Lounge Lizards

It's 45 degrees outside, and the Saturday spectacles have arrived at le Meridien. They're here every weekend. They consist of a clutch of tattooed French soldiers in a technicolour array of banana hammocks, budgie smugglers, nut crunchers, whatever you choose to call them. They lounge on all four sides of the pool sunning themselves alongside the multicoloured lizards that also adorn the poolside paving. I guess it must be welcome respite from their military schedule during the week, but it does make you think twice about heading poolside. You have to breathe in to keep your eyeballs in place.

The excitement of the week for the dwellers of N'Djamena has been a visit by George Clooney, and Mia Farrow who were here independently taking on the Darfur cause - to raise awareness in GC's case; and to record oral traditions on audio and video for a museum in Sudan, in Mia's. Since George was staying at the Meridien there were ripples of excitement everytime he wandered through the lobby. He must have lost half his body weight since he made Syriana. I hardly recognised him.

President Deby has been on a tour of the country over the last week and is due to continue into next week. This means our trip to the desert to train the community reporters has been postponed for 2 weeks. The president on the move constitutes a force majeure in Chad it seems. Whole towns and villages grind to a halt when he arrives with his 200 strong military entourage, so we wouldn't have got much done had we decided to do our training this week.

So it looks like I won't make it back to Niger for the time being. In a way I think it's not a bad thing to stay in one place. The team will hopefully benefit. I'm in the middle of translating a 60 page training manual on different formats of radio shows into French. It's like being back at university, but good for the vocabulary practise.

It also keeps me away from those bronzing beauties by the pool; and dare I say takes my mind off living in yet another place where I can't run about outside or walk down the street to a shop and stop and chat to passers by. The trip to the provinces can't come soon enough. To see and talk to real people in a village and attempt to understand the challenges of life here. To meet our audience and contributors who will hopefully get some benefit from our radio programmes. To feel alive and involved.

The new girl again

When you first arrive somewhere you’re so aware of everything you don't see and don't know. It’s like a negative image – you notice the huge holes in understanding more than the chunks of comprehension. But you have to just keep moving forwards – invest yourself and your time, ask questions, ask them again in another way, listen and sometimes talk. Then hope it comes together – just in time to go home again.

The team I’m working with here has been quite a challenge so far. We have recruited two male producers and two female producers, who are managed by an impressive middle aged Chadian woman, Z who’s very tough, and due to the hierarchical nature of working conditions here, the atmosphere is formal and not altogether open or friendly.

I’m working in French all the time, as we try and sort out their contracts, work out a production schedule, train the team how to work with community reporters and make inspiring good quality radio on youth and good governance. They fought tooth and nail over their contracts, were totally silent and moody as I tried to help them come up with a workable schedule. I felt like the teacher in Ferris Beuler’s Day Off when he’s in front of the class of spotty students saying: ‘Anyone? Anyone?’ to a silent room of blank canvases. They looked at me – all the lights on but no one at home. If anything is going to make your French falter it’s that. And because most ex pats that come here are French speaking, people here don’t encourage you when you struggle. It’s just expected that you’ll speak it. No one really speaks any English.

I carried on regardless, but it required all the energy I had to get through the first ten days. I felt like there was a pack mentality in the room and that I was totally alone, and guilty until proved innocent.

After a few days I had reached desperation point. I also felt lonely and cut off. The phones don’t work to text out of the country; calling out is really expensive; the internet is weak and doesn’t work at all in the office. It’s agony being apart from J and the weeks ahead until we meet in mid March seem interminable. When we spoke we agreed it was a bad idea to lift our heads from the pages we were working on to look at the horizon ahead. The minute you start dreaming about the future and the excitements it holds – being together would be a good start – you waste the moment you’re in. So we’re trying to keep focusing on our jobs and do them well. Being away from everything you know and love makes you appreciate what you have back home so much.

I also found myself watching a programme about Iran on the BBC and a debate about Afghanistan and what should be done next, and realised I missed the relative familiarity of that part of the world – its language, cultures and people that I had grown used to and fond of in so many respects.

But you just have to be organised and methodical when you’re on your own or you end up wasting the time. You need to divide the day up into sections of work, exercise, rest - and you’ll draw the best from it. I’m hoping I might be able to venture out of the town and see the rural ‘real’ Chad at some stage. Being locked up in N’Djamena is worse than being locked in Kabul as I don’t have a life here as such – or a home. So I’m itching to explore. Rural areas are generally much friendlier and safer anyway.

I have been quite ill this week, and one night didn’t sleep at all. Seems like I have giardia or something of that description according to what I found on the internet. One night I didn’t sleep a wink for being sick, so I arrived at work like a rag doll and could only put in an eighth of what I’d normally invest energy-wise. Suddenly my team started making and effort and being a bit more charming. Perhaps I should put less in more often...?!

But a few days later, I'm now seeing a clearing in the clouds. One day I arrived outside Z’s office which is like a little mud box with a tin roof. I stopped for a minute before going in and watched her typing feverishly at her little pink computer oblivious to the fan going ‘clack clack’ noisily above her head. There were flies everywhere and piles of budgets and empty tea cups on her desk; and a half assembled cupboard in the corner. She looked up and smiled at me over her glasses with her amazingly straight white teeth. And I suddenly saw her for who she is, what she’s achieved and what she stands for. I think she’s realised too that I’m here to support her, not to threaten her. It’s lonely at the top and her team are not at all easy and go out of their way to alienate her.

We have chatted quite a lot now and she has explained a bit more about her personal life. She’s probably about 45-50 years old and a Muslim. She was married, but she couldn’t bear that her husband wanted to take a second wife so when he moved to Saudi Arabia she stayed in Chad. She is renowned throughout the country as a formidable force in media. She owns her own radio station and like her or loathe her, she is making her mark. And you couldn't do that without being anything but determinedly tough in this country as a woman.
.
She made a film in the 1990s about female genital mutilation in Chad and the Muslim authorities in the country issued a Fatwa (Islamic death threat) against her. She was saved by activist communities all around the world sending faxes to the authorities demanding her pardon.

People in this country probably fear her for, or are envious of, her courage, intelligence and dedication and passion for what she does. It is truly impressive to witness a woman like this first hand in yet another society dominated by dogmatic religions and traditions which allow men to suit themselves and women to fit in around that.

We are exceptionally lucky to have her with us. I think part of my job will be to reinforce her position here in the hope that the other four members of the team see her light, and treat the chance to work with her as a golden opportunity - which it undoubtedly is. Especially for the women.

Chad

Although landlocked Niger has borders with 7 countries - one of them being Chad, it was bizarrely quicker and cheaper for me to get from Niamey to N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, via Paris than any other route. So I spent a night in the aeroplane and a day meandering around Charles de Gaulle airport making the most of the decent coffee and the nail bar, pouncing on the latest copy of the Economist to keep me going for the next month.

It was almost 10pm when I arrived in N’Djamena. A man in a floor length white tunic and white hat was there to greet me and within 10 minutes I had my bags and we were bumping our way along potholed sand streets in a 4 x 4 to Le Meridien – my home for the next month.

N’Djamena makes Kabul look like the Garden of Eden. The town is a building site – with Chinese men driving the Asian variety of JCB along potholed dust tracks, trundling over piles of rubbish which fester on every corner.

There is an edgy feel to the atmosphere and you’re not supposed to walk about, although no-one has yet been able to tell me exactly why. The people do not allow you take photographs of them, and one foreign girl was stabbed seven times last year for photographing a dog. Having heard that story, I felt more relaxed about being within the confines of a car, with my camera back at the hotel, saved for a rural excursion one of these days.

It is feverishly expensive here as everything is imported. The supermarket boasts nothing in the dairy section but the ubiquitous Vache qui Rit and powdered Nestle milk. But there are little street stalls selling mangoes, bananas and avocados, and young children sell rock-solid sesame balls and bags of peanuts from trays on their heads.

Part of the reason why the Chadians feel on edge is due to the rebellion which happened almost exactly a year ago. A few rebel groups joined forces and stormed the capital from the east with the intent of killing, or at least deposing the president Deby and his government, who has been in charge for nearly 20 years. They failed in their attempt but the city was completely ransacked and looted, most ex-pats were evacuated and locals fear a reprise on its anniversary. Since then however Deby has been amassing the suitable amounts of military paraphernalia with which to defend himself. His paranoia over the last year has extended to demolishing large areas of housing surrounding the presidential palace leaving hundreds homeless, and chopping down an entire avenue of trees in the centre after apparently being told by a marabou (holy man) that he would be shot from above the ground.

But there is reason to his madness it seems, since 8 rebel groups including one led by his uncle or nephew (no-one is quite sure) have recently agreed to collaborate and try to bring him down again. And that is what is making the residents of the capital so uneasy.

The other public issue at the moment is charcoal. Deby has forbidden it in N’Djamena for no apparent reason, meaning people have nothing to cook with and are increasingly frustrated. Gas is impossible to find, and most cooking equipment designed for gas would be far beyond the reach of a Chadian local.

Elegant Nigerienne ladies

Out and about in Niamey

A day out with the girls

The Stakeholder workshop went brilliantly with men and women coming from far and wide to give their thoughts and views on the issues of youth and good governance in Niger. Through the workshop we’ll be able to start planning the themes for all the radio programmes we’re making – and from the look of the list they will be everything from emigration and the rural exodus to corruption and FGM – female genital mutilation.

As everyone was leaving, I said goodbye and thank you to a religious leader from Maradi, a strict majority muslim town to the east of Niamey. I held out my hand but he refused to take it and looked down at it as though it was a dirty rag, then laughed not altogether kindly. Kader the 'responsable' advised me not to offer my hand first as a woman. I should wait until a man offered his hand to me beforehand. You’d have thought I’d have remembered that from Afghanistan, but I never had my hand refused there by any man.

I was ready for another weekend after the workshop, and I spent one day cruising around town with Victoria and her friend Rabia. They are both large and flamboyant, and arrived to collect me in a beaten up maroon coloured car, chomping on chunks of roast lamb out of a greasy brown paper bag. We set off to the museum – both of them chatting in Hausa, one of the local dialects, and belly laughing loudly as we crawled through town in the clanking car.

The museum was a bit of a disappointment – most of the displays were closed apart from the ethnic clothing department which had about 5 national costumes. But the main feature for the Nigerien families there was a makeshift zoo in the museum complex. There were hippos in tiny pools of hot, muddy water; mangy monkeys in stinking cages; some morose looking lions; and other strange sad desert creatures in hot dusty cages.

I was happy to leave after half an hour. We then limped off in the car to a beauty spot downriver from Niamey. Rabia drove right into some deep loose sand and after some furious revving with her high heeled foot, got us totally stuck. There was a group of men nearby and Rabia asked them if they would push her out. They charged her $10 to help. No one does anything for free in this place it seems.

We wandered down the river bank and then went to a Senegalese café back in town for rice and fish and 'bissap' - hibiscus juice. The ladies chatted half in Hausa, half in French. Rabia was complaining about her husband and how he always threatens to find a younger wife. As with Islamic custom, men are allowed up to four wives, as long as they can give each wife an even deal. Victoria said perhaps she was better off not having a man at all. As they chatted away, I realised how I used to long to be able to go out and about in Kabul with Afghan women – unaccompanied by men – for uninhibited chatting time.

But although I speak French I feel like an outsider. I sometimes wish you could fast forward into knowing and trusting people, and not have to begin slowly unfurling the layers of each other’s experiences and personality towards the comfortable zone of companionship.

But friendship and trust do not grow overnight like cress in damp cotton wool and you can’t rush it at the beginning – especially not in a foreign language. So I resigned myself to absorbing as much as possible and communicating wherever and whenever I could over my plate of orange spiced rice draped with fish skin, boiled cabbage and an overcooked carrot; and the metal mug of hibiscus juice which tasted like cough mixture.

From there we went to le grand marche, a huge covered arena selling the usual pirated DVDs and CDs, imitation beauty labels, synthetic materials, plastic shoes and toys. Cavernously cupped beige and pistachio coloured bras hung from rafters; and young boys sold pineapple in cling wrap from huge trays on their heads. We wandered through crowds of men and women bargaining for yet more exports from China in stores with signs saying things like: ‘Trouvez le top qualite chez Abdoul!'. I was glad to be with the ladies as the atmosphere wasn’t overwhelmingly friendly, but they seemed to know everyone and chatted and joked their way down the aisles exclaiming ‘EH! Tu rigoles!’ and clicking their tongues indignantly when they didn’t agree with the prices offered.

Obamamania in Niger

Most of this last week has been taken up organising something called a ‘Stakeholder workshop’. Since the team is running quite a big media project, making radio programmes about issues surrounding good governance and youth – before we begin it’s important to invite everyone who is anyone to do with either of these topics in Niger for a workshop to get chatting. So we had men and women coming from far and wide around the country to give their thoughts and views about the radio programming. It’s scheduled for Thursday and Friday and there’s a lot to sort out.

I had a good laugh with the team since one of them had written ‘Le Steakholder’ all the way through his document, and we imagined all the participants clutching onto a huge sirloin or maybe even a cow. He said he must have been hungry when he was writing it.

Either side of work, I’ve been trying to work out how to save as much money as possible. The hotel meals are expensive, and although I did sample ‘La Capitaine’ (Catfish) straight from the river Niger one night – I was keen to have other options.

With the help of our drivers, Aziz and Ibrahim, I found a supermarket ‘Le Score’ where I found plenty of things to keep me going and to help avoid eating at the hotel bar every day – therefore reducing the risk of more evenings with trainee Uranium seekers.

Unlike in Kabul where the dreaded Nestle has filled almost every supermarket shelf with products, here you can find many things actually made in Niger – so I did my best to support the local economy where I could. There is also French bread and patisserie everywhere, and mornings and lunchtimes, you see men and women wandering the streets with stacks of baguettes balanced on their heads and children running home carrying bags bulging with croissants.

So I’m managing to be quite frugal. If only I could be that controlled in clothes shops (not many of them round here, although I could probably buy back some of my own things in second hand markets). It’s funny how I’m happy to survive on raisins and nuts in Africa for months to save up and buy a lampshade or pay off a bit of the mortgage. And yet wave a Diane Von Furstenberg dress at me in London, and I’ll buy it without a second’s thought. Oh well…

Having some food in the fridge in my room also means I manage to avoid breakfast in the hotel restaurant where about 10 gloomy looking ex pats – mostly men – who sit on separate tables all on their own not smiling and not talking. It’s not a fun atmosphere and makes me want to start throwing fruit salad about to see if anyone will react. I’d rather eat a bowl of ‘Mille' (millet) with the locals outside, but we’re not quite on those terms as yet.

The atmosphere in Niamey is quite appealing. As I’ve said before things move pretty slow. And although there is a regular call to prayer from La Grande Mosquee – you don’t really notice this is a Muslim country. Or at least with my untrained and uninformed eye you don’t. I am, remember a beginner too so don’t take my word for gospel quite yet…

But women and men can kiss hello and wander about together, even if they’re unrelated; women wear pretty much what they like, and can ride motorbikes and scooters. Anything goes with the male dress code too, although most wear some kind of headgear – from the multicoloured skull cap to the flowing turban. Alcohol is also readily available and many people drink.

Although 90 per cent of the country is Muslim (the rest are Christian or Animist) people can intermarry; the government is secular; and they don’t use Sharia Law in the courts. So it makes for an uninhibited vibe and a huge range of customs and holidays.

There are apparently a few fundamental folk knocking about, but from what I understand, the main problems in this country originate from less religiously motivated issues – the regular droughts and famines (which the president Mahmadou Tandja occasionally refuses to acknowledge meaning people die un-necessarily as they are forced to go without foreign aid); and from the Uranium deposits in the north of the country near Agadez. The Tuareg people in this northern area want the government to give them a bigger share of the loot from the sales of Uranium (30 per cent of Niger’s export) since it’s under the terrain they consider their own. But it’s not working in their favour; so they’re planting mines and getting themselves and many others hot under the collar…to say the very least.

If you remember the Nigerien Uranium (or ‘yellow cake’ as it’s sometimes known) was at the centre of one of G W Bush’s false pretences for going to war with Iraq, and resulted in various scandals, not least the war – but also the revealing of the name of a member of the CIA whose husband lifted the lid on the yellow cake affair…Or something like that.

But onto more positive moments in history. L’investiture du President Obama. Niamey moved fast for the first time since I arrived. The whole city rushed home at 3pm to listen to the inauguration on a crackling radio; or to watch it on a fizzy TV. People seemed enraptured and enthralled.

One man at work put it in a nutshell as he described his views about the latest figures in politics.
‘Bush is stupid but I don’t think he messes up on purpose; Sarkozy is even worse as he is calculated and does everything on purpose. But what really impresses me is that the US press are still yet to find anything dodgy about Obama. This could mean two things – either there is nothing to find; or he’s really really ‘malin’ and has hidden everything so cleverly that they never found it. In which case, he deserves to be president anyway…to have got one over the sneakiest press in the world.’

I watched the inauguration on the little telly in my room. It made our royal weddings look like village fetes. What a crowd.

Le weekend

Saturday 17th January
Unlike in Kabul the weekend here is a traditional Saturday and Sunday affair. I was glad of so much preparation work to do because the hotel is dead in the daytime – but for the waiters sloping around arranging and rearranging empty plastic tables and chairs by the pool side.

I went to a shop nearby to buy 6 bottles of water as the hotel charge ridiculous prices, and when I carried them in a porter said he’d help me. When I said I could take them myself, he tried to help me put them on my head. My expression must have said it all, as he laughed loudly and said: ‘Dans les mains c’est meilleur pour vous madame?’

The daytime was fine – I did plenty of background reading and work, went swimming and watched a bit of the build up to Obama’s inauguration. But the evenings are always the weird bit.

I was totally happy sipping a Biere Niger (a cute label with giraffes on it) on my own at a table reading one of the magazines I’d brought with me. I could have walked in the darkness and sat on my own at a nearby Chinese restaurant, Le Dragon D’Or for a fix of MSG and prawn crackers, or (even less promising) L’Exo’tic! a little bit further down the road, but I thought I’d better start with what was closest, which was of course the hotel poolside with the same band playing the same repertoire as the nights before.

But people always think you want to be joined, and if you could see the other clientele (a mixture of mostly Libyan, Algerian and Afrikaans business men talking money all the time with various Nigerien dignitaries…) you would see why alone was best.

Male Kiwi voice: ‘You’re not going to sit all night here on your own are you?’
It was inevitable I suppose. I kind of wished I was an old lady and people didn’t want to talk to me, but I guess when I’m old I’ll be wishing they would. So I reluctantly went to join him and his friends who were average age 25. The conversation was limited and fairly right wing….

He said he was a minerals expert (can you be and expert in anything apart from yourself at 25?!) looking for Uranium and his three friends were the pilots responsible for flying him around, very close to the ground, to find the stuff. We were shortly joined by a Dutch pilot who worked for the World Food Programme who said how much he loved red headed Scottish women. I hoped the light was strong enough for him to see my blonde highlights and seized the first opportunity to run off to my room as the Dutch pilot started to warn the others about the likelihood of them being shot down by rebels on their treasure hunt in the north of Niger.

L'equipe au bureau

L'equipe

Friday 16th January

Victoria the admin and finance manager came to collect me from the hotel to go to the office. She’s 37 and as tall as me with a wide open beautiful face and almond shaped eyes rimmed with dark blue eyeliner. I’ve never seen anyone look so gorgeous in orange – in which she was decked from scalp to toenail. Her French was easy to understand, and she seemed to get mine too.

As usual with my organisation, they seem to have found a top class team. They’re all from Niger and are friendly, keen and hard working. They have all been trained at IFTIC, the media college here and are desperate to get properly started – which is part of the reason why I’m here. They’re patient when I can’t remember the odd French word, and seem relieved they don’t have to speak English.

We had a meeting to introduce ourselves, and to come up with a plan for the next few weeks and months; and I spent most of the day talking to Kader, ‘Le Responsable’, and Victoria. She’s unmarried but really wants kids. As she was helping herself to a sugar lump for her coffee I noticed the brand of sugar was called, ‘Daddy’. I explained to her what sugar Daddy meant in English and she roared with laughter and said that sounded exactly what she needed - an older man who’s rich and could give her 2 kids.

The rest of the team seem lovely also. They all have twinkling eyes and bright smiles and there was a bit of ‘Bonne arrivée’ and then we got straight down to business. No tea drinking or sweets with this team it appears…

The radio studio has been built, but all the equipment is still being held in customs at Niamey airport. We’re meant to have produced 8 radio programs by the end of March so the team are understandably anxious.

Orange earth and blue skies

And now I’ll be working for my organisation in Niger and Chad until June when J finishes in Kabul.

First stop Niger.

Thursday January 15th
I wondered whether the large African lady with blonde and pink raspberry ripple striped hair; rainbow bejewelled nails; skin-tight white trouser suit and huge pile of Louis Vuitton luggage was also on her way to Niamey, the capital of Niger, via Paris from Heathrow. If she was, then I’d definitely misjudged what Niger would be like, and also the dress code (I’d packed a version of what I wore in Kabul since Niger and Chad are majority Muslim countries)…

But she was heading for Kinshasa - by the look on her face and the volume of her shriek as they announced the flight had been cancelled.

However, her enormous presence at least took my mind off the trepidation of beginning all over again in new countries with new teams (albeit for the same organisation), but this time without J.

At 6.40 on a foggy January morning in London, the next stage seemed formidable.

But as I mulled over a few French words in my head on the flight to Ouagadougou via Niamey, I realised if I was to say formidable in a French accent, it meant something completely different. Rather than meaning scary, it meant fabulous. A bit like the word awesome in its original meaning – which we now use as an expression of positive enthusiasm but was once used to describe awe and fear. Perhaps the photo my boss had given me of the Dalai Lama was already emitting vibes about a positive attitude?

So I relaxed a bit and started to enjoy the flight; and the food (Air France of course provides an enormous lunch with pear tarte and camembert to finish and as much champagne as you want…and that’s in economy). And there were plenty of people to look at. As usual when going to these out of the way places, there was a diverse selection. A few nuns; hordes of Chinese men; a few Africans – one lady in a full length fur coat and coloured head dress; some greasy grey haired American men with mirrored shades and dour expressions; a rowdy group of middle aged French men with purple noses and safari gear; and me.

As the group of French men tucked into their fourth whisky each with champagne chasers and broke into song, I looked out of the window feeling relieved I was the row behind not sandwiched among them.

After the Mediterranean there was nothing but desert below. After about 3 hours I realised I hadn’t seen one river or tree since the coast. It’s hard to imagine a future for people on a continent with such vast expanses of arid nothingness. You can see why things get tense down here.

About 10 minutes before touch down, I saw the river Niger. The Sahel is the name for the region along the line that spreads horizontally through countries such as Mauritania, Niger and Chad. It’s the barrier where the desert supposedly stops and the more tropical landscape begins. Niamey is situated a bit below this line, on the river Niger. It's full of trees and surrounded by fertile looking fields and rice paddies.

The Aeroport International Diori Hamani in Niamey was pretty quiet. There was nothing on the runway apart from a huge plane belonging to the Kuwait Airforce. I wondered what had brought them here. But perhaps they were thinking the same about me. The airport building itself is simply four brick walls with a roof perched on top, and a huge gap in between allowing the air to enter.

Miraculously my luggage arrived, my visa, passport and yellow fever form was given the okay and I found a little white van outside saying: ‘Le Grand Hotel du Niger’ – my accommodation for the next couple of weeks until I go to Chad. The driver was fast asleep with his legs dangling out of the window. West African tunes pumped from the stereo. He slowly woke up, rubbed his eyes and said Salaam Aleikum, then continued in French.

The earth here is a dark ochre colour. Considering that it’s only earth, it’s incredibly beautiful - perhaps because of the contrast to the huge blue sky. Weaving down the road we passed strings of camels and herds of goats in amongst the traffic. Vehicles sprayed orange dust, and there was endless scrubland and little round houses made of straw either side of the road.

We passed a huge sign saying: ‘Bienvenue dans un monde de simplicite et diversite’ and I thought that sounded quite a nice combination. Tall thin men and women meandered down the roads with everything from pots to huge boxes and suitcases on their heads - those slender elegant necks so strong. The men vary in look from very dark African with Islamic hats and long robes; to more Arab looking with blue, white or black scarves wound into a turban on the head with the ends allowed to flap loose or to cover the face against the dust, often with enormous gold framed aviators or Elvis shades perched on top. The women as always come in every shape and size – the proudest bosoms and bottoms gripped by strident African print strutting alongside skeletal younger and older ladies – their skin barely touching the fabric of their loose clothes. Sahel size zero.

The vibe is a relaxed West African one. Like slow motion compared to Central Asia.

Le grand hotel du Niger is right on the river so has a good view, and is full of men lounging about. When is a hotel ever not? But there’s a pool, it’s clean and if I was a bird watcher I’d be busy but unfortunately the only ones I can recognise are pigeons.

That evening I drank the miniature bottle of whisky Rosie and Duncan had hidden in my bag and unpacked my case with ‘When the saints go marching in’ wafting in the window from the band playing by the pool. I didn’t feel quite up to sitting at the bar on my own…

The novelty of San Franciscan forks, and walking to work

This was the view on my walk to work in San Francisco – a healthy change from the smoky dusty drive in manic Kabul. And every day I ate my lunch with a fork made of recycled potato skins from the organic café nearby. That would have produced a few laughs with my team in Afghanistan…(I can hear them asking what was wrong with the potatoes that you had to make forks out of them. And why do you need a fork anyway?)

Whirlwind world tour

I worked out that I’ve slept in 19 different beds since I left Kabul in November. That’s 19 beds between Kathmandu, London, New York, Rhode Island, Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dubai, Tasmania, Sydney and now Niamey and that’s not including nights in aeroplane seats.

In retrospect the whirlwind tour was just the cure for my melancholy after leaving Afghanistan.

Although my Afghan team are still in my thoughts, and my inbox….

An email from Ahmad the driver: Salam Lucy Jan how r u doing wher r u. I heart u leaving 2 the stat what happen nd jimmy is he leaving with or just u leaving a lon…har jay ki bashi khosh bashi (this mean: wer you are I hop u good). Bye.

And Zabbi: Dear My Lucy Gordon, I hope you are safely home with no more weepings. Look forward to receiving your reminders and guidance. Zabeehullah Jalili.

So with their good wishes and thoughts, I felt liberated to embrace the next stage, even though it wasn’t quite what I’d planned.

And the next stage seemed to embrace me too – after all I was mostly in America which does a warm welcome like none other, so I didn’t have much option but to enjoy myself and learn almost as much about another culture and politics as I did in Afghanistan.

And then I was packed off to finally meet J at the end of my mini US tour by my wonderful American boss. As I ran into San Francisco airport she pressed something into my hand. It was a photograph of the Dalai Lama she’d taken and Christmas card saying: ‘Miracles to Come.’

No drama...

Since Nepal I've been in effervescent America, still fizzing with excitement over its President elect. It is an extraordinary time to be here.

Obama's face is as ubiquitous as the Thanksgiving pumpkins. Together they adorn almost every free surface - horizontal and vertical. Even the credit crunch is shadowed by the elation after democracy and what it can achieve.

My boss and I have been doing fundraising events in New York and DC - and I've been talking about our work in Afghanistan and showing the film. I have been bowled over by the enthusiasm, the warmth and the promise this country has to offer.

My itinerant refugee status has been flung to the roadside as I am warm heartedly welcomed by everyone I meet. It's humbling stuff. And it is deftly filling the emptiness of being so far from J, and the life that we loved in Afghanistan.

Faces - Young and Old

Streetlife

Spinning prayer wheels

Candlelight

Kathmandu by night

Early morning Kathmandu

Fresh Air

The unexpected sharp exit from Afghanistan luckily coincided with a work trip to Nepal that had already been planned. And my organisation are being amazing - providing me with plenty of work and places to be so I don't have to land splat back in London where I started, until J finishes his stint in Kabul and we can return together.

Perhaps cultivating a career-in-a-bag is not such a bad idea for our lifestyle anyway...

Seeing our organisation's set up in Nepal was inspiring and exciting. Its people face some similar hurdles to Afghans - mountainous countryside with no particular cohesion between communities; a backdrop of conflict; extreme poverty and unemployment; and therefore potentially disenfranchised young people.

But their media is fairly advanced, and so to witness the radio and community projects we run there was extremely encouraging. The Nepali team is charming and brilliant and it was refreshing to be in a country where you can achieve so much more because of fewer security problems; and where broadcasting on topics such as HIV AIDs or homosexuality wasn't forbidden by strict convention.

In between meetings and trips over Kathmandu's surrounding mountains, there was time to explore Buddhist and Hindu temples, spin some prayer wheels and nibble on momos (a Nepali dumpling).

I confess it was a relief to be allowed to wander around a country's most spiritual monuments even though I was a woman; and to hear how tolerant each religion is of the other in this country.

And it enabled an important ten days of reflection on what I had left behind, and what lay ahead.

First stop - Nepal

Leaving my life behind

It wasn't the end of the world. But it was extremely hard.

Leaving J, my friends, my colleagues who I had come to know and love so much, my job….It was as if every twig had been plucked from the nest J and I had so carefully built over the last year and a half.

Facing my colleagues and explaining what had happened was the worst part of the four days I was given to pack up and leave. We all cried, and one of them said tearfully, ‘We’re so sorry for our country Lucy Jan.’ Others just shook their heads incredulous – in a life so unsettled and unsure at the best of times, ex-pats leaving because of security problems adds yet another rusted nail into the coffin of doubt and uncertainty. ‘When people like you go, our energy goes.’ ‘Although you are young we lose a mother.’ ‘You are not a xareji (foreigner) Lucy Jan, you are like us. You are Afghan.’

These were among the remarks that only made it more upsetting to turn my back on a job and group of people that had become more important to me than anything I’ve worked on in my life.

But with four days to do everything I needed, I received some help from somewhere – a surge of pragmatism. I had no choice and if I was going to sit in a heap sobbing for a week, I would not be making the most of the time – and I would not be tying all the loose ends neatly. Goodbyes are difficult but important. As are proper handovers.

So we all sat down and discussed all the projects we were busy with – and we gave Zabbi the translator a well-earned promotion to programme manager, Nadia his role as assistant; Anwar the senior producer in charge of all content quality; and so on – until we had divided my job into five different parts in the hands of five, well trained and competent people who in spite of the excitement of promotion and its inevitable financial gain, were looking a little bit nervous. I was still crying quite a lot, and Ab Fab asked, ‘Can I give you a hug?’ and I received the biggest, squeakiest black-leather-jacketed-hug I have ever had, and realised I would always be in touch with these people…somehow.

Zabbi said: ‘Lucy Jan, you must come and see us again when it is safe for you to come back. And if you don’t come, then we will all have to come and see you in the UK in a big bus!’ The idea made us howl with laughter, especially to imagine the chaos of visas and accommodation that would ensue – which made me feel even more certain I would opt for coming back to see them one day when I was able.

Then I left the office with J and went back to our old flat we had had to leave in a hurry 2 weeks before, to pack up the rest of our life – back into the trunks we had arrived with a year and a half ago. Nasreen the cook at work had sent me off with a warm naan wrapped in a cloth, so we had lunch in our strangely empty kitchen, with some old cheese we found in the fridge, and mango chutney.

It’s easy to feel like a refugee at times like this, albeit for a country of our own that’s safe enough to live in, friends and family waiting. But over the makeshift sandwich, J and I consoled ourselves with the fact that although we were apart – being alive in good health, with family and friends – everything else was remediable. We planned a skype link up with champagne the following week on our two year wedding anniversary.

The four days passed in a strange blur, with a rollercoaster of emotions similar to the feeling of mourning. The packing seemed to take forever. I didn’t know where I was going next, so the dilemma of whether to pack bikini or balaclava in which bag kept my mind occupied. And Led Zeppelin became the anarchic theme tune to those days – artfully letting out the passion for us.

My colleagues organised a picnic as a farewell on my last day at work. J and I took about 2 hours to get there as the roads were blocked with traffic after a bomber had blown himself up in the Ministry of Information and Culture killing himself and four others. But we made it. And J was greeted with many a bearded kiss by my colleagues who he also loves. There were piles of pilau, kebabs, sweets and fruit. After the speeches (I managed to say mine in Dari with only a short intermission for tears in the middle). The speakers came out and there was dancing and as ever, laughter. A great way to say goodbye.

The chief BBC correspondent was leaving the same week as me and his party fell on my last night. J and I stayed up all night dancing and talking with friends – eeking out every last second in the country together. We got tremendous support from all our wonderful expat friends there. A card from some bearing the Afghan proverb in beautiful Farsi calligraphy: ‘As long as we have friends, there will always be more conversations.’ We slipped out at about 5am and drove in the foggy darkness to the airport – Kabul’s streets mostly empty – the first prayer call ringing in the air.

There was no power in the departures lounge, and I sat in the dark feeling so sad. Hoping it was a dream. It’s bad enough leaving people behind wherever you are, but deserting people in a country where the future is so uncertain is unbearable. If things go badly wrong again – where will all my colleagues go? I spent the flight to Delhi half sleeping, then waking up and thinking of each one individually and trying to put them to bed in my mind. Each time I woke I realised what I had left behind…and how the next few months were so uncertain – feeling sick about the ironic sense of certainty I had left with J in Kabul where my life had been until 5 minutes ago. Albeit in a ‘dangerous place’ when you make yourself at home somewhere, you build a sense of security. So I felt less secure now the structure had been taken away.

Later that day, as I looked down at the orange glow of the lights of London, it was as though someone had taken a pin to the balloon of my life. All that air I’d put in it. And like piglet and the popped balloon in one of the Winnie the Pooh stories, I looked down and all that was left was a little piece of damp rag.

Initially the damp rag was London – although in the bosom of family which was immeasurably helpful – so I went for a run in the pouring rain just because I could. Down past Earls Court (dodging halloweeners with blood painted on their faces or dressed as pumpkins, with explosions of fireworks going off in the background which still made me jump a little).

I ran along the river with the wind and rain lashing my face, trying to break myself free from the sadness. But then I realised, jogging towards Battersea park where J and I had had our first date, how much we had got out of our time there. And look how much there was left. The whole of London for a start. The whole of the world. The whole of life.

Life. Living in a country like Afghanistan, we were lucky to have had a warning and an opportunity for me to leave before anything happened. So many people don't. I lived there for a year and a half and I didn't feel afraid once. But perhaps by the time you feel the fear in countries such as those, it's already too late.

So there were plenty of blessings to our situation. We had squeezed every drop out of our time there. No regrets. The happiest memories. We’d made the greatest friends. And nothing can take away the time we had there together.

Who knows what's next.

But when do you ever?

A sadness

I'm being pulled out of Afghanistan. J and I are going to be separated for 8 months until his work is finished here. I have 5 days to pack up my life and get out, and find myself a job somewhere else. We are distraught.

Organisations like the one I work for are among the few that are actually able to achieve things on the ground, at community level because we're allowed out and about. My Afghan team are blossoming, and now I have to let them down.

I've gone through 4 loo rolls over the last 24 hours. I didn't know I had as many tears in me. I'll write more when I've regained my composure and we've worked out what on earth we're going to do, and where I am going to go.

I don't know how I'm going to face my team who I've come to know so well and love so much. Will we ever meet again? At the moment this feels like the end of the world.

Dancing mullahs

I've managed to get to work over the last week with the help of some bushy bearded security men with piercing eyes. Their shoulders are twice as wide as the front seat and they guard me as I get in and out of the car by the office. Our Afghan guards at work say to me nervously, 'Lucy Jan, your er....friends have arrived' when it's time to go home. They look quite small in comparison. The chat in the car is always amusing, and without them I'd be held captive in our temporary lodgings, and I have been so grateful to them for enabling my (relative) freedom.

Life is becoming more strange and strained. The poor aid worker Gayle Williams was shot as she walked to work in Kabul; a female Canadian journalist kidnapped also in Kabul; DHL men shot dead outside their compound not far from where many of us live and work. Not to mention lists and lists of horrible things happening to Afghan people all over the country on our daily security reports. A brave policewoman from Kandahar, Colonel Malalai Kakar was murdered a few weeks ago; and terrifying insults to justice such as a young journalist from Mazar jailed for 20 years for downloading information on womens' rights in Islam.

The lovely ladies I work with in the office opened up to me this week for the first time about their fears. They worry all day long about their children, whether they got home safely from school. They are constantly on the phone checking that things are alright at the house. And they are becoming increasingly fearful of working with, albeit only one or two, internationals. It makes them more likely targets by Taliban. But they love working with our organisation. Beyond their children it is their raison d'etre. They receive training and expertise. And if there's any hope for this country, it's in the hands of people like these.

But they deserve more than this. 7 years after the international community came to the rescue, there is still only intermittent electricity in Kabul and only a few good roads. Proper healthcare and education take longer to establish, but the government could at least have enabled people to switch on a light in the evenings, or to get to work without a back breaking journey over ever-growing pot holes. They are abusing their own people.

The more desperate people become, the more likely they are to cause trouble. Not my colleagues, but the poorest of this country. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the people spoiling the show are the desperate ones, the young men with no hope and nothing to lose; the illiterate people who have only one thing left to believe in: an all consuming religion heavily laced with archaic tribal codes. They are alone with their anger and their distorted faith that has been dragged so far off course from its original message by generations of people who can't read their own language, let alone arabic. And the more the government fails this country, the more of these desperate people there will be.

People wouldn't need to become knee deep in fundamentalist attitudes if they had hope. My colleagues are some of the few Afghans who have been allowed to hope - mostly through their work. The other day I heard raucous laughter coming from one room in the office. One of my team came running up to me and said: 'Lucy jan you have to look at this. This is reeeally funny.' He showed me his mobile phone and played me a short video of a Talib-style mullah dancing around in a mosque to quite raunchy Bollywood tunes in his turban and robes. The whole office was falling about laughing. 'They call themselves muslims! Look at these idiots. They are full of rubbish. They don't know anything about the real Islam. They are killing people for abusing their religion like this - and see how they do it themselves.'

It's getting to the stage where these balanced, intelligent people who I have spent a happy year and half working with, will lose their hope too if things don't change for the better over the next few years. And albeit for the increasing dangers as shown with the shooting of poor Gayle, I still believe we absolutely have to keep helping and investing in people like these. They and their children are the future.

Reasons to be cheerful

I've been feeling guilty about moaning about our situation, considering we're in Afghanistan where far more terrible things are happening and many expats have been living under this level of captivity ever since they arrived. But I have a list of plus points to our new existence so far...

1) I will be hurling Davina Macall's fitness dvds into Regents Canal in approximately 8 months time but she's still keeping me sane, and I managed to do a work out in our new room yesterday without knocking myself out on the chest of drawers.

2) I am now within walking distance of the embassy shop where I can buy alcohol for us and for friends, rather than having to ring J all the time to do it for me. (I can see why embassy wives have been known to take to the gin...)

3) Newly found love of Leonard Cohen (I always used to think he was too depressing)

4) I have entered us for strange things like a tennis tournament which is tomorrow. (I haven't played for 3 years but it will get me out and I have found a lovely crazy Iranian lady to play with me as J will be guess what...working)

5) Started to buy tickets for even stranger things such as, 'Flashman's Trafalgar Ball' in a male dominated place called the Gandamak Lodge. Very unlike me, but staying in is not so fun anymore so we might as well go out.

6) I can see a sunflower measuring twice my height from our window.

Breakfast with Nasreen

There are many reasons to be dubious about sending children to boarding school. But the one advantage of having been to one is you learn the skill of making yourself feel at home in any space you're given, within a couple of hours.

The Indian curtains went up in our new little room. The scented candle flickered as Leonard Cohen droned in the background. And the quest for settling in (for the third time) began.

Once I'd unpacked our multiple suitcases (poor J had to go straight back into work and was therefore denied all the therapy I was indulging myself with) I realised that a year and a half on, I could chat enough Dari to talk to our new cleaner Nasreen, who has turned out to be rather unusual.
She's divorced. This is pretty much unheard of in Afghanistan. She's a single mother with 5 children, who are now between 16 and 21 - yes, that's one every year for 5 years. She told me how awful her husband was to her, and how happy the years have been since they divorced. I haven't yet found out how she divorced, because it's something in the legal system here that only a man can implement (by saying 'I divorce you' three times - and that's that, in the eyes of Allah and the law). But this is legally impossible for a woman to do. So I hope my Dari will stretch that far tomorrow.

As I ate my cereal she started asking me detailed questions about what sort of contraception I used. 'Since we didn't have children it must be a very effective dawa (medicine)', she said. J and I are forever having to explain to Afghan people why we don't have children. And normally when we say we work, and our mothers aren't here to help, they understand. But when I'm alone with women the contraception chat follows straight after since it is the one thing that will probably save them from killing themselves by having a baby every year. And they're fascinated by it.

I think Nasreen was enjoying the presence of a woman in a house that has only ever been occupied by men, and asked me what the little white things were that she'd seen in the cupboard. Thinking she meant dental floss, I asked if she meant things for cleaning teeth. Whereupon she fell about laughing and said no she thought another area of the body, and only for women.

You can't buy tampons in Afghanistan but Nasreen is keen to try some out because she said what she uses 'are far too big like what you use with babies, and make you walk funny.' So I agreed to bring her some next time I went away.

Not your average breakfast chit chat. But she took my mind off my troubles. And I'm hoping next week I'll be able to get back to work because I miss my Afghan colleagues like mad and they keep calling and worriedly asking why I'm not coming to the office.

A life not one's own (with apologies to Virginia Woolf)

Everytime we come back to Kabul after a break, by the time the Kam Air flight has clunked onto the runway, my palms stop sweating and I start looking forward to getting back to our flat - our little oasis of peace. This time we had come back with some curtains and table cloths from India, so I started mentally picturing how they'd look and thought about asking some friends over for dinner to brighten our post-holiday mood. We were missing our travel companions - the Vinnie and Drew show.

But we arrived to be told we had to move out straight away...security is getting worse (and the place needs to be completely re-wired or something which will take months); a western woman was kidnapped in Kabul this week; and the moment we most dreaded has arrived. We've been absorbed into the confines of concrete and barbed wire nearer the embassy. We're not living alone any more, and life as we knew it is gone. It's understandable, and people are concerned for our safety but it doesn't make it easier to swallow. Our lily pad has shrunk, and I hate to admit, our spirits with it.

We said a tearful goodbye to the lovely gardner Gul Ab who will have no-one to admire his flowers or eat his fruit any longer, and packed up our stuff, trying to keep our minds on the job, not on the sorrow of saying goodbye to our tiny patch of normality we had constructed together, and shared with our friends here.

Please allow me to apologise for being morose. It is not in my nature, but this is turning our adventure into the equivalent of a trip to Milton Keynes. A life not one's own. Daytime views fringed with barbed wire coils; nightime sounds of helicopter roterblades chopping the darkness. The piercing blue sky every morning now seems only an ironic clash with the grey concrete blocks and sandbags piling up towards it.

The first evening here I wandered to the embassy shop with cold flip-flopped feet to the sound of the mullah calling his district to prayer; the dusty air chewable, and allowed myself a moment of melancholy - in mourning for our patch of privacy and good times we'd had there. The next morning as I unpacked I found myself listening to Leonard Cohen at 9am.

...but I finally managed to make myself laugh because I texted myself the security code for entering the house in case I forgot it, and automatically put a kiss at the end as I would if texting a friend. So I sent a kiss to myself. How silly. But I think it worked...

...and the hairy

...The Colourful

India - The Sacred...

A letter to the Times of India

I saw this letter in an Indian newspaper and thought I should spread it a bit further...

Terrorists can't be called Jihadis
I am grateful to Asghar Ali Engineer for pointing out the faulty logic of terrorists in his article, 'Making a Mockery of Jihad' (Oct 7). Just having a Muslim name does not make one a Muslim. These supposed Muslims chose the holiest month of Islam to carry out their dastardly acts. They call themselves jihadis and the media also labels them as such, not understanding the concept or the spirit of jihad as laid down in Islam.
The foremost jihad is non-violent. It is the internal struggle that one needs to conduct to win over one's urges and impulses in order to live a principled life and become a better human being. The media should stop addressing the terrorists as jihadis because that is what they have set out to achieve, thereby bringing disrepute to the Muslim community and distorting Islam in the minds of the uninformed.
Azfar Murtaza - via email.

Hindustan

After the arid intensity of life in Kabul, India greeted us with a humid technicolour hug.

As we lined up for passport control at Delhi airport, J (exhausted) had a slightly zombiefied look on his face - a familiar one to me now as I know how hard he works. But the perturbed Indian passport controller mistook it...'I think you are very boring to be in India sir! You looking very boring! You British, yes? You catholic? Protestant? HALLELUJAH!'

And our holiday began.

We had meant to be going to Pakistan with Mum and Dad but changed our plans at the last minute feeling concerned about security there. The recent attack on the Marriott Islamabad confirmed our suspicions. And with news from Afghanistan ever more grim, we felt it would be unwise for them to visit us here.

But India, or Hindustan as the Afghans call it, was the perfect answer. We were bowled over by the colourful chaos, the Islamic/Hindu cocktail of architecture and customs, the smiling faces, spicy food and the smuggest looking cows in the world. Rajasthan seemed to have so many similarities with Afghanistan, but on the surface at least, the women in saffron, cobalt and bougainvillea saris (yellow, blue and pink somehow don't quite do the job) baring large expanses of midriff seemed to be so much happier and more liberated. The same region of the world but with such a richness and depth...

We rented Enfield motorbikes and explored the back roads around Udaipur - and while the poverty was resonant, the women singing and dancing to the beat of the drum, celebrating a hindu festival with the men of their village was startlingly bright and bold after womens' comparative captivity and oppression you become used to witnessing in Afghanistan.

No snow dome or postcard can prepare you for the impact of the Taj Mahal the first time you see it. It imprinted itself in our minds. Surely only love can inspire something this beautiful. Shah Jahan (literally meaning the King of the World) certainly earned his title with all the mesmerising buidlings he was responsible for.

This extroardinary country, which grows by the population of Australia every year... the endless signs of contstruction and development; the western style billboards promising wealth, health and happiness hanging above rows of people sleeping on the streets or in their rickshaws; the sewage stench laced with jasmine and cumin; the first class train carriage making Virgin look basic speeding past men in loin cloths shitting and washing by the rails; a bottle of cool Kingfisher beer (The King of Good Times) sipped whilst reading about the latest bomb attack in Ahmadabad or Delhi, or hundreds killed in a temple stampede in Jodhpur. You find yourself in simulataneous agreement and disagreement with everything. Feelings of joy mixed with horror. No answers - just more questions. But a fabulous place of respite and 'can do' promise compared to where we are currently living.

Ramadan ramblings

With reports of everyday violence on the increase, poor Ab Fab received a reminder of this last week. He was at home breaking his ramadan fast with his family and new wife, when his mother came running up the stairs saying there were people climbing over the walls into their compound. Although our organisation has a no guns policy, he has been carrying a pistol for a while for self defence.

He described how all the women in his family started screaming and crying and he crept downstairs in the dark to see three men in the compound. He started shooting into the darkness and managed to scare them off without anyone being injured. Although the police came round quite quickly, there was nothing they could do. And Ab Fab laughingly explained that they went around for the next few hours arresting all the wrong people; and within one hour, news of the break-in had reached his other family members in his home village Jabul Seraj - 1 hour out of Kabul. (The gossip networks in this country are extremely fast and effective.) And he also admitted that at least he'd managed to prove to his wife he was a real man in the first month of their marriage.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for ordinary Afghans to live safely in Kabul and its neighbouring provinces. With an average kidnap rate of 1 businessman per week, entrepeneurs are understandably leaving the country to start up in Dubai, Germany, India and other places. Without investment here, how can jobs be created? And of course you can see why people are encouraged to carry guns.

The Governor of a province next to Kabul, Abdullah Wardak, was murdered outside his house last week. Apparently he was a good guy, doing his best for his country. And our daily incident reports from around the country seem to take up more pages each week.

We've just hired a new radio producer to help with our multiple new proposals. He comes from one of the provinces south of Kabul, Ghazni. He was running for his life from his job at a radio station down there. The Taliban had been sending him 'night letters' on a regular basis warning him to stop working in media or they would kill him. He was relieved to have found a job with us in the relative safety of Kabul. Although you wonder how much longer this bubble in the centre of the country will remain safe for the likes of journalists and those working with Westerners.

But on Kabul's surface, crime as we know it in London, for instance, seems minimal. Driving past the schools every morning, lines and lines of bicycles are left standing outside the gates by students - not one of them chained up. And the streets in early mornings and evenings are filled with hundreds and hundreds of schoolgirls and boys - some as tiny as four years old - none of them accompanied by adults. So the trouble goes on very much under the surface - the kidnaps, the killings, the corruption. A newcomer might wrongly presume this was a safe or peaceful city for Afghan people.

Alongside the increasing turbulence, ramadan rumbles on. Peoples' energy is diminishing and breath and armpits get smellier (during ramadan people aren't allowed to brush teeth or use anything that might be absorbed by the body such as deodorant, in daylight hours).

But my life at work seems to be turning new corners. Our team are improving in leaps and bounds and I've realised how good seems to breed good. The more decent people we employ, the more good people we find for new jobs. We have no one in our office who isn't worth their salt, which makes daily life at least a positive experience, despite all the terrible goings on which seem still strangely far away.

I discovered a new Dari proverb in one of our radio scripts:

Zahr e adamha, adam miwardara: Human beings remove the poison from human beings.

I suppose it's a saying to encourage people to talk about their problems to friends.

And my new boss received a brilliant email from an Afghan colleague at a previous job: 'Let me express my congratulations for your new responsibility as country director for your organisation. I hope the bright stars of luck and success twinkle upon you.'

Yesterday J and I managed a day off, and had lunch in one of Kabul's restaurants - an old school hang-out called Gandamak which has guns on the walls and a Flashman theme throughout. There was a dust storm so we retreated indoors and ordered some food from a menu which included the house speciality 'Sated Aborigine.' No wonder they call it eggplant in the US.

Unwelcome guests

They must have been very quiet. Because I didn't notice them until now...

I'd been feeling a bit strange and although it has been a stressful week, I thought I'd better go back to the German clinic to see the Marlene Dietrich lookalike for a check up.

After the ritual humiliation of having to produce a couple of samples into little pots and walk past a long line of Afghan men, clutching the containers and trying not to trip on the rustly plastic shoe covers, I went back to work wondering what the lab might find.

At 3pm Marlene revealed the problem: 'Ze parasites. You are full of zem. Full!' And handed me a bag of huge brown pills that even a donkey would have baulked at. I must have picked up the free-loading passengers in Badakhshan. But they took a while to make themselves known.

Parasite: A plant or animal that obtains food and physical protection from a living organism of another species (the host), which is usually damaged by the presence of the parasite, and never benefits from the association.

I am definitely not benefitting from the association. Although it's tough on them that as well as being nuked by the big brown pills, it's also ramadan. So they'll be getting starved out at the same time. A seige on parasitism.

Assembling the screen

New beginnings

There's something about September. It feels more of a new year than January. It's like you're beginning a new term with a new energy, and nostalgia of sharpened pencils and itchy new school socks.

In the streets of Kabul, mounds of grapes are being wheeled around on carts next to the pomegranates which means autumn is approaching. The sun has lost a bit of its heat and ramadan has come around again.

J and I have just been to Greece for a week with his parents. It was a wonderful end to quite a fraught 8 months of work, and gave me time to reflect on the month before which brought everything to a sharp conclusion with the first screening of our documentary.

The lead up to the finish line was frenetic. Marta had originally bargained on another two weeks of editing, but we kept being held up by technical issues so we had to postpone her flight back twice. The computer was working more and more slowly, perhaps from all the dust here; our energy was waning; and the deadline fast approaching. I was lamenting the time pressure to Ab Fab who agreed saying, 'Well Lucy jan sometimes this time issue really stops you from seeing right. You need to keep Marta here for sure. I will arrange everything.' And this was the week before his own wedding.

Some nights we even slept in the basement edit suite so we could keep working all the hours we had. The room was the framework to our life - piles of test DVDs, pizza boxes and pop music to keep us awake, a huge computer and 2 laptops encoding and making movies out of the final cut, dirty coffee cups and matresses. Wires everywhere, thesaurus and Farsi dictionary. Notes all over the wall to help us remember things, and pictures when we started to get overtired and silly.

We were totally alone and we knew we had to just sit there and work out all the technical problems as they came up. Marta was brilliant, but there's a limit to what you can acheive with no support. There was no one in the whole of Kabul with skills like hers.

It admittedly got a bit much at times, but at least we were safe. While we were furiously working in our underground den, three female aid workers from the International Rescue Committee were shot dead by the Taliban in a neighbouring province, Logar. This sent ripples of dread among not just internationals, but Afghans too - as their driver sobbed as he placed their bodies into makeshift wooden coffins outside the district commissioner's office, 'They were here helping our people.' And they were. They are one of the very few organisations who dared to travel around this country helping the poorest people survive by providing them with basic resources. And they were shot for it. So now their organisation is leaving Afghanistan just like Medicins sans Frontieres did a few years ago after losing some of their staff.

It was a tragic waste. 3 women who were bravely doing their best to help bring stability to this country. And think of all those Afghans who will miss out as a result.

Very soon after this 10 French soldiers were ambushed and killed by the Taliban on the other side of Kabul, but equally close. Morale is understandably low.

So our edit suite was probably a sensible place to be based. And in its own little way, encouraging too, as we were allowed to slowly watch our progress as the film came together - albeit for all the problems along the way. A luxury of creative jobs is you have something to show for your work at the end. And a far cry from those impossible jobs soldiers and aid workers like the ladies that died are attempting in this country. All that courageous work. And nothing to show - not even their lives in many cases.

The drama team have been flourishing in their success too. They have finished their filming and had a party to celebrate on the Shomali plain north of Kabul. They ate kebabs and went swimming. And then Radmanesh the director and his team had a 20 minute slot on Ariana national TV to talk about the up and coming drama series. Nadia was interviewed too. I was really proud as they've done it all on their own. And for a small moment I allowed myself to look back and see how far we'd come over the last 8 months, when we hadn't even bought a film camera or tapes, let alone employed a TV team, and now we've got 2 almost finished products - a ten part tv series and a documentary for broadcast nationally and internationally.

Because we have decided not to show this version of the documentary in Afghanistan to keep the subjects of the film safe, we have made a new documentary team of Mustafa, a camera man, and Zohra a brilliant Pashtun girl from Kandahar, to make a drugs awareness documentary for Afghan audiences. They are excited to begin and are having innovative ideas. So they'll be making a film by Afghans for Afghans, which is just how it should be.

Alongside the last gasps of the editing, we had to organise the screening for the documentary ourselves since the donor was too busy to help. 70 people said they wanted to come. The Defense Attache at the British Embassy is a great guy and kindly offered us his garden to have the screening in; and his kitchen to cook canapes in.

So the day before the screening, as poor Marta was trying to make the computer work and burn the material successfully onto a DVD - B and I rushed around Kabul trying to find white fabric for a screen, a carpenter to come and build it in the garden and fix it on a stand. (Nothing like that ready made round here). But the carpenter was charming and capable, and regardless of the fact that I'd designed the structure - it worked (I was as surprised as B's husband, who was looking doubtfully as we gave instructions...)

We were up all the night before the event finishing the documentary off. I came home for a shower in the morning, then headed straight out again with Alex, another girl from work to do all the food shopping and cooking for the screening that night. We got carpets and cushions and put them all over the lawn, speakers and a projector...Rain was forecast but we had no choice but to carry on.

We laid out cups of popcorn everywhere; Alex's food was delicious; J arrived with boxes and boxes of wine and beer; it didn't rain; there wasn't a sandstorm either; at least 70 people came. The film went down really well and the general consensus was that it was very powerful.

B and I were so relieved as watching our last 6 months work with 70 others was too much to enjoy even a minute of it.

Now J and I are back from holiday, and I'm sitting in our flat listening to that familiar call to prayer, thinking of all my colleagues in their houses breaking their day's fast.

There will be a large gap in my life without the documentary, B and Marta. But somehow I think it will not be long until it is filled up again.

Pump action editor

Marta the editor has gone - the film is finished. And even though I had to change her flight twice and she ended up staying in Kabul one month longer than she originally thought, she survived and we're all still friends, despite having spent most of those two months together in a tiny underground room. She's obviously harder than she looks...This is a little tribute to that.

Wedding bells

I arrived at the office last Sunday morning to be greeted by an ecstatic looking Ab Fab, our admin and finance manager. He basically runs the show at our office. After 2 years of painful family negotiations, his mother and father have given the go ahead for him to marry his girlfriend. We celebrated the exciting news with a huge cake covered in white and lurid green icing and flowers to match...at 9am. I shrieked with excitement when he told me and asked him if I was allowed to give him a hug. He nodded, and I gave him a huge squeeze, and the whole office fell about laughing as physical contact between men and women in this country goes no further than a handshake. But his robust physique makes him very huggable indeed and I reckoned after spending a year with them all, it was okay to stuff convention just this once.

I am very happy for him, because for as long as I've known him, this problem has been rumbling on in the background and he has often told me,' Lucy Jan if I didn't have this issue, then my life would be parfact.' Which is a brave statement in a country like this one.

Traditionally you are not meant to have girlfriends or boyfriends in this society. Your first step of anything near to romance is the man's family's visit to the girl's family's house to request the girl's hand in marriage. To a western onlooker the process resembles more of a business deal than an engagement since in more conservative households there is a large bride price to be negotiated and eventually paid by the grooms family.

But Ab Fab has been going out with this girl for about 4 years, and his family wouldn't agree to the marriage as they didn't like her, and wanted him to marry his cousin. But he loved his girlfriend and had no intention of marrying his cousin. If Ab Fab had left his girlfriend it would have been the equivalent of social suicide for her - since no man is supposed to touch a woman who has been with someone before. I don't need to go into details here. So the poor girl was utterly miserable, and rightly so, as not only would she have been losing the man she loved, but any other chance of future happines, or a family, at least within Afghanistan.

But thanks to Ab Fab's tenacity, some astute negotiating, and the help of a bevy of 'ancals' who I imagine are no smaller than himself, his parents relented and he will marry his girlfriend at the end of the month. Then she will move into his vast family house with him.

They will presumably rent one of the kitsch wedding halls with mirrored windows and multi-coloured palm trees, and invite 800 of their closest family. Men and women do not mix at Afghan weddings - the male and female guests are divided by a large screen.

I'm desperately sad as J and I will be away for it.

My new boss went to Pakistan this week as we might be setting up an office there which is much needed. It is where so many of the problems in this region are coming from and educational media could really make a difference. Anwar was meant to be going with her, but relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and between Pakistan and India are so bad a the moment he couldn't get a visa. The problem was he had an Indian visa already in his passport.

Another colleague Faiz said: 'You should have done what I did last time, Anwar Jan. The Pakistani visa office asked me why I wanted to go to Pakistan, and I told them I had recently been to India to buy some goods, and the quality was so bad that I needed to go to Pakistan to get better quality ones. And they gave me the visa on the spot.'

How we laughed.

Anwar and the musicians recording in our studio

Melon for the soul

When I got back to the office my Afghan team all told me that a week had seemed like a very long time. I didn't admit that for me it had flown by. But I was very pleased to see them.

Unfortunately the first few days back were tainted for J and I by a bit of a disappointment, and I have to admit I was tearful. When Nadia the script writer saw my red eyes she presumed it was because I was missing my family, and she came and gave me a huge hug and said: 'Don't cry Lucy Jan. We are your family remember.' And one of the guards, Ismael popped in about 10 minutes later (news had obviously travelled that something was up) with a plate piled high with chunks of green melon, a fork and a napkin. He delivered the plate, then turned and took off his hat to me, slapped his right hand on his heart, and left the room. Now you see how well looked after I am. Unfortunately their kindness only made the tears flow more so I had to retreat to the bathroom before I could manage the plate of melon.

As always, work has a useful habit of taking your mind off things, and I was soon back into the swing. Everyone had done everything they should have while I was away and the subtitling for the documentary is finished. Anwar and I got some musicians into our studio to record some music for the film. They arrived with their Afghan intruments - tabla, raobab and tambur, and made some very nice noises. But they all smoked about 5 cigarettes each downstairs in our little recording room so now it stinks like an ashtray.

Also this week, Atiq our producer was having his first shot at training radio journalists which is really exciting. He is teaching two female radio journalists from Badakhshan about interviewing, recording, editing and producing radio programmes. He looks rather delighted to be able to spend all day (for 6 weeks) with 2 pretty girls and they don't look too unhappy either. He's good looking and a very nice boy. But more importantly his training looks very professional. I feel very proud because I didn't know whether he'd rise to the challenge.

Marta, B and I were all reunited today which is wonderful. I really missed them both. We will continue our final two weeks of editing from tomorrow.

J worked all day yesterday, but I got a day off and spent it by the pool with some others - one Afghan friend, and a couple of others. News from most areas in this country is not good. We all admitted to each other that we did feel low about it, but agreed there was no point being here unless you at least seemed enthusiastic. The last thing our Afghan colleagues need is depressed looking foreigners who look like they might be on their way out.

Acbar (the co-ordinating body for relief work in Afghanistan) has just released a statement saying that there are fewer and fewer areas safe enough in the country for aid work - for both Afghans and foreigners. So the news isn't getting brighter.

But you would never know this in our office, where people seem to be more intent on getting the work done and having a laugh with each other at tea breaks (multiple...) and lunchtimes. But perhaps that is the eternal strength of the Afghan spirit. That and their recipe for all ills - a cup of tea and something to eat.

Thought bubbles

We've been living in Kabul for over a year now, and each time I fly back into the city after a break, I notice my thoughts and feelings about it have changed since the last time. A bit like falling in love, the veneer of dizzy excitement about something new, wears off to reveal the realities of the relationship you have with a place. And only then can you decide what the truth is, and whether it works for you or not.

The romantic Orientalism that often seduces westerners to this part of the world is a dangerous thing as it stops you from seeing the truth. However given enough opportunity to get to know a place, the magic can definitely co-exist with the reality. But you must have both to see the bigger picture. J and I have been lucky enough to be introduced to that mosaaic of a larger picture - a couple of squares of it anyway.

As I looked down at the familiar linear structure of brown houses I realised that a year on, I was a little more aware of the challenges the families behind those walls are facing. Their worries for the future; their struggles of the present; the pain of the past.The love versus the cruelty. The deep faith in God, and the loyalty to the family. The two things on which you are forced to depend when everything else is taken away, perhaps? It's not simple, as the world is coming to realise. And improvements to everyday life for ordinary Afghans are taking a lot longer than anyone expected.

My trip to the UK was a whirlwind visit with an overload of sensations - beautiful people in beautiful clothes; thousands of varieties of food; cocktails; conversations; music and art. Going to London is like a cultural fireworks display after Kabul. With a twinkling accompaniment of family and friends.

But going home also keeps you on your toes because you're forced out of your own bubble of existence by questions from people outside it. Perhaps those preliminary questions are the most crucial, but not always the easiest to answer...Is it safe? Are the people really that nice? Are our armies really helping? What's the point? How can we afford all this money and all those lives? Are we doing the right thing?

There are no straight answers, and the hard part about life, and in this case war, is that you can't have a controlled laboratory experiment where you test out different treatments on a country and its clone. You have to choose the route you think is right, and stick with that. And you can only hope that we have enough time to correct mistakes, and lay down better plans, within what feels like a ticking time bomb.

A martyr in the edit suite

I’m in Dubai on my way back for a wedding. As always leaving Kabul, I felt like someone had turned the power off in my body. My eyes were prickling with tiredness and it was amazing to be able to switch off. Kabul airport gets more modern each time you go. It was full of families with piles of suitcases balancing on trolleys and bags of nuts and dried fruit in hand. It is not the look of an airport in a country that is at war and there was a carefree atmosphere in the departures lounge.

The last two weeks at work have been like a tunnel of subtitling. We have 50 hours of footage to reduce to an hour and twenty minutes, and Marta needs to understand what we've filmed which requires subtitles. It’s taking a very long time, even with B and I working with a computer each to keep subtitling while Marta is editing.

Khoshan, the lady we filmed from Badakhshan is difficult to understand. Dari isn’t her first language – Wakhi is. And the man we filmed in Kabul has done half of his interviews in Pashto. So the film, when it’s finally finished will be in Dari, Pastho, Turkmen and Wakhi. And Afghanistan is supposed to be one country?

The man who came in to help us all the bits in Wakhi came from very near where we were filming in the Wakhan. He was a bit worried about the footage we had got about his community. He said to us he thought that God should kill Khoshan for being a drug addict. We are realising more and more how this may not be quite the film for Afghan audiences, especially to keep our subjects safe.
Although the climb is tough, I couldn’t be in better company. B, Marta and I work really hard, but we have a lot to laugh about. We are generally in our little edit grotto until 10.30 at night for 6 days a week. Turbo-getting-to-know-each-other.

The latest laugh was Zabbi the translator who asked if Marta’s name was actually Martyr. (The equivalent of course exists in Dari – Shahed). You might not be allowed on many planes in the UK with a name like Martyr.

We have managed to get our deadline extended by 2 weeks, which means we will all be convening after a week off for a further fortnight editing. I'm so glad I get extra time with the dream team. And I'm hoping there might also be a training opportunity for Mustafa the new editor. I really don't want to waste this valuable chance of having Marta's skills in town.

J has been cooking me dinner most nights and we have been nowhere and seen no one. But I think patches like this are bearable when you know they won’t go on forever. My Afghan colleagues keep asking me when my work will finish. I think they miss the attention I would normally be able to give them. I told Zabbi one day that as long as I was alive, I didn't think my work would never be finished, and he told me the equivalent in Dari:

‘Ta jaan dar tan ast, jaan beh kan ast’ – As long as the soul is in the body, you have to work.

We have written a CV for Ekhtyar Gul, the addict from Kabul who we filmed. He is desperate for work so he won’t relapse back into his heroin habit. We are trying to help him get a job as a guard somewhere. We met up with him to get the information to put on his CV and he looks so much better.

We couldn’t bear the thought of him in his little room trying to fight off the draw of his heroin addiction. Without a salary, a sense of purpose and somewhere to go every day, how will he manage?

Turkmen Tunes

Jamie and I were just about to leave the house this morning at 8.30 when there was a large boom and the walls of the house shook. I don't think I've ever heard a suicide bomb that close. I hate to think what it felt like for the poor people near the Ministry of the Interior and the Indian Embassy where the suicide car bomb exploded. So far they think 15 casualties. But those preliminary numbers only ever seem to increase over time.

I had been worrying about our documentary deadline and how we'll get all the work done in the 2 weeks we have left; complaining of a sore throat to J and generally having a very normal morning. Now we're on lock down until 11am and I'm feeling thankful neither of us, or our friends and colleagues it seems, were on the road at that place at that time. Any of us could have been.

Things quickly return to normal. J and I sat in the garden for a bit before he was allowed to leave the house, and Gul Ab the gardener picked us some peaches from the tree. Our lush garden full of birds and fruit trees is only a few roads away from the dust and rubble, the ambulances and the people trying to make sense of the chaos.

Now I'm using the extra hour before I'm allowed out to update this blog.

*****

The last week has been a bubble of creativity with M and B in our underground edit suite aka. the grotto. We have finished one third of the film - the part about the Turkmen village near Mazar. Unfortunately we've been slowed down a lot by the ghost of Farid who seems to live on, as we discover his hidden muddles of un-named files and badly transcribed data. But I have found another guy, Mustafa who seems at least more engaged in the subject matter, has a creative eye, takes beautiful photographs, and made a film about a little girl addict in Kabul off his own back. I'm not sure how much of a capable editor he is, but I have no choice.

Finding Turkmen music has been an adventure. There's very little of it about. I went to RTA (Radio Television Afghanistan) with our Turkmen translator, and found another man who was in charge of Turkmen radio who was very elderly with fishy breath in an Astrakan hat. He brought out a few dusty reels of tape, wound them around a 1950's player, and handed me one flaky leather headphone with broken wires coming out the top. My favourite was a singer called Ahmad Bakhshi. It was a crackly and intermittent sound - and very feint. But you could just make out frenetic strumming on a guitar and a hoarse mix of singing and yelling. It seemed very Central Asian and definitely ethnically appropriate for the village where we'd filmed. I thought Bakhshi was his surname but it turns out that every Turkmen musician is called Bakhshi.

But we weren't quite sure as it was quite energetic music, and the village is lethargic to say the least - they don't eat or work much and lie about smoking opium all day. So B and I went to AKMICA institute, the Aghan Khan Music Institute for Central Asia, and listened to some old Ustads (teachers) playing on what looked like medieval instruments. Dotars, Sitars, Tamburs and Tablas...with lots of other names I can't remember. The sounds were mesmerising. The man in charge told us how so much central Asian music is dying out as it is never written down - so it depends on the Ustads to pass it down to the next generation. And of course on the next generation to want to learn. Most young Afghans I meet would rather learn the electric guitar over the sitar. So you can imagine what an endangered species of music this is. Many Afghan families consider the performing arts fit for the lowest of the low - and most girls are banned by their fathers from learning to play an instrument, sing or dance. Of the 300 music students at the centre - only 2 are girls.

J got back just under a week ago. I have nice bookends to my day now - starting with breakfast together, and ending with dinner together. Although neither of us get back until 9pm at the minute - at the earliest. While he was away Fawad our driver, the house manager and the gardener all asked me if I was frightened being on my own in the house. They all said they got frightened when they were alone. The Afghan family being omnipresent I suppose. Fawad told me he hid under the covers because he was afraid of the 'jinn' (something like a ghost). I told them I was safer here than in London, with 3 armed gurkhas by the gate. I could do with 3 of those in Camden.

Radmanesh is doing well with the drama filming it seems. His team are working so hard. He came up to me last week and thanked me for making him employ the two women, as they were the best in the team and could I please give them a pay rise. (Small battles, small improvements).

One of the ladies, the production assistant Zohra has 3 children at home. She only wanted 2 but her husband made her keep going until they had a boy. I told her about her payrise and she asked if that was all I could give her. I explained the english idiom about inches and miles, and realised I could learn a lot about getting what I want out of future employers from the Afghan way of doing business. They are born into the bazaar and they are brilliant.

My new boss organised a cocktail party to encourage donors to sponsor our projects. It was fun because my Afghan team all turned up. I don't often socialise with them as our lives beyond work are so segregated. I hate that, but we don't have a huge amount of choice. Fridoon the guard (who has recently been promoted to work with the TV team and is excelling) said to me: 'Jamie besiar makhbul ast.' (Jamie is very beautiful). 'Iaki Amir Khan ast.' (He looks like Amir Khan). Amir Khan is a very popular Bollywood actor in Afghanistan. Men are only really allowed to comment on each other's beauty here. Womens' beauty is out of bounds for remark.

We have just started trying to subtitle the footage from Badakhshan. It is very time consuming even though B is doing an amazing job, because Dari is not the first language of Khoshan our subject so she speaks it quite badly, and some of the words she uses compared to modern Farsi are almost Shakespearean. But in order for people to relate to our subjects, and understand what they're going through - time and attention spent on subtitling is the most important. Otherwise we'll be misrepresenting the sort of people they are, and their thoughts and feelings.

Fitting in some fun

In the edit suite...in good company

Sunny patches

M the editor has arrived and is brilliant. She's a happy, fun, clever and sensitive story weaver who got started on the hours of footage right away - beginning with the stuff we filmed in Mazar. It's great sitting in the edit suite with her and B. We are all on the same wave length which adds strength to our thoughts and ideas. And professionally I feel a lot less lonely than I did a few months ago.

Farid has resigned. He told us we didn't know what we were doing, that he wasn't interested in transcribing tapes of the bloody doctor doing his bloody job. He has missed out on a fantastic training opportunity, but we are hoping to find someone who will relish it more. And since he has gone, the bubble of negative energy he brought with him has popped and disappeared. The edit room is too small for negative vibes.

It seems like weeks that J has been away. I miss him so much, although I wouldn't have seen a huge amount of him as I've been tucked away at work. It was his birthday this week, which coincided with M's birthday. So I celebrated with her instead.

Ahmed the old driver sporadically sends me text messages, and the latest one was hilarious. I told him that J was away without me and he wrote: 'Oh poor u thi sis not good with u to stay here a lone jimmi wil injoy his vocations withe some one els. Sorry joking....'

The inimitable Ahmed. He has recently been doing translating work in Kandahar, but thankfully is now back driving for a construction company in Kabul. I was worried about him working in the south.

The drama team have started filming, and nervously I looked at some of the first few scenes they'd shot last week. If they were bad I was going to have to start a rescue operation which I really don't have time to do. But I was quite impressed. They are well shot by Sultani the cameraman, and the lead female role they've chosen is very beautiful. In any country a bit of eye candy on telly is a bonus. So although there is still 2 and half more months of room for things to go horribly wrong, they have made a good start at least. Radmanesh looked delighted that I was pleased.

We have been working with a Turkmen translator in the edit, as a lot of the footage we filmed in Mazar is in Turkmen and we are doing subtitles. The minute you put subtitles on passages you begin to understand and you realise how compelling some of the stuff is - and what they were really saying. B understands all the Dari parts, but for M and I - a lot of the footage is coming to life and making sense suddenly. The translator is hard working and extremely accurate, and is fascinated by it. We watch his face to see which parts move him - which helps us decide the moments we will include in the final film. In total we will have to reduce about 60 hours to 60 minutes. Lots of decisions.

This week was filled with parties. We all went to the British Embassy ball and I drank far too much champagne. I got back at 3am and fell asleep in all my clothes. I woke up at 6am still holding my handbag...And the following night we went to a friend's party and danced until 2.30am. I'm not sure M was expecting so many parties. But I've been enjoying letting the hair down. Sometimes a good dance is just as valuable as a good night's sleep.

B and I went back to the Kabul clinic where the male heroin addict we'd filmed in the cultural centre had just finished de-toxing. We had a quick interview with him, then drove him back to his house. He has de-toxed three times now, and he's determined that this will be the last. Although it all depends on whether he'll find a job. He seems such a nice man - and brave. I would really like to find someone who'd employ him. How you could you ever manage to stay off the drugs as an unemployed ex-addict in Kabul?

Frustrations

In between filming I've been running back to the office to make sure the tapes are being organised, digitised onto the computer, logged and translated. M the editor is arriving today and I've been frantically trying to get ready for her so she won't have to waste her time with a muddle.

Meanwhile Radmanesh has been making his own muddle of the drama preparations, buying a generator that isn't powerful enough for the lights I bought and asking me what I was going to do about it...and getting his knickers in a twist about 'cabals' (cables) and transport to locations. (But at least he's shut up about the director's chair and the umbrella.)

I should have seen it coming, (perhaps optimism is the only way you keep going here) but Farid has done a very bad job of the transcriptions and only written down about a third of what is on the tapes. Because all 50 hours of footage is in different languages - all of which are foreign to me, and some of which are foreign to B - we could miss out on vital parts of the story if it's not down on paper. So B and I have spent every night this week in the office until 10.30pm doing the job for him. He leaves work on the dot of 4.30pm every day, and refused to work the weekend. Yesterday I worked from 7am until midnight finishing up the job. I can forgive his whiffy armpits, but it's hard to deal with laziness and a can't do attitude when you're under pressure.

A couple of times I have caught him in the edit suite 'reviewing' (for the third time) the breastfeeding footage from the villages where we filmed. And he has an infuriating habit of calling me Ma'am. I'd rather he did the job well and gave up on the formalities. It's a veneer of respectfulness without the hard work.

It's difficult to witness because there is a tiny skills pool in this country, and the editing suite we've kitted out is unrivalled in this town. Just watching M the editor work would be an incredible training opportunity. I wish I'd employed someone with no knowledge but at least a desire to learn. It seems a bit of a wasted opportunity.

But it also got me thinking a bit about development, aid, training, and all those things expats are supposed to be doing in this country. How can people see high standards, feel a sense of competition and realise how much there is to learn if they never get the chance to leave the country. You could easily just jog along and think that everything you're doing is brilliant if you never see what other people are achieving elsewhere. I'm not saying we necessarily always do things better in our own countries, but it's good to have an idea of your own market value, and to be able to improve on that. Think about British food for instance, and how we've managed to improve our cuisine over the last 50 years by borrowing from other countries.

J is away on holiday having a much needed rest - I feel happy when I think of him having time to himself and with friends back home.

I have been living a monastic existence...but enjoying the purity of work and sleep. I have seen no-one, and apart from reading Alan Bennett's, Uncommon Reader (it's brilliant!) in the bath before bed, I have been using every cell of my brain and body for work, with the very occasional work-out. (I will hurl Davina McCall's fitness DVDs into Regents Canal when we leave here, but she is still keeping me sane and has helped me get rid of my bingo wings without leaving our flat so I'll hang onto her for the meantime).

There was a jail break in Kandahar earlier this week and an estimated 1000 prisoners are on the loose - 450 of whom they think are Taliban (although how they know who is who and who thinks what is a mystery to me...). So I'm glad to be in Kabul, and spending most of my days underground in an edit suite with a large lockable metal door at the top of the stairs.

As long as I don't get stuck down there with Farid...

The Russian Cultural Centre

The urban side of Afghanistan's drugs problem

To find a Pashto speaking drug addict in Kabul, we went through the Zendegi Naween (New Life) drugs clinic in Carte Se, a district in the West of the city. The clinic is sponsored by the British Government and GTZ, a German donor. The doctors were keen to help us - but with our bad experiences with certain doctors in the other areas I didn't have high hopes. One of them Asef, had slightly crazed looking eyes but said he would come with us to one of the main hang outs in Kabul for heroin addicts.

We took a Pashtun translator with us, and an armed security guard in civilian clothes called Tony. Even though our organisation has a no guns policy, we're not taking any chances this time, as I've realised over the last few months how quickly things can kick off, and incidents can often be opportunist - people spotting 2 girls with no security and expensive camera equipment...

I was glad. We arrived at what turned out to be a giant squat for heroin addicts based in the ruins of the Russian Cultural Centre. An edgy and tragic place. We followed Asef the doctor as he marched through what would once have been marbled corridors. He had a big bag over his shoulder full of clean syringes which he kept delving into, giving handfuls of needles to the crowds of heroin addicts who came staggering out of the shadows. Black, bony hands grabbed at him through the darkness. The smell was undescribable, but if I was to have a go, imagine heroin smoke + piss + shit + dead animal + sweat + feet...and you'd be almost there.

700-800 heroin addicts lurk and live in this huge ruin - once a bright new centre for Russian arts complete with tiled mosaiic of Lenin in the lobby; then the frontline of battle between mujaheddin factions in the early 90s; now an olympic sized crack den - the image of Lenin blasted away...the marbled floors replaced with piles of human shit, old needles, silver papers from heroin smoking, cigarette packets; mounds of rubble and discarded rags of clothing. And almost 1000 broken men shooting up, chasing the dragon and living (if you can call it that) in this broken building.

It was a picture of hell better than any imagination could conjure up. We filmed Asef as he strode around advising people about the risks of injecting drug use and HIV, and encouraging people to come to their shelter and join the waiting list for the clinic to quit their habit. But there are 10 beds in the clinic, and 6000 people on the waiting list. And everyone knew this.

But this futility seemed to do nothing for Asef's energy as he squatted beside scrawny men as they shot up - stroking their greasy heads, asking if they were okay, buying them bread, finding them water, encouraging them to stop their habit. 'Don't kill yourself like this. 18 people died like this over a few months this year.' He shouted to groups of them.

Asef knows most of the men in this building by name. Many whom he has treated are back, having relapsed, in this horrible den. One of the young men cried in his arms saying his heart was breaking. Relapse is one of the major problems because even after withdrawal there are no jobs, and most addicts lose their support network of family, so the majority land right back where they started. But the doctor seems to keep up the hope somehow, on his tiny salary of $200 per month.

We found our subject after filming in the cultural centre for a few days. I won't go into details quite yet as it's a sensitive story. But our man was once a dashing, well educated young guard during the Communist time, and after a bullet through the back of the head, a near death experience, followed by civil war - is now unemployed and spends his days smoking heroin in this hell hole. It is a heart breaking story, and one that many would relate to. It's not just the illiterate country folk who are finding solace in opium and heroin in Afghanistan.

B is being amazing as ever - since we have realised our translators more than often let us down with their questions and technique, she is not only doing the camera work but doing a lot of the translating for me, and interviewing. It's frustrating to understand only 60 per cent of what's going on - and yet again I am reliant on her. But our subject is Pashtun speaking so this time we've both been quite lost during interviews. Let's hope we have what we need as we are trying to avoid returning to the crack den after 5 days filming there. We'd be mad to go back too often. Even with Tony our cuddly security guard....

Back to my other life

It took quite a while to feel normal again after the expedition. I had one day off where I lay in bed and couldn't even manage to watch a flim as it involved too much concentration...so I slept. Then the following day I braved the office and for the rest of the week, and slightly wished I didn't have to - but there was no choice. It definintely feels like I have two jobs at the moment.

I had a meeting with Farid, who I've decided to keep on as the edit assistant when M the editor comes for a month, in the hope that he will receive some valuable training by watching her work. His job was now to capture all the recorded tapes onto the computer and make a transcript of all the footage and interviews, then give it to the translators to convert to english so B and I can start to carve the stories in the film. I think he's got the message and seems to be working harder (and hasn't talked about sex for a few days).

We were meant to be filming in Jalalabad next - a city two hours drive to the East of Kabul, near the border with Pakistan. People are mainly Pashtun there which would add a third dimension to the film. But after a chat with J, I started to think that perhaps the security there was going to make our lives difficult and uncomfortable again. In order to find addicts to film with, we were inevitably going to have to drive around the dicey areas - and it's only a quick trip from Jalalabad to Waziristan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) which isn't top of my places to visit list right now. We could have been making ourselves far too available for kidnap without lots of close protection, which my budget didn't stretch to. And I also felt responsible for B. So I had a chat with her and we decided we'd try and find a Pashtun addict in Kabul instead.

Our film when we finish it will include people speaking Dari, Turkmen, Wakhi and Pashtun - which is a good reflection of the ethnic diversity in Afghan society.

I have a new boss at work. She's brilliant - an Aussie in her early 40's with huge blue eyes, and 4 years experience of working in this country - especially in media. Besides being really clever and dedicated, she is also a hoot - which will make for some fun times both in and out of the office.

We went together for a meeting with the British donors for the documentary. I expressed my concern about the level of bullying in Afghan communities - especially towards addicts, and how I was worried that by broadcasting the film on television in this country, we would be putting our subjects in the film at risk. They understood, but were still very excited about using the film for lobbying purposes and trying to get money for drug treatment centres from international governments, and to nudge the Afghan government to focus on the problem too (as if they didn't already have enough to deal with).

They also said they wanted us to edit a clip of the flim by June 26th for a meeting they're having with European potential donors. Another deadline...But well worth it if we can manage it. Poor M the editor will be hitting the ground running.

I have had no energy to go out in the evenings, and it seems like a lot of friends are away - so J and I have spent evenings watching the ladies tennis from Paris. I was transfixed. Seeing Ivanovic free enough to run around a court whacking a ball with such dexterity and skill, wearing a tiny tennis outfit, was a far cry from the world B and I have been involved with for the last few months. Yet again I was reminded of the freedoms for females in the West to follow our dreams - and the cultural and vocational prison in which women are trapped here.

Meanwhile, Radmanesh and the drama team have been trying their best to finish the scripts in my absence and prepare shooting schedules and budgets. But he is not a natural leader. He is a little round primadonna who likes the veneer of TV, but not the hard graft. Interestingly Nadia the script writer has excelled in the vaccuum that he has created. She has been organising everyone, and everything, as well as writing the scripts. The timeline in the scripts didn't make sense, and Radmanesh had never done a budget before as he's worked with RTA, Afghan state TV where I guess everything must have been done for him - so I spent almost a week trying to clear everything up with them - and send the scripts to the donors for approval before we start filming. I had to concentrate not to raise my voice. I am hoping my levels of patience aren't exhaustive, and that I'll be able to top them up through sleep...

Trying to sort out a minibus load of angry men...

B and I at work

Documentary diary 2 continued...

Sunday 25th May
We slept until 6.30 this morning which was unusual and had breakfast of bread as tough as a slipper and granular honey from Mashad in Iran. We are looking forward to the food package…

We got to the clinic to film Khoshan’s husband leaving the clinic to go home and the trouble started…

Even though there is no established media law in Afghanistan yet, we decided we would try and get all the people we filmed with to sign release forms – giving their permissions in writing. (Even though their signature is a thumb print and if you explain what the form is for they might not fully understand what it means).

The husband however said that he didn’t want to carry on filming with us and he didn’t want us filming anymore with his wife and child either. I suppose he was in a very vulnerable position – he had just stopped his opium habit, was heading back to his village, and the men in the community were bullying him. No wonder he was taking a stand. But we had his wife’s consent so you’d think that would be fine. But not here, as a woman’s voice counts for nothing.

We decided to wait for the social worker to come back and hold a village Shura to explain the purposes of our film (raising awareness about the addictive qualities of opium and heroin in Afghanistan…if you remember that far back) and see if they’d give us any lee-way as we really wanted to film Khoshan’s treatment and her recovery.

In retrospect I was an idealist even to think this was worth a try. We were after all dealing with a gang of small minded men, who lived trapped in a small valley in one of the remotest places of the world, who had not been to school and couldn’t read or write, who mistrusted us from the outset and who had thought we were men a few days before. But we had come this far (20 hours of footage and 15 days later) so we had to at least try and make them see our point of view.

I went to the commander’s office to use the phone and spoke to Mum and Dad and to J. I remembered that J and I met today four years ago. I had a nice little day dream about the moment we met which served as respite on my walk back.

I met one of the social workers on the way back to the guest house who asked what I had been doing – I explained I’d been speaking to my family and he asked after my Father and my husband. I replied my Mum and my sister were also doing well. I was not really in the mood for more misogynist chit chat.

B and I took our first day off since we started. We read, slept and chatted in our room as the wind shook the building, and were brought tea and almonds by the guesthouse manager who we have nicknamed The Badger as he looks exactly like one.

Monday 26th May
The doctors and social workers are getting tired of us and don’t really want to help us sort out this problem. No one really sees the bigger picture apart from us – how could they.

Our driver had been away for 2 days fixing the broken spring on the car and was late back so we were late leaving for the village shura. The doctors and social workers reluctantly came with us. We saw Khoshan before we left who said she wanted to keep working with us, but we had to win over the men for her and get their permission. She sent us back on the 3 hour drive with her blessing. She is such a strong and spirited woman in the face of so many adversities, we are becoming fond of her and Shakila the baby, who’s hysterical.

We began the shura meeting. The head of the shura – who turned out to be the one that ran the sheepy guest house where we’d stayed – had gone to Faizabad. This was going to be problematic.

20 men came along – and were led by a nasty piece of work called Shamshir (which means sword). He was wearing an army jacket, Russian hat, gold watch, enormous ring and had kohl rimmed eyes – we were resolutely told that what we were doing was un-Islamic, we shouldn’t have been in the house with the woman on our own (But we’re also women for goodness sake! What did he think we were doing in there?). Shamshir said he would have liked to have beat Khoshan up for co-operating with us. They said if we were to continue with the filming – they needed to see the footage first. The doctors did nothing – the social workers remained silent. They were frightened by this retaliation and I suppose feared for their jobs.

We had not much choice but to try and arrange for them to see the 20 hours of footage, even though this is a big no no in documentaries as it should really be based on trust. But that was obviously the problem.

The sad thing was that although Khoshan’s husband was present at the meeting, he wasn’t allowed to speak. His view didn’t count. Just like Khoshan’s view didn't count. Ironically the only two permissions we needed in the village – his and his wife’s – didn’t count for anything. The community took over – and the individuals’ views that really mattered were left forgotten in the dust. There is no such thing as individuality here. It is strangled before it can begin.

I tried to explain the purposes for the film – that it was to help people in Afghanistan understand the dangers of opium and heroin using real life examples. But they weren’t having it. Didn’t understand and didn’t care. And they said they would need to wait for the permission of the head of the shura for all this anyway – who wouldn’t be coming back for 10 days. We didn't have 10 days. The film needs to be finished by mid July, and we're only half way through.

We drove 3 hours back down the road again – feeling exhausted and depressed that something we had dealt with so thoroughly, kept our standards so high over, and had all started so simply (with Khoshan’s approval to film) had turned so complicated now this gang of men had got involved.

We realised they were threatened because we were giving one of their women an opportunity to express herself to a camera – and therefore an audience. And possibly – judging from the wealthy looking Shamshir – we had come up against the opium dealer in the group who would not have wanted a film to be made about drug use in his district...

We arrived back at the guest house and there was Anna my colleague – who’d come all the way from Kabul with the boxes of food from J and B’s husband. We felt the love and the support come out of those parcels. I struggled not to cry (again). I doubt people in the communities we’re working with have never felt such support from other human beings. We found a bottle of whisky hidden amongst the cans of sweetcorn, dried fruit, cereal and packets of beef jerky (inspired!). And it really helped to forget our worries that night. With the help of that sturdy bottle of Ballantine’s we managed to mentally switch off, step outside the situation and even laugh about it all.

Tuesday 27th May
I called a well-connected friend back in Kabul to see if he could intervene and persuade the villagers we meant no harm and to allow us to continue filming without showing the tapes (which would have taken 20 hours of our time which we absolutely didn’t have). He said if we got the ringleader on the phone (the sinister Shamshir) he’d see what he could do.

We drove another 3 hours back down the dreadful road to the village. Anna’s driver took us this time, who narrowly missed driving us off a cliff on the way there…On arrival at Shamshir’s house and meeting his two wives it became apparent he was as we suspected, one of the wealthiest in the village. Perhaps he really was a dealer. He gave us each, his face full of hatred, a bowl of sheep's yoghurt and a plate of raisins (hospitality comes first – even for enemies…)

We arranged the phone call on the Satellite phone in a howling storm and Shamshir agreed to have another shura to talk about the possibility of us continuing to film. This time the men started to become seriously angry, Khoshan’s husband started hurling obscenities, and told us they couldn’t make a decision until the head of the shura returned in 10 days time.

We left, another 3 hour road journey feeling even more gloomy than the day before. The light of hope was flickering out.

We stopped on the way back to film some of the beautiful views and saw a white mini van driving towards us. I jokingly told Anna to look out for the head of the shura, just in case he was in the van. And as it drew closer – there he was – a funny little man with a ragged turban and mad looking face – in the front seat.

We flagged them down and explained we needed his permission, as head of shura, to continue filming. And a very bad situation got even worse – culminating in Anna taking pictures of me trying to sort out the increasingly irascible men – none of whom really understood, or wanted to understand what we needed or why we were there. The head of the shura made no sense at all – I think he really was mad. And he yelled and yelled and then drove furiously off with his entourage and left us in a cloud of dust…

We didn’t know how this situation got so messy – but it was definitely time to leave. The weather here can change quickly on every level, and as we drank some more whisky that night we agreed it could be risky to stay any longer with this amount of confusion and anger going on in the village. They knew where we were staying so we would have been mad to stick it out. And we had a story on the tapes anyway, and Khoshan’s verbal permission to film – we just hadn’t managed to film her complete recovery.

Wednesday 28th May
We managed to book ourselves on the flight from Faizabad to Kabul on Saturday. Even the doctors and social workers have become confused and mislead about this project. I don’t think people are used to female production teams; and maybe documentaries like this are still avant garde in this country. We are learning a lot about the real country it must be said - even if we're not getting our way every time.

Our driver got the car stuck in the sand on the road and didn’t know what to do. Anna and I pushed him out with the other male driver just standing there watching – surprised that we knew what to do.

We filmed processions of camels and breathtaking views all the way back to Ishakashim and started fantasising about making a wildlife documentary next – and steering well clear of people. Maybe next time we should come and find the snow leopard. At least it wouldn’t argue with us about release forms – but then again, it’s probably too sensible and elusive to get itself into this mess in the first place.

It’s great to have Anna with us to witness the madness of our time here. She has been taking pictures all day to document our work.

Thursday 29th May
We stayed in another guest house with awful food – but we didn’t need to worry as we were working our way through the amazing food packages and the remains of the whisky in the evenings…

The guest house manager beat up his children and a donkey in front of us this morning. I don't think I will ever get used to the violence in society here.

We tried to organise for some armed guards to escort us on the dangerous bit of road from Ishkashim to Faizabad, but the commander in the village was not going to help us. He was an unpleasant little man who insulted us by saying even if something happened to people in a low position – such as us – it wouldn’t look good for the district. But he wouldn’t give us any help. He had tiny feet and I had to restrain myself from telling him what that supposedly meant…

We are exhausted and becoming fed up of the constant fight to get anything done. We are women and people are not used to women being unaccompanied so make it harder rather than easier for us. And we were up against men, men and yet more men and their staring, their questions, their probing, their not understanding, their hating – with everything we do and say. We are getting a tiny glimpse of what it might be like to be an Afghan woman - although we don't have to stay here forever, and we have our platefuls of rights to go back to at the end of all this. Sadly this is not the case for all the women we have come across here, such as Khoshan.

B and I (and now Anna) are totally on our own. When the shit hits the fan all our supposed support staff fade into the background and we have to fight for everything ourselves.

It makes us feel tired, and sad that it’s so hard for women here. Ironically though – for all the tribulations – the reason we’ve got such compelling and hopefully effective material – is because we’re women and we were able to film in Khoshan’s house, and with all those other women, to begin with.

Faiaz the driver bullied Julia all the way back to Faizabad telling her to put on her burkha in the car. And we had to stop in the danger zone on the road to pee. But we got to Faizabad safe in the end.
Frustratingly we couldn’t stop for the beauty shots because of the security problem. And we were bashed about in the car for hopefully the last time in 3 weeks. We are feeling battered and our brains and bones have been badly shaken about.

But we are still giggling a lot...about everything. Laughter has kept us going. And we have the luxury of being able to escape back to our normal lives now - as I've said before. And Khoshan will live with all this for the rest of her life - and so will her baby Shakila. And most likely her children too...


Friday 30th May
We saw our guardian angel from the American Counter Narcotics team who had given us the chocolate mousses and binoculars on day one. She gave us another amazing lunch of chicken and courgette followed by mango mousse. Our stomachs didn't know what to do with it all.

She made us laugh, because the Afghan date at the moment is 1387, not 2008. And when she heard our stories she said sometimes thinks it really is 1387 in these communities.

The driver we used that day started fighting us for more money (obviously this is the norm around here).

It makes me sad to think of 29 year old Julia our translator stuck here with her good brain and it being stunted it from lack of opportunity and freedom. We left on good terms despite her tricky character.

Saturday 1st June
We only just made it out of Faizabad. The flight wasn’t going to be able to land because of haze. I could hardly bear it – we really needed to get out of there. But we heard the UN plane in the distance and cheered loudly as it crashed onto the rusty metal runway.

Arriving back in Kabul was like Los Angeles compared to where we’d been. J and I had a really fun evening drinking champagne and eating some Russian caviar he had found in the local shop, and I tried to fill him in on every detail of our time away.

Sunday 2nd June
It’s officially the first day of the week and I should be in the office, but I can’t move. My bones are thumping and have really bad stomach.

Apparently these are the symptoms of nervous exhaustion… I can’t even muster the energy to talk on the phone.

J has gone to Islamabad which is really sad – our jobs are not keeping us in the same place much at the moment.

More soon when I catch up with myself.

Some of what we saw...

Documentary Diary 2

B and I just got back to Kabul after three weeks filming in Badakhshan so I’ll have to go back in time a bit…
Please forgive the lengthy descriptions – and the careless writing. I have so little time to get this down.

Saturday May 10th
I had been spending every day in the edit suite in the office basement trying to get Farid to log all the tapes properly which he hadn’t been doing. All that time in one room with him made me realise he has only one thing on the brain. And it isn’t editing unfortunately. Every other remark is a sexual reference. Oh God. Why did this edit suite have to be in a basement – and only just big enough for two people?

In between technical mayhem he regaled me with horrific stories about things that have happened to Afghan women – the ritual of Afghan wedding nights and having to prove they have never had sex before (I will spare you the details); and how he was a ‘women researcher’ before he got married which means he got very close to lots of girls who all told him their stories. This was all topped off by an intricate explanation of a film script he has written based on a true story. It centres around a 13 year old girl who is raped by a weapons smuggler, forced to marry him after becoming pregnant and ends up having to help him take gun parts over the border into Pakistan hidden in her underwear. He is struggling to find a girl to play the lead role 2 years on. (I wonder why?!) I was nervous about our next filming trip to Badakhshan – but frankly anything to get out of that tiny cubicle and away from the rampant editor…

Tuesday May 13th
I got on the UN flight to Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan with B feeling like a jelly already. I had not slept for the previous two nights because, despite realising the editor was a sex maniac, it also clicked that he wasn’t capable of doing the documentary editing job either. Worse still he refused to admit it and didn’t seem that keen to learn. I had a long chat with B, and we quickly came to the conclusion that we needed another editor to do the job for him, and train him up – if he was interested. And fast.

But there are very few editors that use this software system in Kabul and they’re all in high demand. And I couldn’t really think of anyone from abroad who would come to Afghanistan at a month’s notice. I had a day and two nights before heading to the middle of the most remote place in the world with no phone or internet and a full-on filming schedule. So it wasn’t really the best moment for beginning the recruitment process. Unless I was looking for Yak farmers…

But it’s amazing what you can do in 24 hours. Farid would at least agree with that. Ahem. And by the time we boarded the flight I had found 3 interested editors – from the UK and the US to come and save my skin.

I spent both nights awake sending emails to editors and the day time in the office sorting radio scripts, the TV drama, more proposals and some meetings before I left Kabul. I missed out on the views of the snowy mountains during the 40 minute flight as I was sound asleep.

B and I spent the afternoon in Faizabad with an amazing woman from the States who works for the US government’s Counter Narcotics team. I’m really not sure if I agree with their CN policy but meeting this lady gave a glimmer of hope. After an amazing lunch she packed us off for the following day’s 10 hour road journey to Ishkashim (the last town before you get to the Wakhan Corridor) with a couple of armed guards for our security on the road; lollipops; chocolate mousses; multiple packets of Pampers baby wipes (I didn’t know it then but that would be our shower most nights); multiple emergency phone numbers and a pair of binoculars - in case we saw a snow leopard.

Wednesday May 14th
B and I left Faizabad with a female translator, Julia and Faiaz her mahram (A close male relative. Most Afghan women are expected travel with one). He was Julia’s cousin and also provided our Toyota Landcruiser and did the driving for us. I thought it was neat to have got a mahram who could at least earn his keep by doing a job for us. But I was to regret this later on in the trip.

We had been advised on no account to stop on a certain part of the road in a district called Warduj where apparently the Taliban have their R and R. So the journey only took us 7 hours in the end as we didn’t stop at all. Despite training our bodies to withstand the appalling roads; stopping ourselves from needing the loo so we wouldn’t have to piddle near holidaying Talibs (I bet they do the towels on the sunbeds thing like Germans on the Costa); avoiding banging our heads every bump; and save the precious camera equipment by cradling most of it in our arms, the drive was breathtaking.

We drove along the river, passing caravans of Kuchi nomads moving to their summer camping area. Baby camels all dolled up with ribbons and bows; Kuchi babies to match; foals; calves; lambs and tiny donkeys. They trailed slowly along, with the Kuchi women looking extraordinarily steady on top of camels, in their bright red and pink shawls – some with piercing blue eyes studded into their leathery faces.

The river gushed through changing scenery – fields followed by rocky crevasses and then finally before we reached Ishkashim the valley widened into grassy plains and we saw the tips of the snow covered Pamirs, the biggest mountains in the Wakhan in the distance. The views far outweighed the discomfort of the terrible road and the agony of listening to one warped tape of Afghan pseudo-pop whining out of Faiaz’s stereo.

We had travelled in a convoy of two cars – us in one and the guards and the driver behind. The driver of the second car decided it was a good moment to start complaining about the price we’d agreed once we’d arrived. So I began my Afghan haggling training alone, in a foreign language, hours from civilization, over a barrel. The bastard. I won however – but had to leave the scene because poor B had a violent allergic reaction to the pills she’d been given for her stomach problem she got in Mazar. I ran into our room and to my horror saw her eyes puffing, face swelling and lips getting larger by the second. Her nose was becoming blocked, and I was terrified the same would be happening to her windpipe.

I tried to stay calm and called the Doctor who was supposedly in charge of the drug treatment we were going to be filming in the Wakhan and he arrived within 10 minutes. He brought a vial of antihistamine and a syringe, but he smashed the first vial by mistake and had to send for another, and then started to cut off the top of it with a dirty old fruit knife from the kitchen. B and I both put our foot down (mentally weighing up septicaemia versus asphyxiation from an allergy – in Ishkashim of all places). So she took an antihistamine pill instead and thankfully the rash and inflammation was assuaged quite fast. The doctor’s reputation however was in pieces before we’d even begun filming…And for that and more serious issues we struck him off the people-to-film list pretty fast. During our time spent in the Wakhan however we discovered this sinister man had almost total command of the valley – at least in terms of what we were focusing on which was the drug treatment. This was not a good start. And the doctors are supposed to be ones you can trust.

Thursday May 15th
I woke up feeling a bit disorientated not knowing where to start. But I made use of the last available internet connection to try and tie all the knots with editors for the documentary in June. I think the girl who edited B’s last film is going to come and work with us. It really will be an all girls’ production in the end…in a country where that is still almost impossible.

B is totally recovered from her attack thank goodness.

Our driver doesn’t seem to have a huge amount of initiative and asks for money all day long. He kept asking how much diesel we’d need; how much water; why did we have to bring those guards with us yesterday as they were smelly? Every tiny decision needs to be given careful thought and attention. If you don’t make each decision yourself someone will make the wrong call and you’ll be left in the Wakhan with not enough water to drink, no fuel, or no protection.

We set off into the Wakhan. The road was even worse than the first one but the scenery became more and more beautiful. You can see why it is called the Wakhan corridor. The wind hurtles down it, picking up dust on its way and changing the weather every few minutes as it goes. You can’t plan around it, but it does make for some startlingly dramatic shots with the film camera – as we discovered.

We arrived after 3 hours in a tiny village of mud houses called Khandud where the drug treatment clinic – the Omid (Hope) Centre is. We talked to a couple of doctors and social workers about their treatment and had some eggs and dry bread for lunch at about 4pm.

The guest house where we stay is a basic cement compound in the middle of the windswept plain. B and I are sharing a room. The staff seem friendly – if a bit surprised to see three girls working and lifting and carrying all the heavy equipment and sorting all the logistics. But are nevertheless quite happy to watch us get on with it….You don’t really see women here apart from in the fields in their colourful headscarves, doing excruciating manual work. The bathroom is very basic and the food on offer is chick peas, rice and bread.

Friday May 16th
This place becomes even more beautiful the further you drive. The landscape is sublime – with huge, ever changing skies, enormous mountains either side of the corridor and the same gushing river which divides this arm of the country from Tajikistan the other side. You can clearly see Tajikistan from the terrible road – with its electricity cables and developed housing. At night you watch the lights of Tajikistan twinkling across the river, from the darkness of Afghanistan.

We set off for a further 3 hour drive to a village called Kipkot– the road completely disappears in places and you have to forge gushing rivers and clunk round hairpin bends with vertical drops below. Although he is luckily not a bad driver, Faiaz has no respect for any other people or animals on the road at all. He calls the people here scum and ‘wild like animals’. I got angry with him about this but it didn’t stop him blasting his horn to get camel convoys to move out the way, or shepherds with their sheep and lambs. He has never been here before and absolutely hates it. His cousin Julia our translator admitted he was a Daddy’s boy from Faizabad. And he doesn’t even work for a living. The only thing he appears to care about is his car – not even Julia who he’s supposed to be looking after.

I saw my first yak (ghash gav). They are very prehistoric looking but a treasured commodity in these parts, mostly because of their milk and their strength.

The drug treatment begins with the social workers and doctors choosing a Shura or council in each village where there are opium addicts. The problem then becomes a community responsibility as much as an individual or family one, which helps them support the addicts when they have been through treatment to avoid relapse.

It’s a good idea, although we need to find a family to film with to give the documentary a personal focus.

We filmed the meeting and then made use of precious sunlight to film oxen ploughing fields around the village, and beautiful young girls peeping at us from behind mud walled houses. It meant we missed the lunch that the villagers were offering us and they were upset. But we didn’t want to eat their food because they have nothing here. But the Afghan laws of hospitality don’t change when the village is poor. Luckily we can fix our mistake tomorrow as we’ll be coming back here.

Saturday May 17th
We’re already quite exhausted and we’ve barely begun. Sleeping on the floor, 5am starts, a diet of oily rice, chick peas and wooden bread, 6 hours crippling road journey every day to and from the village and very intense physical work…Everything takes a lot of organisation, strategy and planning. Even washing in the morning or evening is an endeavour- as the hot water is heated by a wood burning stove which you then dilute with water from the stream and pour jugs of it over your body. All the bathroom accessories are western but stuck onto the wall with no plumbing. There is a sink but if you spit down the plug hole when you brush your teeth it lands on your foot as there’s no pipe. And the loo is western but doesn’t flush. There’s also a window which looks directly at the kitchen which because I’m so tall is about bosom height. So I have to wash in the dark so the men in the kitchen don’t see me naked. Men watch us all day long – whatever we do. It gets quite wearing. But we keep reminding ourselves we’re probably the only female guests they’ve had ever – at least without male escorts.

Talking of male escorts – Faiaz the driver decided it was time to start complaining about how much he was being paid. He is on $100 per day, not including his food or accommodation, which B and I realised is almost more than what we’re being paid. He is totally obsessed with money – it rules his conversation. And he knew that by bargaining when we were half way to the middle of China, he would have me over a barrel (like the last driver). We came to a bit of a deal since admittedly the diesel is more expensive here, and hard to find. I couldn’t really burn my bridges as this is not the place to be without a car, or with a driver who has started to hate you.

B and I are having to use so many different skills a day – linguistic, pragmatic, diplomatic, investigative, creative. If you switch off for a second something goes wrong. You need to make every decision yourself as no one else really sees the bigger picture. I really don’t know what I’d do without B. She is about the only person I could be in this situation with, and still manage to get a good job done as her camera work is exceptional.

We filmed yet another meeting to find the families of addicts who the doctors were going to help. I was using the boom for the whole 4 hour meeting. It was extended to its longest so my arms got a good work out. Thankfully I’m so tall – but I’m fairly rubbish at it really since I’ve never been trained and have a lot to learn. B keeps me in line though and teaches me a lot.

We still haven’t chosen a family to film with as we’re going at the social workers and doctors’ speed. Everything takes so long and the days seem to be ticking away.

The office in Kabul sent me off with $25 credit on our Satellite phone which ran out after one phone call. We’re feeling pretty cut off and remote. This is not helped by all these men watching our every step and being screwed over by our driver. B and I feel quite alone but thankfully we have each other. Julia is a very good translator but is a very complicated and difficult person. She is unmarried and 29 years old – and following her own path and career in Faizabad. The costs for a life even this simple for a woman here are manifold. So it’s not surprising this comes with trickiness.

I found a phone at the commander’s mud house at the end of the village and called Kabul to get more credit for the Satellite phone. I also spoke to J. I really miss him and wish he was here.

Sunday May 18th
The tiny houses in the village where we’ve started to film are all the same layout. They are mud on the outside – you have to climb through a small hole in the wall which serves as a door (designed to keep the wind and dust out). After a small mud lobby area you enter the main room which has a small ground area and raised mud platforms ahead, behind, and to either side. There is a fire in the middle, and a hole in the roof – the only access for light which serves, depending on the time of day as a spotlight on one area of the floor – or illuminates different corners of the house.

The walls are blackened by soot – and some people have decorated the top of their walls by scratching patterns through the soot into the mud – like elementary cave paintings.

It is complicated for B to get the lighting right when we’re filming because of this one lighting source. But luckily not only is B brilliant but our camera is good in low light, people in the village where brightly coloured clothes, and their faces are beautiful, weather-beaten and lots have clear eyes. B is getting some beautiful footage which she works at intensely.

Life here is as tough as I’ve ever seen it. The spring is only just beginning, and the cold sets in again in September. The short summer is the only time they have to produce anything fresh for humans or animals to eat. Most people survive on dry bread and tea, with rice occasionally – brought by traders on donkey and camel – along with the supplies of opium that many of them are also relying on.

Infant and maternal mortality here is the highest in the world. Some women have given birth as many as 24 times, with only 6 living children to show for it. A doctor is reachable if you can manage 3 days walk, and this is if the husband has allowed his wife to see a male doctor. There are no midwives. Often the man in the family will give priority for an animal to visit the vet over a wife’s visit to the doctor.

I can see why we are finding that people smoke opium – it is the only thing available that softens the pain of life.

We are still looking for a family to focus on, and have decided to try and avoid the daily exhausting journey, and see if we can find somewhere to stay in the village where we film.


Monday May 19th
Woke up at 5am with a fizzy head – we haven’t really been sleeping as there’s so much to think about and organise. We found a guest house in the village – although it wasn’t up and running yet. They were still plastering, there was no running water and they said there wasn’t much food – but we could stay. At this point anything was better than the daily 6 hours on the road. So we accepted.
The room B and I were shown into was filthy with an overpowering sheepy smell but we were glad to be near where we were filming.

The spring on the right front wheel of the car has snapped and we are trying to work out how to get it fixed – it will involve calling someone in Faizabad to send a replacement to Ishkashim and driving back to sort it there. But we can’t spare a driver as we’re working flat out.

We arrived at the village at 10am – Faiaz nearly ran over B’s foot in the car. It was almost like he’d done it on purpose and B got a fright. He looked at her mockingly. Julia the translator took her cousin’s side and started yelling at B in front of the villagers. She was seriously insulting, and when I asked her calmly to apologise she said she had never apologised in her life and was not going to start now. I’m going to have to add psychologist to my list of necessary skills. This girl is complicated.

Fortunately she is a very good translator, for she brings little else to the party at this stage. And we can’t talk about anything without involving both of them as they are from the same family, so everything is for their collective rather than individual gain – even though they don’t like each other very much.

We had no lunch as we went back to the car to get the food out in the 20 minutes we could spare, and Faiaz had locked the car and left to go and eat lunch with some men – leaving all the expensive kit unguarded and us with no access to our last tin of tuna and some beans. We were not happy.

The camera stopped working after lunch. I think it is telling us it is exhausted too. It won’t eject the tape. We read the manual and it said in changes of temperature (which is every 10 minutes here) wrap it in a plastic bag and leave it for an hour. We took about an hour to find a plastic bag without a hole in it – and then left it in the one complete bag to form its own little microclimate of temperature in there.

The Satellite phone tells me we’re in China. That’s how far away we are. And the nearest place to fix this camera is Dubai – and even that could be dodgy. We can’t do much without the camera – our whole trip would be wasted. We have a spare one but the quality will be totally different which would be so disappointing. In such a beautiful place as this you want to get the most out of it.
I went and interviewed some more families for filming – everyone seemed quite happy to be involved but there were no stories that immediately jumped out at me. By the end of the day, we were told about a lady, Khoshan who had 3 days before she went into treatment, who smoked opium with her one year old baby Shakila. I met her in her little cave like house, without B who was looking after the broken camera – and I think this could be our lady…

The camera still wasn’t working by the evening – so we decided to leave it in the bag over night and hope for the best.

B and I lay in the sheepy smelling room on the floor after a dinner of rice in and chickpeas in thick orange oil that made our stomachs wrench. We chatted about the extreme highs and lows you experience at times like this. The challenges; the people; the crazy experiences. I feel so tired, but in a strange way I wouldn’t swap this for anything right now. We are at least seeing the realities of this country rather than the false comforts of Kabul.

Tuesday May 20th
The camera was still not working when we woke up in our stable…It was trying its best to eject the tape making a whirring and beeping sound. But no luck. We felt very low, and still quite ill from the food. Julia the translator decided to jam the knife in harder by suggesting it was B’s fault the camera broke and we should take the camera to ‘a professional’ in Faizabad to fix it.
I went to meet Khoshan the lady we wanted to film with again this morning at 6.30am and by the time I came back to the guest house the camera had fixed itself.

By 8.30 we were at the village ready to film the drugs meeting again. We heard from the villagers that Doctor Alex, an English doctor who lives and works in the village with his family, was back from his holiday in Tajikistan.
He asked us if we wanted coffee. We slightly fell upon his suggestion and settled ourselves on a plastic mat outside his little mud house and chatted to Ruth his four year old daughter and youngest of four children.
He was charming and funny, and we chatted over cups of filter coffee and spice cake about his experiences of living in the Wakhan for 4 years. His children were brilliant company and his wife also seemed lovely. It was surreal to talk about the UK and where we’d all been to university. What an extraordinary dedication to come and live in this wild place and try and help the people with medical experience which the area has never known.
We continued with our filming later in the morning, humbled and feeling reinforced by conversation with someone on our wavelength, and filter coffee.

We filmed hard all day – although we really need to confirm who is going to be the focus of this part of the film – and time is running away with us. The doctors are trying to be very helpful, but they are a bit too happy for us to just continue filming with them. What we really need is an addict to tell us what they’re going through, as it will be much more compelling.
We tried to film with one family – a male addict and his pregnant wife who was also using opium – but they weren’t at home because they had gone to a friend’s house to find some stuff to smoke. So we returned to Khoshan’s house – the lady with the baby. She was smoking opium with a female friend of hers, and they were puffing the opium into the mouth of the little baby, Shakila. They said they would be happy to film with us and looked like they were enjoying the company and the change of routine.

That evening the owner of the guesthouse said there was no food and we had to buy a sheep for him to cook for us. He was going to buy one from the neighbour. The going rate for a sheep in Badakshan is $50, which I paid him. He asked me if I’d like to have a look at the sheep before they killed and cooked it, but I politely declined.

We tried to speak to ‘Silver Support’ who claim to be able to help with camera problems, and repair and send them back to you wherever you are etc. But the satellite phone kept cutting out, and I don’t think they quite knew what to do when we said we were in Afghanistan – let alone in its most remote part.
We will have to keep filming and hoping for the best.

We will probably be here for the next 2 weeks since we want to film Khoshan go through her treatment at the clinic. It seems like a bit of a life sentence at the moment as we’re already very tired.

I managed to speak to J who I miss so much. He was as encouraging as always, reminded me which way was up, and also how lucky we were to be having such a real experience as this. And he’s right. 4 years ago I would have killed to be doing something like this – and now here we are doing it.

Wednesday May 21st
Our stomachs are killing us – all this thick orange oil, un-digestible sheep parts and greasy rice. Our schedule is pretty military – up at 5.30am and very intense mental and physical work all day until it gets dark – followed by bed in the sheepy room on the floor. I don’t really sleep at all. Fortunately B and I are finding a lot to laugh about and I honestly would have given up if it wasn’t for her. I was accosted by one of the local village Shuras a couple of days ago who needed photographs of themselves for a proposal they’re writing. So I did that at 6am this morning before we began filming.

After some wooden bread and sour cherry jam from Iran washed down with bitter green tea we set to work.

We filmed Khoshan and her children throughout the day. Her husband is also an opium addict but is in the clinic going through treatment at the moment. The village of Wozud where our guest house is, and where Khoshan lives, is a tiny collection of mud walled houses beside the river. Since winter has only just ended in this region, the fields are still newly ploughed with tiny green shoots only just visible in the brown earth. Ladies in brightly coloured shawls wander about with huge yellow pails of water and firewood. Lines of mud bricks lie in the sun drying. Ragged children play in streams and peep at us from behind walls. Tiny donkeys struggle to carry oversized looking men, while wealthier men prance in their turbans and chapans (long coats such as Karzai wears – thrown over their shoulders) on glossy horses. The animals here look well cared for. They are a precious commodity and only form of transport for the majority.

The walk to Khoshan’s house from our guest house is a 15 minute walk. We have to negotiate our way on tiny paths separating ploughed fields and jump over streams. We have a lot of kit to carry. Julia is normally 100 metres behind us, and is not strong enough to carry any of the heavy equipment, which means B and I do pretty much everything – carrying the camera, the boom pole and microphone, a huge back pack and reflector, sprays, water for drinking, tripod, tapes, batteries…. We are stronger and faster than the other ladies (who are quite often in the wrong place where we’re filming, and usually in shot when they’re not supposed to be).

Julia is a good translator, but she has a habit of finishing peoples’ sentences, interrupting or putting words into their mouths which when we’re filming interviews makes them unusable – so we have to stop and start a lot. The social worker who is helping us is lovely and extremely helpful, but 5 months pregnant so I’m always worrying about tiring her out. But we’re all women which means we have unrivalled access to the women in the village – who seem happy with us there and are keen to talk about their lives. It’s probably the first time they ever have.

We followed Khoshan go about her day. She was smoking opium with her baby for a lot of it. The baby Shakila is very drugged out. Her pupils are in a very strange position in her eyes. Her head lolls about making it difficult for B to film her, and she is filthy and cries a lot.

Khoshan’s other children have not much to eat because their mother spends all their money on opium. They are dejected looking brood. One of the boys is called Panjshambe (Thursday) and one of the little girls is called Nao Ruz Mah (New Year’s Moon). The children do most of the work – collecting firewood, water, taking the animals out to eat grass, begging for flour – and even earning the opium money for their parents. They don’t go to school because they need to work.

A few hours after finishing the last of her supply of opium, Khoshan and her little daughter started to have withdrawal symptoms. Khoshan was in great pain, and Shakila was screaming. We continued to film and interview her about how she was feeling, and she told us about the two children she had lost – which made her cry. After a few hours we left her saying we hoped we had not annoyed her by filming in her house. She told us we had helped her by being there because answering all our questions had taken her mind off the pain.

That night we did all our clothes washing and had some Chinese noodles out of a packet which was the last of our food supplies we had brought with us. B and I had a chat about how unfair it was that we had been born into the worlds of opportunity and love, and look at the life that Khoshan was given. How accidental our destinies are.

Thursday May 22nd
I didn’t really sleep again – the food we’re eating is not possible for our stomachs to digest. So my tummy keeps me awake all night telling me about what it’s doing. We have an armed guard outside leant to us by the commander, but he looks about 12 years old, and there are strange noises from the fields outside which doesn’t help sleep patterns either. Everyone in the whole valley will know by now where we’re staying, what we’re doing and all the expensive kit we have with us. So there’s a lot that could go wrong – and no one would ever know until it was too late…

This is however an extremely beautiful place to wake up – we are so far from traffic or urban chaos that even after 2 hours sleep I feel exceptionally lucky to be able to look out onto the little stream lined with lurid green almond trees with cows and yaks nibbling grass in the distance.

We followed Khoshan around again – she went to a stream to wash herself, Shakila and their clothes. Shakila screamed and screamed in the cold water as Khoshan scrubbed her downy baby hair with Imperial Leather soap.

I am being a muppet with the boom and the sound recording – everything can be very cumbersome in the tiny houses with a tiny hole in a wall for a door which takes me ages to clamber through with the boom and all the bags. And I am not thinking or reacting quickly enough which is not only extremely frustrating for me – but also for B who is more experienced so she has to stand there and watch me mess things up. It is difficult because everything is in Dari and sometimes I miss things. Yet I should be the one who is thinking ahead and aware of everything that’s going on. Luckily there is not enough time to beat myself up about all this, as things are moving so fast. I just need to keep learning.

We scrabbled around the mountain side following a deft Khoshan with Shakila in her arms taking the cows out. We met her oldest daughter who got married when she was 7 years old. She was being bullied by her friends because her Mum was not only an addict, but was allowing herself to be filmed by us.
Khoshan went back to the house and sparked up her opium pipe – breastfeeding Shakila all the while on her flaccid, brown, wrinkled bosom. It was sad to see her desperation. She puffed and puffed on her pipe with Shakila gurgling happily beside her. They go into treatment tomorrow – mother and baby – so this was one of her last hits.

We followed her up to the stream again, but she told us to leave because the villagers were starting to turn against her. She said she was enjoying working with us but we had to be careful of the other people because everyone thought we were giving her money or paying for her opium and were jealous.

The social worker went to the Ja’amat Khana (meeting hall) to sort things out – and it turned out the villagers thought we were men. This means they thought Khoshan had allowed strange foreign men into her house when her husband was away. The social worker assured them we were women.

We had a laugh back in the guest house when she said she’d told them to open their eyes. We were not men! Julia said it was lucky they hadn’t demanded we went to the meeting hall for an inspection to prove our gender.
I told B she made a very beautiful girl, but in these kinds of societies unfortunately it was even more dangerous to be a beautiful boy…but we won’t go down that road right now.

It’s important to realise how we are perceived in places like this – and I suppose we must be like aliens to the villagers really. We are as opposite as could ever be as women to their women in terms of our life experience, and our future.

But we are getting a true insight into the desperation of life here for women. They have no voice. And no choice. How can it be fair that in one of the most religious countries in the world – women are not able to go into a mosque?
Most women here are suffering from undiagnosed depression; physical agonies from all that child birth; and un-consoled mourning from all those lost children. The word men use for women in this region is ciasar which literally means darkness in the head but would probably translate as ‘wench’ or ‘wretched one’.

No wonder Khoshan finds solace in opium. She and Shakila go to the clinic tomorrow. She is really excited about being helped to quit her habit. She is longing to be liberated from it.

Friday May 23rd
We woke up at 5.30am to try and get some general shots of the beautiful village but the air was a haze of dust and a strong wind was blowing. I had my first good night’s sleep because I didn’t have dinner which saved my tummy a nocturnal workout. B and I both had crazy dreams – B had gothic dreams about Vampires, and Nicole Kidman was in it. Mine weren’t quite so creative or exciting but weird nevertheless.

Khoshan had dolled up Shakila in a little bonnet and gloves for their journey to the rehabilitation clinic in Khandud – 3 hours back along the terrible road. We filmed them in the car. Khoshan’s friend was in agony on the journey – holding her head in her hands. And another addicted woman and baby also came in the car. They looked terribly ill. Khoshan was on a bit of high and giggled happily as we bumped along, with B filming from the front seat – and me hiding in the boot.

They were given a check up by the doctors on arrival, and went to wash. Shakila was already starting to look like a new baby, out of their grim cycle of life back in the village. The nurse tucked her into a bed with clean sheets and she chuckled contentedly – her tiny head looked the size of a pea on the huge pillow.

We are now back at the original guest house which is next door to the clinic – which seems 5 star in comparison to the last place. And we can easily move back and forth to film Khoshan’s treatment in the clinic. Her husband is nearing the end of his treatment so we’ll be able to film him too.

Spoke to J (the lifeline) again and he is sending a food package to us. A colleague is taking a flight to Faizabad from Kabul and the 13 hour road journey to bring the stuff to us. It is a comforting thought that we might be able to move off chickpeas and oil.

We are having problems with Julia the translator. I think she is threatened by B and I and is being unpleasant and cruel. Compared to other Afghan women her age she is so brave and has achieved so much – but the other half is still terrified, spoilt and bitter. She won’t touch dirty plates, heavy bags, or do her own washing. She is too afraid to sleep alone in her room. And yet she’s clever and a great translator and at 29 and still unmarried, has broken the mould that so many other Afghan women are trapped in. It’s sad to see that even the success stories for women in this country come at such an enormous cost.

Saturday 24th May
The wind is howling down the Wakhan corridor and the noise inside the clinic is too bad for us to get a good sound recording. I went out in the gale, and up a dodgy looking ladder to gaffer tape the windows and stop them rattling quite so much. But the effect was minimal so we had to carry on regardless.

We are getting very familiar with Khoshan who is pleased to have us around as she goes through her withdrawal. She seems to be coping really well – much better than her friend who is writhing in her bed screaming Allah! It’s painful to watch. Shakila is completely recovered and making friends with the baby boy in the bed next door. They are in bed with their mothers who drift in and out of sleep looking grey and sick. The babies get through the withdrawal much more easily, as their little bodies recover quickly.

We interviewed Khoshan’s husband who seems a sweet man. He is over his withdrawal and heading back to the village tomorrow. He is in the mens’ ward which looks like a ward from the Crimea. Unfortunately the other men in the ward were bullying him, as they were jealous we were interviewing him. They shouted – why are you talking to someone who can’t tell his right from his left – which would have been disastrous for his pride. The atmosphere turned a bit nasty in the ward.

Poor B has a sore back from curling herself into the tiniest of balls to get her beautiful camera angles. I’m still doing the boom, and learning slowly although I keep messing it up as I get so absorbed in what’s going on in front of my eyes. We’re keeping our headscarves firmly in place here so people in the clinic are sure we are women.

The men were playing music and singing songs in the clinic today. There’s something Dickensian or even Goya-esque about the toothless faces, the gnarled hands, the ragged feet. We would all have looked this weather-beaten 500 years ago.

Team outing at Karga Lake

Kabul bling

Jigsaw puzzles and picnics

We have had to delay our next filming trip to Badakhshan in the North East of the country. Poor B has been ill - something nasty she picked up in Mazar. So I've had a chance to sit in the edit room and look at all the footage we shot in Jangal Saseq. Looking at the village's problems back in Kabul is all the more sad and disturbing. When we were filming there, I was so busy making decisions, and trying to decide what our priorities were and where the story was going, that the full impact of what we were experiencing didn't sink in until I looked back at what we had shot.

No one in our team back in Kabul can believe what we saw there. And we have their unanimous support for what we're doing it seems. They don't have many opportunities to witness peoples' suffering in other parts of the country as they are so busy trying to sort out their own lives, understandably. So they are very interested in what we filmed.

The transcription and translation of the tapes has been a bit of a disaster - it appears no one can work alone and do a proper transcribing job. So Farid the editor and I have been going through every minute of footage, and as people talk - Farid translates it, and I write it down in English. So hopefully by the end of today we will have finished transcribing 23 tapes. And we have a Turkmen translator coming in for a couple of days to translate those sections. It will be interesting to understand what people have been talking about in the background. Then I will at least have a paper version of the footage to work from - and piece together the story from that. Editing can be a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle with a million little pieces and no example picture to work from. But that is also the beauty of it.

I am a bit concerned about sitting in the basement editing suite for the next couple of months with Farid. Everything seems to have a sexual connotation. B came in to look at some footage, and I got a bad case of the giggles because Farid said we should watch out for filming horses and donkeys, as when they see a camera they sometimes get 'the sexy problem', and he reminded us that every time the addicts talked about injections, the word they used was the same as the word for intercourse. It also doesn't help that he looks and talks like Borat...I find it really hard to keep a straight face.

Meanwhile the drama team have been casting for the 10 principal characters for the TV series. We have seen about 30 people so far. Radmanesh shouts, 'Akshan!' when they need to start their performance. I am having to accept it's probably going to be quite a cheesy series - but my business is not to try and change that. The whole point is it's not an internationally made production. But the scripts are quite good and include references to Afghanistan's current problems - exorbitant wheat and rice prices; unemployment; drought....which is a good way of keeping it real.

This week I've been particularly excited about roles for women on the two projects. Anwar won't be able to come with us on the next trip as he has too much to do in Kabul, but I've found a female translator in Badakhshan who sounds quite good. She is delighted to have the work and I am pleased to have an all girls documentary team. Not common in this country. I have also given Nadia the script writer a promotion to production manager so she can be involved with bringing her scripts to life - and hopefully oversee Radmanesh and let me know if things are being done on time, and thoroughly. Her eyes lit up when I suggested it. If only there were more chances like this for women in Afghanistan.

We need to try and film some scenes in poppy fields around the country. I called a few counter narcotic teams in the south and they said it was unfortunately going to be far too dangerous. Even the road leading through the south western province of Farah to Herat, where there are poppy fields coming right up to both sides of the road, is too dodgy. Afghans who drive on that road carry absolutely nothing that could link them with International agencies, and only travel there if completely necessary. But we think we might have found some fields just north of Kabul where we are told it's safe enough for some of our Afghan team to go and film.

We had a picnic for my boss' leaving party at the Karga Lake just north of Kabul this week. We didn't tell the ladies where we were going so their husbands wouldn't have a chance to forbid from coming along. We went boating - had a huge water fight, and paddled around in the multicoloured plastic swan peddalo boats, then sat down to a lunch of mounds of greasy rice with lumps of lamb buried in it, plates of spinach and piles of naan.

J has been away for the last few days, and when he gets back I will have already left for Badakhshan. We aren't seeing that much of each other at the moment and I really miss him - but it makes for fun story swapping sessions when we eventually meet and little excuses for celebration (as if there ever need be an excuse).

Murat, the four year old addict and his father

Dagentoordi

Documentary diary 1

Sunday 20th April
On arrival in Mazar we dropped our stuff at the UN guest house and headed straight for the hospital. The Ministry of Public Health have drug treatment centres in a few hospitals around the country - and Mazar houses one of them. The hospital staff proudly told us about their strategy to use 'focal points' (ex-addicts) to find addicted people in the communities and encourage them to come for treatment. They suggested we film with them, but as the doctor mentioned the names of every focal point, the social worker shook her head saying they had all relapsed back into addiction. But the drugs team promised they would find some addicted families to meet the following day - so we left the hospital and started filming some general shots around Mazar city.

It was terrible. Raucous men and boys followed us everywhere we went. Watching the scene from above would have looked like iron filings scooting towards a magnet. We were inundated. And worse was that the men were grabbing at our bottoms. Anwar couldn't cope. He was our male guardian and was unable to be firm with the marauding mobs. We were annoyed with him for being so wet and had to yell at people ourselves. The only other women in the street were hidden under blue or white burkhas. So you can imagine how B and I stood out. And we were wielding a film camera and a boom to top it all off.

Monday 21st April
We met the first of the two families the hospital had lined up for us. Both families were Turkmen. It was tricky because the three suited doctors insisted on coming with us in two white vans and a white landrover. So we not only blocked up the tiny street lined with mud houses, but we stuck out like a group of Africans would in the Highlands of Scotland. There was more angst as I explained to the doctors we were trying to make people feel comfortable and at all costs to keep a low profile. After a few hours they left us with the family.

The mud built compound seemed to house mainly women - with one old man, the head of the family, who made spades. Three women (all opium users) agreed to film with us - but the man refused. It's a very big thing asking an Afghan drug addict, let alone a woman, to appear on national television so I was astonished they agreed so readily. None of them could read or write so they signed the release form with an ink thumb print. They said that the hospital had told them we would give them food in return for their contribution to the film. I felt a bit uneasy about this, but my sense of fairness won and I agreed we'd give them flour and oil at the end of the filming. We then went to visit the second family. The man of the house was an opium addict - he ate three chunks of it per day and was also seemingly happy to film - although he didn't want us to film his pregnant wife. He mentioned the requirement for a gift after contributing to the film too, and signed the release form with no hesitation with his own inky thumb print.

We returned to the first family and almost within five minutes we realised the control was slipping away from us. Of course, rule number one in documentary making is never pay your subjects - in whatever sense. And because the hospital had told these opium addicts that we would give them something in return for their contribution, the addicts had us wrapped around their gnarled little fingers...They had a firmer grasp on the rope than we did by virtue of this oil and flour payment, and subsequently began to pull. Suddenly they changed their minds about showing their faces on camera, the daughters were nagging the mothers not to get involved, the old man listened in on our conversations as he knocked together his spades.

We got less and less from them until one of the ladies left the house saying she was going to stay with a relation for a few days - and she was the main subject. We spent a few hours in the compound which was big, with goats, chickens, cows and piles of dung patties for burning in winter. As Turkmen families go this was a wealthy one. And we realised that the young girls in the compound were furiously weaving carpets (unpaid) all day to sell in order to support the older ladies' opium habits. These young girls were trapped in an inextricable system of family-slavery. If we had made a film about this family - it would have been ugly. (Although of course these older ladies were eating opium to kill their terrible pains. They had all lost children in the fighting, and most had gruesome sounding health problems. Opium is a quick fix for any such thing.) But through agreeing to give them a gift of flour and oil, we were appealing to the wrong side of these people for honest co-operation for the film. We would have gained neither truth nor quality, because in essence we were paying for the information they could give us. Interviews need to be voluntary. If anyone is in a job solely for the purpose of a quick buck (or the edible equivalent) the quality ebbs away. So that was my lesson number one.

Tuesday 22nd April
We decided to film with the Turkmen man from the second family instead. The social worker came with us from the hospital. It was very embarassing as she approached the car wearing her burkha and I shut the car door in her face because I didn't know it was her under there. Luckily she laughed about it. I felt time was ticking away without us - as Anwar kept getting us embroiled in formalities and meetings with paper pushing officials from the hospital. B and I were like stroppy teenagers.

Anwar got embarassed every time he had to ask for a loo for us. And to top it all off, we had lunch in a restaurant and had to sit behind a blue curtain. Mazar is an extremely conservative city. The female social worker told us that ladies wore burkhas here long before the Taliban were conceived of. So we ate our kebabs behind the grimy curtain and I took great pleasure in crawling underneath the curtain as often as possible to ask for salt, a drink or the bill. It seems girls shouldn't really crawl on the floor, go to the loo, or eat in public. And we were expected to stay hidden. As we were concealed behind the purdah - Tolo TV was pumping out music with semi-clad Central Asian girls dancing raunchily on the fuzzy screen.

We filmed a whole afternoon with the second family. Niazi, the addict, had been one of the Uzbek warlord, Dostum's fighters and had been addicted to heroin, then opium for many years. He used to be a keen footballer so after interviewing him we decided to film some young boys playing football on a dusty pitch beside a huge rubbish dump and stinking drains. Again we were set upon. One little boy stood above me and stared at me with cold eyes, then tried to piss on my shoulder. The group of boys gradually grew until there was a huge gang and we started to feel uncomfortable again.B is brilliant at filming on regardless but it was testosterone fuelled and oppressive. These poor young boys have merely followed the example of their fathers, who have known nothing but fighting - and live under such conservative contstraint. Seeing people like us was too much for them to cope with. And again poor Anwar had no control over it.

We retreated to a hotel roof in the centre of the city to film the beautiful shrine from above the streets of rowdy men - and managed to get the wide angle lens jammed on the camera. It took us half an hour to release it, by which time the sun had almost set and we headed back to the guest house. B and I luckily have a similar sense of humour which gets us through these testing moments.

Wednesday 23rd April
We realised the hospital were expecting us to make a propaganda video for their treatment centre, which is at best ineffectual. And B read my thoughts about filming with Niazi. As Afghan addicts go, he has a pretty nice life. He has food, a job, a house and children, extended family to support him, and can afford his three rations of opium per day without much trouble. And he eats it rather than smokes it. If we went ahead with filming with him, his situation was comfortable enough to make our film look like an opium advert, not a deterrent. And because he eats it - it would have been very difficult to film the effects convincingly. We told the hospital we needed more extreme cases for the purpose of the documentary.

We clicked that hospital have been controlling us and are also entangling us in their very complicated office politics. Suddenly it became clear that the hospital don't bother to tackle the very bad addiction problems. They stick to the safer ones. They don't travel far from the hospital to find people really needing help and the 'treatment' facilities are a farce. They shut addicts in a freezing room for detox, and don't interact with them or look after them. Addicts have been escaping in the night from the withdrawal room hell, and taking the hospital blankets with them. Most addicts we spoke to feared the hospital.

Furthermore it is a 20 bed drugs clinic for a Central Asian city brimming with opium and heroin addicts. With every stone we overturn, it seems like someone is to blame - but this poor drug treatment centre is only the result of an underfunded, weak and corrupt government. Even doctors with the best will in the world couldn't change this situation. If you can't point fingers, at least you can paint pictures. We met family after family of addicts - all taking opium to kill the pain of life experience in this country....a land where opiates are increasingly taking the place of psychologists, adequate medical treatment, and tragically, food. A bit like putting a band aid on a growing tumour.

One of the doctors got jealous we were working with another doctor, and started to make up stories about foreigners being shot at on the roads around Mazar. I called a security contact who told me he had heard of no such stories. The doctor was fabricating terror stories out of envy. We headed on terrible roads to a village near the border of Uzbekistan and saw the only railway line I've seen here (It was on the Uzbek side though. No occupier of Afghanistan has built railways here.) The doctors told us the journey would take 2 hours, but after 2 hours we were only half way there. We turned back as it would have been too far for us to make that journey every day, had we found people to film there. Anwar bought three fried fish from the Amu river for lunch, and left them suppurating in a plastic bag in the boot of the car for the whole journey back. 35 degrees and faulty air conditioning.

We returned to the hospital and I had some hard words with the doctors who were hindering not helping our work. I was suspicious they were pushing us towards only Turkmen addicts, in a country where racial tensions and bullying is rife. But B checked with a Reuters stringer and it turns out most addicts up there seem to be Turkmen. At least we checked - since the doctors were Tajik and Pashtun we could easily have been hoodwinked.

They said they would try and help us the following day. So we headed back to the blue shrine in Mazar to get some general shots. It was supposedly ladies day, but we arrived at 2 minutes to 5 and all the women were being herded out by police. The police were thwacking at the ladies backs and bottoms with sticks - pushing them about as you would sheep. When they saw us arrive with our camera they dropped their sticks. Then the hordes of men entered - and we didn't manage to get one shot of the shrine. It became more like a zoo - and we were the animals. Anwar couldn't keep them back and B and I had to do it ourselves. Then they started laughing and jeering at us. So we left, defeated.

We were starting to witness a sort of gender apartheid in Mazar garnished with a brutality that we wouldn't have witnessed had we not been unaccompanied women. (Sorry Anwar but that's what it felt like). Every corner we turned there were at least five more things we could have been making a film about. I don't know what I'd have done without B. And thank God she is also a woman so we were in it together, experiencing the same things.

Thursday 24th April
Finally the doctors told us that there was one place worth looking if we wanted to see the rougher side of addiction in this country. And we travelled 2 hours along a dirt track, past wheat fields and orchards, into the desert - to a town north of Mazar called Khairabad, and finally a mud village far into the desert called Jangal Saseq. It used to be surrounded by trees - but now it is encircled by an arid plain, baked and cracked by the sun. A forgotten village. A female social worker had come with us but spent most of the day complaining she had a headache - and admitted she had never been to this village before.

50 out of the 60 families in the village are addicted to smoking opium. Old men, old women, young men and women, chidren and babies - they're all taking it. There is a well near the village, and that's about it. There are no trees, no jobs, no food. Just opium. And all their money which they get from picking up scrap metal in the surrounding desert (still littered with mines) goes on their drug habit. They are rake thin and dying of throat cancer, chest infections and tuberculosis. Opium is their oxygen, their nourishment, their God. They sell the clothes from their backs rather than go without it.

We filmed in the tiny mud houses, forced to breathe the same air as them - thick from the smoking chillums. Most people had hacking coughs and a four year old child with no mother could neither walk nor talk. Younger babies are regularly fed the stuff to make them sleep when the women are weaving carpets. I have never seen such intimacy between men and women in Afghanistan. The scenes in these houses were more cosy than you'd see anywhere else here. The cameraderie of mutual addiction.

They were very happy for us to film them. They are desperate for help - they know they are a sinking ship - but no one goes to the village. The social workers who accompanied us spoke to no one in the village. They didn't really seem to care, or know where to start.

On the way back we ate enormous mounds of rice with the diminutive village Mullah in the neighbouring town. We asked if we could stay in the village whilst we filmed, but he said he would be concerned for our safety at night. So we decided to stay in Mazar for a further week, and drive to and from the village every day.

Back at the hospital with the social workers who said they never wanted to go back to the village, one of the doctors told us the road we had taken that day wasn't safe as there was criminal activity. I wondered why he had waited until we returned to tell us that.

Friday 25th April
I had a sleepless night. My instincts were niggling. I was responsible for this project, and of course I wanted it to be great. This village was the story we needed for our drugs awareness documentary, but what could we do when there was trouble on the road? And more important than the project, I was responsible for the safety of Anwar and B. I was the one who had come up with this whole plan in the first place. I sat at breakfast with a fizzy head. The cornflakes made me feel sick and I couldn't eat.

B put my thoughts into words and we started to make a few calls to local UN units, Reuters stringers (anyone but the hospital who seemed to be entirely irresponsible). The feedback we got was on all accounts to listen to the locals - they know. And one person told us to remember the criminals on the roads are not just thieves, they are hungry thieves and would kill for $10. Sobering stuff. Not that we needed extra sobriety. We took the day to reflect, research, and make calls, and didn't travel to the village. Afsal the driver looked relieved we were taking our time. It was he who had alerted us in the first place - but we had been so confused with the doctors' meddling and lying, it was impossible to know who to trust.

In the end we were recommended to call the local commander of the province of Balkh and ask his advice. B and I were reluctant, as authorities are notoriously corrupt and we envisaged him possibly leading us into trouble, not out of it. But we had nothing to lose. At 5pm we turned up at his office. He marched into the room full of plastic flowers, glass tables and sofas pushed against the walls. He was probably about 6 foot 5 and had a kind, strong face and firm handshake. The whole meeting took a total of 10 minutes (unheard of....). He thanked us profusely for letting him know we were there. How could he look after us is he didn't know we were in his province? We asked for two armed guards and he offered us four - two with AK 47s and uniforms, and 2 civilian dress criminal police with pistols. For free, for as long as we needed them.

Saturday 26th April
We set off at day break. The guards were pretty smelly but I didn't care - we were in good hands. No criminal would have tried it on with our car load... We agreed we would leave the guards in a place a little way before the village so we wouldn't scare the villagers. Anwar was soon in the doghouse again, as he was gossiping to everyone about our armed protection - including the village mullah and the doctors. So by the time we got to the village - they already knew we had armed guards and looked nervous. B and I were furious. Information on a need to know basis, and cause and effect was not coming easily to Anwar, and he was burning the bridges as quickly we could build them.

I found the interviewing very difficult - the ladies in the village only spoke Turkmen so we needed three way translations and Anwar was not translating properly or quickly. I was also having to concentrate on holding the boom - far away from B's beautiful shots taking care not to cast shadows, in a tiny corner of the room - towering above the people who were sitting on the ground. It was hot, awkward and smoky. Wearing a headscarf is so impractical - they were not designed for women who work - and I didn't feel I was making anyone feel at ease or relaxed in order to get good answers to our questions. I was not on their level in any sense - physically, emotionally or linguistically. And we were sure they were more guarded having heard about our armed escort.

We carried on regardless and realised quickly they were sweet, open people, (very beautiful and photogenic too) who were unable to break their vicious circle of addiction, at least until death broke it for them.

Sunday 27th April
Anwar seemed more on the ball and things were a bit better. We brought vitamins and iron syrup for the four year old child and other babies. We did lots of interviews and followed people in their daily routine - which was mainly drinking tea and smoking opium with occasional trips to neighbouring houses to do the same.

The main problem is the police have been stopping the male villagers metal collecting - supposedly because of mines - but demanding huge bribes on top of this. So the villagers are starving. All their money goes on opium (they would rather forgo the flour than the drugs). And when they can't afford the opium, that's when things get really bad.

The soldier who travelled in the same car as B and I was rather intrigued by us. I don't think he had ever seen women working 14 hour days, and lying face down in the dust to get the best camera angle. He said to us that if everyone worked that hard in Afghanistan there would be no problems there. And the criminal policeman admitted to us that he had worked in the province for 20 years and never knew this village existed - and how was it that we, after only 5 days here, had managed to find it?

We found some bootleg beer in a Wedding Hall on the way back thanks to a tip off from B's husband. We drank one can each in the guesthouse that night and I felt drunk after a few sips.

Monday 28th April
Although I thought today had gone okay - after a debrief in the car on the way back with B - it appears I may have asked the tough questions too soon. We were interviewing an elderly lady called Dagentoordi who is looking like she may be one of the principal characters in the film. She looks after the four year old, Murat as his mother has died. She smokes opium all day long - and also gives opium to Murat (who can neither walk or talk).

I felt miserable that evening, feeling so stupid I hadn't got to know her a bit better before wading in with the hard questions...I thought perhaps we would return the next day and she wouldn't speak to us. I decided holding the boom far above people's heads was not the way to bond with anyone and get them to open up.

With this documentary, I know exactly what I want - but sometimes don't quite know the best way to get that - the shots, the questions to ask...How do you communicate well and form trust with people who are culturally so different - via 2 translators?

I received a phonecall from Kabul, and it appears the TV drama team have been doing nothing in my absence. Radmanesh the director can't seem to work alone or motivate himself.

This is all proving so much harder than I ever imagined.

Tuesday 29th April
The journey to and from the village started wearing on us. The road is terrible. But we gave it our all - and this time I sat on the ground with the boom. It worked so much better - we were much more relaxed, the baby relaxed, and Dagentoordi was more open. Direct eye contact and proximity is essential - especially when you don't know someone.

We got lots of good footage, and the people in the village became even warmer and used to the camera. One lady even stood gazing into the lens, face uncovered, breast feeding her baby.

Wednesday 30th April
We went back to the shrine for some general shots - this time with our friendly armed escorts - and it was like a different place. The shrine felt more like a haven of peace rather than a zoo like last time. Poor Anwar didn't have to worry any longer - we were well looked after.

There was a demonstration in Mazar about prices of wheat and governmental corruption which we filmed.

Finally we dropped in on the village late in the day and gave them 2 bags of flour. They had had no flour for weeks. It cost us $80. I don't know how poor people can afford food in the world at the moment.

On the way back one of the soldiers confided he used to have huge fields of opium but had to stop, as it didn't go too well with his job. But he managed to pay for his wedding with the proceeds. Luckily for him he didn't tell us on day one or he might have become the subject of our documentary...

Thursday 1st May
We flew out of Mazar - exhausted but excited about getting back to Kabul. I have missed J so much - although he has provided daily counsel on the telephone, it's not quite the same. Kabul will feel like a paradise compared to the conditions we've been filming in. This documentary is the hardest thing I've ever done but we are incredibly lucky to be experiencing these things in a country where expats are increasingly being restricted to homes behind high walls in Kabul.

How can we help people here if we're not allowed to meet them and visit their villages?

We flew over the desert surrounding Mazar - perhaps over the village of Jangal Saseq. I knew what they would be doing down there...

As we soared south, I allowed myself to reflect - at last sitting down with time to piece together our experience.

The oppression under which people live in this country is much more obvious somewhere like Mazar rather than Kabul - where it has been diluted by foreign influence.

Such oppression - conservative tradition as it was originally, now mixed with staunch religion -leaves no room for peoples' natural feelings. The oppression forces down peoples' souls - like a baby constricted in the womb - causing emotion and feeling to be pushed out, ugly and deformed, in other ways. Violence. Domestic abuse. Male on male sex. Women bullying each other behind mud walls. You can't stop people from being human. Squashed human spirit turns perverse.

I wondered what sort of person I would have become had I lived behind this permanent social purdah with no one to turn to. You can see why so many people turn to opium when things get bad.

Opium tales

Making a documentary involves looking under many stones. The unfortunate part of the process is that with every stone you turn - you find things lurking beneath that you'd rather not have seen. I knew there were stories to be told about opium and heroin use in Afghanistan. But I didn't realise how many there would be; how inherently linked they were to other social problems in this country; and how sad and seemingly unresolveable they would be. Although it would be good to make a film that is redemptive, we won't be able to. Because life isn't. And the drugs problem seems to bob on the surface of Afghanistan's sea of issues like a huge barnacled buoy in a remote harbour.

Anwar, B and I set off for Mazar i Sharif two weeks ago, and have just returned to Kabul. The learning curve was steeper than I thought. And we've only just begun. But first I must introduce my two team mates. Anwar has never made films before and I think the last two weeks have been as hard for him as for me. But he's slowly getting up to speed - at the expense of his ears which have received daily bashings from B and I.

And B (camera lady). I don't know what I'd do without her. She is creative, intelligent, inquisitive and kind with a fantastic instinct for a story. Because she has lived all her life in Iran she has no trust for authority, or anyone in a uniform. She sees problems coming before they happen because she's spent a lifetime having to survive under one of the most harshly oppressive regimes in the world - especially for women. As I was drinking vodka with my friends at university in Edinburgh, B was throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police in Tehran. We have had polar opposite upbringings but thankfully we agree over almost everything and I think are as excited about the documentary as each other.

Technically she is a perfectionist, and very experienced - so not only am I learning a lot more about story telling, but also about cameras, sound and all the things I've been sheltered from during my career as I've always used a camera crew rather than filming things myself.

The two weeks were extremely arduous, and as fraught as anything I've ever done in my life so far. We are afterall making a film about the most damaged people in one of the most troubled countries in the world. That is the layer that we are getting to know. And on low moments this is how I've managed to keep the faith. Surely these people need to tell their stories. And surely we all need to listen.

Directors' Chairs and Crocodile Clips

After a couple of months preparation, we're finally about to begin filming the documentary. I was meant to be visiting a drug treatment project in Badakhshan this week, but the Red Cross flight cancelled me at the last minute, and Dr Anwar our senior producer had to go on his own.

He'd never been to Badakhshan before and I think he was initially a bit nervous to go without me. The project is in the wilds of the Wakhan corridor (the long arm of Afghanistan in the North East which points towards China) and having mostly lived between Kabul and Pakistan, my colleagues are quite suburban in a way. They get nervous going far away from what they know, unsurprisingly.

He called me about every three hours each day he was away. On day two his car broke down on the road between Ishkashim, the town at the entrance of the Wakhan corridor, and Khandud, the village where the project is. He had to walk three hours back to Ishkashim, in the snow in his thin shalwar kameez to find a mechanic. Poor Anwar. Although as he generously admitted, this was a good trial run before we head there together. We'll definitely take a back-up vehicle next time.

But he said the project was very inspiring, in a beautiful setting, with amazing doctors. He did the research we needed, and luckily had no more car disasters on the way back.

Back at the ranch in Kabul - the synopsis for the TV drama is slowly taking shape. Radmanesh has been worriedly reminding me that we haven't got a chair for him yet (I guess he's after a director's number) and he also said, 'Lucy Jan - Ambrella bozorg zarurat ast!' (We need a big umbrella). I was tempted to reply that once he'd written the scripts and found the locations and the actors, then we could find his director's wherewithall...but I managed to be a bit more diplomatic, and asked him jokingly if he'd like his name on the chair too and he laughed.

I think about these TV projects from the moment I open my eyes at 6am - listening to our gurkha guards loading their guns as they change their shift - up until the moment I go to sleep at night. I don't think I've ever lived and breathed work as much as I am doing now.

B, the camera lady started today and seems really great. She is Iranian, beautiful and no-nonsense, with a good sense of humour. We went through all the camera and sound equipment checking everything and discovered that Farid the editor can fix sound cables and many things besides.

He can speak pretty good english too, but I keep forgetting that some of our words for technical things are different. I texted him, asking him to buy coloured gels (which are plastic coloured sheets for lighting) and crocodile clips and he called asking what I meant when I said something about crocodiles and jelly.

J got back this week which has improved my life no end. I was worried as his plane was a couple of hours late and I couldn't get hold of him. He had taken a Safi Airways flight, which is a new private Afghan airline. Realising I wasn't going to help myself by sitting on my own stewing, I did a bit of research on the internet, found a number for Kabul airport control tower, called it, and miraculously a man answered and said: 'Oh, Safi. Yes Madam, Safi she arrive ten minutes ago.' Some things here are so easy they take you by surprise.

Anwar, B and I fly to Mazar i Sharif on Sunday to begin filming with drug centres, and hopefully with drug addicts. I think pre-match nerves would be an understatement.

My boss

After two years of running our Afghanistan project, my boss has decided she is moving on.

She announced the news in our team meeting this week and my team are totally distraught. There are no real leaders in this country, so Afghans grasp what they can in the work place, the family, the village, or the mosque.

She has been a brilliant leader and has made such a phenomenal impact on my colleagues' lives - on their professional skills; their training; their confidence and belief in themselves; their work ethic and their overall happiness and reason for being. There's no one in our office who doesn't respect and admire her - if fear her a little too.

But I'm happy for her, because this is a tiring place to work and from examples I've seen it wears on you in ways you don't always notice. She's moving to Lesotho in South Africa where she will be running an HIV awareness program and for once will get a full weekend off, and places to go and things to do on her time off - unlike here where the movement is limited.

I have learned a tremendous amount from her and hope that I will be able to carry on in the same vein under someone else with what she has taught me. I'll really miss her and her New Jersey lilt, the incredibly loud laugh and her anything's-possible attitude.

Farming puppies

The day I arrived back in Kabul the heavens opened and it has not stopped raining until today. It is such a relief as the ground looked so dry when we flew over – and this is the rainy season. Our garden is a lurid green now – only showing up the shabbiness of the buildings and brown hillside surrounding our house. Gul Ab the gardener looks like the happiest man in the world. I said to him, ‘Bagh bidar misha’ (the garden is waking up) and he looked so pleased that I had noticed. It is always refreshing to talk to someone who works in such a peaceful place as a garden every day – away from the problems of humanity. And you can tell in his face how he has been preserved from people. He doesn’t believe in all the security restrictions and said to me philosophically the other day that he didn’t think bad things happened to people who were not afraid. Let’s hope he’s right.

All the equipment has arrived (minus the lights. Grrrr.) and we have a huge Mac computer and monitor in our new basment studio now. It looks rather incongruously flash against the wobbly wall with damp patches and peeling paint. But Farid the new editor looks ecstatic, as did the rest of the TV crew when we unpacked three new video cameras, tripods, radio microphones, boom microphones with fluffy covers….they were like kids in a sweet shop – it was a joy to see. Let’s just hope it all works and hasn’t been jolted about too much on the journey over from the US and elsewhere. I warned them they'd get the sack if they didn't take care of the equipment and they looked a bit surprised. But I was serious.

I am about to spend the next few months travelling around Afghanistan filming the documentary with the camera lady, B who is Iranian, and Dr Anwar our senior producer. I am hoping that Radmanesh will be able to work with the drama team without me. I have just read through the synopsis and Zabbi our translator has translated poppy as ‘puppy’ all the way through. So we had a lot of conversations in the script about puppy cultivation and how to take good care of your puppies so you get a good harvest. And in one scene a female character was wearing a 'corrugated or puckered' skirt. But overall they were pretty good and the storyline is a combination of a love story, a comedy and a tragedy with an underlying message about drug addiction.

We just have to make it now...

Check out the green garden

A bad case of Dubai rage

It was a good time to take a break - before the 10 new tv staff I have just recruited came on board, and before all the equipment arrived from around the world.

Ski-ing in France hit the spot. It was wonderful to be in a country where you didn't have to sit looking at the snowy mountains all day long as we do in Kabul - you could actually roam around in them. And to know that explosions in the distance were just avalanche control; that bangs in the night were just kids playing with fireworks. To be able to ski downhill really fast, laugh with Mum, Dad, Dunc and J and have the only dilemma of the day in the restaurant while trying to decide what you wanted for lunch. (All that choice. We were holding up the queue in every cafe we went to as we ummed and aahed over 5 choices of quiche, wine, salad, bread...)

I travelled back to Kabul without J (I cut my holiday short to get the tv stuff started) and came via Dubai briefly. I had to bring a suitcase the size of a body bag with half of the filming equipment - camera, microphones, tripods, batteries, chargers, lenses...plenty of fuel for palpitations in Terminal 3. (Oh, and since we're on that subject...it must be worse thanT5. I could barely move for people - arrived 4 hours before my flight and still only just made it through in time). A year since I arrived, I swear Kabul airport is more efficient than any UK airport. And at least in Kabul you don't have to remortgage to buy a coffee and a sandwich.

I arrived in Dubai at 8am in good spirits - I had made it through with all the kit, no bags lost, and all I had to do was buy some lights for filming and a few other things, and fly to Kabul the following day. I was driven to the hotel by a lady Filipina taxi driver called Rose. Her taxi was pale pink and cream, and she wore a hat and veil to match. She was like a filipina Lady Penelope and she drove like Schumacher - barging all Sheiks in their black tinted-windowed gas guzzlers out the way. I was thrown to the back of the seat as she accelarated while shrieking at me 'I LIKE YOU! YOU LOOK JUST LIKE AIR HOSTESS!' I suppose in the service industry hierarchy, air stewardess must be somewhere near the top, so I decided to take it as a compliment.

I wasn't allowed to check in until 2pm so I decided to go and find the lighting equipment. There was another Filipina lady working at the hotel who sang Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds at me every time she passed me in the lobby so I reckoned it was definitely time to get the hell out.

Apparently everywhere I needed to go was within walking distance. After two hours I found myself at the lighting shop having woven around building site after building site, cranes and skyscrapers, asked for directions about 6 times and directed wrongly every time. The problem with Dubai is that only 1 in 10 people is actually from the UAE. It's hard to know what language to embark in, and no one walks. The only people on the street to ask directions were Tamils and Bangladeshis dangling from scaffolding in blue boiler suits and hard hats. Blisters began forming after 10 minutes of walking but there were no taxis to be found. I regretted not keeping Rose the Filipina for a day.

But I got to the lighting shop and the guy (James Christopher Gonsalvez - his parents were obviously Portuguese A.A.Milne fans or something) had everything I needed...3 red head lights, plus stands in a carry case; filters, reflectors. Brilliant. So I handed my Visa card to him. But he said: 'Ah, madam. There is a problem - we only accept cash.' I was ready to scream - I had spoken to him on the phone three times that morning checking he had all the kit. You'd have thought he might mave mentioned to bring $2,500 cash with me. Who travels around with that amount of money in their handbag? Well, probably everyone in Dubai I guess. But not me.

For the rest of the day my mission was trying to find the cash and I was foiled at every turn. It was way above my limit at every ATM; all the banks were closed by 2pm apart from Lloyds (1 hour out of town) who said when I got to the front of the very long queue that they could only help Lloyds clients; even Craig from the Royal Bank of Scotland Perth Chief Office (it was at least comforting to hear a Scottish accent) couldn't help when I rang and explained my predicament.

I couldn't believe that in a commercial hub like Dubai, is was impossible to use a Visa card - and furthermore impossible to find cash. Something's got to be wrong here. Dubai is like this false bubble sitting on top of land which was once the sea - and full of people, a tiny fraction of whom are even from there. On my walk back to the hotel (three times as hot, got just as lost, more dust, more Sri Lankan builders, more blisters) I thought that this city is the kind of place where suddenly there are huge riots, or a massacre or something, and people will say, 'Oh but I thought Dubai was such a stable place'. I'm not so sure. The minute you make money the only reason to be somewhere you have a lot of sad, rootless people who have no family or community who one day will probably become disgruntled about something.

Back at the hotel. There she was to greet me, singing Lucy in the Sky...By this stage I have to admit the smile was thin. It was 5pm and I had been walking around all day in this dreaded city and hadn't even managed to buy the lights which was the only reason I had stopped there. Dubai is a place where all the impossible things have been acheived (the boldest architecture, islands in the shape of the world) and the simplest things are forgotten.

Of course now the dust has settled, and my wonderful colleague is going back to Dubai from Kabul with cash to collect the lights for me this week (thank God I have such a big contingency in my budget), I am now laughing about my terrible attack of Dubai rage. But maybe there are some small grains of truth in my red mist. And next time I'm definitely going to travel through Delhi....

The Intercontinental Hotel

New Year, Cartoons and Pop Idols

Afghans celebrated Nowruz (New Year) this week. Although it is not an Islamic festival, this year it fell the day after the prophet Mohammed's birthday so my team have had a four day holiday. Kabul seems quieter as a lot of people travelled to Pakistan to visit family and friends. But the hill above our house has been alive with families having picnics. It's lovely to watch children running free in brightly coloured clothes - celebrating Nowruz with their families.

The trees in Kabul are covered in blossom (shogufah) and the days are longer and warmer. Surely it's more sensible to celebrate new year in Spring time - rather than grim old January.

Most of my male colleagues have gone to Pakistan for a few days and haven't taken their wives or children. You realise how little the men and the women have in common in this country. Even with the more forward thinking families, the girls lead quite separate lives from men. The less you do together as a couple, the less you have in common, and therefore the less you enjoy spending time together. So the men have gone to Pakistan leaving their wives and children behind with the mothers-in-law. (Sometimes the men stay really late in our office - on the internet, or listening to music. I ask why they don't go home and they say there's nothing to do there so staying in the office is more fun.)

The men in my office have also recently discovered the Lambada and have been pumping it out of the radio studio downstairs, and humming it as they get their lunch. If only they could see the dance....I was talking to Anwar as he sang along to the tune - trying to describe what the dance was like without having to show him the raunchy moves. I said: 'Let's just say it probably isn't a dance that the Mullahs would approve of.' And he roared with laughter.

With the amount of work I need to get done, it has not exactly been a perfect moment for a four day weekend. But at least we have done the main building work in our basement for the TV production office and edit suite. Some things in this country are so easy. The builders came in last Friday - built a wall, made multiple metal storage cupboards, made and installed a door and plastered everything in under 2 days - for $1000. So even though it still looks a bit kharab (useful word to describe anything a bit shabby or broken) our television production side of the organisation is starting to take shape.

I have also hired the tv teams now - and Radmanesh has been storylining with us for the drama series. He has already written a horse into the script. In the UK this would mean you'd need to take out extra insurance, find an actor who could ride, hire a horse and a horse handler....here you just borrow one from the village where you're filming and off you go.

J has been working to the bone again - I can assure you, you are getting every penny of your tax payer's money out of him...But we had a great day off yesterday. It was the finals of the Afghan equivalent of Pop Idol, 'Afghan Star' which is being made by the private Afghan TV channel, Tolo. And we were invited to the finals which was held in the ball room of the Intercontinental Hotel - a 1960's barracks of a hotel on a hill over-looking Kabul.

We took a friend with us and drove up to the hotel. The event happened to co-incide with the re-publication of the Danish Mohammed cartoons and there were demonstrations all over Kabul - notably outside a mosque at the foot of the hill where the Intercontinental is. We drove along - past rows and rows of riot police, and soldiers on roof tops pointing their guns menacingly down on the crowds below. There was an edginess in Kabul, and the city was buzzing with people chanting angrily, punching their fists in the air, and waving green banners. I have to admit that my heart was beating a little faster than normal as we passed the huge mob outside the mosque at the bottom of the hill. But fortunately no one was looking our way - as there was a Mullah in full rant demanding their attention.

Things in the city can spark off very quickly. And even in a bullet proof car, an angry mob at the windows could certainly be nightmare material. So I was pleased we made it to our seats in the Intercontinental ballroom.

What an interesting juxtaposition of fledgling popular culture only a few metres away from chanting mobs of people protesting about the cartoons. Angry mullahs at the bottom of the hill, and male and female pop idols crooning at the top. It kind of explains the ambiguity of the current status of this country I suppose.

The finals of Afghan Star were well worth the un-nerving journey there, and teenagers with greased back hair, tight jeans or seventies-style white suits were jostling for space in the aisles,and also performing on the stage. Quite a lot of the girls in the audience were wearing baseball caps on top of their head scarves - although the ladies on stage were more conservatively dressed. There was one woman from Kandahar who was knocked out in the semi-finals but was allowed to sing at this event. These women risk their lives by competing on national TV. I interviewed one of the ex-contestants of Afghan Star for our TV team, and she now travels everywhere with a body guard since appearing so regularly on television here. The risks for ordinary Afghans trying to make it to the top, far outweigh the risks for foreigners in this country.

I think Afghan Star has even reached the International headlines - and a friend of ours is making a documentary about it for Channel 4 so you'll be hearing more about it.

For once some respite from Prince Harry of Helmand and suicide attacks on NATO convoys.

Darul Aman Palace

Springtime

Spring has arrived in Kabul, although the trees are still bare - they seem to be taking a little while to catch up with the warm weather and the over excited birds. You can hear the city breathing a sigh of relief as the bokharis (wood, oil or gas burning heaters) are packed away and the thick mud turns into dust once again.

The charming gardener, Gul Ab (which means flower water) has transformed our garden. A couple of weeks ago it was a wasteland of grey blocks of melting ice, but thanks to his furious digging, pruning, planting and tidying - is now a business like looking blank canvas which will be a tiny paradise of vines and roses in a month's time. J and I are being tweeted awake in the morning by the birds and roosting wood pigeons outside our window.

Our helper at work, Qand Agha (which literally means sugar lump man) has been spring cleaning too, and assisting the builders to create an editing suite and television production office in our basement. And I think we have found everyone we need for our two production teams. It is such a responsibility - I really hope I've chosen the right people. Lots of them speak no English so my Dari is coming on fast.

Radmanesh the director has started working on the storylines with me and Nadia the scriptwriter and although he is a bit of a difficult character we have a lot to laugh about. I am almost twice his height and I said to my team if we walked down the road together it would look like we were off to the circus. And Nadia said, 'Well Lucy Jan, like in the Dari alphabet, you can be the alef and he can be the b'. The letters she was talking about are like this:
اب
That's what we look like when we stand side by side...

A bit like employing an assistant, I am having to do double the work to get Radmanesh up to speed, but hopefully it will pay off in the end.

My team were really excited to have met Jamie at Mahbouba's launch party and Zabbi the translator sweetly said: 'Lucy Jan, we saw in the eyes of your husband that he is a very good man and we, your colleagues at Equal Access, believe you are a great match.'
I nearly cried.

There was another suicide bomb on the airport road this week - eight people died. Poor Anwar our senior producer was quite close to it, as he lives in the Russian built Micro Rayon estate which is next to the road where the explosion happened. He was almost in tears as he explained to me how in Peshawar, Pakistan where his mother and extended family live, it is seething with people who are being indoctrinated in Madrassas - and why didn't Nato go and hang out there rather than in Afghanistan. The region is getting so dangerous he is considering bringing his family to Kabul. From the frying pan into the fire perhaps - but who knows.

This week J and I had a real day off, and went on an outing to the Darulaman palace, a few kilometres from the centre of Kabul. Ironically it means, 'Abode of Peace' but you can see from the photograph above that it has been in the firing line for most of its short existence since 1920 when it was built. It was gutted by fire twice, and reduced to the shell it is today by the mujaheddin fighting in the 1990s. Nonetheless there is something romantic about a ruin. And we also discovered the National Museum of Kabul opposite, which has some fascinating Nuristani wood sculptures and furniture, and had a display of photographs of the Tashqurghan Bazaar (in the North of Afghanistan) from the 1970s which were as beautiful as Velasquez paintings.

We had a few friends round for dinner and I managed to find some lamb chops (I hate to admit, imported) which didn't involve a 30 minute workout for the jaw and J made an awesome chocolate cake. It's amazing how just one day off to do things together other than work and laugh with friends over dinner can be a tonic that equips you for the week ahead.

A tiny world of colour

The Mini Mobile Childrens' Circus

I've visited this place quite a few times now - since it was the focus of one of our radio shows, and also because we are working with the group for our drugs awareness programming. The trainers for the circus are going to conduct workshops and performances around the country - focusing on schools, informing children (who can pass on to their parents) about the addictive qualities of opium and heroin.

Opening the door to the MMCC compound was like entering a world of colour from the drab, freezing street outside. Run by an inspiring Danish man and woman, David and Berit, it is a glimmer of hope for a small percentage of Afghan boys and girls. Schools here either follow a winter programme or a summer programme, depending on whether they are in a cold or a hot area. Kabul is in a cold area, so schools close for three months in winter, since the state can't afford generators or heating costs. This means that for three months, during the bleakest time of the year, children have nothing to do. While the more enlightened and better off parents might pay for extra classes during these months, the majority don't.

David and Berit have designed a programme for up to 350 children (each year this number increases) to come to the MMCC compound and spend all day learning maths, grammar, english, history, geography, acting, radio production, singing, painting, pottery and theatre - including all sorts of circus acts such as juggling and acrobatics. We saw tiny girls juggling six balls, and a ten year old boy recording a radio show. The set education methods in this country are generally uninspiring, if they exist at all - based on learning by rote and untrained teachers preaching at the children for a maximum of three hours a day (schools go in shifts as there aren't enough, meaning that each child gets only a third of a day at school.)

This year they had trouble because the MMCC has become so popular, there were about double the children than they could cater for waiting outside the gates in the freezing cold at the beginning of the programme. Berit told me that she had to turn away over 300 children which nearly broke her heart. But they refused to leave and stood there, arms crossed against their chests, threatening to go on a demonstration if she didn't let them in.

The MMCC groups also tour the country (and the world - they've performed in Japan and Europe) performing their circus acts, and are setting up satellite programmes in provincial areas of Afghanistan. Although David and Berit run the funding side, the tuition and all the ideas come from their team of young ebullient Afghan trainers.

In a country where my main contact with children is when they come begging for food or money, or to sell me some chewing gum or a phonecard on a street corner, it's a relief to see this world of colour, where children are allowed to be children.

http://www.afghanmmcc.org/ You can have a look at their website here.

Mahbouba show launch party

The recruitment process

Just when I needed it least - a chronic bout of tonsilitis. J inspected my throat with a head torch (I can't believe he brought one of those but I wasn't in a position to tease at that point...) and confirmed it was covered in huge white spots. I had my first visit in 8 months to the German clinic, which isn't bad going. I seem to have avoided the tape worms and other common Kabul complaints that other people have told me about. The doctor looked and sounded like Marlene Dietrich, with bright orange rectangular glasses and a raucus husky laugh. She asked me to stand up and then realised she was too small to see down into my throat which was about a foot above her head. So I had to sit down again. I was packed off with a huge bag of penicillin and some very German sounding painkillers - GrippoSTAD. A week on I think I'm back on track.

I've been swallowing as many painkillers a day as possible and we started the interviewing process for the documentary and the drama crews. For the documentary we need a girl who speaks Dari, Pashto and English, who can travel on her own without a maharam (male relative) and who has an enquiring mind and is interested in the project. We're offering about $400 per month, which is about six times the state wage - but still low compared to other international organisations. We found one possible candidate, but she is asking for $600 which is almost as much as our director's salary.

The difficult thing about recruiting in Kabul is that there is no competitive market. There is not yet enough of a thirst for learning or a passion for subject matter. Understandably it's all about the pay cheque, as most of our employees are supporting their extended families. In the UK people at the beginning of the ladder, in the creative field at least, are so desperate to start that they end up working for free just to get experience. But here the salary system is a completely false one, with people being overpaid for very little skill or experience because the pool is so small. So I'm up against that as well as everything else. I've also had a threatening phone conversation from an Afghan-American man from other production company warning us to, 'Stick to radio as there's enough people making television in this town.' Hmmm. I thought this particular comment said more about the caller than the market. Obviously he's getting no work at the moment. It hasn't put me off though as we're creating a niche product with our educational subject matter - it's not like we're making commercials.

One girl we interviewed was looking promising, but we needed to check if she could travel alone, so we asked her mother to come in and chat to us about it. Her mother came tripping in wearing stilettos and a gold brocade top, letterbox red lips and a huge bee hive hairdo. When we explained the job description to her and the requirement for her daughter to travel alone, she said: 'I think I would be more suitable for this job.' She batted her daughter out of the way with her handbag and started selling her own merits, saying her husband was dead anyway so she could travel anywhere she liked on her own. Anwar, who was interviewing with me, and I got the giggles and didn't really know what to say....We opted for neither in the end.

I've been having sleepless nights all week. The 10 epsiode television drama is a big undertaking - let alone alongside a documentary with sensitive subject matter - and in my few hours of sleep I've had nightmares about actors passing out from heat exhaustion from filming in the summer months; or locations charging us four times what we can afford. I sent my boss an email saying, HEYLP. I don't think she realises what is required to produce 2 projects this size in a country like this - on my own with 2 Afghan crews. I've cancelled all my holiday until October, and although I'm not normally a panic mongerer, I'm concerned the quality is going to suffer by doing both projects at once. Unfortunately she said there's no alternative as we can't afford another ex-pat.

However, Radmanesh the diminutive director has agreed to work with us and he came in to help me start interviewing for the drama crew. He was wearing a spotty shirt and a stripy jumper with patent shoes (about a size 5) and did some tough interviewing. I was definitely the good cop in the interviews, and Ab Fab our finance manager gets back from Pakistan on Sunday so he can fight them for the salaries I hope. I want to try and stay out of that part and concentrate on the storylines. We interviewed for 2 camera operators, a sound assistant, lighting technician, 2 production assistants, and most importantly an editor, who will be editing both projects.

Most candidates were under 30 and the lighting assistant candidate got the giggles every question we asked him - he was 18. I asked if it would help if I left the room (maybe I have a funny face?) but it was no good. One of the cameramen had been kidnapped by the Taliban a month beforehand and held for 15 days before he was released, unharmed. I couldn't believe how chilled out he looked. Every day I see something that makes me realise how extraordinary this nation of people are. Not sure we'll recruit him though, as I don't like the idea of having one degree of separation from the Taliban. Who knows what they might be paying him to find out...

Meanwhile, I've been trying to decide where we should buy all our equipment - and how to get it here with out paying extortionate tax or excess baggage - whilst navigating Dubai cowboys on the other end of the spectrum. You can't even buy lens cleaning solution or tissues here, let alone cameras, tripods, microphones... I've emailed a guy in the UK at a professional equipment supplier and he didn't even know where Kabul was, didn't sound too interested at my plight, and hasn't replied to my email. Thanks a bunch Graham.

I've been writing letters to doctors in drugs clinics around the country to find contributors for the documentary, and Zabbi the translator has been translating them all. I explained in one letter that we wanted to talk to opium or heroin addicts, but in this case people who smoke marijuana was not what we wanted. I don't think Zabbi is that familiar with this subject matter since his version of marijuana translated as: 'Wild mountain man tobacco'. I'll need to check the letters word for word if we're going to be taken seriously by the doctors.

Also this week we had the launch party for Mahbouba's radio show. We started off with the programme on the Mini Mobile Childrens' Circus which we played live at the beginning of the party and it went down a storm. I will tell you about the MMCC in a minute. All our staff came - dolled up in immaculate shiny suits (one particular number with maple leaf motif all over it). J also came (fortunately without the head torch), and lots of other people besides. People loved the show. We held it in a restaurant called Sufi, and they laid on a full Afghan buffet, sprite and fizzy orange (no alcohol obviously) and live music. There was a lot of man dancing and dirvish type whirling aroud, clapping and shrieking. (Women don't dance in public here). We had a real laugh and I thought despite how tricky my job is, I am so incredibly lucky to have got to know, after only 8 months, all these wonderful Afghans and to count them not just as my colleagues, but my friends.

I know it's not p.c. to joke about these but they're useful if you want to keep a low profile on the roads.

Mazar e Sharif

The whole point of going to Mazar e Sharif was so Anwar and I could do an assessment of the student radio facilities at the university there. Anwar is about to start training students how to write radio dramas in universities around the country but we need to know if they have microphones, mixers, software for editing and all the rest before we begin. And the other reason was to visit a doctor, Dr Bashir, in the drugs clinic to see if he help us find some people for our documentary.

We only spent a day and two nights in the city but it was enough to look around a bit. We stayed in a UN guest house which was warm and comfortable. The first morning we went straight to the hospital and met Dr Bashir. I was nervous because if this meeting didn’t go well we would have potentially blown our chances for access to people for the documentary. But he was helpful and nice and I think the meeting went as well as it could have.

We realised we then had four hours before our meeting with the university and wanted to go and visit the ancient city of Balkh – 20 minutes away. We asked Dr Bashir about the security there and he said he would come along with us (perfect, I thought – more time to get to know him and start establishing some trust before we start filming the documentary).

We looked around the town – once a well-fortified city pre-dating Alexander the Great, and capital city of the Aryan tribe. In one of the areas of the town, the doctor told us, 190 of its 200 inhabitants are addicted to opium or heroin, so this was all good research for the documentary.

We looked at some ancient shrines around the town and also visited a dingy hut by one of the sites where a man was toking on the biggest bong I have ever seen. It was only marijuana this time, but we all felt high enough just sitting in the room chatting with him. He kept offering me to try it but I didn’t want to look too keen, although I was tempted to have a go, since my next visit there would be to make this drugs awareness film. So I said, ‘Thank you, not today’ and laughed. I’m hoping I won’t be judged on my hypocrisy…(especially by Dr Bashir, although there was something in the glint in his eye that made me think perhaps he wasn’t averse to the odd joint.)

We went for lunch in a huge wedding hall with plastic green, blue and pink palm trees outside. It was a surreal place with tropical fish painted everywhere. (Or maybe it was just that we went there after the marijuana den)…There had been a funeral lunch for about 800 people and the room was strewn with rice - like confetti on the floor, and orange peels, gnawed bits of lamb and discarded napkins. We had kebabs (again) and used toothpicks from little Chinese plastic dispensers with dolphins on them. You pushed the dolphin down and it picked up the toothpick in its mouth. After lunch we went straight to the bazaar to buy some to take home. As anywhere – most things here are made in China.

We visited the blue mosque of Mazar and fed the white pigeons with grain, and then had the meeting with the university. That evening in the UN guest house, Anwar and I chatted to a British man who was a visiting psychologist for Unicef. I got the wrong end of the stick and thought he was helping Afghan children, but he was actually here to check on the mental state of ex-pat Unicef workers.

He then went to bed and I said to Anwar (who is a qualified medical doctor as well as our senior producer) that surely the Afghan people could do with a few psychologists, rather than the ex-pats. He said he reckoned 90 per cent of the population in this country had experienced things in their lives which a human being is not expected to be able to deal with. But there are not many psychologists – and the ones there are, are often ill-trained or crooked. He said he thought that most of the gastric problems he had treated when he was a practising doctor were caused by psychological trauma. That is why, he said, people are running on such short fuses (the cause for so much domestic violence, child abuse, gun fights in the bazaar….heroin addiction). ‘It is a broken country, with a broken people who are forced to be content with struggling on because there is no alternative’, he said.

My throat tried to stop me from swallowing my tea as I looked at him in the face as he spoke. When we are finished here, we can go back to where we came from and continue as before. But for Anwar and his family and everyone he knows, this is home, which for him, with all its deep issues and dangers, is better than being in someone else’s country. So he just keeps going like the rest of them.

After dinner, we watched a bit of television. One of the main channels, Tolo TV plays a lot of Bollywood films and Indian soap operas. But the Ministry of Vice and Virtue, and the Ministry of Culture and Information have made them put a blurry area over all the cleavages on the actresses, and any midriffs that are on display. We were laughing about ‘the blob’ as we called it, and Anwar said, ‘Lucy Jan the stupid thing about the blob is that it’s almost like two big arrows saying PLEASE LOOK HERE!’ And he told me about a spoof TV show on another channel where they had put blobs over peoples’ feet and hands and over a lady’s handbag – taking the piss out of the draconian governmental rules.

The drive back to Kabul was just as lovely – the same views from the other way around. And I got to know Salim’s uncle and nephew a little more. We stopped for a picnic on a muddy river bank and I managed to chat to them a bit in Dari. I also thanked Salim for looking after us, and for driving so well. He said: ‘I think driving is something every persan can do. But not many peepal do good. A bit like fighting.’

After lunch they all prayed on the plastic picnic mat, and I watched them – trying to keep on one tiny corner and not get in their way as they prostrated themselves – forehead flat on the plastic. And then we wound our way back to Kabul passing the same old mud fortresses we had seen on the way, past wreckages of tanks and tiny village mosques which were only distinguishable from the houses by their pointed windows. The sun set, and when we arrived it felt I had been away for three weeks, not three days.

The Salang and my travel companions

Road trip to Mazar e Sharif

I’ve always loved a road trip. But the security situation in this country often restricts in this respect. However the road from Kabul to Mazar e Sharif in Balkh province is generally considered to be safe enough to drive without armoured cars and guards to match. (WOO HOO!!!!!)

So Anwar, our senior producer and I set off in a convoy of two Toyotas – so we wouldn’t be stranded if one car broke down. A man called Salim drove Anwar and I, and Salim’s uncle and nephew drove in the car behind us.

I borrowed a deep purple coloured burkha just in case we spotted trouble on the road, but realised a little too late that it didn’t fit on my head, and only reached my mid-thigh. I looked more like jellyfish than an Afghan woman. As we set off from Kabul in the dawn light I giggled to myself imagining being stopped at a check point by police and them asking Salim if he knew he had a box-jelly on the back seat. Luckily there was no need for it, and when we got to Mazar, Anwar took me to a burkha shop and I bought a blue one which the man in the shop said was the longest he’d ever sold - but perhaps not quite as long (or as wide) as the one John Simpson wore back in 2001 when he ‘liberated Kabul’.

The drive took about 10 hours, and was wonderful (although by the time we arrived I had listened to enough Tajik pop for a lifetime). Anwar told me that the road was pokhta the whole way. This is an interesting word because it literally means ‘cooked’. In this case it is used to describe a tarmac road, but the same word is used for a clay pot that has been fired; bricks that are baked in a kiln rather than in the sun; and also used as the adjective to describe someone who is skilled or well-trained in a job.

So thanks to the Russians this pokhta road meant a reasonably smooth drive. The best bit about a road trip is you have time to prepare yourself for the change of scene – rather than arriving bump in an aeroplane with no warning. We left Kabul, and climbed up through increasingly rural looking villages – the houses became lower; glass windows became more scarce; donkeys gradually replaced cars – until we reached the Salang pass. This is a 3km tunnel high in the mountains, also built by the Russians (if you look on a map the road heads north towards Uzbekistan which would have been part of Russia when they constructed the route and the tunnel). The tunnel cuts through an enormous mountain in the Alpine-like valley, still under feet of snow. A string of lorries and their impatient drivers and caleeners – their co-pilots - waited for the tunnel to clear of traffic. The lorries were revving and whooshing and gearing up to groan through the darkness. The tunnel is completely unlit and thick with exhaust fumes and eerie thundering noises. I shut the window and covered my mouth and nose with my headscarf. A car had broken down in the tunnel leaving a little boy and his father stranded. They needed some pliers, so Salim stopped, and rather than waiting in the tunnel thereby holding up traffic, he sold the man his own pliers and we continued on our way.

The mountains surrounding the tunnel felt familiar – maybe from ski trips to the Alps. We exchanged words for things we saw. Their favourite was ‘Icicle’ (Icical! Sounds like bicical Lucy Jan) And my favourite was barfe kuch – avalanche, which in pragmatic Afghan style literally means, ‘snow goes’. We drove down the northern side of the mountain range beside gushing rivers of snow melt and emerged onto wide open plains, and for the next 8 hours we witnessed the country preparing for spring. Oxen pulled basic wood ploughs through fertile brown soil, being tilled and sown to produce melons, watermelons and cotton. We drove past orchards which in autumn will be heavy with almonds, pistachios, mulberries and apricots. Old men, still wrapped in woollen plaid-like patus, strolled along the roadside with grandchildren – their hands clasped behind their back like my Grandfather used to. You can see how much this position helps when walking uphill. Anwar stopped to buy dried melon, apricots and bags of pistachios. And he and Salim drank endless cans of Pepsi while I drank water (and regretted it… and won’t even describe the loos available but I was too scared to pop behind a bush in case I was spotted by a farmer).

Besides the Russian road, there were other international clues. Many villages were marked with Halo trust logos – with ticks on houses or Mine clearance Village by Village written in English and Dari on mud walls. I smiled when I realised that J was part of these projects in 2002. And here I was tracing the very same paths six years later that were now free of mines. We laughed as we passed a little girl playing in a stream with her brother, filling a condom with water and throwing it around like a water bomb. Anwar explained that many parents go to the health centre and collect handfuls of condoms for their children to play with. Condoms are free, but balloons from the shops cost money. There were roadside school tents with UNICEF logos being resurrected after a long winter of freezing days when it’s too cold to open schools (schools shut here for 3 to 4 months in the winter in cold areas, and for 3 to 4 months in the summer in the hotter areas).

We saw the huge line of pylons from Uzbekistan to Kabul – they follow the line of the road. The connection is almost complete, but some are still partially-constructed and we saw tiny silhouettes of men putting them together like ants building a nest. Anwar explained the electricity would soon be 24 hours in Kabul as a result. But he said most people in Kabul would have no idea how much work it had taken to channel the energy from Uzbekistan, and perhaps if they could see these pylons being constructed, they would have been more patient. Although I would say you’d have to be pretty patient to wait six years for electricity.

What a privilege to drive through someone else’s country and have them explain the tiny details to you, that would otherwise pass you by, or at most remain unanswered.

We drove through the provinces of Baghlan, Samangand and into Balkh (of which Mazar is the main city although not the oldest). I learnt the names for different birds:
Partridge: kabk; pidgeon: kaftar; magpie: akak; swallow: ghoochi.

…and a couple of new proverbs:

Kharbuza kharbuza ra dida rang miguirad: One melon takes its colour from another melon (Meaning we learn from example)

And

Pa e tan az galemet birun nakash: Don’t stretch your leg beyond the end of the carpet (Good financial advice)

We stopped in chai khana (tea shops) and sat cross legged on wooden platorms eating kebabs and naan, as the other customers – groups of men – looked at our motley group in an amused fashion, but never unfriendly, even though I was the only woman.

After lunch we asked the man for our bill and I asked Anwar to get the receipt from the teenage boy at the till. I couldn’t understand what the conversation was about – and thought there was a problem with the bill. The boy handed the pen to Anwar who explained to me that the boy couldn’t write.

You hear statistics all the time in this country, such as....90 percent of people are illiterate; one in five children dies before his or her fifth birthday and so on. But it’s not until you go into the provinces that you witness with your own eyes what these statistics mean. This teenage boy was looking at the pen as I would look at the control panel of an aeroplane. Just think how far he could have gone with that pen – he might have become one of Afghanistan’s greatest poets. He might have been able to read some of Afghanistan’s greatest poetry. In every chai khana we visited we were met with the same blank look and were handed the pen to write the bill ourselves.

Probably the cruellest thing that war can do to a country is to destroy the chances for education – wiping out two or three generations of potential movers and shakers. I’m not saying you need to read and write to be influential, but I think it helps. Many young boys ended up missing school because their fathers were killed in the fighting, and had to provide for the family. Salim our driver explained over lunch that his uncle and nephew (our co-travellers) were not educated because their fathers had both died fighting the Russians and so they had worked almost since they could walk.

And in this era of misconstrued religious messages, learning how to read would also enable you to understand what your perception of the Koran is yourself, rather than relying on your local mullah, who may or may not be a wise influence. (Although this is a bad example because the Koran is written in Arabic which adds another complication to the thread).

It is perhaps a bit like Europe pre-printing press when the community couldn’t read, and had to listen to the religious scholars rather than thinking for themselves based on what they had read. People become dependent on what they were being told, rather than using their own knowledge and powers of reason.

Now you can see why donors are so keen to invest in our educational radio shows, although sometimes you wonder how anyone has time or inclination to listen when there are children to feed and fields to till.

Just before we reached Mazar we stopped at a place called, Takhte Rostam (Rostam’s throne) which was once a Buddhist shrine or pagoda. Well, I suppose it still is although there aren’t many Buddhists around here anymore. It is comprised of a sequence of caves with beautiful carvings of flowers made by simple tools in about the 4th century AD.

We met an Afghan man there who asked interestedly where I was from. ‘Scotlandiam’ I answered. But before I could come out with my set explanation about where that was, he slapped his thigh and shrieked, ‘AH! LATVIA!!’ and proceeded to talk to me for a couple of minutes in fluent something which passed convincingly for Latvian. I let him down linguistically but laughed along with him (a lot).

Finding the team...

Poor J has woken up most mornings this week to me (having been wide awake for hours) needing to talk through my rather enormous work load. I don't know how I managed to find someone as kind, patient and full of good advice as J... all at 6 in the morning. I'm sure the pain is part of the process, but at one stage it was looking like I was going to have to be in three provinces at once - filming a documentary and casting for a drama in the same week. I'm so busy I end up feeling hungry only 20 minutes after breakfast at the moment.

So I've decided to try recruit an Afghan director to take on the brunt of the television drama series to free me up for the documentary. And that way we'll have the studio run by an Afghan team which is the whole point. I interviewed one of the three main directors in this country (the other two are working in India). Radmanesh is charming, with a neat little moustache, a round belly and measures approximately half my height (this might help if I need to remind him who's boss at any stage). He speaks no english but we managed to understand each other quite well - maybe because we were both speaking the language of story boards, cameras and lights. He used english words for most of the techincal terms. But it's impossible to tell until someone is already doing the job, if they're any good. I'm having to go on instincts. (Recruiting someone because they have a cool name and an honest looking face is not something I would normally admit to). But at least he'll be able to help recruit the rest of the crew, as the CVs coming through are terrible and I don't know where to begin.

I've decided we should try and make the documentary with an all-female crew. That way we'll be able to film both male and female addicts and doctors with the same team. So I've been trying to find some Afghan camera women. I can't really afford to have to train someone up, or carry a beginner through the process - so finding strong candidates for this too is going to be a challenge. I need to find women who are able to travel without a maharam, a male relative - you can imagine what an extra passenger would do to my budget....and the candidates need to speak a bit of English, and hopefully Pashto as we'll be filming in Nangarhar where that is the main language.

And then there's the haggling. I am having to be extremely on the ball when it comes to salaries. But superman Ab Fab is helping me on that front - saving me from being ripped off and taken for a ride before we've even begun filming.

Besides all the television work, I'm still helping Mahbouba to do the interviews for the radio show as she's not yet up to speed. We went to Pul e Charki prison this week to talk to some women. The angle was how they are represented legally - if at all. I can never get over how badly damaged people can look so normal. Talking to these ladies about their lives, I couldn't believe how they could get dressed, eat, smile, laugh and survive in this hell hole of a prison surrounded in deep mud. Most of them had their children in there with them. I'm glad I'm not a psychologist - having to break through all these layers of assumed normal-ness to find the roots of the problem.

Love tuk tuk

Getting out of Kabul is a refreshing change, but it's also quite exhausting. I really miss Jamie when I'm away. It's a shame we can't do more travelling together. But he is very generous spirited when it comes to letting me go and have an interesting time - without being bitter about not being able to come too.

In Kabul we have constructed a life and a home. We've made some friends and are comfortable in our flat surrounded by cushions, rugs and our books and photographs. I realised in Herat as I tried to sleep in the freezing guest house, that being outside of the cocoon is tiring to begin with. We are in a strange country, and in order to be able to contribute you need to dig yourself in and feel at home - create a base to function from. So for the first 24 hours in Herat I felt tired and out of sorts and a bit grumpy, although I think I was quite good at not showing it, and just talked a bit less than usual - probably no bad thing. We were with new people with different accents and personalities. New streets and different sights. But after a day and a night I was already getting used to the new place and started to enjoy it.

And then it was great to return to Kabul, to be with J again, and tell him about all the adventures. The Valentines card went down well. You can see one of the love tuc tucs up above. Don't you just love the eyes at the top...? We were meant to go to a friend's house for dinner on Valentine's day but J came home with some deflating news. We were hoping to be able to spend 2 years here, but it appears the maximum they want us to stay is 18 months. I felt a bit indignant, because it takes a lot to settle in here - and I don't feel I'll be ready to unpick it all and leave in a year's time. So we stayed in for dinner and drank a bottle of champagne and talked things through. I suppose in return for having an opportunity like this, the institution decides your destiny to a certain extent. I'm not good at accepting that. But it's the usual rough with the smooth. I call it the sandpaper effect - one side has softer grains, the other more course.

Furthermore, I'm not supposed to be here, am I. We managed to bend that rule. So perhaps we should try and bend another.

Strangely enough the champagne helped so we went to a bonfire party, saw lots of friends (unusual to see lots of people at once these days as most people aren't able to go to restaurants and bars since the Serena attack.) We got to bed at 2.30am a bit sloshed but happy.

Faces of Herat

Herati nuggets

Shrines and sweetie shops

By the final day in Herat we had finished the work we had to do and we got a chance to go sightseeing. I couldn't believe how much of the city there was left standing compared to Kabul. We saw minarets, and mosques still coated in beautiful blue tiles. (Please read in your history books about Herat as sadly I'm not an expert on the Timurids or Alexander the Great's favoured style of doorway...). But it is stunning with a very different feel to the capital. It feels like a big town, not a city.

There are fewer cars, and the streets buzz with brightly coloured tuc tucs, most of which are covered in love hearts. We spent at least an hour stopping the car and flagging down surprised looking tuc tuc drivers so I could take photographs of all the hearts for J's Valentine's card. Our driver Walid was fascinated by the idea of 'Walentines day where everyone say I love you'. So we regaled him with as many anecdotes as we could. Irritatingly my background knowledge of Saints is even worse than my ancient history, and I couldn't even remember who St Valentine was, let alone when he lived, or how to explain what a saint was without saying the word martyr...(lest he think St V. blew himself up or something silly like that.)

Again refer to your history books here. We went to the Friday mosque; the shrine of Gowhar Shad Begom - the wife of the Timurid governor Shah Rukh (1400's just to give you a clue), and the shrine of the sufi poet Khoaja Abdullah e Ansari (Born in 1006. 60 years to go before William the C even steps off his boat). At this last shrine I was told on the way out by an old white beard that I should not be in there as I was a foreigner. Mahbouba wasn't with me at the time, but she shrieked: 'He would have had a piece of my mind if I'd heard him. My ancestors are buried in there for Christ's sake. I'm sorry he offended you sweetie!' I muttered that it was probably infinitely more couth than the average insult to an Afghan or Pakistani in Bradford on a Saturday night...but there we go. The shrine at least, was eyewateringly beautiful. Not that I have anything against Bradford. And it was the first time I have ever been made to feel unwelcome here.

Then we hit the sweet shops. Mahbouba and I sauntered around the shop sampling everything. She made me try all sorts of crazily coloured things that are apparently edible - luminous pink coconut cakes and green pistaccio toffees. In between powercuts she delved into barrels of pumpkins seeds, dried apricots and filled up her basket with everything she could manage for friends and family back in Kabul. And straight after the sweet shop we were whisked up to the Thousand and One Nights restaurant over looking Herat for a quick kebab before bed. An Afghan-style eat-a-thon. But no is not an option when an Afghan is waving another spoon of rice, or a coconut cake in your direction. Ooof.

Views of Herat

The Herat burns hospital

It might seem strange to try and make a positive programme about a burns unit in a hospital. But this clean, well-run organisation is the only dedicated burns unit in Afghanistan. When Mahbouba and I arrived we were put into long blue coats, cap and blue plastic bags over our shoes. The doctors showed us around the various wards. When you have seen other Afghan hospitals this was like a spark of hope - that there were Internationally supported organisations that were really working on a national level. (The funding came from joint donations from the US, Italy and France.)

The neat lines of beds in crisp white sheets only accentuated the horrific injuries. And the smell of charred flesh under a veneer of antiseptic took a while to get used to. The doctors told us that in winter the number of burns victims goes up because so many people have accidents lighting fires, wood burning stoves, often making the situation a lot worse by using petrol.

Mahbouba went around and chatted to many of the patients, trying not to get in the way of the nurses who were applying dressings, giving toddlers skin grafts, and trying to keep people out of pain as much as possible.

The most desperate and severe cases were girls who had set fire to themselves. One 16 year old we talked to had lost both of her parents in the earthquake in Bam, Iran. She had been forcefully married off by distant relations. She was horribly abused by her husband and his family, so she ran away. The police discovered her and she was thrown into jail. Her last resort was self-immolation and she set fire to herself with petrol. More than two thirds of her body was covered with third degree burns. She was swaddled in bandages.

The doctors can calculate how people have been burned. One doctor, Abdullah said if it's an accident the victim will try and put the fire out - whereas the people attempting suicide don't bother - so the burns are much worse.

You'd think this girl had been through the worst of it, but she told Mahbouba in the interview that there was no one in her life. Most people have food sent or cooked by families, but her food came from a local charity. And the doctor mentioned that once she was completely recovered, she would probably end up in a safe house - at best. Mahbouba is going to stay in touch with her. And the doctor said he would do his best to help her find a place to live.

The doctors work on a governmental wage (as low as $50 per month in some cases). They were all trained in a burns hospital in Montpelier. They could earn ten times this amount with an Internationally funded wage.

The majority of the patients we interviewed said how lucky they were to be there. As we left, humbed once again - we saw other patients going into the main hospital. Without the dedicated burns unit many of the people we spoke to would have died from their injuries as the main hospital doesn't have half the facilities or standards of hygiene.

We are living in a country where a small burns unit is seen as a positive change and something to be remarked upon.

Me, Mahbouba and Anwar in Herat

The Green Palace

I'm not one to complain about the cold, but the Green Palace guest house where Mahbouba, Anwar and I stayed was not kitted out for the temperatures that hit Herat this winter. The living room was the warmest room in the place, but even there we had to sit in two coats, gloves and boots. There was one gas heater which we took turns to sit beside and when there was power (about 2 hours in total over the time we were there) we watched a wildlife programme about bats (shabparak e charmi - literally means the leather butterfly).

Getting to sleep was a bit problematic. I slept every night in all the clothes I had brought and my headscarf - the one redeeming moment for the headgear. Afghans use Chinese velvety acrylic blankets - the material you would have made your bear costume out of at primary school. I had three of those on top of me and I was still shivering.

But luckily I was not alone, and any uncomfortable situation is improved with good company. The best bit about being in the field with Afghan colleagues is you get a chance to chat to them properly. The office is so busy, we don't often have time for long conversations.

Mahbouba had a few freak outs on the poor men running the guest house telling them they were letting their country down by making us stay in conditions like this. They scuttled around apologetically in the dark trying to patch up the situation with cups of tea, and pots of sweets. Next time I'll remember to take a bottle of whisky...

But we sat huddled on the sofa every night, our breath smoking from our mouths, and I listened to Mahbouba and Anwar's tales of growing up in Afghanistan. Mahbouba had a privileged upbringing in Kabul - spending most weekends swimming at the Intercontinental Hotel with her friends, and living in a beautiful old house with her family. Her parents were well educated and liberal, sent her to good schools and encouraged her to be independent.

Her lifestyle changed significantly when she had to escape to the US in the mid 70's. Her royal lineage would have meant certain death under the communists. She said she could relate to the poor people queueing outside the UNHCR compound - since she spent most of her first few years in the states queueing and being rebuffed when applying for visas and green cards.

She told us how she laments the break down of the community in Afghanistan, the loss of values and the demise of what was once a society based on honour and respect. Her family is scattered around the world - and recently her nephew committed suicide in Switzerland where he lived with his parents. She is certain this wouldn't have happened had he been part of a strong community, like she had when she grew up. The wars in this country smashed and scattered families indiscriminately from the very rich to the very poor.

Her husband is one of the Gilani family - originating from Iraq. He was brought up in Jalalabad in Nangarhar province (I visited the remains of his estate with Mahbouba last month). He spent his childhood on a horse hunting anything there was to shoot, or driving around in his father's Buick. He didn't bother much about school, and had everything he wanted. He became a Mujaheddin and fought the Russians for 15 years. He still carries around a heavy Russian pistol in his pocket wherever he goes. Even though there is nothing much left but crumbled mud walls of his family home, his loyal staff still shuffle backwards out of the room for him, and kiss his hands in greeting. Neither Mahbouba or her husband have any photographs or possessions left from their past, having left it all behind when they escaped.

Anwar's grandfather was a poor man who used to make clay urns and carry them on a donkey to sell around the country. He managed to get a job working on a dam with a German construction company in the '50s as he was a tall, strong man. He worked his way up, becoming a tractor driver then a factory worker, and managed to send Anwar's father and all his brothers to school - even though they had no shoes. Anwar's father made it to Agricultural college, and they lived in Kabul until Anwar was 5 years old, when they fled from the flighting on foot to Pakistan.

When Anwar was about one, he was stolen from his parents' yard by Kuchi nomads. A mile or so away from his house they were about to cross a river and Anwar's uncle happened to be there. He recognised the crying baby and took him back off them saying he was the father.

Anwar is a qualified medical doctor, radio producer and many other things besides. We teased him about what he may have become had his uncle not saved him from those Kuchis.

Soraya Pakzad

Soraya Pakzad is a beautiful Afghan woman in her forties. She greeted us in her immaculate office in Herat and gave us tea and sweets – apologising for the fact she could only offer an hour of her time, as she was going to the USA the following day to collect her Women of Courage Award. She sat elegantly on a chair, her flawless skin framed by a pale pink chador. I could not stop looking at her sparkling brown eyes.

Soraya is a married mother of six, and risked her life in Kabul under the Taliban in the 90’s running schools for girls and women in secret houses around the city.

Not content with this extraordinary contribution to her people, she now runs a safe house for destitute women in Herat. Mahbouba and Soraya got on like a couple of old friends, so we got a lovely natural recording for the radio series.

Women in Afghanistan have nowhere to turn when their worlds come crashing in. Hideous rates of domestic violence, forced marriages, sexual abuse and grim living conditions mean many women run away, often only to be thrown in prison as punishment. And worse still some resort to self-immolation (setting fire to themselves) in a desperate attempt to escape their tragic lives whilst making a statement to be noticed.

Even if these women are not discovered and imprisoned, there is no place within Afghan society for a single woman who has run away. Single women cannot rent accommodation and even widows can be scorned. Soraya offers these women a place of refuge, provides them with medical, psychological and legal assistance, and attempts to find remnants of family for them to be reunited with. So far she has assisted 450 demonised women, and there is only one permanent member of the refuge who she admitted would probably stay indefinitely as she had found no family for her.

One of the most poignant parts of the interview was a poem Soraya had written to one of her daughters. Her daughter had been complaining about how hard Soraya worke