Winter!

It is really frosty now. Every morning when I jump out from bed I try to put on my six layers of clothes as quickly as I can. There is hardly 9º C in the bedroom and the curtains are frozen to icy windows. While the sun is rising, the ice flowers are melting rapidly.
Cold is the main topic among Afghans and internationals as well. We suffer together. Afghans don’t seem to know what are double glazes windows, so we covered our windows with plastic. It is a common tradition here.
We bought two sawdust ovens made by local master. Actually they are just metal buckets with some decoration outside. We use another, smaller bucket to fill it with sawdust. Actually, I need to compress sawdust quite a lot. I put smaller bucket inside the bigger one, light fire and – voilá! – oven runs for eight hours. At least theoretically.
The water pipes are usually installed outside of house walls. During night time (ca –10ºC to –15ºC) they freeze. So, most of houses – and many offices as well – don’t have running water and sewage system is often frozen as well.
At the beginning of this year, I went to Noborja Fort, to photograph in the headquarters of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. Most of Kabul’s internationals left home for Christmas. Only fragile young lady Molly was left there, pushing local staff to solve the problems with frozen pipes and unusable toilets... I have some previous experience from hiking in Siberia during wintertime, but Kabul reality seems to me much more frustrating. Body gets tired of everlasting fighting with cold.
At the other hand it has been so nice: lots of snow, bright sunshine during the daytime and transparent air (no dust at all!). Of course, there is lots of work connected with snow as well: every day somebody must climb up on roof to tidy up snow (because snow is heavy and flat mud roof is not waterproof) and there are lots of problems with traffic (afghans do not use winter tires and suitable non-freezing car liquids).
We missed the Christmas, but we got the local holidays instead, Eid-e Quorban. Andres’s colleague Elias tells us the story from Holy Quran: God ordered Abram to sacrifice his son. When Abram was about to start the sacrifice, the God stopped him and ordered him to sacrifice a lamb instead of his child. God said to Abram that he just wanted to understand how strong is Abram’s faith.
During sacrifice holidays, there are herds of sheep everywhere on the streets of Kabul. And one can see lots of taxis stuffed with sheep on back seat. Our landlord sacrifices a lamb as well and sends us some meat. This is a good time for beggars and for poor: rich must provide poorer ones with food. And hordes of men with bloody knives and axes roam on the streets, knocking on the doors and asking for meat…