Booms and bubbles

I had a good night sleep, needing to be woken up by my alarm, not like yesterday at 5 AM by a loud ‘kaboom.’ It was what is called a ‘satchel’ bomb thrown from a vehicle into the police station near the Russian embassy, about one kilometer from the office; far enough to leave us alone but close enough to rattle the glass, loose in its window panes.

Locals seemed not too disturbed about the bomb. A few policemen died since it was too early for the general public to be out (and Friday). I was thinking of those policemen and their families last night – no bedtime for them. I guess if you live in a place where bombs are not that unusual the only thing that counts is that you are safe and no one you knew got hurt.

We tried out the bubblething I brought form the US and experimented with the local dish soap, the quantities of starch and baking powder, as per instructions in the accompanying bubblething book. At first we were not very successful – soapy foam everywhere but bubbles that popped prematurely. But everyone got the idea and Said worked at his skill.

We went to the German school, a Friday morning tradition to let foreigners out of their confined spaces, to walk around the tracks and get some exercise. You do have to duck once in awhile to avoid the Frisbees that whizz by at high speed from the competing Frisbee teams. We parked Said in the shade and he and Wafa watched the foreigners enjoying themselves in physical activity. This included the unusual sight of women in shorts and T-shirts.

After our walk we split up, Maria Pia and her friends went back home and the rest of us went for an outing on Chicken Street where I got the rugs Sita had requested. This required sitting on the ground in a small shop and looking at hundreds of rugs being unfolded. I think my lungs are now full of dust mites from all over Central Asia. How to bring the rugs back is not clear yet – they are slightly heavier and larger than I had realized.

We were joined by a group of women who are here to study ways in which the DOD, USAID and other US government agencies can work better together to improve the health of the population. One of them was our USAID counterpart in the early 90s – the best we ever had. I had not seen her in 15 years. It was a wonderful reunion.

I found another brand of local dishwashing detergent in a small supermarket and hope I found the best brand for Afghan bubbles. For lunch Steve took us to a local restaurant in downtown Kabul. We had manto, a local ravioli, yogurt and pumpkin dish, spinach, pilaf and goat knuckles – accompanied by the Afghan equivalent of lassie and yogurt served in small plastic Mountain Dew cups with plastic Chinese soup spoons.

The rest of the beautiful spring afternoon we experimented with our bubblething and Said actually got some really good ones that lasted for a few second. The new soap is better and the Afghans in our household can now say the word for dishwashing detergent in English (‘dish soup’) while I can say it in Dari (moyazarfshui). But is is not quite as good as Joy (the recommended brand for the US) would have been and we could not replicate the bubbles on the photos in the book. The bubblewand left this morning to go back north with Said so he can practice. We’ll see him again next weekend and I hope to see the results of all that.