Cookie Tong

It's Honey Box

2005-05-20

Taking it to the streets

Yeah! today was a day off and nice one at that. hey man nice one! I got up at 7:30 am and Joony and I and Alim and his really cute 4 year old son (this guy we met who stepped on a land mine a couple years ago and runs this mine vicitms group)(so scary with the four year old and four people on one motorcycle) all rode together on his motorcycle to go to the bagram hospital. But we were too heavy for his motorcycle so about half way there we met up with this wedding caravan and rode on the roof of their van filled with colorfully dressed girls and load iranian music with a seemingly excessive amount of drums. Then we got off in some town because they asked us to pay and we did not want to do that. Then it turned out we sort of broke alims motorcycle with our weight, so we had to stop at a mechanic (which in farsi is prounounced Mr. E or kind of like mystery said slowly, i'm serious its awesome! and some times people say they are Mr. E to me and I love them!) but luckily it only cost one dollar to fix (its afghanistan) and we had the best tea of our life while waiting. then we left his son with a friend. and drove to the hospital. He got hooked up with a date for some surgery and then we rode back. On the way back we stopped at his organization's small office and everyone took off thier prosthetic arms and legs and hands and showed us and told us how the leaders of thier province were crooks and steeped in nepotism and wouldn't help them at all or give them any kind of compensation for their injury. There are about 400 people in their union and they all have these tiny serious looking headshot photos in this big plastic bag. They want me to contact the American Army and get them some help. I don't know about that but I hope we can assist them in some way.

On the way back home we stopped at Alim's house and drank about 7 glasses of tea. We saw his village (Kharukhsi) which is part of Granshakh and near Rogamati (my village) but is more beautiful and more poor, in this valley by the river. Then we got on the motorcycle again but it got a flat tire and we had to walk a couple miles. When we got back home I helped our neighbors build this wall.

Alim is a really awesome dude although I wonder how much the metal in his face and eye from the landmine affects his brain. He literally never stops talking for the whole 2 hour motorcycle ride. And most of the time he was just asking me if I was good or okay. About every 15 seconds he would turn to me and say, "Khub as?" and he wasn't just saying it he always expected me to give an answer and would ask me until I did. And when he wasn't saying that he was saying, "Chetor Kunem?" which is kind of like saying, "but hey, what can you do?" as in, "I've got no money so I can't buy this thing i want...but hey, what can you do?" and he always called us the wrong names even during other people calling us the right names. He calls me Kecko or Kacki and Joony, Genom and Junum. He also kept asking us if we were friends. He's probably like 40 years old. It's good [Ed. later we found our that Junum means friend in iranian farsi, and that kacki means dirty and kecko means gay, but i don't think he meant that as an insult i think he really thought those were our names, and also I think the metal has effected his brains]

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