This post is a bit of a digression but I thought I'd expound on some of the more intriguing if less related observations.

I consider myself American, but no one else around the world seems to agree. I'm only part Chinese ethnically and I'm certainly not from China. That is, until I learned all about the "Chinese" from people who are not actually Chinese. Take, for example:

The Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, and Korea are all different provinces of China.

In southeast Chinese provinces like Indonesia and the Philippines, if you need money fast and can’t afford those expensive wire fees, kidnap a Chinese dude for ransom. They’re all a bunch of stingy misers anyway. Wait, these provinces ARE in China. Whatever.

In the U.S., this guy represents all 700 million Chinese men around the world to a tee.

In most Western countries, the Chinese language, while it may consist of thousands of squiggly lines, actually has only three syllables: ching, chang, and chong.

Filipinos also say the Chinese language consists of these three syllables - until I point out that, as Filipinos, you are part of China as well.

Chinese people are genetically unable to speak English fluently. This includes Chinese-Canadians and Korean-Americans.

However, Chinese people sure are good at math!

On suburban American playgrounds, the ChiNESE kids have dirty KNEES. It rhymes, get it? So true.

Beware: any Chinese person on the street can so totally karate-chop you with their mad tae kwan do skillz.

And...drum roll (this is the part that makes this post somewhat related) - in Afghanistan, all “Chinese” women are prostitutes!

Some say when you travel to faraway places, you learn more about yourself than you do about that country. Thank you America, China, the Philippines, and now Afghanistan, for teaching me to part with this American façade and accept my true self – the stingy, Engrish-speaking, kung-fu fighting math-geek hooker that I am!

I will do my people proud.

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Apparently, "bad" is spelled "baad" (not that English transliteration is ever accurate). More information, which may or may not be biased, can be found here, and here.

One of the articles says that some X percentage of Afghan women are "forced" into marriage. It's not clear how they're defining "forced" as most Westerners associate "arranged" marriage with "forced". Marriage still remains very much a business or social transaction among families. In fact, I would venture to say that those who have the luxury of marrying solely out of love are in the minority.

Of course, if you're forced to marry a guy who doesn't think you deserve an education and beats the living daylights out of you - well, that's a whole different story.

A few days ago our house hosted a small get-together amongst other development worker friends. The doorbell rang, a tall Afghan woman walked in, and the din of the gathering suddenly hushed as one of my housemates went to talk to the woman privately. After a lengthy conversation and whispers that I only vaguely grasped, the woman left and the housemate returned with a look of sorrow on her face, and explained the whole story.

Our next door neighbor is embroiled in a family dispute that, in this country, can only be solved outside the courts. Boy meets girl, boy marries girl, families disapprove. It had the underpinnings of Romeo and Juliet but as my housemate continued to explain, tragic love is not so romantic in Afghanistan. The girl’s family is so disapproving that they bring charges against him (for what, I am unsure) and he is temporarily detained in prison. A judge rules him innocent, the man is let go and sets out to start a new life with his pregnant wife, away from both families. Of course the young wife’s family is even more incensed, now that the legal system, in their eyes, has failed them. So they instead rely on the tried-and-true cultural tradition of “bad”.

“Bad” itself, as it was explained to me, is merely an in-kind transfer of goods, similar to bartering - I’ll trade you my juice for your cookies. In this case, however, it is being used for retribution, and the commodities to be traded are women. I'll take away one of your daughters now that you have taken away one of mine. The wife’s family threatened to do this by marrying one of the daughters in the husband’s family into their family. Since this is done in revenge it is understood that whoever the unfortunate girl may be, she will essentially be a slave to that family for the remainder of her life – if not something far, far worse.

Whatever punishment was threatened, it was serious enough to warrant the entire family of nine women and two men to pack up all their things that day and flee across the border to Peshawar, where they will return, once again, to their former lives as Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The mystery woman who came to our house was the eldest sister, the lone breadwinner. As neighbor and friend of my housemate, she came to say goodbye before taking her family away to safety, in the night, indefinitely.

Link: Technorati Profile

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Despite what I had been told, Kabul Airport turned out to be a walk in the park compared to any Chinese airport. Phew!

I knew at some point between Dubai’s Terminal 2 and getting off in Kabul I had to put on my headscarf (loaned courtesy of one of my generous donors). I thought that moment would be an arbitrary judgment call. I had read comments from Muslim women who, when asked why they choose to wear a headscarf, said that it makes them feel “protected” from men, among other reasons. While most Western (and probably most non-Muslim) women find this very difficult to understand, I understood quickly upon facing a large, packed plane where 95% of the passengers are older, bearded, stern-faced men looking at me like I was from another planet. No one really stared or pointed or whispered to each other – not like my white or black friends walking around in China – but everyone took notice when I boarded the plane, and that’s when I instinctively knew to throw on the headscarf. I didn't feel the need to be "protected" per se, but I was, after all, the only foreign woman on a jumbo jet, and anonymity certainly felt more comfortable.

I sat next to an older man, probably in his sixties and presumably Afghan. Breakfast was large for an airline meal and included chicken kebab, a normal-sized roll, a normal-sized croissant, etc. This guy wolfed it all down in less than five minutes, down to the container of cream cheese spread which he ate directly out of with a knife. He even used the toothpick that I didn’t notice was included with the fork. He still looked hungry and I had a lot of food left over, so I offered him my unopened cream cheese cup.

This was partly sincere generosity and partly my first attempt at cross-cultural communication. It was also in part a gesture of curiosity stemming from a blog entry I had read from a Western woman who picked up and given back an object an Afghan man dropped accidentally, only to be met with the scowl one makes when you’ve done something rude.

The man sitting next to me refused with a look that was between annoyed and “crazy foreign woman”. And so it goes - lesson learned number one, Afghan edition: when offering something edible, stick to tea.

Welcome to my first official blog entry! As you can imagine I’m very excited and a bit nervous at the same time about my trip to Afghanistan. I just hope that I’m able to do a good job and support schooling for young girls who haven’t really had a chance to go to school until recently. Basic literacy in particular is critical if we really want full societal and civic participation of women in the future - hence, my mission to start with younger girls now.

An Oruj Student learns to read.

My immediate concern right now is just getting logistics in order. Visa – check. Plane tickets – check. Dari lessons – um, anyone out there have any tips on this? It’s been crazy doing all of this in between finals, recent family matters that have come up, moving out, couch-surfing for the rest of May, and fundraising. But I’m really looking forward to being involved in women’s rights as well as my first trip to a non-Pacific Rim country. Most of my experience has been in east/Southeast Asia or with east/Southeast Asian communities in the States, so this will be a new challenge. Approaching education from both a human rights and international development perspective will be something new for me as well.

I definitely need to profusely thank all the people who donated and made this experience possible. You guys were GENEROUS and averaged over $100 per donor – and even those of you who gave smaller amounts were willing to do so in less-than-ideal circumstances (i.e. those of you who are students, still job-searching, or just had a baby). You were so generous it made me feel guilty and put my stingy ways to shame! I also want to thank the two people who didn’t donate money directly but donated thousands upon thousands of frequent flyer miles. I will have to wrack my brain to find a way to adequately thank all of you. And to anyone who may be reading this and hasn’t donated yet – AP will still be accepting donations throughout the summer on the same webpage. Thank you everyone!