Leaving Kabul…again

Leaving was bitter sweet. It’s always good to be heading home, but I am starting to feel attached to this place (after only two visits of one week each!) There is something about the culture, the landscape, the people that just sucks me in. I am also getting to the point that I know people in Kabul, Herat, and Jalalabad (although I’ve never been there) and can have something of social life here.

The journey home (which is only half-way through as I am writing this in Paris) has been arduous so far, with a few moments of enjoyment. My flight from Kabul left at 8:30am, so we had to be at the airport at 6:30 – another night of four hours of sleep. We flew into Dubai and my colleagues and I decided to take a hotel room to make that 14 hour layover a little more bearable. (This was not an easy decision for me after spending time with NGO staff that guilted me about staying in expensive hotels when working on poverty reduction.)

The first thing I did in Dubai was go to the gym for a good long run. I’m supposed to be training for a triathlon, but Afghanistan is really not the place to do it. I did manage to fit in one run at the guesthouse in Herat, but that’s it. After a few hours of work and after the heat of the day had dissipated (it was 44C/112F the day before we arrived), my colleague and headed out exploring the souks (markets). We went to the gold souk, the spice souk (where they laughed at me when I asked if they had Afghan saffron) and then took a water taxi across the harbor to the fabric souk. It was a surreal moment to stop and think that I had just been in Kabul, Afghanistan, I was now in Dubai and I would shortly be heading back to Washington.

Dubai is an interesting place. Very sterile in a lot of ways. It seems to have very low crime; it’s clean and shinny and new. Even the souks had wide streets and were brightly lit (unlike the souks of north Africa which are usually in a maze of dark disorienting alleys). But the most interesting thing about Dubai is its diversity. I do not think that I have been to a more diverse city in all my travels. We saw people from Italy, France, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Korea, West Africa and heard many other languages that I did not even recognize. And these were not tourists but people living and working in this strange city in the desert. I can’t say that it is a city that I would want to spend more time in, but it is certainly interesting. We returned to the hotel in time for a quick dinner and departure for the airport at 10:30pm for our 1am flight.

The flight was literally from hell. The gentleman in front of me tipped his seat all the way back. When I tried to tip my seat back, the West African woman behind me pushed my seat back into an upright position! She tapped me on the shoulder and went off at me in French (which I was too tired to understand). I eventually asked the flight attendant to intervene and explain the rules of seat etiquette to her (that you can tip your seat back). The West African woman eventually moved to the empty seat beside her. The seat next to me was occupied by a froggy Frenchman (as opposed to a nice Frenchman) who had a cold and kindly avoided coughing on his wife by coughing on me all night. Then the gentleman in front of me pushed my toe of the end of his armrest every time just as I was falling asleep. (I find the only way to sleep on a plane is to roll up into a ball against the window with my feet balance on the edge of the armrest in front of me.) All in all a miserable flight, but it just means the next one has to be better. (Sorry about the venting, but I am sitting here in Charles de Gualle airport with nothing else to think of but how tired I am!)

I'm now home so wanted to end on a brighter note. The last leg of the journey was great – three seats to myself and 6 solid hours of sleep! It was my first time coming back to my new home from travel and it is so good to be home! Of course, I can’t get too settled as I am heading to Ethiopia in just 10 days. More blogging then....