Who the hell is Ricky Ponting? (03/20/06)
March 17th
Ok so it’s cold. But tomorrow I will be sweating my butt off…. so I am told. Then again I was told not to pack cold weather gear too. I feel a bit misinformed.
I woke up the past few mornings to a thermometer reading of 50 f. that inside my room. Yes its 50 and 50 is better than 40 but damn that is too cold to get out of a sleeping bag only to THEN light up the heater, take a (yes) hot shower run naked and wet to your 50 degree warm underwear. Laugh, mock, tease all of you…but every morning I weigh the benefits of hygiene versus warmth.
I love this country for many many reasons, one of which has to be the quotes I keep hearing from various people, right now it a tie for best between the earlier “we love out trucks and our donkey’s” and my new favorite “Look at the hen…. so brave!” from one of the reporters as we nearly ran over a hen that sprinted into the street then back to the roadside avoiding death by a few inches.
March 19th
We have just returned from Peshawar and the Khyber Pass there is plenty to talk about here just from these two places.
We left Abbatobad on Friday, I was the only one who gave a damn that it was St. Patrick’s Day, and obviously in a Muslim country it was a dry St. Pats day. So far I have survived but I did feel like something was missing. The road from Abbatobad to Peshawar is generally not that impressive but the change in scenery was noticeable. Up here there are mountains in the distance, some with snow on the caps still. The mountains are stepped for farming and dotted with evergreens and birch trees. Heading to Peshawar the land gets a bit rockier and drier, the land gets flatter. All along the road you become more and more aware of a few things that Pakistan has plenty of…bricks and oranges. You see shorter thick smoke stacks off the side of the road with quarry like excavations into the clay ground which call attention to the numerous brick factories along the way. It’s shocking to see how much of the land here bares the scares of its growth. The areas where they have harvested the clay are completely barren of trees and any other sort of life. The oranges…I will be honest I have no idea where the hell these come from, I haven’t seen a orange tree since I got here but every 4th person you see selling ANYTHING is selling oranges.
Our first morning in Peshawar we met up with AZ who grew up in Peshawar, he led us through the maze like tunnels of the bazaar area. I will say in advance that I have not the command of my own language to describe that city. We literally ducked into doorways that I would have avoided like a rabid dog only to have an open air courtyard in front of me that was filled with jewelry shops, garment makers, tea houses and even the odd gun shop. We walked through these alleyways and into buildings, up stairs, down ramps for hours and somehow AZ always knew where we were. You couldn’t see the sky at some points for the amount of wires, clothes and signage hanging above you. We came up to a tea house across from what I took to be the meat market stretch, judging from the whole skinned cow carcasses hanging on meat hooks next to whole skinned goats. I am the observant type and all. We sat in the teashop drinking green tea and swapping stories between the four of us.
Oh yah, I never introduced the others. Virginia (chief something for internews radio Abbatobad) Sophia (programme manager? Internews Abbatobad) AZ (Chief something Internews radio Islamabad) so there you go, all the specifics you will need.
AZ then took us through another random doorway, up three flights of stairs onto the roof of an old building there that looks out onto the Mosque next door. According to Lonely Planet and a very friendly man who just started to talk to me and walked around with us for a good 15 minutes the Mahabet Khan Mosque was built in 1630, it was stunning! White marble that was blinding after walking through darkened alleys and buildings. I had never been in a mosque before, so this was a pretty good one to start off on. I was given permission to photograph as long as I was respectful so I took just a few shots and decided to just observe instead. I would compare this experience of it to having never seen a cathedral before and just wandering into Notre Dame or St. John the Divines when there were only worshipers there.
We grabbed our shoes and headed back out into the mix. We also found some street photographers who have hundred of scanned scenes from Bollywood action movies and random backgrounds that they will super impose your head onto for a small fee. Naturally we had to. I wont say what the shots look like but I will say that when we got the back we cried laughing at each other and even the non-English speaking tuk tuk (auto rickshaw here) driver laughed and applauded our photos.
Later that day AZ took us to “little Kabul” an area that as the name suggests is entirely Afghan. This area did make me a bit more nervous than the bazaar because it was noticeably more impoverished than the rest of the city. Which is not something easily outdone. We wondered around looking for a burka for Virginia. Why she wanted one is a fairly long and drawn out story that only she could tell you especially since she has such strong feelings against them and what they stand imply. While we were slipping in and out of stalls, I was taking pictures and looking around keeping both Virginia and AZ in sight and they me, we came across some pet shop stalls. Mostly birds and rabbits in cages. (Mom, I did verify that they were pet shops not restaurants there by avoiding the confusion I ran into that morning in Korea) it was next door to these shops that found a t-shirt stall. I looked desperately for a great shirt to buy but only succeeded in pointing out the rather incongruous AC/DC shirt on the corner that made Virginia very happy (shes Australian and a huge fan) so she bought. 5 minutes later she was trying on a burka to buy. This leads me to our creepy quote. When she bought the burka, a younger man in the crowd of boys that had gathered to watch us shouted very excitedly “Congratulations!” to her.
How would I try and explain Virginia if ever asked to do so? I was with her when she bought an AC/DC shirt and burka with in minutes of each other, I think that’s pretty much all I need to say.
The next morning we set out to the Khyber Pass.
The Khyber Pass is one of several ways to cross over to Afghanistan from Pakistan; countless armies have crossed through it. I wont bother with the history lesson so if you want to know more, look it up. I am just telling you what I saw.
First we had to apply for permits and pick up and armed security escort to go there since you are effectively leaving governmental Pakistan and entering tribal Pakistan. We met our mustachioed escort complete with AK-47 and handy vest-o-spare-magazines and headed up.
The drive from Peshawar to Khyber was surreal. Once you leave behind the city you drive past an Afghan refugee camp that started about that time we started bombing Afghanistan in 2001. Past the camp you enter tribal land, the villages get more and more scarce and more and more scary. The people that live in them live behind huge mud brick walled compounds. Entire clans are walled in and gated with huge iron doors. All of the compounds house several families and keep out all of their enemies. Men walk around with guns over their shoulders; some actually carried large caliber soviet army heavy machine guns. Not the sort of personal defense type guns one would expect, these seemed better suited to be mounted on the back of a truck than to be carried around “just in case”. The closer we got the dirtier the stares were from people on the side of the road, passengers in passing cars, and the more stares we received from children. The landscape suddenly began to resemble what I had envisioned Pakistan to look like, mountains with caves and tufts of grass and the very noticeable due to its solitude tree. Mud brick compounds seemed to appear out of nowhere and disappear as fast. As advertised we would not be allowed to actually travel to the border, we had to stop at Michni checkpoint, home of the Khyber Rifles, a former paramilitary unit that is now part of the formal military…or so I was told.
Email does in fact exist here but it sucks. Go figure. So I have been trying to write these out as I come home from smaller trips but they seem to blend already. I have been to several towns and areas in the 4-5 days I have been here, met some seriously interesting people, been asked a hundred times the same question (what does America think of Pakistan? Now you can make some variation to that question like (since September 11th, since the war started etc etc. The reporters have asked me, the drivers have asked me, people in camps have asked me. Knowing that this question is…shall we say loaded, I tend to try and answer it with out sounding dismissive or political. Politics and the US are very sensitive issues here, as you may know. It generally isn’t ok to be an American but not always. For instance I have already been Australian, Irish, New Zealander and my favorite Argentine several times. The truly kick ass part of all of this has been that every time I claim a nation other than my own it seems to be that I do so in front of someone who has personal knowledge of that nation that rivals my own.
Ireland? He went to business school in Dublin
New Zealand? I was questioned about the capital and got it wrong…its Wellington not Auckland.
Australian? They want to talk about Cricket…..who the hell knows who Ricky Ponting is? I do now.
Argentina? I met the one guy in Pakistan standing on the street corner who speaks only Pashto and Spanish!
Gotta split, its late and I have been on the road all day.
I live for this stuff.
Take care,
David
Ok so it’s cold. But tomorrow I will be sweating my butt off…. so I am told. Then again I was told not to pack cold weather gear too. I feel a bit misinformed.
I woke up the past few mornings to a thermometer reading of 50 f. that inside my room. Yes its 50 and 50 is better than 40 but damn that is too cold to get out of a sleeping bag only to THEN light up the heater, take a (yes) hot shower run naked and wet to your 50 degree warm underwear. Laugh, mock, tease all of you…but every morning I weigh the benefits of hygiene versus warmth.
I love this country for many many reasons, one of which has to be the quotes I keep hearing from various people, right now it a tie for best between the earlier “we love out trucks and our donkey’s” and my new favorite “Look at the hen…. so brave!” from one of the reporters as we nearly ran over a hen that sprinted into the street then back to the roadside avoiding death by a few inches.
March 19th
We have just returned from Peshawar and the Khyber Pass there is plenty to talk about here just from these two places.
We left Abbatobad on Friday, I was the only one who gave a damn that it was St. Patrick’s Day, and obviously in a Muslim country it was a dry St. Pats day. So far I have survived but I did feel like something was missing. The road from Abbatobad to Peshawar is generally not that impressive but the change in scenery was noticeable. Up here there are mountains in the distance, some with snow on the caps still. The mountains are stepped for farming and dotted with evergreens and birch trees. Heading to Peshawar the land gets a bit rockier and drier, the land gets flatter. All along the road you become more and more aware of a few things that Pakistan has plenty of…bricks and oranges. You see shorter thick smoke stacks off the side of the road with quarry like excavations into the clay ground which call attention to the numerous brick factories along the way. It’s shocking to see how much of the land here bares the scares of its growth. The areas where they have harvested the clay are completely barren of trees and any other sort of life. The oranges…I will be honest I have no idea where the hell these come from, I haven’t seen a orange tree since I got here but every 4th person you see selling ANYTHING is selling oranges.
Our first morning in Peshawar we met up with AZ who grew up in Peshawar, he led us through the maze like tunnels of the bazaar area. I will say in advance that I have not the command of my own language to describe that city. We literally ducked into doorways that I would have avoided like a rabid dog only to have an open air courtyard in front of me that was filled with jewelry shops, garment makers, tea houses and even the odd gun shop. We walked through these alleyways and into buildings, up stairs, down ramps for hours and somehow AZ always knew where we were. You couldn’t see the sky at some points for the amount of wires, clothes and signage hanging above you. We came up to a tea house across from what I took to be the meat market stretch, judging from the whole skinned cow carcasses hanging on meat hooks next to whole skinned goats. I am the observant type and all. We sat in the teashop drinking green tea and swapping stories between the four of us.
Oh yah, I never introduced the others. Virginia (chief something for internews radio Abbatobad) Sophia (programme manager? Internews Abbatobad) AZ (Chief something Internews radio Islamabad) so there you go, all the specifics you will need.
AZ then took us through another random doorway, up three flights of stairs onto the roof of an old building there that looks out onto the Mosque next door. According to Lonely Planet and a very friendly man who just started to talk to me and walked around with us for a good 15 minutes the Mahabet Khan Mosque was built in 1630, it was stunning! White marble that was blinding after walking through darkened alleys and buildings. I had never been in a mosque before, so this was a pretty good one to start off on. I was given permission to photograph as long as I was respectful so I took just a few shots and decided to just observe instead. I would compare this experience of it to having never seen a cathedral before and just wandering into Notre Dame or St. John the Divines when there were only worshipers there.
We grabbed our shoes and headed back out into the mix. We also found some street photographers who have hundred of scanned scenes from Bollywood action movies and random backgrounds that they will super impose your head onto for a small fee. Naturally we had to. I wont say what the shots look like but I will say that when we got the back we cried laughing at each other and even the non-English speaking tuk tuk (auto rickshaw here) driver laughed and applauded our photos.
Later that day AZ took us to “little Kabul” an area that as the name suggests is entirely Afghan. This area did make me a bit more nervous than the bazaar because it was noticeably more impoverished than the rest of the city. Which is not something easily outdone. We wondered around looking for a burka for Virginia. Why she wanted one is a fairly long and drawn out story that only she could tell you especially since she has such strong feelings against them and what they stand imply. While we were slipping in and out of stalls, I was taking pictures and looking around keeping both Virginia and AZ in sight and they me, we came across some pet shop stalls. Mostly birds and rabbits in cages. (Mom, I did verify that they were pet shops not restaurants there by avoiding the confusion I ran into that morning in Korea) it was next door to these shops that found a t-shirt stall. I looked desperately for a great shirt to buy but only succeeded in pointing out the rather incongruous AC/DC shirt on the corner that made Virginia very happy (shes Australian and a huge fan) so she bought. 5 minutes later she was trying on a burka to buy. This leads me to our creepy quote. When she bought the burka, a younger man in the crowd of boys that had gathered to watch us shouted very excitedly “Congratulations!” to her.
How would I try and explain Virginia if ever asked to do so? I was with her when she bought an AC/DC shirt and burka with in minutes of each other, I think that’s pretty much all I need to say.
The next morning we set out to the Khyber Pass.
The Khyber Pass is one of several ways to cross over to Afghanistan from Pakistan; countless armies have crossed through it. I wont bother with the history lesson so if you want to know more, look it up. I am just telling you what I saw.
First we had to apply for permits and pick up and armed security escort to go there since you are effectively leaving governmental Pakistan and entering tribal Pakistan. We met our mustachioed escort complete with AK-47 and handy vest-o-spare-magazines and headed up.
The drive from Peshawar to Khyber was surreal. Once you leave behind the city you drive past an Afghan refugee camp that started about that time we started bombing Afghanistan in 2001. Past the camp you enter tribal land, the villages get more and more scarce and more and more scary. The people that live in them live behind huge mud brick walled compounds. Entire clans are walled in and gated with huge iron doors. All of the compounds house several families and keep out all of their enemies. Men walk around with guns over their shoulders; some actually carried large caliber soviet army heavy machine guns. Not the sort of personal defense type guns one would expect, these seemed better suited to be mounted on the back of a truck than to be carried around “just in case”. The closer we got the dirtier the stares were from people on the side of the road, passengers in passing cars, and the more stares we received from children. The landscape suddenly began to resemble what I had envisioned Pakistan to look like, mountains with caves and tufts of grass and the very noticeable due to its solitude tree. Mud brick compounds seemed to appear out of nowhere and disappear as fast. As advertised we would not be allowed to actually travel to the border, we had to stop at Michni checkpoint, home of the Khyber Rifles, a former paramilitary unit that is now part of the formal military…or so I was told.
Email does in fact exist here but it sucks. Go figure. So I have been trying to write these out as I come home from smaller trips but they seem to blend already. I have been to several towns and areas in the 4-5 days I have been here, met some seriously interesting people, been asked a hundred times the same question (what does America think of Pakistan? Now you can make some variation to that question like (since September 11th, since the war started etc etc. The reporters have asked me, the drivers have asked me, people in camps have asked me. Knowing that this question is…shall we say loaded, I tend to try and answer it with out sounding dismissive or political. Politics and the US are very sensitive issues here, as you may know. It generally isn’t ok to be an American but not always. For instance I have already been Australian, Irish, New Zealander and my favorite Argentine several times. The truly kick ass part of all of this has been that every time I claim a nation other than my own it seems to be that I do so in front of someone who has personal knowledge of that nation that rivals my own.
Ireland? He went to business school in Dublin
New Zealand? I was questioned about the capital and got it wrong…its Wellington not Auckland.
Australian? They want to talk about Cricket…..who the hell knows who Ricky Ponting is? I do now.
Argentina? I met the one guy in Pakistan standing on the street corner who speaks only Pashto and Spanish!
Gotta split, its late and I have been on the road all day.
I live for this stuff.
Take care,
David
posted by davidlang at 12:11 AM
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