Banding Horny Stray Dogs

There are a boatload of stray dogs in Georgia, they are just all over the place including a pack right by my house. I have to give them credit as they are very sweet, not too scared, not mean, starved for attention (kinda heart breaking actually) and horny...

For whatever reason I see almost no females around, the vast majority of the strays are males. This makes a female in heat a target for the always-ready-to-rock-their-libido males and every once in a while I will hear an insane frenzy of barking and whimpering etc and i have come to learn that quite often it is the males chasing the females that are in heat. This country completely does not need more strays (no country does) so it makes me wish there was some easy way to castrate these dogs.

When I worked on a beef herd operation we did a combination of surgical and banding castrations. Being a guy I always cringed a bit for my fellow males but asides from the initial fight they put up they seemed amazingly undisturbed immediately after being deprived of their jewels. I tried looking on the internet for banding dogs and all I could find was a few seemingly innocent posts asking about banding of dogs and a frenzy of posts condemning the individual, though no hard facts about it. I did notice (in the link i gave above for livestock) that the three ways listed were surgical, hormonal, and chemical. I wonder if there is some chemical or hormonal type castration out there for dogs?

Ever Ag Project Needs Alittle...

Ok first thing that comes to mind is luv, but we all need alittle luv'in (sorry, brain fart). But what I was thinking of is:

1. A Monitoring and Evaluation person (M&E)
2. A Lawyer

Of course there are other things, the obvious like administrator, agronomist (duh), veterinarian (assuming the project has a livestock component which most of mine do), and a few others I that I am sure I am forgetting but the two afore mentioned positions are things that seem to be missing all to often from projects, and even when they are available they are misused.

Lawyers are needed because to be able to navigate the laws (or catch the caveats) of developing countries is truly a mind boggling task and is almost impossible for non-lawyer nationals but they are really quite essential. Even if the laws are not enforced you will be safer complying with them than ignoring them (international organizations are seen as limitless bags of money ripe for extortion etc so if you aren't following the rules then you become an even-easier target for corrupt officials or well connected individuals).

M&E people are important because you have to show the donor results, and it is of course lots of numbers and stats etc (and we all know about statistics) but if you have an obviously defunct (or worse, non-existent) monitoring plan in place and no data coming into the project you will have nothing to show the donor (or nothing to back up your claims). Not only that but for a non-math-minded type like myself creating a M&E plan is a bear and keeping up with it, crunching the numbers, and trying to take into account external factors is more than my wee brain can do (maybe if that was my only job but it would be a miserable job for me and at this stage of my professional life [such as it is] I am usually in positions where i have to follow many things and can't devote significant time to M&E).

My previous project didn't have a budget line for a lawyer and I tried to get my staff to contract one on a per job basis but it was towards the end of the project, they were lazy, and I was getting really tired of the project but I can think of a few instances where a lawyer would/should have  caught errors in contracts, could have helped us in intervening in some areas (irrigation and government roles), etc. My previous project did kind of have a M&E person but they ended up just being computer guys that could input data and graph out what i needed but were worthless for analysis or following the project in anyway.

Oh well, my two cents for the day.

Dried Mulberries?

I have been thinking about the mulberry tree in my front yard and dreading the time when it starts producing fruit. I have found mulberries to be kinda a sweet but tasteless fruit, that isn't great by itself but is wonderful as a base (like frozen for fruit smoothies). Problem is i won't be able to eat them all and am really not looking forward the two months of sticky shoes and tip toeing through the mulberry mush (there is one directly in front of my gate and another in front of my front door). Since this is a rental house chopping them down isn't really an option, actually don't see an option but it did get me thinking about mulberries...

I've seen lots of dried fruits, especially at the western health food stores but they have always been a moist super sweet type thing. I remember in Afghanistan they would dry mulberries out (not hard there, the driest places I have ever lived) to the point they were crunchy and i gotta admit, they were pretty good. In retrospect i think i remember something like "apple chips" or something but that is about the only dried/crispy fruit product i can recall having seen/tried in the US. I am just surprised that more dried/crunchy berries aren't sold in the US (low weight, high storability, palatable, no-so-exotic-and-idea-as-to-repel-potential-customers)

Not all doners are created equal

I had to close my organization's satellite office in the capital of Azerbaijan (Baku) due to pressure from the donor organization and some from out regional office (where my immediate superiors reside) so I am now left without a office/bed when I have to go to Baku (the office also has a bedroom). So I have had to find somewhere else to stay (or more accurately had to have my staff find). Now my knee jerk choice would just be to stay in a hotel but in Baku there is no such thing as a budget hotel, they (it, only one) are either mediocre or insanely expensive (considering the monthly salary of middle class Azerbaijani is around 500eur/mo) and there is the politics of keeping staff’s feelings in mind. I have not entertained the idea of paying a large amount for hotels so they have the option of staying at the mediocre hotel or staying with family so other than playing the “because I’m the boss” card I can’t really justify my spending minimum of $120/night at a middle-of-the-road hotel (for the record, I found that when I gave staff money for hotel they would just keep it and stay at their relatives houses).

So, ANYWAY, the point is I have found a guesthouse run by ADRA that is a very respectable 30eur/night and is quite acceptable (shared bathroom etc but hey). This place is located in another part of town so I find myself having to relearn my way around, different shops, etc, including the donar shops.

Donars are a Turkish food (Azerbaijan is ethnically very similar to Turkey as are customs foods etc) that normally consists of a mixed meat with a few vegetables in a tortilla wrap, kinda. It is a very popular fast food here and while not health food I would wager it is no worse (probably better) than Mickey Ds plus they are dirt cheap compared to other food in Baku (about 1.20eur) so considering they are usually quite tasty and my being cheap I treat myself to donars when I am in Baku. There was a string of shops near my old office and two of the three had pretty good doners but the doner situation near the guest house where I am staying is a bit different.  I went to one and the tomatoes were grainy and they put cold greasy French fries in it, the second shop had some herb I hate premixed in with the cucumbers so the only vegetables they had to put in were tomatoes and pickles. Two shops down, one to go… change can be difficult.

Store-bought Meats Dosed to Look Red - Consumerist

Yeah, i can't remember where i heard about this technique. That i am aware of (and i could totally be wrong) the process itself isn't that bad but the stores' tendency to keep the meat longer and deceive customers is unforgivable. I might point out that i seem to remember that there is a connection between CO keeping the meat looking red and how it kills you (like if you locked yourself in the garage with the car on), i think its something about binds the iron to the red blood cells and doesn't allow it to take on oxygen? anywho, interesting.

Boxed, Bread Flavored, Tree Juice?

Boxed, Bread Flavored, Tree Juice?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Earlier I posted my “Boxed Tree Juice” photo with the intention of posting my “Boxed, Bread Flavored, Tree Juice” photo later (later being now). Before I had found what amounted to a boxed birch tea drink in an Eastern European supermarket but recently I found a variation on that which to me is quintessentially Russian (I mean really, it doesn't get much more Russian than this) while I have observed many different cultures that are reliant on bread I have noticed that Russians are especially proud of their bread (one quote I remember from TV was someone asking a Russian man about Russian break and he said [translation] It is the best in the world… if only we could make our cars the same way); while it being the “best in the world” is debatable they are no doubt quite proud of it and eat it quite a bit (though in truth I have noticed in Azerbaijan and Afghanistan people are much more “bread dependent”, that is a meal without bread isn't a meal). Really, seeing bread flavored drink sounds funny but then I consider all the Kvas stands in eastern Europe that I see (and like) the idea of a bread flavored tree tea becomes less strange…

Strings Attached Aid at some of its worst

Being in Development sector I tend to see aid projects with strings attached, some times its not so bad but there are times when it seems really wrong, this would be one of those times. Christian organizations trying to convert people at a time of crisis, while they are vulnerable, is like trying to pick up chicks at abortion clinics because you know they promiscuous. Trying to push religion just seems wrong, Christianity and Islam seem particularly notorious for this, pushy that is; and seem to have little regard for the culture they are destroying in the process.

To all those out there trying to exchange aid for Jesus, please think about what you are doing; it gives "blind faith" a whole new meaning.

Boxed Tree Juice?

Boxed Tree Juice?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

When traveling I am always on the lookout for new foods and, in this case, drinks. I was recently in Ukraine and noticed a variety of foods, many could probably fall in the category of “Russian Influenced” (can talk about Azerbaijan and Potatoes later) or as the Ukrainians might argue “Ukrainian influenced”, food. What came to mind when I first saw this was “tree juice in a box” and I am not too far off, it is a tea of sorts brewed from the birch tree. I was very amused (yes, I do amuse myself on occasion) to see tree juice but after some thought this is not so strange in that sassafras (a tree) tea is not so strange and I remember my great aunt telling me about cutting birch trees and then coming back later to collect the sap and chew on it like chewing gum. Truth be known this photo was taken months ago (4?) and I just hadn’t gotten around (lack of inspiration) to posting it but upon finding a variation on this juice which was about as Russian as one can get I was inspired to post this photo as a prelude of sorts.

Lada O’ Melons

Lada O’ Melons
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

That is a Lada (Russian car) full of melons. In developing countries I am constantly amused by how people push the limits of vehicular carrying capacity be it a car with brush (for making brooms) piled 3 times as high as the car is high, to a trunk full of peppers to a… backseat piled to the ceiling with water melons. The lada seems to me to be the Russian equivalent of Germany’s VW Bug, breaks easily, fixed easily, deathtrap; but I have never seen people stuff a VW Bug like I regularly see people stuff ladas. A photo like this can be had near just about any CIS bazaar, unfortunately this was a camera phone photo so it is of less-than-stellar quality. Also, note, I am sure I am within a few hundred meters of the right place but I am not positive, I didn’t have the GPS function turned on in my phone when I took this photo so I used www.geoimgr.com/ to place the image about right. I know it is near the freedom square in Tbilisi though.

What about agriculture?!?!

ok, yet another agriculture gripe. While there does seem to be a bit more lip service (and a trickle, more than before, of funding) i was looking over the events sections of devex.com and reliefweb.int and nada, i mean nothing nothing. There was a listing for some aquacutlure and yeah that counts it is one thing out of thousands of gender, humanitarian studies, M&E, etc events... still no love for agriculture or agribusiness.

I Think You Need This AND Should Use This!

I posted a not-quiteag-post on gtinn earlier but I also wanted to address the Ag component of these girls'/interns' visit.  While I still don't entirely understand the purpose of their visit (when i get ambiguous answers it makes me think they don't know what they are doing either) I did get that they want to "help" small Azeri dairy processor make European style hard cheeses. When i heard that first thing that popped into my head was "Do Azeri's really like hard cheeses that much?" a question that I know the answer to, they like it ok but their prefer their own cheese. Their visit quickly started to sound naïve, and more naive the more I heard about how they wanted to focus on small dairy processors and selling locally (or exporting) etc, now I will proceed to poke a few holes into their politically correct line of reasoning (admitting that their cheapness has tainted my personal few of these two):

Many rural cultures are not open to foreign foods. This statement reminds me of a bill board I saw in the US, it was an advertisement for “down home/country cooking” and it has some Marlboro man type character saying “Sushi? Raw fish?! Where I come from we call that fishing bait!” testimony to the lack of acceptance of foreign foods. While I don’t think the reaction to hard cheeses in rural Azerbaijan would be quite so vitriolic I don’t see them just loving it either.

“Small farmers small businesses, go local!” While the sentiment is admirable it is not always logical. In the US and especially in Europe and definitely Japan farmers are (generally speaking) more sophisticated and if they were to change their businesses (say from soft cheeses to hard cheeses) they would probably be able to adapt. That degree of dynamism is lacking in second and third world countries; I don’t think rural Azerbaijan is an exception. I learned from talking with one of my friend’s mothers (who raises [raised?] goats) that making hard cheese is more difficult than making soft cheese, which is probably a factor in why I think I have seen more soft cheeses in developing countries (those that eat cheese). Assuming that you can instill an understanding of sanitation in addition to technical understanding of making hard cheeses in addition to cultivating a widespread taste for hard cheese just sounds a bit green to me (from the development point of view).

One of the points the two visitors used as justification for making hard cheese is “exportability”, it is indeed easier to transport hard cheeses since they are denser and keep better/longer than softer cheeses so this is a valid point. The thing is, are these small village processors really going to be exporting their cheeses even across Azerbaijan not to mention to other countries? The answer is probably not. I have seen one example of a local processor who occasionally exports to Russia (an easier market to be sure considering corruption and lax sanitation standards) but this person is still 2-3 times larger than the second largest processor in the region… So whether they plan to have it sold in Azerbaijan or exported somewhere else I just can’t see it happening.

I suppose there are other points but the above is what popped into my head first.

Salinity?

Salinity?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

My agricultural background, while fairly general, is a bit more geared towards livestock so I don?t have much background with horticulture/soil science/irrigation but despite that I hear about salinity every once in a while. When I hear there is high level of salinity in the water/soil of some place it usually conjures up a picture of the more finicky crops not being able to grow. Working in Azerbaijan my understanding of salinization has changed, mostly due to the fact that this is the worst case of salinization I have seen (now mind you, after doing some research I have heard of places that have it worse but for now I am just talking about places I have seen myself). In this photo the ground looks white, if it were the beach and this were sand that would be normal but it is not the beach it is an area that I pass through every once in a while called Imishli. The whiteness is salt (mineral deposits) that you can literally chip off. This is a camera phone photo so the quality is mediocre but if it were clearer you could see that it almost looks like a beach of salt. The primary occupation of rural Azerbaijan (this area is no exception) is agriculture and when I see those puny fields that are barely scraping by it does tend to make you feel sorry for those farmers.

Train me!!

As I have mentioned before my current position requires staff management, not one of my favorite parts of my job. One of the things that I am confronted with on a monthly basis is being told “I need training”. Most of my staff seems quite obsessed with getting trainings, presumably for their resumes. There is a catch though, because invariably the “required trainings” are in places like western Europe (read: EXPENSIVE) so “I need training” is somewhat of a euphemism for “I want the prestige of training abroad” and they are dead serious about this. While I do my best to humor them or walk them through the hurdles involved I am one of those who is not convinced of the usefulness of “training”, I have had to go to many a training and the hardest part is usually trying to stay awake, not to mention the fact that they are usually short enough or complicated enough (usually short) that I can hardly absorb what I am being taught. I know there are many out there that disagree but having sent staff to trainings, or had donors require my staff go to trainings and then seeing my staff go right back and do things they way they always have I just can’t help but think that trainings are 90% fluff and 10% useful. Our donor recently sent a person from one of our partner organizations to a fairly expensive training in Britian. My staff was sure that this guy was going to leave the instant he got back and found a better job. Well he got back and within a week he quit and got another (admittedly sweeter) job. One of the unfathomable parts of sending external people to trainings such as this is that there is very little that can be done to keep them at the organization after they get the training and there is no incentive to use this training (market development in this case) if the donor agency isn't funding such things; you can't get funding for drilling water wells and say, we are going to make the market work here! or at least there is very little incentive to try to use that training because all you have to do is drill the well (or whatever else the donor wanted), telling the donor what should be done can get sticky.

I think I will be sick tomorrow...

My current job requires an uncomfortably high level of staff management. I have never been particularly good at this as I am often accused of being either too nice/diplomatic or totally unsympathetic (hows that for contrast?). One of the “totally unsympathetic” accusations came when I was informed by my staff that “I will be sick next week” quite matter-a-factly; my instant reaction was, “how do you know it will last all week?”, her, “I know”. Now the organization’s regulations state that the staff will have to produce a signed letter from a doctor saying the person was sick enough that they couldn’t come in to work but outside of the west that is an absolute joke, those kind of letters can be forged or bought for a few Euros and of course you will still be paid because you are “sick” grrrrrrrrrr. I have about given up on this but it will never cease to irritate me… the other day I had a migraine and decided to go home early, I informed my administrator and the first thing he asked was “will you be sick tomorrow?” 

Pork cravings

I guess its kinda clear from my writing that I work in international development which, of course, includes living/working in many different countries. I rather like the diversity of my work but it is fraught with numerous inconveniences and each country has its own little issue. I am currently in Azerbaijan but before that I worked in Afghanistan, both are Muslim countries. I am from one of the largest pork producing states in the US not to mention the world and I have grown up with pork in all its forms but the past two countries I have worked in have presented their own problems, from Afghanistan where it is totally harem (forbidden/verboten), to Azerbaijan where people just don’t care for it; I can’t seem to get a “pork break”. I smuggled a pack of bacon from Georgia (the country) to Azerbaijan and had a very sinfully fattening weekend of bacon with everything (bacon bits in a salad, straight fried bacon, bacon with green beans (canned but what the heck), and bacon N cheese omelet… I will die a young (but happy) man. Anyway, when I am in the US, one of the first things I plan on doing is clogging my arteries with some good ole’ chopped BBQ pork with spicy vinegar sauce!

Zoonotic infections? Anyone need help with zoonotic infection mitigation?

It seems that I have finally reached a level (professionally) where recruiters have started contacting me (as opposed to my begging them); that is not to say that any jobs have come of it but hey, it does help my (severely damaged) professional ego. Today I got an email asking if they could include me in a proposal (hardly a guarantee of employment) as a "Zoonotic Swine Infections specialist"… didn’t see that one coming. I got my MA in “International development” but was frustrated by the lack of technical expertise the degree offered so every chance I had I tried to gear it towards something more technical (agriculture related in my case). An example of this was my masters paper, which was pretty much zoonotic infection mitigation in small scale Southeast Asian aquaculture production. I have worked on a small scale swine operation in the US as well so some recruiter thought “hey, this guy might work” (I am guessing there are not many people who have a background in this, and having been in the position of having to recruit consultants I know the feeling) but the problem is that reducing zoonotic (mainly parasitic) infections in a swine operation is probably quite different from doing it in an aquaculture operation, not to mention variables like scale (I am much more familiar with small scale livestock production in general)… and the fact that the best mitigation is just cooking your food well before eating it (there are exceptions like mad cow disease but anywho)

Bizarre Morning

I woke up at about 6am this morning to the cold nose of Beanie (my dog). Somehow in my groggy semi-awake state it occurred to me that I had forgotten to let Beanie out last night to “do his business” and that his waking me up this morning was his way of giving me a choice, “you open the door and let me do it out there or I do it here”, not a hard choice so I got up.

As it was 6am in the morning and my yard is walled in etc I didn’t bother changing out of my boxers, I stumbled my way down the stairs, opened the door and Beanie started barking like crazy, was getting ready to scold him until I looked up to see a little middle aged man standing in my yard gorging on mulberries from my overly prolific mulberry tree. We blankly stared at each other for a second and then I said “salam” (hello here in Azerbaijan) he said hello back, then I wanted to ask him if he wanted mulberries in Russian but in my groggy state (helped by the fact that I don’t know how to say mulberry in Russian) I mumbled “hochish mulberries” well he got it and said “da” (yes) I just said ok (horasho), turned around, and went back inside. Surreal.

In retrospect I really didn’t mind all that much, the mulberry tree has beome a liability in that now I have a yard full of rotten mulberries which are caked on the soles of my shoes and getting tracked everywhere. Plus, there is the detail about his chickens, Beanie awhile back decided he wanted chicken and picked off about 2-3 of his chickens like popcorn… not a happy moment. So, I sent my driver over to pick a bowl of mulberries for the guy, tell him he can have as many as he wants and to be sure to close the gate.

We shall see.

Note: 2009/08/23

Well, yesterday was like a relapse. Beanie started barking like crazy, i look outside to see a family running around in my fenced in yard picking fruit. I went out and said they could take all they want but they had to close and lock the back gates (from where they were coming) but of course that evening when i went out to check the gate it was not locked at all offering my door opening canine the perfect opportunity to go KFC on thier poultry and then (probably) come back to me and complain how my dog is a menace... the best neighbors are not having any neighbors at all... sigh.

Dumb Ag Guy

Today i just finished a tough meeting with my staff and the staff of a survey organization that we contracted almost 8 months ago to do a survey. It has become a blame game and just about every issue we have with them is (apparently) either our fault or the fault of the people they surveyed. It was tough in that it was the hifalutin academic statistics gurus vs the "country bumpkin" field people (who just happen to work in the field and know that the data that was presented does not reflect observations in the field). They ran circles around us with all their numbers and procedures etc but in the end, the data just does not reflect what we see in the field... its kind of like we are race car drivers and we can just feel that something is wrong with the car but we can't say exactly what is wrong while we have the mechanics telling us everything is ok. At one point they told us the "numbers don't lie" which immediately brought to mind a quote from Mark Twain "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics"... i am not sure they would have seen the humor in that quote though.

Hair Fertilizer?

I can't remember where exactly i heard about this, a podcast i think (which podcast i have no idea) but it struck me as a very simple thing assuming it works. This product is essentially (treated) hair that is woven into mats and can be used as a combination fertilizer (as it is biodegradable) and something to keep weeds down (like a mat that you can put around say a tree or maybe in between rows to keep weeds down.

http://www.smartgrow.us/welcome.htm

I can easily see some people being repulsed at the idea of using a mat make of someone elses hair but at the same time its nice to see the stuff is being used instead of taking up space in a landfill.

Google Goats

Well google took my idea, they are now using goats to "mow" their "lawns" (fields)(apparently a service, it is amazing what people will pay for in California). I considered getting a goat last summer and am reconsidering it now as i apparently have a very fertile yard but what is holding me back is the knowledge that goats will consume anything that is even semi-edible thus the shrubs, trees, and some flowers in my yard would be in eminent danger should i introduce a lawnmower as indiscriminate as a goat.

I don't think sheep are quite as adventurous when it comes to eating. Once winter comes around again i could sell the animal (most likely for more than i paid for it, assuming i get a small/young one now) or BBQ it... anyway, i haven't made up my mind yet. I am not sure how my dog would take it, he has a taste for chickens (killed at least 3 of my neighbor's chickens thanks to the particularly incompetent dog sitter i employed while on a trip) but he seems to shy away from cows. I guess my entire reasoning is that it doesn't seem to make sense to try to mow my yard as I am out in rural Azerbaijan and the only lawn mowers in the country are gas powered (ie expensive and not easy to fix for non-grease monkeys such as myself), using the scythe that came with the house is a pain, and well getting an animal could be amusing and keep the grass manageable at the same time. 

Ah well.

Doubling of aid from the US to International Agricultural Development

Well, what can I say, two posts in one day is a record for this year (the other post was on gtinn).

Well the reason is the expected budget allocation for international development aid, and more specifically for Agricultural Development. This from the Center for Global Engagement "While traveling Obama put these words to action in announcing new assistance programs. At the G20 summit Obama announced America would double assistance for agricultural development to $1 billion. The program is designed to increase rural productivity and incomes, while building multilateral partnerships and decreasing reliance on foreign food aid." I believe that is a doubling of aid (for agriculture) from what it was before.

Its nice to hear that one of the most basic (and arguably important) sectors of development is starting to get some attention/recognition again.

Wow, I'ma lobbyist?

I was just reading over one of my association newsletters (which i don't do nearly enough) and noticed they made a mention of the "Coalition for Agricultural Development" and how it was a member of this coalition, makes sense right? (after all my work is "international agricultural development"). I wasn't familiar with the Coalition for Agricultural Development (CAD) so i googled it and the first document that came up was a pdf that apparently was a letter to congress. In it they pretty much implore these congressional members to put more money into international agricultural aid. I can honestly say I agree with most of the arguments they put forth (at least i am accurately represented) but i would be really curious to know about the monetary lobbying going on. I am almost positive my organization isn't doing any direct monetary lobbying or if they are it is not through membership fees (i think it is made up of less than 1,000 members and the $50/year membership fee probably doesn't leave much for enticing congressional members). I did however notice that the CAD is made up of some much more (monetarily) influential organizations like BASF, Monsanto, Chemonics, ACDI/VOCA, etc (a mix of direct agriculture interests commercial and development organizations).

I was amused at how they threw in the bit about HIV and political instability, makes sense though, i guess i don't have to tell people that agriculture just doesn't engender as much sympathy and emotion as say a person dying from HIV, or school girls being kept out of schools, or even fuzzy little mammals that are endangered of going extinct... or scare people as much as some hooded terrorist (and yes, i do sincerely believe those all are important things but in a head-to-head fight for attention agriculture usually takes a back seat to these other issues; hence the CAD's probably seeing the need to link agriculture to these more popular issues).

Anyway, just interesting to find out i was (apparently) part of a lobby.

Agriculture not en vogue...

I always knew agriculture was not en vogue, not at home (within the US) or abroad in development but I was floored by a figure I saw in the Christian Science Monitor "Relatively quick and substantial progress can be made if nations rededicate themselves to international aid for agriculture, which has dropped from 13 percent of all development aid in the early 1980s to only 3 percent now."... 3% of all development aid is for agriculture; folks, bottom line if people don't grow stuff then they don't eat. I knew that agriculture was not popular but 3% just boggles my mind for something so basic and critical as agriculture. In the US and Europe I see people quibbling over details of agriculture and the most environmentally appropriate (important no doubt) ways and most healthy foods but then I think about the farmers toiling away to grow enough wheat/rice for their families, producing not even 1/5th of what an American/European farmer can produce in the same area... and wheat/rice is about all these subsistence farmer families eat.

My knee jerk assumption is that since much of the developed world lives far away from agriculture so has little concept of it and given supermarkets has little appreciation for agriculture that coupled with political interests that are injected into all forms of development aid I guess its not hard to see how agriculture is marginalized but still...

A Mortgage Broker In Amish Country... lessons to be learned

I was reading an an article on NPR about the Amish and loans and came away not sure what to think...

A line from the article that really got my attention was "O'Brien says the Amish are less risky debtors than people with access to all the tools of modern banking. The Amish live well within their means — no splurging on iPods or HDTVs, no dinners out that they really can't afford. The Amish think that missing a payment brings shame — not just on them, but on their whole family, their whole community."

Its a strange phenomenon in a day and age where people routinely spend beyond their means. I am currently working through a budgeting debacle that I inherited from the previous management where it seems that they spent over 40+% of a three year budget... in 8 months; times like this remind me that even one who is "fiscally disciplined" can be subject to the fiscal faux pas of others.

I am still quite proud of my family and the way i have been brought up in terms of living in a fiscally realistic manner. Again and again i find the world looks at me like i am some sort of scrooge (though i have never been accused of being a mooch) because i live what i believe to be, responsibly. Its odd to me because it is not only the spending-money-like-water (sometimes via credit, though usually by just spending all month-to-month) westerners but also the poor as dirt developing countries, they think i have "tons of money" and can live like a king (rarely saving properly for the future) but i find that in many of these countries life gets rough when they get older and they become heavily dependent on their children, children who sometimes don't look out for their parents later in life.

ah well...

More on waste

I guess i have been on an anti-waste kick lately. Things like the recession help keep such things fresh on the mind. While i am one who actually saves/invests i actually like recessions less than most (i.e. i am hurt more than many non-saving types) I do believe that recession and shortage is a good thing in a way, it makes people become less wasteful though of course people have extraordinarily short memories as evidenced in one of my other recent posts (the Afghan cook who stopped saving food once he got a raise).

I recently read two articles on NPR that struck a wasteful chord with me, one about how wasteful the author had been previous to the recession and the second about how the person being written about turned some people's waste into other peoples good fortune. The first was kind of typical, a person who is/was probably semi-righteous in some leftist way but still bought stuff at the gap, scorned those who would wash n save zip lock bags (the same scorn i saw volunteers have in the peace corps when locals would save/reuse zip lock bags), etc these types annoy me the most... they have this righteous air about them but only for some things. The other article was a great example of how an organization used food that other places would throw out, even house holds would throw out, and then giving it to people who really do need or are at least willing to use the food.

I work for a development organization and am the only American in it, and by most estimates probably the most conservative (fiscally, not necessarily socially and certainly not environmentally) so most of my colleagues have an air of self-righteousness (which in some cases is justified if not perhaps a bit unbalanced [and the case could be made that i am sometimes one of them]) but there are a few that just amaze me, or perhaps that just rub my specific pet peeves raw. It needs to be said that in some respects these people perhaps contribute more to the development community than I just by virtue of the fact that they are more gregarious in their work. Some of the pet peeves are the refusal to eat leftovers, opting to either feed it to the dog or just throw it out (they were amused that i use the fruit leftover from compote that we have to make things like apple butter, fruit smoothies, etc) this is something that just amazes me.

I am not sure how to end this post, it is not like i have a solution to the cultural problem of waste but it is something i will perhaps never get over.

Long time...

Well, TDA officially has one reader! ok, so maybe one non-family-member-reader but her email reminded me that i haven't posted *anything* since May 2008... geeze.

Part of the reason is that i have gone from one of the most exotic/novel places I have ever been (Afghanistan) to a place that is more familiar (Azerbaijan, which is familiar in the former soviet republic respect), and of course part of it is laziness.

There are things to write about here but the mood hasn't hit me yet. I will say that i am currently Head of Country for an organization managing agribusiness initiatives (agribusiness in the sense that we are helping [very] small farmers get access to agricultural inputs). The project is a bit unique in that there is no material inputs, no hand outs etc, we are working with people to help them learn that there are things such as feed mixes that can significantly increase the growth of their animals (through nutrition, not steroids for all you hippies out there), how to find artificial insemination service providers, how to pick microfinance organizations; and then we actually work with the service providers by brining them to the communities and ensuring that they have sustainably large groups to present to. Really, we are just the lube trying to make rural agricultural markets work better... sounds simple but trust me, its not. The most difficult part is that we are not actually doing the work, we are having local partner organizations do the work to build their capacity, but damn the are inefficient I am positive I could get twice the work done for 2/3rds the cost with my small team but that is not what the donor wants, so we are the ones that push them along in the right direction etc. My favorite part of the project is that there are no "material inputs" as many development organizations like to say, so there is much less chance of creating a "gimme culture" which is what happens after many development projects finish in areas.

Ok, that is all for now.

The Mentality of Wastefulness

I admit I have an ironic (for an American) pet peeve, wastefulness.
I also admit that in some respects I am not the most efficient individual (mostly in terms of energy consumption [though I am pretty frugal for an American] and food [mainly its packaging]) but there are some pretty basic things that get to me especially in these desperately poor developing countries.
Our janitor (who has now been promoted to janitor and cook), before used to collect all the uneaten food at our organization and take it home to his family and he would talk about how wasteful it was to throw the food away (saving leftovers is a somewhat foreign concept here). Since his promotion I now see him regularly throwing food away, and he has ceased saving the cans to sell to a recycling center, presumably because he has more money now. This is something that is just unfathomable to me, we could easily find one or two beggars around the corner and take the food to them (and I am sure they would be willing to come to us) but instead it gets thrown away. One of the more sobering things I have seen recently was a few kids huddled around a pile of trash making a small pile of inedible looking potatoes. Apparently they were picking out these rotten and bug infested potatoes to take home (hopefully for their livestock but most likely not) and my organization (a "humanitarian organization") throws away its leftover food.
I see this mentality among the "richer" people in developing countries all the time, their absolute repulsion at the idea of taking uneaten food home in carton (like after eating at a restaurant) or their unwillingness to save leftovers after a meal at home for the next day. It has made me sick in the past and still does make me queasy to see children picking through a garbage pile for bits of food and then see perfectly good food being thrown out.

Cheap food...

Being somewhat of a traveler, a wanabe connoisseur, and an aggie I am constantly looking at food comparing prices (among other things). One of my favorite things about Bangkok was the phenomenal food and the dirt cheap prices but the more I travel the more Thai food prices seem like an anomaly.

I heard somewhere that food prices in the US are some of the cheapest (per capita) prices in the world considering the efficiency of large scale farming I am not surprised (you can argue about sustainability, health, morals etc but it is dirt cheap compared to US incomes). I walk around and see prices in developing countries and compare them to the incomes there and I wince almost every time.

A co-worker of mine once mentioned that Afghan’s don’t save money very well, I have seen other cultures that save comparatively well but still, one needs food, and while local food is almost always cheaper it is still not “cheap” for locals, not compared to the US.

In the US and to a greater extend in Europe food is important, and good food is worth paying for but the ability to pay for it is a luxury so it tears me between efficiency and giving people the opportunities to spend less than 1/2-3/4ths of their income one food alone and the grassroots farming I always hear about in the west (support you local farmer etc [which I happen to agree with in the west but only because we can afford to make such choices]) which quite often is not able to provide people with as much food for a cheaper price compared to “factory farming”. Factory farming is improving but in baby steps (especially in the US) like Smithfield (huge pork producer) starting to let sows roam when not farrowing (before they were kept in cages small enough that they could not turn around; which is still standard practice for most large scale pork production).

Adjusting...

Well there is an adjustment curve for every new country I visit (and it seems to get easier every time). One of the things I ran into in Afghanistan is the love of tea, which I share, but they like it the Limey/Yank (Yank = Americans from the north) way, hot. Being from the Southeastern US I often crave sweet iced tea which seems to be a culinary anomaly found just in the SE US (I have found many other places that serve sweet hot tea but not sweet cold tea). Another thing I have noticed is that most teas around the world are pretty damn bitter, à la earl grey. In the US (and perhaps the rest of the world though it seems rare) we have a few brands (varieties?) that are not bitter and also caffeine free (caffeine is fine but it only takes alittle to keep me up into the wee hours of the morning).

So, here I have taken on a combination of tea drinking preparations to come up with my own tea here. Mainly chilling the tea (southeast US), adding Sugar (many different places), and adding milk (ok, in my case soy milk but its the adding of a protein that is the key here, its an Britain/Indian thing [I never have figured out if the Limeys got it from the Indians or the other way around]) to take away the bitterness.

Side note: I was a miserable chemistry student (even though I did pretty well even in the higher levels of collegiate biology) but one of the few things I took away from Chemistry 101 was how milk (more specifically protein) neutralizes the bitterness in tea (for more details on that try here or here) so when drinking bitter tea I thank Chemistry 101, and of course the Indians/Brits.

Beefcakes in Afghanistan

Beefcakes in Afghanistan
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Well i suppose this is less ag (food) than culture but I thought I'd put it in the digestible aggie because the body building powerders and carb drinks are what intially prompted me to take this photo.

There are always interesting (and sometimes contradictory) things to be found in every culture and one (of the many) things I have noticed in Afghanistan was a tolerance for, and fascination with, bodybuilding, I have been told (by some people here) that even when the Taliban were here it was tolerated (it probably helps explain Afghan’s fascination with WWF, the super built fake wrestling). It amazes me that such an uber-conservative culture would tolerate some overly tanned, massive beefcake poster child clad only in grape-smuggling speedos bearing it all to the world (this in a place where I have been told I would be yelled off the street [or worse] for wearing shorts). In Kabul I see signs everywhere with pictures of huge body builders (the younger Arnold is a favorite) usually advertising gyms or fitness types stuff (in this case a little shop with protein powders, thirst quenchers, etc piled from the floor to the ceiling. In the local paper I saw a picture of “Mr. Kabul” who one the Kabul body building championship, while he could easily kick my ass he was a fraction of the size of the body builders you see in the magazines. Go figure.

Sikh Doctors

Sikh Doctors
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This guy is totally not what I think of when I think of Indian doctors (really, to me an Indian doctor is just a doctor that happens to be Indian [has MD, white coat, etc]) but this is what many Afghans think of when they think of Indian doctors.

Actually this guy is Sikh (yes, still Indian/Pakistani but I think considered a different ethnic group) these guys fit in well enough since their lifestyle dictates they should have beards but they also wear turbans in a certain way that makes it pretty easy to pick them out in a crowd (Afghans wear turbans of sorts but a much different style). There was a string of Indian doctor “shops” in the main bazaar but apparently these guys specialize in herbal type remedies.

I am not sure if these guys are able to stay in business because they are truly effective, or because Indians generally have a reputation for being good doctors (compared to Afghan doctors), or because Afghans still believe in herbal remedies (which is not too far fetched since it seems like much of Asia still has significant faith in the powers of herbal type remedies).

Oil N’ Eggplant

Oil N’ Eggplant
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

I have been holding out for an “Oil N’ Okra” shot but that will come later, today was Oil N’ Eggplant day garnished with a bit of tomato. While I am not a fan of eggplant there are palatable ways in which it can be fixed, alittle in a spaghetti sauce or chili works nicely, eggplant parmesan is quasi-edible, and musaka (the eggplant & meat casserole version) is one of my favorites, but Oil garnished with alittle eggplant (ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration) is not at the top of my favorite dishes list.

I have come to the conclusion that many Eurasian dishes are perhaps a bit more oily than I normally prefer (case in point, I later drained the oil off into one cup and the food part into another cup and found that oil was about 1/6th of the entire dish [perhaps more but that is all I could drain off]). This was an issue in Eastern Europe but I don’t remember excessive (to this degree at least) oil usage in Kenya or Southeast Asia. While this is waaaay too much oil for me (in terms of personal taste and considering the semi-sedentary lifestyle that working in Afghanistan imposes on one) I have noticed that if there is less oil then people do not seem to like the food as much.

Having grown up in the Southeastern US, the land of fatback and overcooked vegetables, I have come to the conclusion that excessive use of oil/fat, salt/msg, sugar, etc are means of culinary compensation for poor cooking. That is not to say those that who use excessive amounts of the afore mentioned ingredients are thinking “well its bad food but I’ll just add a few cups more of oil to make up for it” but just that they have just learned that this way of cooking is good enough. I am no master chef but I consider myself to be a decent cook and I have cooked food in areas where inordinate amounts of oil in food is the norm and have been complimented on most of the foods (where I used a small fraction of the oil normally used, or none at all); I say most because I have learned the hard way that no matter how well they are prepared there are some foods that some societies typically will not eat like Spicy stuff in Moldova or vegetables in Afghanistan (this is more true in the rural areas than the larger cities).

Fun with Mud

Fun with Mud
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This is the last “construction” thing I will show for at least the next few posts (it just seemed to make sense to put a few posts that built on each other [no pun intended]).

These are an architectural staple of afghan construction (especially in the more rural areas), mud bricks. I was reading a Wikipedia article for “adobe” and it mentioned how strong adobe is; on the one hand I question that because of all the dilapidated adobe structures I have seen here (though admittedly at least some of their decay has been helped along by war) but having handled these bricks and felt some of the structures I am amazed at how solid they actually feel. When I was a kid I made a ton of things (forts with red-clay stucco) holes/tunnels etc and I don’t ever remember any of them feeling nearly as solid as the mud-based structures/materials here. Anyway, they have wooden forms here and they seem to make raised “tubs” (earth raised on four sides) where they pour water and dirt, mix, then pack the mud into the wooden forms. I haven’t seen the procedure myself but wikipedia goes into some detail that probably holds true for most parts of the world.

Pile of dead stuff

Pile of dead stuff
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This is a truck loaded to the hilt with pelts, the dead stuff. No I am not necessarily one of those “fur is dead” types (fur for function, that is from an animals that is grown for lots of things like meat/milk/hide is ok, fur for fashion, some animal grown just so it can be skinned for a $800 coat seems obtuse to me) and this truck is carrying goat pelts (lots of ‘em) I belive.

In Afghanistan I kind of doubt people will be into raising animals just for their pelts (well sheep, but they are sheared) any time soon. I don’t think I have ever seen so many pelts in one place in my life, and from a distance I couldn’t tell what it was just “dead stuff”. Sheep are the dominant livestock here but goats aren’t too far behind and just about everywhere in Afghanistan (land of homosapi-us carnivor-us) you can find butcher shops with a line of cow/goat/sheep heads and a pile of fresh pelts. I assume that this truck makes its rounds picking up pelts from these butchers but I have no idea what they do with them. As freezing cold as it can get in some parts of Afghanistan I can’t recall having seen many fur jackets, actually I remember seeing more fur jackets in eastern Europe which has far less (per person) livestock than Afghanistan. There is of course the “Karzi Hat”; I can’t remember what it is called but the current president, Hamid Karzi wears this funky little cap that I call it a “Karzi Hat” which Afghans laugh because they all know what I am talking about. This hat is actually made from the lamb hides and seems to only be worn by older Afghans but apart from this hat I can’t think of many other leather products that I commonly see around Afghanistan. It’s quite possible these hides are sold in Pakistan where they have a more developed manufacturing sector and are probably better able to turn out leather products en masse.

While you can’t see much of the truck what little one can see does give you and idea of how most of the truck is decorated. This is part of the reason I thought this truck might be en route to Pakistan because almost all of these decorated trucks are Pakistani. There are usually chains hanging off the trucks with little trinkets of sorts hanging on the ends with colorful art ranging from picturesque scenes to religious depictions but some of the art is decidedly more psychedelic (It is rumored that many of these Pakistani drivers are perpetually stoned which, as I think I mentioned in a previous post, would go a long way towards explaining the designs on their trucks). The art on these trucks is usually pretty benign as I am sure having metal silhouettes of nude women on the mud flaps wouldn’t work very well in Muslim society though you see pictures of Indian and Pakistani movie stars all over the place, even without shawls covering their hair (gasp!) so I have never been totally clear on what was taboo here and what is acceptable.

Repeating myself…

Repeating myself…
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This is a irrigation canal that diverts water from a river into irrigation ditches. Projects like these are almost as common as “carpet weaving” and “gender development” projects here in Afghanistan’s development community. While they all have their place they are all (in my opinion) not implemented as well as they could be, but since I don’t feel like talking about carpets and I just don’t think I know enough to talk about gender development I’ll focus on irrigation.

I feel like am becoming a bit of a broken record by repeating myself about various topics, in this case water usage. I have seen a myriad of projects/organizations (including mine) start irrigation or water infrastructure projects but the vast majority of these projects focus on increasing people’s access to water not helping people use water more efficiently. When I first came here I thought “geeze, this is a country full of water efficiency poster children” but I have studied irrigation a wee bit and it didn’t take more than a day or two to figure out that some of the technologies (as they exist now) that could produce maximum water usage efficiency will not be realistic here for a long time. I believe that there are other steps that could be take like education about how to use water more efficiently but alas, if people are given more access to water they will have little immediate incentive to conserve so education would be a moot point.

Adobe Afghan Style

Adobe Afghan Style
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

After talking so much about trees and lumber I thought I’d post a picture of a house in progress. Just about every structure in Afghanistan is either cement or adobe (or a combination of both) and this place is not exception. These places look bomb-proof and according to the Wikipedia entry for adobe they are but in driving around I saw many places there were falling (or totally fallen) apart, though this could have happened over 20 years. Because there is so little rain (snow can be, and is, shoveled off the houses before it has a chance to melt) these structures don’t have too much to worry about and like houses in the US have their roofs replaced or sides painted every few years people usually repair their walls/houses every few years (plastering/piling on fresh mud in the areas that need it).

This is a prime example of how wood is used in these areas, rarely burned (probably due to scarcity) and mostly used as trusses. The logs they are using are perhaps a wee bit on the larger side of trees I have seen grown here but then again this house (probably a compound for a large extended family but that is only speculation) is larger than average. You can also see the wet mud that has been stacked/piled on top of the dry parts slowly building up the size of the building. This is hands down the best examples of a house being built and I am thankful I actually got a shot in as the driver was speeding back to the office (I think he was ready to get back and eat).

Tree Thinning

Tree Thinning
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Here is a common scene along creeks and irrigation ditches, trees tightly packed together to be cut later. Since my folks raise saw timber anything having to do with silviculture is kinda interesting to me, and growing saplings certainly counts.

I am still figuring out silvicuture in Afghanistan. There does not seem to be an industry of growing wood here but it does seem to be available and possible to grow. I see “lumber yards” all over the place in Kabul selling firewood and I do wonder were it all comes from. I think a wee bit of my question was answered yesterday while talking to a person who has an office in the Afghan Red Crescent (Islamic version of Red Cross) compound. She was telling me about how a person on a backhoe had come through to “remove all the dead trees” (but as she pointed out, it is still winter here so no trees have so much as a bud on them yet). The conclusion was that someone was probably just collecting all the trees to sell for a small (afghan) fortune, criminal at best considering how few trees there are around and this compound is/was like an oasis of sorts. So, the tendency seems to be cutting the trees wherever one can first and them and when nothing else is left start planting… at times Afghanistan is vaguely reminiscent of Easter Island.

This photo though was taken out in a rural province (Wardak) where I got the impression that people relied more on dried cow patties and grass for fire fuel so these saplings were almost certainly for construction (Poop and grass just doesn’t support ceilings/roofs very well).

The first thing I thought of was “Geeze they need to thin (prune) these saplings a bit”. I am no forestry expert but in growing trees in the southeast USA one normally starts off growing trees fairly close (though we measure the distance between planted saplings in feet not inches like here) but after a few years we go in and cut a few saplings out to allow others to grow more effectively etc. Here it seems that there might be a wee bit of informal thinning (“Oh, I need a shovel handle, time to go cut a tree!”) but no organized/intentional thinning efforts. Since people depend on trees for trusses across windows, doorways, small bridges, and ceiling/roof beams I would think it would be in their interest to grow some slightly better trees, that said however arable land is *much* more scare here than where I am from so maybe it works out (as centuries of practice does sometimes) as a more efficient use of water/land to grow many half-ass trees rather than fewer good trees, I just don’t know.

Afghan Logging

Afghan Logging
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

We were driving back from (I think it was back and not to) one of the field offices and I noticed some cuts trees. The trees seem to have been planted here as they are most everywhere in Afghanistan (ok, that is a bit of a generalization since I haven’t seen any other areas apart from Kabul and central Afghanistan) packed as close together as possible. They pretty much just cut everything at once (instead of thinning and then getting even larger trees). In the states clear cutting also just cuts everything but normally the trees have been thinned (many years) beforehand.

The tree sizes here are respectable but I saw many places where trees were literally growing on top of each other forming a veritable wall (literally, close enough that you can not squeeze through). It has occurred to me that considering the level of technical sophistication (or lack there of) that larger trees might not be manageable, in many rural areas people just don’t have access to anything apart from handsaws for cutting and donkeys for transport. I do wonder though if that is the reason why they don’t bother growing them any larger (something tells me that no, that is not the reason).

Purty Pile of Poop

Purty Pile of Poop
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Honestly this is about the most creative use of poop I have seen outside of Chris Ofili's redrawing of Mary, the major difference is this was happenstance and will be used for fuel to keep people warm. This is in Wardak, a province in central Afghanistan that is pretty high up, pretty (damn) cold and pretty much devoid of wood. As a result of the wood shortage (when wood is available it is usually used for ceiling beams in houses) people in these parts resort to using weeds/brush and manure. It hardly ever rains here (I would say that about 90% of Afghanistan’s water comes from winter snows) so they can leave piles of dried poop outside that would be potentially soluble disasters in wetter climates (ok, maybe not disaster but it would make quite a pool of manure given a good rain). I have other, less artistic, pictures of poop piles on walls, on top of houses (wouldn’t want anyone to start steal’n from you poop pile now would ya?), and beside door ways.

While this may seem disgusting to all but the crunchiest of individuals I have to say it honestly isn’t a big deal. After working on multiple bovine farms, and doing a masters paper that dealt with infections in poop I can say that #1 I really wish that all poop was dry coming out of the cow’s a*s, it’d be a bit more manageable and I could make pretty piles with it and #2 Once the poop is dried the most of harmful microbes are dead (not that I’d start munching on one of those patties but you get the idea).

Common Available Ingredients in Afghanistan

I have been a bit frustrated with the everyday food here in Afghanistan, it seems to be an ongoing problem in many of the countries I have worked in (most notably Moldova [eastern Europe in general] and Kenya). I have been accused of being a bit finicky about the food I eat (if you call not wanting Rice garnished with Potatoes and a side of bread, or pressure cooker cooked cauliflower [mush] with oil and bread being finicky). Where I work/live (a normal setup for NGO life in Afghanistan) has a *very* basic kitchen (with questionable sanitation) and our breakfast/dinner cook is also the guard and the lunch cook doesn’t appear to be much more imaginative than the guard when preparing food.

As a result I have been trying to cook for myself and sometimes for the others staying here which has been quite a bit of a challenge between the rudimentary kitchen, limited ingredients, and many of the staff’s aversion to variety and vegtables. I thought I’d post on a cooking forum to see if anyone knew of a website that could give suggestions on recipes based on a list of ingredients. It turns out that there were some sites but one person also suggested I post available ingredients and they would brainstorm about it. I got a bit carried away with my response to them and thought it might make a good post on my blog so here it is:

Different foods are in season at different times but here is a run down of some of the foods available. It should be noted that an oven is not an option here and refrigeration is iffy so preparing large portions or baking (unless there is a trick I don’t know about, quite possible) are not really options here.

Cooking utensils are also sparse. Fortunately I am a (steel) wok kinda guy which is not hard to find here, I brought my own cutting board and “French chef” and paring knives which are the “must haves” for me. We have very large pots, some very large bowls, and that’s about it asides from a few plates, tons of soup bowls, forks and spoons. While I am sure they can be found at one of the expat stores where I am. Even at the expats stores finding things like thermometers, copper plated pans, whisk (usually use a fork), and even measuring things (cups, spoons) is usually difficult.
* Potatoes (lots of em)
* Okra
* Cauliflower
* Flatbread (ok, its not an ingredient but I found it makes a reasonable pseudo pizza crust)
* Something like cream cheese (not quite but close)
* Feta cheese (Iranian but quite cheap here)
* Rice, lots of rice (they are really big on starches here, its not uncommon to get a meal that consists of potatoes, rice, and bread).
* Pomegranates
* Mini-lemons. Tiny lemons, I thought they were funny at first but half of one of these lemons is perfect for sweet iced tea (which doesn’t happen here [strictly hot black or green tea] so I usually make it myself).
* Carrots
* Cabbage
* Beef (chunks and ground, they don’t really make a distinction between different cuts of meat here)
* Sheep
* Goat
* Chicken (kinda expensive here)
* Tomatoes (lots)
* Onion (lots)
* Eggs
* Black Pepper
* Red Pepper
* Curry
* Cumin (they only use it for rice here but I use it in chili)
* Beans (usually red)
* Chickpeas (I’ve been tempted to try hummus though I’ve never made it w/o a food processor before)
* Cucumbers
* Pasta
* A nut that is similar to pine nuts (but isn’t)(I’ve thought about trying to make pesto but haven’t tried yet)
* Dill
* Vegetable oil (usually sunflower)
* Sheep fat (just thought I’d throw that in. I like sheep and back home people occasionally cook with fat back [and I occasionally eat it when my heart/waistline are feeling up to it, can be quite tasty] so since pork is taboo here and they have a breed of sheep that has big fat deposits I thought I’d try cooking something with sheep fat… every time so far has been a mistake)
* Yogurt, not like Dannon brand yogurt you find in stores in the US, usually not as sour.

I can find lots of other ingredients here but usually that requires paying a ridiculous price, going to the stores for foreigners, or both: Things like mushrooms (always canned), bean sprouts, salami, green peppers, lettuce, and lots of other things I can’t think of at the moment.


The kind of things I have made that my (afghan) colleagues will eat (which really narrows it down) and I am not ashamed of making are:
* Omelets (kinda a pain for crowds but tolerable for 2-3 people)
* Quasi Italian/American Spaghetti
* Chili
* Beef stroganoff
* Semi-Spicy French fries (or chips depending on where you are coming from)

I have made some chef salads and quasi Greek/Russian salads as well but those didn’t go over very well here. I have also made various stir-frys which I thought wasn’t half bad but also was not well received. Another thing i attempted was a semi pizza but that didn't seem to work too well as i had to make it kind of like a grilled cheese in a pan (since i don't have an oven). I have also made grilled cheese (mixed in with some onion, wee bit of feta and mozzarella and sliced bread [the last two being very expensive here]. I just got my hands on some corn meal and it is okra season now so I will probably try fried okra which I think will go over well.

Things I have learned that Afghans don’t like (there are always exceptions) are lots of vegetables and spices. A few veggies and a smattering of spice is ok but if you start going Thai/Indian spicy/vegan on them they won’t touch it.

Ok, that’s about all I can think of at the moment any thoughts suggestions would really be appreciated!

Cheers

-Gaiko

Not so spicy spices

Not so spicy spices
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This was at the “restaurant” in Band-i Amir the first encounter I can recall with food condiments. I have since learned that Afghan’s (as a rule though there are plenty of exceptions) don’t particularly care for spicy stuff though the food (from the good cooks) here is not as devoid of taste/flavor as it was in parts of Eastern Europe. We were served boiled eggs, nan (afghan flat bread), tea, and if requested “Happy Cake” (a Iranian “Little Debbie” type company I guess) standard fare in Afghanistan (minus the cake). Not quite what I hoped for but I attempted to make do by garnishing my chunk of egg with some salt and pepper looking stuff. Since I like spicy stuff but not crave it I was fairly conservative in the amount of spice I used but once I tried the egg I discovered that whatever this spice was it was not particularly potent so I ended up drowning my egg in spice which, along with the happy cake and lots of tea (which when well with the happy cake) held me over for most of the day.

Watching the fishies…

Watching the fishies…
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Not much to say here. I was hiking up on a hill (more like a cliff), looked down, and noticed some Afghans (a steady stream of them) gawking at and feeding the fish. I guess feeding fish is a bit of a novelty here but I just found it amusing because later even some pretty old looking men came and tossed in a few scraps of nan (afghan flat bread).

Fishies!

Fishies!
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

These little guys are small enough that they don’t have to worry about being fished to death but that is the depressing part to me. These are in the Band-i Amir lake on of the natural wonders of Afghanistan located in the center of the country (one of the less accessible places I might add). It is still amusing to me that a land locked, dry country like Afghanistan would have such a taste for fish but they do, and as a result have (for the most part) depleted the edible supplies of fish in these chains of lakes (there is Band-I Amir, Band-I ??, and a few other Band-Is) yet another case of humans impact on delicate ecosystems. These little guys, I was told, aren’t particularly big and even less tasty so they have the run of the place. I do have to wonder though, how the hell any fish got into this lake, none of the tiny little streams that come from these lakes could (that I can imagine) traveled up and brining fish to this fairly isolated area would be no trivial task nowadays so before the days of cars (and 4 wheeled drive) it would seem to have been downright impossible.

Hay Grinder?

Hay Grinder?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Yup this is indeed a hay grinder (I have another picture of one that is a bit more colorful that I might post later if I find it) meant for, grinding up hay! It took me awhile to figure out what these things were for, I initially thought that maybe it was an old* corn chopper for making silage (they do have a lot of livestock here so it would kinda make sense) but now, most Afghans aren’t that far along enough yet (livestock nutrition is almost an afterthought at the moment). After seeing one of these things in action and then asking a few questions I found out that it is for grinding up hay (that is stalks from wheat, rye, and other grains). I had to ask, “What do you use gorund up hay for?” and apparently it is used in the mud stucco and mud bricks that you see everywhere here (some close up pictures of a wall made of their stucco later).

*I say “old” because most setups in the US now are a two in one deal where the corn is sucked up and ground up at the same time then spit out into a trailer of sorts but one of the farms I used to work on had some pretty antiquated machinery and one of them was a “chopper” (or so the boss called it) that we fed corn and corn stalks into and it chopped everything up and spit it out as unfermented silage.

Fire Fodder (continued?)

Fire Fodder (continued?)
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

I am almost positive I have a similarly titled photo somewhere on my blog but #1 I am too lazy and impatient to bother finding it on this ass slow connection (read 0-3KiB/s) and #2 I am pretty sure its not the same picture since I embed all my comments etc into the photo itself and this photo has no comment.

So, this seemingly boring picture was kind of interesting for me and a picture I saw from Kabul to Band-I Amir. The little piles you see are scrub, usually the scrub (twigs, weeds, etc) left behind after livestock have grazed the area, this is the stuff not even goats would eat. The left behind brush is collected into piles (like you see in the picture) and then I assume they come around with a donkey and load the animal up with the brush and ferry it back to the village. Many times I would see these piles in the middle of no where and in the evenings I would see Afghans who had gotten a fire started and were obviously settling down for the night meaning, to me, that they were too far to reasonably walk home and then walk back the next day. Wow.

China bans (ok, limits) plastic bags

I just noticed this article (thanks to my Technorati news feed) and it made me thing, especially the line saying "The ban on bags brings China in line with a growing international trend". I think something like this has been done in California (or maybe it was requiring that all bags sold must be plastic that is biodegradable or made from vegetable derived plastics, regardless it *would* be there) but that is about it, sad that the most powerful country in the world should lag so far behind on such issues.

 

Throughout the world plastic bags are everywhere I haven't been to a place that is poor enough (and I have been to some pretty poor countries) to *not* have plastic bags and most of the time they are just lying around on the ground. I will admit that I am not the best about not using plastic bags, if I just buy one or two items I always tell them "save tha bag, I don't need it" and I carry a messenger bag quite often so I put things into that as well but if I have more I usually take the bags they give me (even though I should probably do the crunchy thing and get a bag to carry around). The whole thing is a pity though, and a bit of an enigma, here (Afghanistan) there are people who rummage through trash to find food for their animals and paper/metal to sell to recyclers but free (yeah, it is most certainly built into the price) plastic bags are rampant.

 

 

 

 

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in the third world

I am always annoyed by the lack of recycling facilities in developing countries; my being annoyed is pretty unreasonable I admit but its still annoying. For many countries it is more cost effective to just import/make more products rather than recycle them so I see things wasted all the time. I do see instances of people reusing things (usually motivated by poverty not by a desire to be environmentally responsible) but not very often.

 

All this got me to thinking about how products could be reused in developing countries. All sorts of ideas have flitted through my mind but I have no idea how reasonable the ideas are. I see plastic bags in even the poorest countries being used and thrown away *all*the*time* one idea I had was for arid places like Afghanistan to patch them together for use as plastic mulch since water is so precious here (then of course this creates issues of trash but quite often I see trash around anyway so in this instance it would at least be serving a purpose).

 

The concept of paper recycling seems to be lost on most people but in Kabul paper can be recycled and it is essentially just processed wood chips so at the very least paper can be used as a very effective mulch.

 

Another idea was using cans as a sort of solar insulation or something like that. I seem to remember reading somewhere a guy that collected soda cans, took the top/bottoms off the cans then nailed the “metal sheet” onto the side of his house which I think helped with heating (cooling?) his house.

 

There are other not-necessarily-straight-up types of recycling like using gray water (bath/laundry water) for things like toilets. There is also the possibility of composting (my organization probably throws away a liter of used teabags a day (sorry, not sure what other measure of volume to us), uneaten food, and throws out the grass clippings and then wonders why parts of the garden look so pathetic.

 

The list goes on, I have seen some interesting things in “mother earth” (no I am not a hippie but I still find most of their articles pretty neat) and I am sure other places but I can’t seem to find a blog of third world recycling ideas… if I thought I could come up with enough ideas I’d start the blog myself.

Fake flowers in Afghanistan

When I was en route to Panjshir we stopped in the town of ?? and purchased some flowers. When they told me they were going to buy some flowers they just said “flowers” not “plastic flowers” or “fake flowers” so I was struck when I walked into the “flower shop” to see wall to wall of fake plastic flowers. Now there is the pragmatist in me that says “hey they last a long time” but then there is my sense of taste (which is heavily influence by my decorative plant snob mother [and she’s damn good at it]) which says “Ugh! Couldn’t we get something else?”.

 

Apparently Kabul is about the only place you can buy fresh flowers in Afghanistan, plastic flowers are totally acceptable here, not something you would find stuck in the ground in some trailer park (like the US).

 

It does make me wonder about dried flowers, or maybe even origami flowers both of which just seem more tasteful to me, but then again I am heavily biased.

 

I can’t imagine that growing flowers (which I think of as being a fairly delicate crop) would be particularly easy but hey, that’s way outside of my league of expertise.

 

 

 

Aquaculture in Afghanistan?

Aquaculture in Afghanistan?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

When I got to Moldova (my first “development” experience) I was almost incensed by the persistent requests for computers by Moldovans when they had inconsistent power, no little-no heating, and a myriad of other problems but I learned/relearned that
#1 It is hard to tell/convince people what they need (as opposed to what they want)
#2 My first impressions aren’t always right

In Afghanistan I would never have guessed that there would be even one fish farm in the country but here I was looking at a fairly (for Afghanistan) sophisticated hatchery.

Since seeing Afghans taste for fish (I wouldn’t have guessed), this hatchery, and having seen irrigation in Afghanistan it has occurred to me that small scale aquaculture might have a place in Afghanistan. The inhabited parts of Afghanistan that I have been to have surface irrigation ditches everywhere (about as inefficient as one can get) the way this system works I don’t see a reason that the better supplied ditches (i.e. those that aren’t in danger of going dry) that are close to (relatively) good roads can’t have little “micro-hatcheries”. It is hard to describe how many of these ditches are positioned relative to the fields but at the points right before fields little hatcheries could be built which would give people extra income/food, use no extra water (very important), provide a water storage basin of sorts, and provide the crops with really good “pre-fertilized” water (the sharing of hatchery waste water is something I have seen successfully done in many parts of Southeast Asia).

Cellulosic Ethanol: One Molecule Could Cure Our Addiction to Oil

Cellulosic ethanol, in theory, is a much better bet. Most of the plant species suitable for producing this kind of ethanol — like switchgrass, a fast- growing plant found throughout the Great Plains, and farmed poplar trees — aren't food crops. And according to a joint study by the US Departments of Agriculture and Energy, we can sustainably grow more than 1 billion tons of such biomass on available farmland, using minimal fertilizer. In fact, about two-thirds of what we throw into our landfills today contains cellulose and thus potential fuel. Better still: Cellulosic ethanol yields roughly 80 percent more energy than is required to grow and convert it.

Still, I think the most "Sustainable" option would be to push research on turning everyday waste biomass (like what is thrown in the garbage; grass clippings, banana peels, floral waste, etc) into ethanol, it is possible and while i doubt it would "answer all our energy needs" (though there is no solution to all our energy needs) it would be using (unused) existing waste instead of growing new material.

30 Minute Bird Flu Test

Well the subject says it all (pretty much) but i thought i would blog this just because i have seen how difficult it is to access some of the places that Avian Influenza started. There are many parts of the developing world where it is very difficult to get to, get things (infected animals to test) out not to mention doing tests on site. If these little devices could be made cheap and rugged they could be distributed many places where people aren't as aware of its dangers so aren't as likely to go to the trouble of testing (which is arduous at the moment). Being able to test in the field will certainly go a long way towards helping control such outbreaks.

Happy-Fatty Cake

Happy-Fatty Cake
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Actually on one side it says “Fatty Cake” and the other side it says “Happy Cake” I am not sure which is more amusing. I took two pictures but I decided to include the “Fatty Cake” side:
1). Because it says Fatty Cake
2). The email address, yahoo.
It just seemed funny to me that an Iranian food manufacturer that is large enough to get food into central Afghanistan would list a Yahoo email address instead of something a bit more professional (fattycake.com? [I couldn’t resist])

A-Typical Afghan Breakfast

A-Typical Afghan Breakfast
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Normally Afghan meals are served on a piece of plastic or pleather on the floor so this breakfast was a bit of a treat (in the morning I was not in the mood to sit on the floor).

This breakfast was even more of a treat in that it consisted of more than just jam, bread, and tea (which annoys me even in those bagel and cream cheese house holds in the US). This day we had hard boiled eggs, “Little Debbie” type cakes, tea, and bread… not a four star meal to be sure but more than I normally get.

I was also struck (again) by the absence of women, something that continues to make me feel guilty/uncomfortable.

Pot O' Yoghurt

Pot O' Yoghurt
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

There was no real restaurant in Band-e Amir but there was a little hut type place right by the late and I suspect the same people that "ran" that hut were supplying us with food. One of our organization's field managers arranged that we have a large tent set aside for us so we were served various foods like kabob, nans (bread), and yoghurt, lots of yoghurt. The photo here is a big ole pot of yoghurt and it was doled out in typical Afghan fashion (that is, little worry about spillage or microbes).

I haven't yet taken a good picture of a normal afghan meal but I have been amused that the normal meal involves rolling out a piece of pleather or plastic on the floor and then putting all the food on the rolled out material. Afghans traditionally eat with their hands (sometimes using shared bowls) and things tend to get a bit messy so the rolled out plastic works quite nicely in that they just take away the dishes and roll up the mat and all the spilled yoghurt, crumbs, and bits of sheep and I guess shake it out outside.

Yoghurt itself seems to be almost as important as nans in the typical afghan meal. Normally yoghurt is eaten plain, by the spoonful, and from a bowl. I have never been particularly fond of plain yoghurt and in Moldova, the few times I was served yoghurt, I would doctor it with some of the great Moldovan jams. One of the problems I ran into in Moldova is that yoghurt, cheese, etc all contain microbes and in developing countries they tend to contain "extra" bugs many of which can make you sick. So, the combination of having a sensitive stomach and being mildly allergic to dairy products has been enough incentive to keep me away from most homemade afghan dairy products.