First Field Trip

The first field trip took me north of the city for about hour to a city called Charikar. I was with Nicolas, Lisa and Nasrulla travelling in our unmarked van with a guard car in front, albeit the guard had no weapons! We were enroute to assess a new water supply and distribution project, funded by the European Union, Emergency Fund (ECHO). Afghans are retuning to the city and a new area of the city was being prepared to settle them and ACF is going to be organizing the water supply. EU and ACF are involved because the Afghan government has no capacity to do this. The plan is to capture a spring at the base of the mountain, direct it to a reservoir, filter by sand and distribute to tap stands. Currently, 1000’s of people use the open canal for the source supply, even though it is very contaminated. Driving through the kaos of the city was most fascinating, an endless hustle and bustle of people, car, animals. The extent of just how poor the area was became so evident. For security reasons I am not allowed to take photos from the van in the city or in crowed areas and never at police or military of which there were numerous. The road to Charikar is the only safe road (relatively speaking) out of Kabul, however the military presence was there with several small tanks and soldiers based along the road along with several check points. During the Taliban era, this region was almost wiped out with the numerous battles that were had. Driving along, there were hundreds of mud homes, many of which were destroyed and thousands of people killed by the Talibs. We came to a traffic circle, with a small grassed enclosure in the middle. Nasrulla told us that during the Taliban rule, this circular grassed area was where many innocent people were publically hung. The traffic here is NUTS and there are no rules or at least not followed. . and it was amazing how we just blended in. Shop keepers, small markets, were everywhere. Many women fully covered black outfits, with only a small slit to see out or in fully blue burkas with a mesh screen to see., f were shopping or walking with small children.
Upon driving up the hillside, to get a view of the spring, numerous young kids were walking up and down the steep hill with plastic water jugs (20 L) fetching water from the reservoir building. Some were lucky to have a wheel-barrow, others were carrying the jugs by hand, which when full are very heavy. Some would walk up to 3 km and twice a day to get water! Another source of water is from ancient underground tunnels called ‘karez’, the one we visited was 200 years old. Ground water is collected further upslope and channel into the deep tunnels. On the surface, access is gained through a small hole (like a well) and people (kids) collect water via a rope and bucket. The one in the photo is used by 400 families. ..hard to believe. ACF wants to capture this water via a well pump and direct it to a reservoir and then distribute it. As well all ACF projects, the eventual goal is to build the capacity of the Afghans themselves to manage the new infrastructure themselves.