Confection
    I am not really sure why I did it; I already had one from when I was 23 (and one is usually enough for most people). I was in-between jobs and desperate, so I took a drastic step: I got another Master’s degree.
     
    After three years of running off to take exams while my husband lounged by the pool in Kigali, lugging statistics texts to my office in Kabul, and declining friends’ Friday night invitations to Harlem Jazz so I could write reports, it’s all over. Now my business cards read:
     
    Confection Marzipana MA, MPH
     
    A tad anticlimactic, no?
     
    Three years of my life, countless hours and thousands of dollars for three little letters. And--get this--I am not even employed in the sector of my new degree (but rather in the discipline of my former Master's).
     
    Yeah, so now that it’s all over I am a little bit at loose ends. Without the demands of writing a thesis and taking courses I am not sure what to do. However, I have some ideas (in no particular order):
     
    -Get a pilot’s license (impossible for Americans in former Soviet Union)
    -Write a cookbook
    -Take up violin again
    -Learn to kick-box/cage fight
    -Improve my Russian grammar
     
    So heed my advice: if you have one Master's degree and are considering getting another, don't. It's really not worth it. Plus, you get yourself worked up into a frenzy of being active and studious on weekends that is really hard to undo.
  18. Confection
    So no more Ethiopia, no more Africa. Bacca, bas, halas, vso, that's it.
     
    I am back in the Soviet Union, working for an organization I swore I'd never work for again.
     
    They made me an offer I could not refuse.
     
    Still, it's nice: with my white complexion, round face, lean build, tight skirts and high heels I fit right in. It is so pleasant to walk down the street and have no one scream "foreigner!" at me every few minutes like they did in Ethiopia--and the sour cream is amazing.
  19. Confection
    It was Saturday before I heard something had happened. Already for 72 hours dozens of baby faced teenage boys with bullets in their shoulders, and pregnant women with gunshot wounds to their knees had been bundled over the border by family members. Thousands more stood waiting in no man’s land by the time Al Jazeera reported on the shootings on Saturday morning.
     
    At the time I wasn’t surprised—after all, things like this happen in Kyrgyzstan regularly now. The point about ethnic conflict was not really being reported until Monday morning. Even at that point the media said the violence was due to some gang activity, they didn’t mention men in Kyrgyzstan military uniforms were the ones setting Uzbeks on fire and pulling out their eyes.
     
    By Monday, I was writing indignant emails to friends about how I had not one single message or phone call about the situation, and I work for the main aid organization in Uzbekistan! My boss sent an Uzbek colleague out to review the situation on Sunday and he returned Tuesday with sterile facts about the camps: 3,248 people in Jalalquduq, 4,200 people in Poktabod. My colleague didn’t mention anything about the rapes or the mutilations. He also didn’t mention anything about the toilets, shelters or meals at any of the 40-odd refugee camps being set up along the Kyrgyzstan border. My boss sent me out to investigate along with our health project manager, Adolat.
     
    By then, late on Tuesday afternoon, I had some idea of what was going on. I knew the basic facts—37 camps, 80,000 refugees, mostly women and children—but I also had heard some of the rumors that were being reported, about the decapitations, shootings, and beatings of Uzbeks. I and my colleague drove the 5 hours out to the Fergana Valley and settled into our hotel in Margilan about 10pm. We had no idea what exactly we were doing, with whom we were supposed to meet, or what the implications of this trip (I am talking on a personal level) might have.
     
    At 9:00 we reported to the Andijon airport where the main coordinating center had been set up. Adolat and I sat there for 3 hours waiting for someone to be identified by the government to accompany us to the camps. In the small “press center” where we were waiting, a DVD was being looped showing men and women being carried into the Andijon emergency hospital with gunshot wounds. The time stamp on the footage read June 10, 3:10am. Until this point, I thought the shooting had started on Friday rather than Thursday. Yes, the three press men sitting next to us confirmed, it started Thursday. The DVD lasted for an hour and showed at least 100 people dead and dying, and was accompanied by a small set of laminated, bound pages of pictures of corpses. These photos included men with gunshot wounds to the head, women severely beaten and the charred corpses of toddlers wrapped in blankets.
     
    Our first stop was the emergency hospital where the injured were brought. We donned the requisite white coats (Adolat's actually an MD) and visited the wounded. Everything was white, clean, quiet and bleached. Young men stared languidly at the ceiling while doctors explained their treatments and the surgeons produced before and after x-rays to show to the American what action was taken. Thankfully, we were spared visits with the rape victims but were allowed access only to the ICU where the worst injuries were still recuperating. 170 people were brought to this hospital with gunshot wounds.
  20. Confection

    Amen

    By Confection,

    I came in this morning and had gotten a copy of the article referenced here about Muslim women having their hymens reconstructed. I shared it with my friend Hareg who informed me that infibulated women go to the doctor to have their infibulation "tightened up" for the husbands as a holiday gift. (If you don't know what infibulation is, it's when a woman has her clitoris, labia majora and minora cut out and then sewn together to ensure she remains a virgin until she marries. See my post on International Women's Day.)
     
    Y'all, what the fuck? At least Judith Warner knows what time it is.
     
     
     
    From today's New York Times.
     
     
    June 12, 2008, 11:37 pm
    Pure Tyranny
    Tags: chastity, patriarchy
     
    Righteous indignation is so easy, so pleasant, when you can sit back and fling it overseas.
    I had that edifying experience on the D.C. Metro Wednesday morning, reading in the Times about the Muslim women in France who are going to cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacement surgery so that they can bleed as seeming virgins on their wedding nights.
    It’s a practice that has, apparently, become relatively common in the immigrant communities of Europe. But, of course, it seems like hair-raising news in a country like ours, where a young woman’s right to do with her body as she sees fit has, for decades, been enshrined as perhaps the most essential part of her God-given human dignity.
    As my 11-year-old says, Yeah, right.
    Right after I finished reading the Times piece, I called the French Embassy to find out under what conditions French social security would pay for the hymen-restoration procedure. (It’s “mostly done in private clinics and in most cases not covered by tax-financed insurance plans,” said the Times article; “Oh la la!” said the receptionist to whom I relayed my query.)
    I then started rifling through my desk. And there, beneath a report showing paid family leave to be on the decline, beneath a Newsweek article on a new children’s book, “My Beautiful Mommy,” that tells the story of a mom who becomes even prettier after a nose job and a tummy tuck, I found the story that the hymen news had immediately brought to mind.
    It was also from The Times, from May 19, and featured 70-odd girls, of “early grade school to college” age, with their fathers, stepfathers and fathers-in-law-to-be, at the ninth annual, largely evangelical “Father-Daughter Purity Ball.”
    “The evening, which alternated between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing” – and which culminated, for at least one father and his daughters, with a dreamy walk in the night around a lake, “was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed,” said the Times article.
    “From this, it’s only a matter of degree to the man in Austria,” I’d scribbled across the first page.
    The “man in Austria,” of course, was 73-year-old Josef Fritzl, who was around that time also making headlines after it was discovered that he had kept his daughter, Elisabeth, 42, locked up in a cellar for 24 years, during which time he’d raped her regularly, and had her bear him seven children.
    (“It was a lovely idea for me, to have a proper family … down in the cellar, with a good wife and a couple of children,” he said in his confession.)
    Fritzl, a self-described “man of decency and good values,” had imprisoned his daughter after she began staying out all night and drinking. “I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth by force if necessary, away from the outside world,” he confessed.
    “Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,” Randy Wilson, one of the ball’s organizers, said at the Colorado Springs “Purity” event. “They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”
    I don’t want to take this analogy too far. I don’t mean to imply that there’s any equivalency between Josef Fritzl’s acts and the Purity Ball. Fritzl’s actions were uniquely horrific, and I am not accusing the men who danced in Colorado Springs of any crimes. But there is nonetheless a kind of horror to their obsession with their daughters’ sexuality. There is a dangerous boundary violation contained in their vow “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.” And there is even greater danger to the fact that this particular aspect of the nationwide “abstinence movement” has not been broadly denounced as the form of emotional violence against girls that it indisputably is.
    Judith Lewis Herman, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, whose work with and writings on incest victims in the 1980s revolutionized the understanding of the crime and its perpetrators, believes that incest, like rape generally, has to be viewed within a wider context of power relations. Incest, she says, is “an abuse of patriarchal power,” a criminal perversion of fatherly control and influence. It is perpetrated, in many cases, by men who present themselves as the guardians of the moral order. And it isn’t always physical; in her 1981 book (with Lisa Hirschman), “Father-Daughter Incest,” she writes that the violation can be emotional, too, as when a “seductive father” oversteps his boundaries and goes places he never should in his daughter’s head.
    “Something I need from dad is affirmation, being told I’m beautiful,” said 19-year-old Jordyn Wilson at the ball. “If we don’t get it from home, we will go out to the culture and get it.”
    Sexual abuse – judging by statistics mostly based upon reports of incest – has greatly decreased in our country in recent years. From 1992 to 2003, substantiated cases went down 40 percent, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Lisa Jones, a research professor at the center, says she thinks the impressive decrease isn’t just due to changed reporting patterns or data collection methods. “We feel like it’s very suggestive of a likelihood that there’s a real decline,” she said.
    There are many possible reasons for this improvement. But one, I think, that has to be considered is that girls’ and women’s status has risen. Acceptance of sexual assault and insult has declined. In a world where girls and women are stronger, “abuses of patriarchal power” are less tolerable, acceptable, and possible.
    Or should be.
    In highly secular France, the reaction to the drama over young women’s virginity playing out in Muslim communities has been public and profound. Justice Minister Rachida Dati recently had to fight off calls for her resignation after she upheld a ruling by a regional court that had annulled the marriage of two French Muslims because the bride turned out not to be a virgin.
    Our condemnation of cultural practices and beliefs in our own country that violate girls’ and young women’s dignity and most intimate personal boundaries should be no less total. For, when it comes to female chastity, much of what passes for “protection” is nothing less than sick.
  22. Confection

    Monkey Bite

    By Confection,

    I just don't fucking learn, now do I?
     
    I got bitten by a monkey.
     

    It was the innocent looking one on the left.

    See, I had to do a rapid assessment of a high-risk corridor in Northern Ethiopia last week and the husband and I decided to take some time to see Lalibela and Gondar. (You all know Lalibela--it's home to the rock-hewn churches and has been part of the Amazing Race TV show [the season with the professional wrestlers when Joyce and Uchenna won].) At any rate, in Gondar there is a woman who runs a charity which includes:
    1. Primary school for 27 children
    2. Donkey rescue
    3. Cat and dog rescue
    4. Veterinary facilities
    5. Income generation for people with disabilities
    6. Sponsorship for poor children, young adults and the elderly; and
    7. Primate rescue.
     
    It's the last one that was a problem. While the donkeys, cats and dogs were relatively docile, the monkeys are mean. I knew this and I went and tried to get my picture with one anyway. The bastard monkey ran up and bit me on the leg. My husband got it on film.
     
    Someday we will look back on this and laugh about the fact that I just don't understand that monkeys are not cute, they are not pets, and they are not friendly. In the meantime we will be calling the center and checking to make sure none of the monkeys exhibit signs of rabies.
     
    No wonder the people who used to own them got rid of them. Damn monkeys.
  23. Confection
    March 8 was International Women’s Day, although few Americans knew it. All over the world, women were dressing up in their best clothes, receiving chocolates and flowers from men, and drinking themselves silly.
     
    In Ethiopia, the day passed with little fanfare—a rally in Meskel Square against gender-based violence, some isolated gatherings celebrating women as “mothers, sisters, daughters” and the usual claptrap which accompanies the day. The events only started to scratch the surface on the hardships women in Ethiopia face. The statistics are alarming and disheartening:
     
    71% of Ethiopian women have, at some point in their lives, experienced sexual or physical violence at the hands of a family member or intimate partner. (Demographic and Health Survey, 2005)
     
    About 80% of Ethiopian women have had their genitals mutilated. Some of the girls are as young as seven days when they have their inner labia and clitoris cut off and sewn shut; some are as old as 15. As a result of this practice, girls experience psychological problems, difficulty giving birth (resulting in fistula), and increased susceptibility to HIV infection. (Demographic and Health Survey, 2000)
     
    Female Genital Mutilation is practiced throughout Africa, and in some parts of Asia and the Middle East.
     
    69% of marriages in Ethiopia are the result of abduction. In parts of Ethiopia, 46% of girls are married under the age of 15; for the country as a whole the average stands at around 31%. (UNICEF/NCTPE 2004).
     
    Ethiopia’s fertility rate is the highest in the world at 5.9 children per woman. (World Bank, 2007)
     
    The maternal mortality rate is 871 for every 100,000 live births; more than one-fifth of all deaths of women aged 15-49 are pregnancy related. (Demographic and Health Survey, 2005)
     
     
     
    But aside from the statistics, I can’t tell you how horrible it is to be driving down the road and seeing a woman bent over under the weight of fuel wood; how devastating it is to see women begging while breastfeeding their children, sitting on the side of the road; and how awful I feel when I hear that just last week a four-year-old girl was raped by the guard at her expensive, international preschool.
     
    So although International Women’s Day has passed for another year, be thankful for the women who came before and made all of your freedoms (and my freedoms) possible. Understand there is still a need for feminism in this world, no matter what the media or the Republicans try to tell you. There is still need for action and advocacy and agitation. We have not arrived.
     
     
     
     
     
    “Enabling Communities Abandon Harmful Traditional Practices”. UNICEF/Ethiopia and the National Committee on Harmful Traditional Practices, 2004.
     
    World Bank, Ethiopia: Accelerating Equitable Growth Country Economic Memorandum, Washington DC, June 2007, pp. 5-6.
     
    Central Statistical Agency [Ethiopia] and ORC Macro, 2006 and Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey, Addis Ababa, 2005
  24. Confection
    I love MSG. I think that people who decry its use are stupid and ill-informed. I worked in a Chinese restaurant throughout high school and college, and bloated customers would saunter in and order entrees with NO MSG and then order fried rice. "But the fried rice has MSG", I'd explain; they didn't care, "a little wouldn't hurt".
     
    To this day, all I can say in Mandarin is "bu no wei jin"--no MSG.
     
    At long last, I AM VINDICATED. Today's NYT has an article about MSG:
     
    March 5, 2008
    Yes, MSG, the Secret Behind the Savor
    By JULIA MOSKIN
    IN 1968 a Chinese-American physician wrote a rather lighthearted letter to The New England Journal of Medicine. He had experienced numbness, palpitations and weakness after eating in Chinese restaurants in the United States, and wondered whether the monosodium glutamate used by cooks here (and then rarely used by cooks in China) might be to blame.
     
    The consequences for the restaurant business, the food industry and American consumers were immediate and enormous. MSG, a common flavor enhancer and preservative used since the 1950s, was tagged as a toxin, removed from commercial baby food and generally driven underground by a new movement toward natural, whole foods.
     
    Even now, after “Chinese restaurant syndrome” has been thoroughly debunked (virtually all studies since then confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people), the ingredient has a stigma that will not go away.
     
     
    Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go boot up for my daily dose of MSG.
  25. Confection

    A Way to Help

    By Confection,

    Here's a way to provide educational opportunities to girls in Africa.
     
    (I am not affiliated with this organization. The founder is a former student of a colleague of mine.)
     
     
    Malawi is the "Warm Heart of Africa."
    Won't you warm someone's heart this
     
    Valentine's Day?
     
    The Advancement of Girls' Education Scholarship Fund (AGE)
    is offering a different way to show your love to someone this February 14th.
     
    Purchase a small gift box for $20 or more and support a girl's education in Malawi.
    A beautiful gift box will be sent to the recipient of your choice with information about AGE, a photo of an AGE Scholar, and a small, sweet surprise inside.
     
    Give a gift with meaning...empower a girl through education.
     
     
    All orders and payments must be received by 5:00PM EST on February 8, 2008 to ensure delivery within the US by February 14th. Please complete the attached order form and e-mail it to Katrina Sison at Katrina.Sison@tufts.edu. All payments must be completed on the AGE website (http://www.ageafrica.org/contact) through PayPal. Because of the short turn around, we are unable to accept checks for this Valentine's Day campaign.
     
     
    1 box: Minimum donation of $20
    2 boxes: Minimum donation of $35
    3 boxes: Minimum donation of $50
     
     
    (All pricing includes shipping and handling for deliveries within the US.)
     
    PURCHASED BY:
    Name:
    Email:
    Address
    Phone:
     
    Total Number Gift Boxes Ordered
     
    Total Contributions Submitted via Paypal $
     
    Date of PayPal Transaction
     
     
    (PROVIDE SHIPPING INFORMATION ON PAGE 2)
     
     
    SHIPPING INFORMATION
     
    Box #1 Recipient
    Name:
    Email:
    Address:
    Phone:
    Personal Message:
     
    Box #2 Recipient
    Name:
    Email:
    Address:
    Phone:
    Personal Message:
     
     
    Box #3 Recipient
    Name:
    Email:
    Address:
    Phone:
    Personal Message:
     
     
     
    Zikomo!
    (Thank you!)
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