Friday is the Holy Day here - joma'a. We got together with other expatriates at a home just a ten-minute walk away. It belongs to a Brazilian couple who have a couple of businesses here - the wife runs a kindergarten and teaches Afghan women how to work with pre-schoolers. She told me one of the hardest things is getting them to understand the importance of play.
Met many other new people, some of whom I have heard about before. One couple has been here for 40 years. That wife and a friend are building a Peace Garden by the National Gallery and talked to me about getting some music events there.
On our walk home, we stopped by the naan shop at the corner. They were busy making the bread and invited us inside to watch. A man was in the back crouched up on a ledge with his bare feet, mixing flour with water for the dough. Another man then takes it and breaks it into right-sized portions and makes them round. These go to two young men crouched on a concrete platform nearer the front. They have slanted boards in front of them which they use to further flatten the loaves and put the characteristic ridges in them. They lay them on a board where they are picked up by another crouching young man who has a padded board in front of him. He arranges two rounds on his board, then picks it up and slaps it down into a blackened hole in the concrete about two feet in diameter. The walls of the hole are heated and the loaves just attach to them and the bread bakes. Another young man on the other side of the hole uses two long utensils to pick out the completed bread and place it in the pile in front where an older gentleman is selling it to the public. They gave us a round fresh off the oven - too hot to hold, but oh, so yummy. Muhammad Gul, one of our chawkidor/drivers was there buying bread for us, as he does every day. I learned later that you can buy just the dough if you prefer and make it into cinnamon buns, pizza crusts, whatever you want.
Our cook Reza being off for the day, we had pizza he had prepared the day before heated up by Muhammed Gul, with naan and fruit.
This might be a good time to describe some aspects of life in the guest house. We have a cook and a cleaner who come in six days a week. There are also three chawkidors. Two of ours function also as drivers, and one of those, Zamir, also does errands for us at the ministries. All westerners living here have at least a chawkidor to do guard duty, do some of the buying of food in the bazaars, and wash dishes. Our cleaner, a widow woman, also washes our clothes. This level of service could get quite addicting.
I took out a puzzle to work on while waiting for Zamir to get back with our hosts who had been invited out for the noon meal, then Brian and I went with him to do some sightseeing and shopping. Brian treated us all to beef kabobs from a street vendor and while we were waiting in the van for Zamir to get the kabobs, a bunch of kids tried to get us to take them seriously as beggars. They looked pretty well dressed for beggars. One kid dusted all our windows and I finally relented and gave him a US dollar. Of course, that only brought out more kids. All over are kids carrying smoking cans of something that they will swing around your car to ward off evil spirits. They will walk right out onto the street when it gets a bit congested and walk among the cars hoping for a few Afghanis for their service.
Well, it's time for breakfast, so I'll break off. Just two days left here...already I'm sad to leave.
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