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.

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…

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.

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!

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.

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...

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.

Fire Fodder?

Fire Fodder?
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

I am not sure if the vegetation collected here is weeds to be used for fire or fodder for animals (I took this about a month ago [yes I am falling behind] and because my camera is less than stellar and we are moving the picture isn’t totally clear) but I am guessing for fire since it doesn’t look uniform in composition and this seems to be one of the more arid areas where trees aren’t as available (so they tend to default to dried manure or bundles of weeds).

In driving to/from the provinces one sees lots of donkey’s loaded down with everything from rocks to dirt to grass to telephone poles (not joking, I wish I had gotten a picture of that poor animal) but despite this being a common site I never seem to get a good picture… grrrr.

Bag'n Straw

Bag'n Straw
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Since I have gotten to Afghanistan I have been interested (somewhat) in rural construction materials, namely mud and straw. I noticed early on that many places (even in Kabul) use a mud stucco with some sort of plant fiber mixed in but I had initially thought they just throw in a bunch of dried grass, but I was wrong.

Making stucco seems to be somewhat of an art (debatable I know). I have also discovered that Afghans are flatbread fanatics (not necessarily connoisseurs but Nans [afghan flatbread] are apparently an essential part of every afghan meal so wheat is grown all over the country but I never thought about what they were doing with all the remaining straw (plowing it back in would be nice but probably a pipedream). Well turns out they have machines here that are built specifically for grinding straw. Once the straw is ground they stuff it into bags like these and either use it or sell it. More on the machines they use later.

Burn'n stuff

Burn'n stuff
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Yeah, a less than droll topic but #1 having grown up with a father who had (has) a love affair with fireplaces and #2 having a family that grows saw timber I am often interested in lumber.

While it didn’t occur to me at the time I have since noticed that fire fuel here is hard to come by, people burn dried manure, bundles of grass, roots, and occasionally gas and regular wood so when I saw "regular firewood" for sale I thought I'd snap off a picture.

Here is some firewood for sale in one of the villages we passed through on our way back from the Panjshir province. Wood is usually bought by weight which is funny to me but I am sure there is a direct correlation between weight and burning time/intensity (think about burning pine logs vs. burning oak logs) and come to think of it, it could be the same in the US (I can't recall our family ever having bought firewood, my brother and I were taught [willingly at first] the ways of the chainsaw early on and harvested firewood from our property ever since).

While I can't tell here I swear some of the wood they sell are roots, they are so scraggly that they have to be (I haven’t seen trees that look that scraggly) which is kind of unsettling since that is tantamount to raping the (already poor) soil.

Coming in behind the livestock…

Coming in behind the livestock…
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Coming in behind the livestock and harvesting what they don’t eat that’s the name of the game here.

Since this area has almost no trees the only remaining fuel is either dried cow patties or bundles of grass and here they prefer grass bundles. If you look in an over grazed pasture with most “grass eaters” (cows, horses, goats, etc) you will see that the grass is eaten down to a nub and there are perfect weeds left standing. Livestock are going to eat the plants they prefer first and if they can help it avoid the plants they don’t like (and they are pretty good at this). The point is, people here quite often come in behind where their livestock have grazed and "harvest" the weeds their livestock have avoided and stack them in small piles to bundle up later and use as fuel for fire.

Buffalo Chips

Buffalo Chips
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Going to Band-e Amir I noticed two things (ok, so I noticed many things but two things relating to fire fuel) Cow patties and grass piles.

In the wide open prairie/mountain-meadow/tundra(?) I noticed piles of grass everywhere that were apparently being cut/collected for fuel (more on that in a future post) and I also noticed piles of cakes on the walls around the houses. These cakes are actually cow manure shaped into cakes and dried and later used as fuel.

I am sure some people are repulsed by the idea of even touching cow manure but I promise you it is more benign than say omnivore or carnivore excrement. An Indian friend of mine told me about the many ways manure is used in India and I remember seeing some public TV documentary that was suppose to show the poorest of the poor and what they were forced to use as cooking fuel, at the time they got me (I felt sorry for the people) but now I dont feel as sorry for them, well maybe I do but not because they have to touch cow manure.

Afghanistan has very few trees and what few trees are here are either used for construction (beams) or sold to Pakistan (the wood is pretty slow growing and dense thus fetches a fairly high price) so fuel for fire is scarce. If you have ever read a cowboy novel you might remember a reference to someone fetching Buffalo Chips; I remember these references and usually just glossed over them but later it occurred to me that buffalo chips were buffalo paddies. It actually is a pretty good fuel since it dries into a hard (almost chip-board like) discs and is high in cellulose and lignin (from all the grass that the cattle consume) both of which are high in energy (lignin is especially hard for cattle to digest so it usually passes right through their systems) so instead of throwing it out or leaving it in the stalls the people here use it (and hopefully throw the ash onto the fields but I dont know that for sure) for fuel.

This makes me think of biodigesters; if people are willing to collect manure then maybe biodigesters have a place in Afghanistan. Biodigester residue leaves a better fertilizer behind (instead of just carbon ash) not only that I have noticed that human feces is used as fertilizer, in my opinion this is the right idea implemented in the wrong way (processing the human waste to #1 harvest potential energy #2 reduce or get rid of infections that are transmitted through feces) but that is for another post.

Nuth'n says yummy like a wheelbarrow full of sheep heads...

Nuth'n says yummy like a wheelbarrow full of sheep heads...
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

When being taxied around from place to place in Kabul (its not a great idea for foreigners to walk around Kabul at the moment) I see tons of things I want to get a picture of everything from 300 gallon pots which are actually ovens to… wheelbarrows full of sheep heads.

We had passed by this spot a few times so I thought I was ready to take a picture, or so I thought, the window on my side would not roll down, the driver noticed so he stopped right in front of the two boys selling the sheep heads (not 2 feet away, close enough that I couldn’t even open the door without hitting them). This was *not* what I wanted, pointing a camera in someone face and then driving off. I quickly snapped a picture through the window and told the driver to go (I *really* didn’t like this situation) but they kept saying go ahead and take a picture, even one of the boys started saying “take my picture” (he apparently didn’t notice that I was taking a picture of what he was selling, not him).

I had asked previously about how the heads are used and found that usually the are boiled and the soup stock is used but it is not uncommon for the head to be eaten. While I can stomach the head being used as soup stock the idea of eating something that is staring back at me would be a bit harder to swallow (literally and figuratively). In the southeastern US some people scramble pork brains with eggs though its been a long time since I have seen that.

Seeing these disembodied heads did make me think of headcheese though. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found that headcheese is made in a variety of cultures/places but not Afghanistan.

Those hanging h'orderves in the background are, I believe, lungs. The ditch behind them and in front of the pedestrians is actually an open sewer. This is actually not an uncommon scene, its pretty representative of Kabul, to the left a guy in jeans and a western-ish shirt, in front of him a business-casual looking guy, in front of him a guy dressed in traditional clothes, in front of him a woman in a burqa, and in front of her a older man in traditional clothes and full beard.

New job

Well I just got hired for a program coordinator position in Afghanistan and will be heading out there this week. I don't know nearly as much about the work as I would like but have been reading some of my (new) organization's proposals, about irrigation (which will be a large part of my program), and the Hazarajat region (which my program will concentrate on. I could go on for a long time about it but don't really have the time at the moment. I have noticed that, at least in the Hazarajat region, the have been quite dependant on livestock which bodes well for me (as opposed to horticulture, which I will have to deal with) since I am much more familiar with livestock development. Ok, back to the books/packing/planning.

Tea

Tea
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This was my first "Tea Collection Point". About once a week people go out to thier tea fields and pick a tea leaves, put them into baskets, and then carry them to the closest cooperative collection point.

Tea Factory/Co-Operative Environmental Program

Tea Factory/Co-Operative Environmental Program, originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

On my excursions around Kirinyaga I was taken to a local tea factory (which i late found out was part of one of the largest tea cooperatives in Kenya). In the front they had this sign "Environment Conservation Programme". I was pretty impressed that they would even post something like that up there. I can't vouch for much of what is written on the sign but I did see a few tree plantings.

Kenyan Well

Kenyan Well, originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Amusingly enough i don't remember seeing many wells around (though i don't remember seeing that many wells in Asia either). I guess i am just accustomed to the beautifully ornamented wells in Eastern Europe (Moldova) where they are mean to be a thing of beauty as well as useful.

Farm House

Farm House, originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

The gentleman ahead of me was the Chairmen of the cooperative I was brought to help. Today he was taking me around to different farmers houses. I am not sure if the building to the right was a house or some sort of storage. I certainly saw houses more squalid than this building so it could have been. It is surrounded by corn which seems to be a staple here but they grow it about as well as Moldovans grow corn, not very well (though keep in mind I am accustomed to either GMO/heavily fertilized/sprayed or heavily pampered organic crops in the US so either way the stuff in the US has more resources thrown into it.

Flying Cow?

Flying Cow?, originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Here is a crow. I have seen crows like this in Eastern Europe as well but never in the USA. They kinda remind me of mini-airborne belted galloways (cattle breed). Anyway, other than that fact that its "belted" there was nothing special about this little guy.