19 April 2007 / 30 Hamal 1386 On the way to the university campus I noticed these men rebuilding a street drain. There have been several rainstorms this week, and some of the ungraded roads have turned into swamps. Meanwhile, many drains are being rebuilt. I asked them if this was a Municipality project, but […]
Field trip to Kuh-e Asmayi Read More »
Wednesday, 18 April 2007 / seshanbeh, 29 hamal 1386 The drainage ditch in the foreground is a pretty funky brew. Today was very good. Before going over to the University I took a hike through Deh Mazang, a major and historic hillside settlement on the south side of Kuh-e Asmayi. When I post a map
Sunday, 15 April 2007 / yakshanbeh, 26 hamal 1386 (Hijra Solar) Introduction: A Semi-Blog Many of my friends in California have asked me to keep in touch and to write about my experience of being in Kabul. Rather than set up an email list, I will post reflections on this website. Partly this is so
Coming Back to Kabul Read More »
The sunlight was fabulous again this evening, so I went out to take pictures of my neighbors. Here is Mohammed Nader again. Now I need to find a local photo-finishing service that will do a good job at hardcopies; I owe him a print. I dearly hope that at some point I can get a
Today Samiullah brought me and his cousins to Paghman, an area just west of Kabul. It is the favorite Friday-picnic spot for Kabulis, so we shared the mountain site with about ten thousand fellow citizens. As we headed west through Kabul we passed through the Kota-e Sangi commercial district, which is dominated by Hazaras. This
Karte Sakhi is adjacent to Kabul University. As with Deh Mazang, and most of Kabul, it is a vast (re)construction site. The houses look neoclassical–not in the European sense, but as if ancient Mediterraneans were building their houses with materials available today. I like the new warm color palette, compared to the popular 1970s Kabul-green.
Construction in Kart-e Sakhi Read More »
Here I am in the lovely, garden-like campus of Kabul University. Within the trees is the Faculty of Agriculture, and the field in the foreground will be used as a demonstration/laboratory field once the irrigation system is restored. In the background is Deh Naw (new village), on the south flank of Kuh-e Ali Abad. The
The neighbors of our guesthouse are rebuilding the lot-line wall to make it higher. When A4T rented this guesthouse, it was the only inhabitable building on the block. Still, about one third of the lots are just ruins; but construction proceeds apace on both sides of us here. I took this photo in 2003 on
Here are Engineer Dehyar and Sabri, whom I worked with in 2003. At that time one of my tasks was to go through the International Building Code and identify passages for translation from English. The two sections that seemed useful were 1) the approach to exiting design, and 2) post-construction testing of concrete structures (a
I arrived in Kabul on Weds, May 31, two days after the worst rioting in the city in several years. News of the riot began to emerge several hours after I had begun my journey, so it was disconcerting to be in transit, glimpsing news in airports to find out how bad the situation was.