Life in Afghanistan

Traffic control- Traffic wardens exist here too..... and we had an encounter with one today.... we parked somewhere they did not like but the the 'ticket' was not so visible, and more dangerous!! We only discovered we had been 'done' by a tw because when we stopped for some snacks at the roadside the boy who served us pointed out that our front wheel was flat, so Khalid got it topped up, and he explained to me that this was something that traffic wardens did- they would unscrew the wheel valve and then put a stone inside and rescrewed it on! Yikes- if this was the practise here imagine the health and safety uproar!!
In Herat we got stopped by the police for having tinted windows- they actually were quite unpleasant- there is no GIZ training here, and you can notice a difference in the police- they didn't bargain for Khalid who is very well connected, and soon realised they had gone too far. However this incident made us think about how difficult things are here for the average person.
Herat lies near the Iranian border and lots of women wear the same cloak that is popular in Iran, but the majority are in Burquas, and women in neither get perved on by both men and women!! Life is very restricted for women in Afghanistan, Zahra says that she has met women who have never left their house. Certainly we see women in Burquas walking several paces behind their husbands.
I saw some kids running screaming out of shopping mall with armfuls of merchandise, the cause of their scream soon became clear when a I saw a guy coming behind them swinging a lead- I felt like I was watching a scene from Oliver Twist- grrrrrim
I observed that there is not the same hierachy between rich and poor or tribes/ castes as in Pakistan.
One of Zahara's employees came in one day with a black and white photocopy with Farsi writing and a photo in the corner, he told us that his cousin had been caught smuggling drugs over the border, and executed by the Iranian authorities who had sent the piece of paper with a note to say they would not return his body. This was the 8th member of his family that this had happened to, and he said he knew it was wrong, but people often don't have a choice, as they were poor and there are no jobs, he was worried about his brother's children in Iran, and anxious to get them back to Afghanistan as they had no one now.
Gems of Afghanistan;Kabul museum, Daral'aman ullah khan palace in Kabul, City of Bactria in Balkh, Minarets of Herat, Khwaja Abdullah Ansari's Shrine in Herat
The doorbell went one morning, and it was the local mosque demanding their payment; they demand a monthly tax from all the local houses, and if you don't pay your house will be 'marked' and they will make trouble for you as a non-Muslim!!