Begging for a Share...

This closes out August. If I didn’t take another picture, I’d have enough material to keep me going every day. Unfortunately, as our power is very iffy right now, I’m having a little trouble keeping up. Sometimes when the power is working, the Internet is not. We are actually far better off than most Kabulis. Most people on the city grid get five to six hours of power as infrequently as every other day in some neighborhoods. We have two generators that supply the two safe houses on our block. What is supposed to happen is that when one goes down (out of fuel, overheating, maintenance), the other is supposed to kick in automatically. Well, the automatic bit no longer works for two reasons: the fail-over is broken and the second generator is broken too. So, when the only remaining generator dies as it has been dead for the last 36 hours, we are out of power, out of water and out of Internet. The water bit is actually the most troublesome since it means we can’t flush the toilets. It’s almost relief to go to work where there is power, water and Internet.

So, here’s the latest installment. Don’t worry Ello, I’ll put up some food pictures later this week.

The Russians were here!
This is a Soviet BMP hulk (armored personnel carrier).
You see military vehicle wreckage scattered about town and in the countryside.

Old Town bakery.
Note the drainage ditches leading from the door to the street.

The woman is wearing a burkha, but she's raised the veil.
This is not uncommon, particularly when the women are nearer to home,
but you also see it when they are shopping at the bazaar.

The next few pictures highlight the plight of women, particularly widows, and the disabled and elderly. However, it should be noted that there are "professional" beggars out there along with the truly needy. It is difficult to sort them out. The only beggars that you can be certain of are the ones missing limbs (there's a lot of those)...pretty hard to fake that.

There is no social safety net.
If a woman's husband dies and one of his male relatives does not marry her and if she doesn't have family that will take her back, she's on the street. What makes things worse is that the vast majority of adult women have no education and no marketable skills. Even some with skills wind up on the street if they can't find someone to care for the children.

Men with disabilities are equally at risk.

And of course, the elderly.
But this guy is likely my age, possibly younger.
The male life expectancy in Afghanistan is 43.6 years.
Female life expectancy is only slightly better at 43.96 years.