We Just Got Served!!!

Have you ever seen the movie “You Got Served”? If you haven’t, then you need to go out and rent it as soon as possible because Omarion’s performance in that movie is stellar. I think that despite it being #92 on the “Bottom 100 List” on IMDB, it is still one of my favorite movies and very relevant to today’s story.

Today was our day for Staff Appreciation and it was decided that we needed to have a cookout at the guesthouse. So a crew was hired to set up an authentic Afghan party house in the back yard using what looked like large blankets on poles and tables. We also had an authentic Afghan band come to play dance music before and after lunch. Now when I say “authentic” I really mean “authentic”. The band was made up of 4 people: one who played sitar, one who played a double sided bongo drum, one who sang and played this weird keyboard box thingie, and the other guy who just ran tech and sat there (integral part of the band). The lead guy sang with a RIDICULOUS amount of reverb on his microphone (which is the way that all Afghan music is played), and everyone else just turned their microphones up to 11 to rock out!

From the moment that the music started, we were instantly pleased to see our formerly reserved guards and drivers let their guards down to have some fun. One or two (our host being one of them) would systematically pick their fellow staff members out of the crowd in an attempt to get them to dance to the music. Now Afghan dancing is amazing because there is no real method to the madness. It is easy to pick up and there apparently is no real “correct” way to dance. This was awesome for us Americans because it allowed us to pick up the dancing very quickly. We figured out that Afghan dancing usually consists on a few steps.

Step 1: Place your left foot in front of the right and move them up and down very quickly.
Step 2: Place your arms straight out and slowly move them in what you believe to be an elegant fashion
Step 3: Make some sort of movement with your hands. Some popular ones are: “Turn the Light Bulb”, “Pull the Floss”, “Throw the UofL L”, or just simply roll your wrists.
*If all else fails and you are not able to follow these steps, just stick your arms out and spin around like a helicopter.

(For all of you who are standing up right now, following my steps, I am very proud of you! Please continue to practice your dancing and if we attend a wedding or party together, we will dance Afghan together!)

We danced for several hours (taking a break for lunch of course) and soon the party came to an end. We helped to pack up to tent and tables, and sat down to rest for the rest of the day. After a few hours, several of us took a trip to some of the local schools to see what is being done with burn prevention. We visited two girls’ schools where kids were being informed about burn prevention. This is something that I wasn’t aware was such a big deal in this culture, but apparently it is. The kids were told not to use faulty electrical sockets, how not to overload a surge protector, and many other things that commonly cause disasters in Afghan homes. Now since we were at girls’ schools, the men were not allowed in the classrooms, but that didn’t stop us from meeting a few interesting kids who were roaming the halls (I think the two kids went through about 10 wrestler names as their real names). It’s amazing to see how American culture has infiltrated Afghan culture. Kids here are just like kids at home, they love to imitate what they see on TV, and wrestling is HUGE here with boys. It really made me realize the lens through which other countries view us, and that is through the media that we export. It’s no wonder that people view us as a morally bankrupt country. When we export filth like WWE, which is full of violence, scantly clad women, and alcohol, we are instantly ruining our credibility with the people we come in contact with. Even if we don’t watch things like that, we are instantly assumed to share the morals of the shows that we export. But I digress…

When we returned, we were asked to gather and pray for a guard who had recently lost his brother-in-law to a Taliban raid. If all of you could do the same, it would be greatly appreciated because his family really needs your prayers. If you could also pray for his nephew who was taken, but released, in that same raid. It must be hard to know that the Taliban still has your father somewhere.

After that, we prepared to go eat at a local restaurant. We traveled out to “The Grill”, a local Lebanese restaurant, which was amazing. We had tons of delicious food, and that was the end of our day. It was a ton of fun, and I really don’t want to return home!

Marcus David Lorence