Sharkardara

We went to Sharkardara last Friday (Fridays are off here, therefore we work Saturdays and Sundays) to visit some of my families relatives (grandmother and two uncles). Sharkardara (sugar valley) is a place one hour north from Kabul and a really rural area, without running water or electricity (ok, we don’t have here in Kabul neither most of the time– but here at least we are supposed to have), but it’s a beautiful place. The nature is just overwhelming and the people incredible nice, well-coming and surprisingly free in comparison to Kabul city. And perhaps the most remarkable, coming from the supposed-to-be dirtiest (at least dustiest) city in the world, is the fresh and clean air.

Javeds parents had grown up here (and even Javed and his brothers and sisters lived there for some time in their childhood, before they had to leave Afghanistan). His father, grandfather, uncles, cousins, they all had fought here against the Russian during the war and beside its amazing nature, peaceful surroundings and wonderful mountains cape, this place is full of sad souvenirs and marks of history. I heard all the stories of how they had fought with hands and feet against an massive invading army with newest technology, how they had hidden themselves in the mountains for days and nights, I have seen the places where their brothers, sisters and parents have died. I have seen the calderas of bombs in the ground where they used to hide in the ongoing of the war when the Russian army attacked from the other side of the river; I visited the graveyard with its hundreds of green-white flags just next to the village, where they had buried the martyr (all those people who had left their life for their fatherland).

Later on in the evening I went to meet the “Kutchi”-people (Nomads), who had build up their tents just next to the village. Kutchis are supposed to live a relatively free live, a bit out of society (or perhaps better in their own society). Even during the Taliban time their women did not were a burqua and were treated extremely equal. Unfortunately their “leader” was not their that day, so that the two men (Javed and his uncle) who had accompanied me where not allowed to enter the “Kutchi-village”. With me, as a woman, they had no problems though. They showed me around, made me enter each and every tent (amazing how they build tandours (ovens) in the ground to bake bread, or the hammock-similar beds the babies sleep in) and told me a lot of stories of which due to my limited paschto-knowledge I couldn’t mostly get the pointed. Just that much, that their life is not the easiest. Surviving as a nomad after years of drought is difficult enough, and now the winter is coming and they do not have enough warm tents. Support is not really existing, from where?!