I Moved

June 2, 2007

Please remember that this is my experience in Afghanistan. It will not necessarily be yours, or anyone else's. This is a personal blog full of opinions -- it's not a series of newspaper articles. I make no claims to being completely accurate and I make NO claims to being impartial. There are opinions here that you may disagree with, based on your own knowledge and experience, and that's fine. In fact, I've changed my opinions since writing these blogs - even I disagree now with some of the viewpoints I express here in these blogs. I hope I come from a place of honesty and sincerity in these accounts, and I hope you will respect that this is merely one foreigner's perspective about what she saw and experienced, and that these capture a moment.
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I said goodbye to Assa 2 and moved to a new guest house yesterday. I now live in World Food Program guest house #2 (they have three guest houses in Kabul). I'm still mostly in Shahre Now - or Shahr-e- Naw, however you spell it in English). I'm near the Blossem Hospital. There's only one side of our compound that has a wall exposed to the street, and all the other walls are shared by equally-secure compounds of one kind or another - I hear the offices of CARE are right next door. I am told that I can use a private door in our back wall to go over to the Canadian-affiliated Maple Leaf Inn compound and have dinner and watch people play tennis, or even play tennis myself, if I can find a racket. Sports equipment is VERY expensive in Kabul - if you come here, please bring tennis rackets, basketballs, yoga mats, etc., that you would be willing to leave here.

I moved because I was tired of living in a *hotel*, never feeling like it was a home. I was tired of seeing all sorts of new men day-to-day or week-to-week and not knowing if they were guests or had just wandered in from the street, men who leer at you even when you are an overweight middle aged woman wearing bagging sweat pants and a t-shirt and don't smile (and, for me, not smiling is really hard). I was also tired of a certain group of men who make disgusting noises in the mornings and evenings during their walks around the courtyard and the way this group treats the hotel staff, and tired of one particular person from this group, and who I also work with, who finds excuses to call me.

At WFP#2, I'll save $600 a month over Assa 2, there's far fewer guests and they are all international workers. I have a courtyard I think I'm going to actually be in regularly - I didn't like the one so much at Assa 2 unless some male foreign co-workers were with me. While I'm giving up my own TV, I'm gaining a fridge, a normal-sized bathroom, a much, much faster Internet, two TV rooms (both with DVD players) and a cookout with my fellow guests every Friday.

The downside of moving to WFP#2, so far: one large, dieing cockroach found while I was unpacking and three dead in the floor when I woke up this morning. Yick.

There are some people from Assa 2 I miss very much and enjoyed seeing every day. The small hawk that the Assa 2 manager bought has been flying out in the mornings and then coming back on his/her perch to glare at us all. The dog that lives on the street outside Assa 2 is the only one that is happy to see me, greets me with a wag and lets me pet her (I only pet her on the head and then wash my hands immediately - dogs here aren't vaccinated against anything). And the manager of Assa 2 is a sweetheart.

If you are going to stay in Kabul for a couple of weeks, I think Assa 2 is a good choice, and I recommend it. But if you are going to live here longer term... there's better choices out there. Maybe even the Maple Leaf Inn - I dunno, I haven't checked it out yet.

What will I find when I come home here after work today? That remains to be seen... even if I stay just one month, I'll still have saved a whole lot of money. To be spent on carpets...

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