Guatemala has the chicken bus, Kabul has Chicken Street

Since we had the day off Wednesday, we asked to be taken over to Chicken Street, which is a street full of carpet, pashmina, jewelry, and other stores geared toward Westerners. Mysteriously, no chickens. One of the guards came with us and seemed to know several of the store owners. I was a bit on edge—on one hand it felt liberating to be out of the house, on the other it was a bit nerve wracking to be out in the open where it seemed anything could happen. I heard through the grapevine that a fellow alum from Michigan had a colleague captured and killed in Iraq, so that was also on my mind. Truth is, Kabul at the end of the day is pretty secure—the issues in this country are in the south on the Pakistani border. But Al Quaeda/Taliban forces are gathering in Pakistan and as the weather improves they’re planning to try and cause trouble. You can read up on the situation here and here. I thought about taking some video, but when I pulled out the camera I got some looks, so decided against it. I did manage to take a few stills…

Our guard had the impression we were interested in rugs, which wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, so we went into quite a few rug shops. I don’t really know much about rugs, but I was blown away by the sheer quantity of them! Stacks and stacks in each store. Then I was really amazed in one store by these gorgeous silk rugs—beautiful design, sheen, and soft to the touch. The stuff is not cheap, though. I might try to pick up some small rugs (not the silk ones) for $20 or something. I was told to watch out for “made in china” tags, so I have been diligently turning them over to check.

We walked down the street and back up, passing shops with metal stuff, old guns and knives, and pashminas made of wool, silk, or cashmere. Lots of these last items aren’t made here, but imported from India, Pakistan, or Nepal. I bought a couple necklaces, a couple Massoud-style hats, wool booties, and a wool blanket like the men wear as overcoats here.

There were several street kids, of course. I paid a couple to let me take their photo—the one with the knick-knacks to sell seemed puzzled I gave him (or is he a her?) money and didn’t want anything. Later, one kid came up to me and was speaking to me in excellent English. He asked my name and told me, “Jon, I’ll be your bodyguard…only me.” OK, I said, you can protect me. I asked how he knew English so well and he said he goes to a French school and speaks French and German as well. So of course I told him, “Je ne parle pa le Francais.” We kept walking along and saw some more Massoud-style hats—he picked one up and said they were $2 a piece. I held up my bag and told him I felt stupid because I just paid $14 for two of them. “Very expensive,” he said. I needed this bodyguard a little earlier. This kid was really sharp—he seemed to have a good sense of humor too. Some pashmina shopowner led us into his stall off the main street and his little helper (maybe son?) closed the door on my little bodyguard. But the door would sway open slightly and we’d share a smile about the “doorman” keeping him out who must have been about his same age.

We gave the bodyguard a dollar (50 Afghani) just before getting into the van to leave. I asked if I could take his photo and he said yes. So I was fumbling around with the camera and a shopowner nearby must have thought he was bothering me—he came over to tell the kid to get lost. He realized at the last second that I was taking a photo but then it all got rushed and my shot turned out blurry…

I couldn’t believe how smart that kid was. Vince kept trying to tell me in Baku that the Afghan people weren’t too bright because it was common to marry first cousins. I think this argument is intellectually lazy (borderline racist) and not really even scientifically true, as discussed here, here, and here. Yeah, so one day at Smith Barney I read up on cousin marriage, OK? Slate had a thing on it...nothing to do with the family reunion I went to last summer, I promise.

But back to the point--it’s easy to blame people for bad things that happen to them and take credit for good things that happen to onesself. Conversely, it’s easy to attribute someone else’s success to their environment/context and blame our environment/context for our shortcomings. That is, "these people are obviously poor because they’re stupid because they marry their cousins; whereas I am smart not because I was nurtured, nourished, and educated, but because I worked hard. I believe it's called attribution bias--we touched on it briefly in the MBA program--in organizatonal behavior with then-Dean Angel Cabrera.