Get me to a spa

"She looked at her hands and saw the desiccated skin hanging in Shar-Pei wrinkles, confetti-like freckles, and those dry, dry cuticles--even her "Fatale Crimson" nail colour had faded in the relentless sun to the colour of old sirloin--and she vowed if she ever got out of Kandahar alive, she'd never buy polish on sale at K-mart again."

Tough luck for Kosovo

I saw this for the first time over a year ago and it still makes me laugh. Well worth the 3 minutes it takes to watch (turn volume down on computer if at work).
http://www.break.com/index/kosovo.html

Heavy Metal Discovery

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery in Afghanistan of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. This new element has been tentatively named "UNium."

UNium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since UNium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of UNium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second.

UNium has a normal half-life of four years; it does not decay but instead it undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, UNium's mass will actually increase over time since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that UNium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypocritical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass." You will know it when you see it.

When catalyzed with money, UNium becomes Bureaucracium, an element which radiates just as much energy since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

The honeymoon is over

I’m not sure when it happened but one day Kabul ceased to amaze me. I no longer flinched when barreling towards a head on with a tank and a donkey; the Taliban became amusing rather than frightening and the sight of four toddlers on the knee of a woman in a burqa on the back of a motorbike no longer seemed that dangerous. Salmonella, giardia, chryptosporidium, and leptospirosis have become like treasured appendages to my body – I wouldn’t know what to do without them.

I’m now entirely immune to self humiliation because my column last month on my intestinal worms had to be a low point; I am clean out of pride. Kabul stole it.

I used to like meeting new arrivals who seemed normal and untainted, despite their wide-eyed naivety about what they had got themselves into. Now, I only have one question for them:
“Hi, nice to meet you. Do you have Hello?”
“Yes”
“Can I have it?”

But, Paris Hilton’s latest love trysts no longer titillate; I haven’t heard of 90% of the new “it” people and quite frankly the latest fashion in shoes has my metatarsals in a quiver. Instead, I now opt for gumboots for walking in the mud and a cardigan long enough to cover my behind. The latest fashion? Bite me.

I am disconnected from the real world and afraid that perhaps if I don’t leave soon, I’ll never fit in again. I’ll be one of those Fresh-Off-The-Boat immigrants who can’t use an escalator and stands at the top for three hours, too terrified to step onto the ‘magic dragon’. Or I’ll stare blankly at a supermarket shelf for 45 minutes trying to choose one of 43 brands of ketchup; so spoiled for choice that I can’t choose one.

Truth be told; there are things that utterly suck about Kabul and I am sure you’re all aware of them. I’m not sure who the miscreant is who inflicted Celine Dion’s “My Heart will go on” on Afghanistan, and I feel particularly Machiavellian about the sod who introduced Ricky Martin; these are definitely two dangerously low points about Afghanistan. I have an obvious level of antipathy for the reprobates who blow things up and make my life difficult and as for the pollution, clean air now hurts my lungs. This city is a festering cess pit of dust, faeces, guns, poverty and diesel grease. Kabul may be a toxic hellhole but it’s my toxic hellhole and I have grown strangely fond of it, and all its quirks. I have become a barnacle on the back of the beast and oddly feel quite at home in a sado-masochist kind of way.

The thing is, I know how to live here now. I have become somewhat of a fatalist and fully acknowledge that I will never be able to control my world, and oddly, I enjoy that feeling that comes from not knowing nothing. One day may be fascinating, and one day may be terrifying, but it will never be boring. I could be dodging bombs one day, or heaving over the toilet when the parasites throw a party in my intestines or disinfecting my boots after stepping in an open sewer… again. Or I could get that sense of satisfaction merely from watching a DVD that works all the way through to the end without bizarre flying graphics or people getting up and walking in front of the screen that it was illegally filmed in. Have you noticed how you never get depressed in Kabul? Angry, tired, disillusioned, fatigued and dissolute, but never depressed. How can you be depressed when the one thing you have here every day, is gratitude for being alive and that you’re not living in the bowels of the middle class suburb of whatever city it is you come from?

I could continue to live here, riding the gravy train of the UN and sucking the development industry for all it’s worth, however I have lately been bugged by an annoying little thing called ethics. My appointment to the UN was really just a terrible mistake. I have actually just been making it all up as I go along and I want to apologise to Afghanistan. I hope you understand, it’s just that I needed the pay check. It’s a large, tax-free pay check you see. I finally get what it is that the UN does – they alleviate poverty one staff member at a time. I have yet to work out how six-weekly R&Rs alleviate the suffering of those living on less than two dollars day; and it sure as hell beats me how those big white vehicles are fighting poverty. I just can’t work it out.

It was meeting Axe Max that finally tipped me off into this existential crisis. Axe Max has been here since September 12, 2001. He’s in golden handcuffs, strapped to a job he hates in a country he loathes earning a truck load of money but too scared to go home to his native country for fear of dying of boredom. Max earned his moniker: he goes at life like wants to kill it and everyone in his path. Expletives pour from his mouth as he vents on a daily basis about people he works with, his driver, his house, the milk in his tea or the smell of his dinner. The fuse on his temper is about as long as a sperm tail, and he gets drunk on such a regular basis that I cannot help but recommend that Alcoholics Anonymous branch out into Afghanistan. Staring at Axe Max, frothing at the mouth over some triviality, I stood back in fear, leant forward in curiosity, then screamed a muffled shriek in the horrifying realization, that I was… looking at… me?

I have become short-temper girl; whinging about the guards and going into a mental meltdown every time (ie all the time) a driver failed to show up. Instead of giving money to people in need with a glad heart, I started resenting that I was being seen as a walking ATM. I ignore beggars now whereas before they broke my heart. I have become my worst nightmare. I cringe to write this and I am loathe to admit; I’ve become hard and immune to it all—I write about poverty whilst ordering a steak. What the hell do I know about suffering? I am a fake, a fraud, a waste of space. If someone is going to earn a heap of dosh doing some menial and irrelevant task in the UN then they should at least enjoy earning that money instead of feeling guilty about it. And they should at least enjoy the wonderment and excitement that post-conflict development work in Afghanistan offered before you realized it was an illusion.

Is it, possibly, just maybe, time to go home?

The not-so secret service

I went to the parliamentary inauguration yesterday. I sat 10 rows behind Dick[head] Cheney who caused a major military ruckus and shut the whole city down. It was like Armageddon of Chinooks, tanks, blockades and shooters… I was caught in a dust storm from chopper blades cutting up a few cubic tonnage of dust. Aside from the military brouhaha, the inauguration qualified as quite possibly the most boring event I have ever attended in my life.

But I did get whistled at by a sniper from the secret service although I suspect not too secret when they wear flak jackets with “secret service” written on them?

Eight inches of love

After one year, in what I affectionately refer to as ‘fecal paradise’, I had reason to suspect that my gut might not be what it used to be. Fire hydrant explosions had blown out my sphincter on various occasions producing an odour so ripe, so caustic, so entirely filthy that I was tempted to vomit on my own shoes the moment the waft hit my nostrils. Intolerance to alcohol, bloating, breath like a dead donkey, flatulence that would make a camel weep and other such symptoms had become such a normal part of my day that I ceased to recognize them as odd—like you, I thought I was normal. Conversations with other expats confirmed that such rectal behaviour was indeed par the course of living in Afghanistan. A laugh and a shared wince at the common experience have been the foundations of many new friendships formed.

Oh, how I wish that I had listened to the corporeal screams—the cries for help coming from my colon.

On a recent trip home, I decided to take the holistic healing route and book myself in for a wee colonic irrigation. Thinking I would just wash out the side-effects of 12 months of kabobs, I was unprepared for the swarms of parasites and worms that henceforth spewed from my anus.

Yes, you read correctly.

Eight inches of Perspex, as wide as my thumb had been inserted into my back door, prior to the injection of a few litres of warm water. My lovely therapist who had the caring demeanour of Florence Nightingale, in a voice as sweet as honey, declared than in 20 years of caring for people’s colons, she had never seen so many, and so large, parasites. Such parasites should by right be half the size of a pin head. Mine however, were the size of sesame seeds and larger. And there were lots of them. Entire families—whole clusters of nests—were being vacuumed out in what I now refer to as the Holocaust Of The Amoebas.

The question, “Do you eat a lot of alfalfa sprouts?” [no] was followed by a grave declaration that there can only be one other thing that these minions of two-inch long worm-like creatures could be. Worms.

I was in trauma. Advanced trauma.

Lying in the foetal position on the table, shaking uncontrollably I went into an anxiety so strong that my rectal muscles froze, making it impossible for Florence to withdraw the hosepipe. But wait, there’s more! Once I calmed down, she attempted to slide it out it again, however this time the suction hole at the tip of pipe got hooked on an internal hemorrhoid. Apparently, hemorrhoids are not just a symptom of constipation in the over 50’s as one might incorrectly imagine; they also develop through diahorrea when your body is always trying to forcefully expel an alien invasion.

Are you now feeling my pain sufficiently to be motivated to do something about your own?

What can you do here in fecal paradise to alleviate the situation? Firstly, consume garlic as an ingredient rather than condiment. I shelled an entire bulb of garlic then swallowed all the cloves with water like they were vitamin C pills. The next day I breathed directly in my sister’s face (I love my sister) to check the vile consequences of my home cure, who surprisingly said I didn’t smell at all. One can only imagine that my body absorbed it all because it was in such dire need of whatever properties it is that garlic offers. You can also try to find black walnut extract. (Believe me, it works. Upon inspection of my fecal deposits every day now, the dead parasites are still coming out in droves.) Wash your hands with disinfectant before touching food or drink, wash veges in bottled water and stop eating carbohydrates as parasites love starchy foods. (Are you craving carbs? I wonder why…)

When on R&R, go crap in a dish with a pathologist, get a series of colonics, and a rectal exam. Do something, do anything, to kill what I guarantee is growing in your gut. It’s not nice, it’s not comfortable, but neither is colon cancer which you’ll get if the parasite nests attach to the colon wall and turn tumourous.

And for those of you who pride yourself on your iron constitution, just be warned that worms and parasites often have no side effects and can go undetected for years. Undetected that is, until they have wormed their way into your liver (and your vagina if you’re a woman) and cause liver failure or acute vulvovaginitis requiring a radical vulvectomy. Do you want that to happen? No, I didn’t think so. So grunt up, stop being such a pansy and go get eight-inches of love.

I just got dumped... again.

I think perhaps I smell real bad. Or maybe my butt is a whole lot bigger than what I realise it actually is (and believe me, I realise it is damn big). Perhaps I have a personality disorder, halitosis, a sullen soul, or maybe I am just wholly unloveable??

All I can say is that Kabul is a bitch of a place to get dumped. Firstly, how can you go on a shopping spree and buy shoes you will never wear? How can you drown you sorrows in vodka when your fridge is empty and the only place to buy any more is a dangerous trip down Jalalabad Road to Supreme and security won’t let you go? And how are you supposed to have a best-friend vent/rant/cry session when she lives on the other side of this damn planet? And how the hey nonny nonny are you supposed to lose weight, get a cool haircut and look gorgeous to make him jealous when in fact you look like shit on a regular basis here? I tell you, Kabul is not the place to get dumped; this is a place where products passed their use-by date come to die; it’s where intestinal worms are bred, Russian taxis rust, dust comes to settle, faeces come to rot and bombs come to explode. It is not where broken hearts come for repair.