A page on contrasts

My vonage phone works! For those of you not clear on what a 'Vonage phone' is, let me enlighten you.
It is a phone adaptor you can purchase in the US/Canada/England which gives you a phone line including the area code for the city in the US where you live and which allows you to make calls anywhere in the US/Canada and England for a flat rate, plus international calls for a rate per minute. My brother in law got me one about 3 years ago while living in Vietnam. It was heaven to have in Hanoi, and I was crossing my fingers it would work here and I just found out today: IT DOES!!!

I also just found out today that there are no phone lines in Kabul. I had to fill out my insurance papers and went to ask where I could fax the filled out forms from, and was told, "There are no phones here. Just cellphones".

No worries, we do have a scanner and can just send the forms off as an attachment.

As of yesterday I have a direct internet cable connection in MY ROOM. I am so excited with such a gift. This is why I have a vonage phone installed. I have to share another praise with this, I was not going to bring a phone to Kabul. I thought, 'Oh, i'll just buy one there.' But at the last minute my sister mentioned she had a spare cordless I could take and so I packed it in my bags. There are no phones here, so I couldn't have bought one.

Going to the market is out of the question for us. So if I want anything I have to tell the driver or ask Cristina Grecu(one of my housemates, CIPE staff) to tell the cook to get me what I want. I asked for tomatoes, cucumbers, lemons, etc to make a salad.
He brought a huge cucumber, 2 sad looking tomatoes and a small shriveled- up lemon. I had been told I had to do my own cooking at the house. But then, from the day I arrived we've had full dinners made by an adorable-looking man named, Mohammed. He is literally the image of a cartoon from a french film. He is short, chubby, with a moustache, all he needs is a chefs hat.

So now I get to come home to a homemade dinner which includes desert. Yesterday the menu was pizza(with olives), potato cakes and stuffed cabbage, and for desert a pudding. We are having to talk to Mohammed because his meals are quite the carbohydrate. Take today: another kind of potato cake, pasta with chicken and another kind of fried cake with cabbage inside plus another kind of pudding.

Tomorrow we will have another talk to ask him to please bring back the veggies and leave carbohydrates and desert behind.

Then there is Mrs. Nikidar. She is our cleaning lady. When I first saw her I thought she must be in her sixties. I asked her age and was taken aback, she is 43 years old. She is the definition of a happy woman. She gives me over 8 kisses in the morning.
I had planned to do my own laundry. I left my clothes for washing inside a bag inside my closet. When I returned from work the clothes were neatly laying on my bed. I left her the message to not bother doing it, that I'd do it. Once again I returned to find clean laundry waiting to be put away. And so far, today being the 4th day, the same thing has happened all over again.
She insists on doing my washing everyday.

Life is full of contrasts.
In Hanoi I had all the freedom to come and go where I wanted. I lived on my own. I took care of my washing, cooking. Life was in my control. People always look younger than they are. A 25 year-old woman always looked like a teenager to me.
Kabul is all about restrictions. I live with other NGO workers, someone else does my shopping, washing, cooking. People here tell me I look 21! Which is hilarious to me! But in their lives I do, as a 30-year-old woman like me looks like she is in her late 40's.
But life is all about similarities too.
Both places have given me the priviledge of walking with amazing people. I just started my walk here but so far I am amazed at people's hearts.
This journey has just begun, and I pray that I may more and more walk away from the contrasts and just focus on the similarities.