Life in a Wedding Hotel
Coming to you live from the Crystal Hotel in the Taimany section of Kabul! This area is wedding palace central, with one big hotel after another offering Afghans a place to celebrate the most important event in their lives—marriage. At night the place 
looks like Las Vegas with it’s brilliant neon and flashing lights of the various wedding halls in each hotel. The Benazir Wedding Hall, Kabul-Dubai, are just some of the names of these fancy places. Next to us is the Paris-Kabul Wedding Palace with its big Eiffel Tower out front. This hall is the wedding hall I spent my first night ever in Kabul back in 2006, experiencing my first Afghan wedding.
This time, I am holed up here with 31 of my Afghan students, running a follow up workshop. My colleague Claire is here too and together we are putting on a great show. These students we had the pleasure of working with back in February at the first YSEL (Youth Solidarity and English Language) camp in India. This is a one-month camp for Afghan youth sponsored by the US Embassy here. It is the alternative to the YES (Youth Exchange and Study) program that I’ve worked on since 2004, which has
been cancelled because none of the kids on that program come back from the US, usually running away to Canada. Got it?
Anyways, so we are here doing a one week follow up workshop with our fabulous kids to see what an impact the program had on them and how we can further help in their growth as positive thinkers and good leaders for their generation. We left NYC on
the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and arrived in Kabul on the 13th, the day the Taliban decided to create some chaos in Kabul with 10 explosions around town (2 near our office that woke me from a jet-lagged slumber) and attack the US embassy. Cowards would freak out at this news and want to go home but we keep calm and carry on, for the future of this country needs our guidance. Claire was more freaked out than I was, but has calmed down a bit. We are pretty much in the Crystal Hotel all day and all night working with the kids so we don’t see the light of day much. Yesterday we too the kids out to Bagh Babur, a beautiful garden where Babur Shah the great king is buried. It was a wonderful outing, so nice getting out into the sun and fresh air for a change. Afterwards we went to our office to play a few games of volleyball, which the kids enjoyed immensely. There isn’t much opportunity here for boys and girls to mix and the American Councils office seems to be one of the few places where they can mingle and play together.
Here at the Crystal Palace, there’s a wedding every night. Loud music comes thumping through the walls and we here people yelling, hooting and hollering at these festive events. It’s nice to see that despite the instability, life goes on. Weddings are elaborate events here and the minimum cost of a wedding is $20,000. It’s rather an extravagance for people who have so little, yet they will go into debt to the fullest to have the wedding of their dreams. Afghans spend an exorbinant amount of money on
this rite and it doesn’t just include the wedding itself. The engagement party is equally as extravagant as is the post-wedding party. Who knew? You find out a lot when you spend your days and nights in a wedding palace hotel.
The food here is pretty much the same everyday; rice, bread, meat, salad, fruit. The amount of rice people eat here is amazing. At dinner we get three giant platters of rice, all different. One is Qabuli (with carrots and raisins), one is a bit sweet and one is plain. With all the rice and bread I’m having, it’s amazing I can shit. Luckily the fresh vegetables and fruit help balance that out. Oh I can’t wait for Indian where it is pretty much the same food venue but just a bit spicier. I’ll have to really watch myself so I don’t gain as much weight as I did the last camp. Plus my cholesterol was out of control. That’s next week, let me deal with Kabul life for a few more days.
Despite the bombs and lots of rice, I’m having a great time as usual in the wonderful, mad-cap place!
looks like Las Vegas with it’s brilliant neon and flashing lights of the various wedding halls in each hotel. The Benazir Wedding Hall, Kabul-Dubai, are just some of the names of these fancy places. Next to us is the Paris-Kabul Wedding Palace with its big Eiffel Tower out front. This hall is the wedding hall I spent my first night ever in Kabul back in 2006, experiencing my first Afghan wedding.This time, I am holed up here with 31 of my Afghan students, running a follow up workshop. My colleague Claire is here too and together we are putting on a great show. These students we had the pleasure of working with back in February at the first YSEL (Youth Solidarity and English Language) camp in India. This is a one-month camp for Afghan youth sponsored by the US Embassy here. It is the alternative to the YES (Youth Exchange and Study) program that I’ve worked on since 2004, which has
been cancelled because none of the kids on that program come back from the US, usually running away to Canada. Got it?Anyways, so we are here doing a one week follow up workshop with our fabulous kids to see what an impact the program had on them and how we can further help in their growth as positive thinkers and good leaders for their generation. We left NYC on
the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and arrived in Kabul on the 13th, the day the Taliban decided to create some chaos in Kabul with 10 explosions around town (2 near our office that woke me from a jet-lagged slumber) and attack the US embassy. Cowards would freak out at this news and want to go home but we keep calm and carry on, for the future of this country needs our guidance. Claire was more freaked out than I was, but has calmed down a bit. We are pretty much in the Crystal Hotel all day and all night working with the kids so we don’t see the light of day much. Yesterday we too the kids out to Bagh Babur, a beautiful garden where Babur Shah the great king is buried. It was a wonderful outing, so nice getting out into the sun and fresh air for a change. Afterwards we went to our office to play a few games of volleyball, which the kids enjoyed immensely. There isn’t much opportunity here for boys and girls to mix and the American Councils office seems to be one of the few places where they can mingle and play together.Here at the Crystal Palace, there’s a wedding every night. Loud music comes thumping through the walls and we here people yelling, hooting and hollering at these festive events. It’s nice to see that despite the instability, life goes on. Weddings are elaborate events here and the minimum cost of a wedding is $20,000. It’s rather an extravagance for people who have so little, yet they will go into debt to the fullest to have the wedding of their dreams. Afghans spend an exorbinant amount of money on
this rite and it doesn’t just include the wedding itself. The engagement party is equally as extravagant as is the post-wedding party. Who knew? You find out a lot when you spend your days and nights in a wedding palace hotel.The food here is pretty much the same everyday; rice, bread, meat, salad, fruit. The amount of rice people eat here is amazing. At dinner we get three giant platters of rice, all different. One is Qabuli (with carrots and raisins), one is a bit sweet and one is plain. With all the rice and bread I’m having, it’s amazing I can shit. Luckily the fresh vegetables and fruit help balance that out. Oh I can’t wait for Indian where it is pretty much the same food venue but just a bit spicier. I’ll have to really watch myself so I don’t gain as much weight as I did the last camp. Plus my cholesterol was out of control. That’s next week, let me deal with Kabul life for a few more days.
Despite the bombs and lots of rice, I’m having a great time as usual in the wonderful, mad-cap place!
posted by Tom T at 11:30 AM
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