Saturday, December 25, 2010

Kabul Zoo and Picnic

This is Afghanistan's only pig - Safe from butchering but not exactly living High on the Hog.

I get to be a tourist today.  Let’s go to the zoo.  In terms of bad luck, if you are an animal, ending up in the Kabul Zoo is right down there with ending up on the dinner plate or as road kill. There were many stories about the zoo during the civil war, but even in good times, it is tricky to feed animals when you can’t feed all the people.  The zoo was quite infamous during the Taliban regime.  This article describes the problem.  http://www.rawa.org/zoo2.htm . 
The zoo was also a victim of the civil war, when people took the animals for food.  So I guess the worst fate you could imagine would be both ending up as an animal at the Kabul zoo and then ending up on a dinner plate too!



 While driving that day in Kabul, I noticed the car next to me has a W sticker in the front window that looked like  Husky W.  As the car went by I noticed a University of Washington sticker in the back window.  Weird.  I seriously never saw any other stickers in any language.  I never could see the people except enough to say that the driver looked Afghani. 
I already talked about eating on the street but I couldn’t resist.  I know I will be leaving soon, so Fariq, Hussein and I decide to have a picnic.  We buy some fish on the street and get it cooked and go to the top of a hill looking over Kabul.  Some begging kids, some horseback riders, some kite flyers, a cricket game and a graveyard; great place for a picnic.  I love Kabul,  I will post one more post to show the picnic preparation and implementation.

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