Picture this:

Does anyone else get squeamish and excited at the thought of spending a large chunk of cash on something? Plane tickets to India, computers, cameras ... ?

I just dropped a chunk on a new camera ... can't wait to get it here to Kabul (I've got a mule). That's it on the left above.

With all the necessary accessories (lenses, bag, battery, memory cards, etc.) it came to almost as much as I'd spend on a snazzy new laptop. Although I guess these days cameras are just highly specialized computers with fancy lenses anyway.

So here I am, crossing my fingers that shipping dates and the mule departure are in alignment and I get my new toy(s) soon. I'm excited to be getting back into photography beyond the point-and-shoot snapshottery that I've fallen into in the last few years. It was a sad day when I found that my trusty Pentax ZX-50 had died of neglect. I took some good pictures with that guy ... *cue fond memories of shooting slides in the jungles of Ecuador*

Here in Afghanistan, although there aren't tons of opportunities for getting out and wandering with my camera, I'll do my best. My friends Mikael and Walied have started a photo project ... Eyes of Afghanistan. In their own words ...

Eyes of Afghanistan is an international project that seeks to share images and views of Afghanistan through the eyes of local Afghans and expatriates who have lived, worked and traveled in the country. These images represent their experiences and tell their stories of life in Afghanistan.

Sounds like fun, right? I encourage anyone reading here to check out their site and stay posted for updates and the culmination of their efforts.

Shakes the Tectonic Plate

About a week ago I bought a new carpet. I wasn't planning on buying one, but my friend suggested I join him and another colleague for a visit to his carpet guy and I figured, "Why not?"

So of course I ended up buying a carpet. It was more than I was thinking I would be willing to spend, but it's nice and I like it. So there. For those of you who are dying to see it, here's a picture. It's about two meters by three meters, and it's a Mushwari (mixed kilim and carpet) made from camel-hair with natural-colored wool and naturally dyed wool ...

Now then, two nights ago at 12:53 am I was pulling staples out of my recently-bought carpet when I heard a boom and things in my room started to rattle. It felt like a Mack truck going by. Then my wardrobe started to rattle and I stood up, put my hand on it, and realized that EVERYTHING was shaking. It only lasted for about 15-20 seconds, and afterward I got my shoes on and went outside. One of my colleagues was wandering around:

"Was that an earthquake?"

"Yeah! My heart is pounding."

"Mine too. Whoah. That was my first."

"Yeah me too."

"Ok, well, gnight."

"Yeah, gnight."

And that was that. I had lived through my first earthquake. According to the USGS it was 5.9 on the Richter Scale, epi-centered in Badakhshan, South of Feyzabad. I was a little worried about the angle of my eight-foot wardrobe that sits at the foot of my bed (it tilts away from the wall about 10 degrees), but I managed to sleep.

Did I say that was that? Oh right. Well, last night I woke up from a deep sleep at 3:45 am or so to my bed vibrating like Magic Fingers. Only I didn't have any quarters and it wasn't Magic Fingers. This one lasted about 15 seconds ... should have been long enough for me to jump out of bed and run downstairs and out the front door, right? Well, I didn't do that. I just made sure my wardrobe wasn't going to fall on my bed and then just rode it out. I think my heart rate was up, but that didn't stop me from rolling over and going back to sleep once the bed stopped shaking. Five minutes and I was out. This second one was slightly less powerful apparently: 5.7 on the Richter Scale according to the USGS, and less than 10 kilometers from the previous night's epicenter.

I had survived my second earthquake in just over 24 hours.

Today I'm not taking any chances. I had our logistics office shim my wardrobe up from the floor so it's flush to the wall (actually leaning towards the wall now since of course the walls aren't straight). Tomorrow they are installing brackets to anchor it to the wall. I also packed my grab-bag, just in case: warm clothes, shoes, first aid kit, passport, money, headlamp, Leatherman, duct tape, and a few other essentials.

Like I said, I'm not taking any chances.

Listmaking

Rumor has it that I'm leaving for Afghanistan in less than a month. Supposedly. I'm not sure I can imagine it's real until I actually get on that plane. I remember when I left for Honduras and the Peace Corps. I didn't mentally come to terms with it, even as my Dad honked from the alley when he picked me up to go to the airport. I think it finally sank in then when I was in the hotel in Miami, although now I feel as though I've made so many farewells that they all blend together. It occurs to me that I can divide them all by this century and the last, roughly, since at some point (9/11? before?) they stopped letting people go to the gate without a boarding pass.

Funny how my next stepping stone is connected to that moment.

Anyhow, I think I am better equipped to deal with this latest move at this stage in my life. Of course it helps that I'll have help to pack and ship and store my life (or at least the things part of the equation ... Life = things + people + action). But it's the same in many ways ... I'm saying goodbye to the relationships I've collected and am moving on toward the next phase. On to accumulate more attachments and to limit the loss of those I've left behind.

Sometimes I really feel this way, that my life is compartmentalized into phases, from several in childhood in Chicago (before I went to school, then Bell, and Parker), to Bowling Green, to Centre College (with micro-phases from winter in Ecuador, the summer of '97, London, DC in summer '98, Ecuador again in fall '98 and '99), to Chicago, then Honduras, then back to DC and graduate school, and now my work at Chemonics. This new assignment is my next phase. Rarely have these phases overlapped, except for during college, but they all feel like distinct lives that I have lived, different people that I was.

It's funny, these moments of goodbye have a sort of wistfulness, where you really need to disbelieve that it's a final Goodbye, but deep down you know it could be the last and want to have your words and thoughts be meaningful--just in case. Or perhaps, for me, it's because I know that it will never be the same. Maybe this is why there is also a sort of reckless abandon to the leave-taking, and in a way it's freeing to lose the restraint with which I walk through life on a daily basis.

And now I am trying to busy myself with sorting and listmaking. What do I want to take with me now (pack), what do I want to send to myself (ship), what do I want to put away (store), and what do I want to divest myself of (sell or donate). This distracts me from mourning the loss of Life. So my current occupation is making these lists (and at this point, I use the congnate-ive form of the word as it in Spanish), but I haven't yet written anything down.

Maybe once I do that, my leave-taking will start to become reality.