Afghanistan Women

Many people are aware that Afghanistan women wear burkas and keep themselves covered.  For some there is a religious reason, for others it is a safety measure.  Covered here would be always wearing pants or a long dress, wearing long sleeves, and a covering for their head.  Most of the women that I have seen simply wear a scarf wrapped around their head and shoulders and show their face.

Being American and coming from a different culture and religion, I have a very different opinion of what is proper and acceptable to be shown in public.  Coming here to work I was ill prepared to be a woman working among the Afghan population.  By that I mean that I did not have the proper wardrobe.  Even though it is summer I cannot wear short sleeves, and my polo shirts that are long sleeved, well, they have a womans cut to them and therefore are not designed to be tucked in and as a result, my back will often show when I sit down etc.  This is not a good thing and as a result I have needed to be creative to make sure that I am covered from the neck down with nothing peaking out where it is not supposed to be. 

I also make the choice to not cover my head.  I believe that I am being respectful to the culture by covering my body, I will not cover my head.  This is not a problem with the people that I work with, but rather it has garnered me a great deal of unwanted attention.  Esentially, I am an oddity here, I have pale skin, and I do not cover my head which shows hair that is a rather unique color for the region.  Walking to work the men all stop to look, the gaurds all want to shake my hand and touch me, but the funniest part, is that they all want to take a picture with me.

A camera is an expense that not many Afghan's can afford, however, they all love having their picture taken, so when they see American's they know that we have cameras and ask to have their picture taken, and this is how it goes down.  Dave, Rob and I are walking to AGCHO, we get stopped by soldiers or guards and asked to take a picture, Dave ALWAYS goes for his camera, and the guards/soldiers immediately move to stand near me.  They don't just want their picture taken, they want their picture taken with ME!  I find this to be rather humerous, and have decided to start a collection of pictures with me and random guys...I'm not sure how many have been taken so far, but there will certainly be many more taken in the future!

After we took this picture the guard on the right asked for it every day. Now, first off, I didn't even want to take the picture with him let alone make the effort to print it out, Second, I had no desire to give a picture of me "uncovered" to a guy that I didn't know. However, the insistent peppering for the picture was starting to get irritating. So Rob being the smart man that he is came up with a solution. He said, lets give him the picture but put a burka on you. I said, you know that might just do it, this way my picture was not in the hands of a random guy, and the guard still gets his picture. So we had our new guy Peter photo shop a burka onto me and we will be giving it to the guard on Saturday, Rob is going to be armed with his camera to document the guards reaction when he sees the photo. I am pretty excited myself. Now if I can only get the head guard to stop asking me for my picture I will be good!