Black Rock City x Afghanistan

[some seeing eye]

I'm sure there are burners who spent more time than my few days. I'm sure they have stories!

A long time ago, in 2004, I traveled to Afghanistan to visit a friend newly arrived to work for an NGO there. This is just a microslice of that experience.
 
Her initial project was to bring music, which had been banned by the Taliban, back to Afghanistan. Subsequently she made photographs of the Bamiyan lost Buddha. She trained women to run the elections and to train women to vote.

She was rebellious in the local context, riding on a bicycle when the usual was women could only ride on the back of a bicycle pedaled by a man. We went outside the town on a picnic with a friend who owned a car. She was a translator who had to have a male drive once we got into the hills where we had to act in a certain way.

She had one wish for Burning Man.

It was for me to carry back three burkas to be burned.

I brought them to the burn and reached on-playa in my network for a performance with them. There was some interest, but that evaporated because some thought it was disrespectful to women to burn them.

I ended up doing a performance in one solo. Then I burned them in the big burn.

Later someone I knew, and had approached, then who distanced, found the remnants in the ashes and said they finally understood.