home again

And back at work. Still catching up here, obviously. Some messes to clean up, I'm afraid. God, it would have been nice to have functioning email over there. Anyway, my luggage is still in Dubai but otherwise the rest of the trip back was fine. Yesterday I was jet-lagged as all get-out but I made it through to a reasonable bed time. Helped that Claire was down from Baltimore. Today I've been doing better so far but I suspect it will still be an early night.

back in dxb

The last couple of days in Kabul were weekend days (well, until this morning). My first of the trip, in fact, so I took advantage by going on a little shopping excursion and just generally hanging out. The shopping was cool. We went to two stores. One was a furniture and wood carving place. I had fallen in love with a couple of pieces that Andrew had hanging on the wall of his house, smallish unvarnished wooden frames with metal honeycomb where a picture would normally go. They were really beautiful. Alas, none to be found. But the experience of shopping in a place like that was really cool, the owner had tea brought for us and chatted with us while we looked around.

The next shop was Andrew's rug shop, owned by one Wahid, who took the first shop owner's hospitality and amplified it about 90 million times. The guy just loves rugs and he's obviously doing very well. We sat and chatted for a while in the main room of the shop (the guy asked after Andrew's uncle, apparently they know each other rather well), completely surrounded on all sides by rugs hanging on the walls, stacked four feet high, layered on the ground. Some of the stuff in there was just gorgeous. Andrew told me to just tell him generally what I had in mind, so I did. Then we were off into another room and he was just tearing through a stack of rugs, throwing things on the ground and explaining what they were as he went, taking my responses and tailoring what he was looking for. The ultimate salesman, in particular because he genuinely didn't seem to care whether I bought anything or not. Naturally, I could not resist and bought two prayer rugs (small and cheaper than the really massive ones, of which Andrew bought two). Both are Baluch and about 25-30 years old.

The rest of the weekend was relaxing and pretty uninteresting. I exercised some, read some, watched a bit of TV. Spent last night in the Serena and watched the Champions League final on my king sized bed. The Serena is super nice but I'm really glad I spent the vast majority of the time in the guest house. If you're by yourself in a big fancy hotel like that, it's lonely. I guess I would have ended up making acquaintances if I'd been there for a while but, meh, not my kind of people. Plus it's freaking expensive, even with my handy-dandy AKDN-staff discount, which came to something like 35%.

Spent today in the office, chatting with Noor and Maiwand and generally getting ready to go. Oh, and I made another quick shopping trip with Aziz, one of the admin guys, to pick up a couple of extra things. Driving through Kabul at rush hour and then again in the middle of the day is quite different from doing it at night or just sticking to the little neighborhoods I did for most of the time. LOTS of traffic and not really much in the way of rules. Then it was back to the airport, where my ass was saved by a stranger named Naghida (sp?).

In short, I wasn't able to print my KBL-DXB ticket. So after going through the frisking and bag-searching between the main road and the last gate before the airport, the lone cop there wouldn't let me through. So this young woman, quite conveniently bilingual (tri, actually, as it turned out later), argued with the guy on my behalf. That didn't work, so she went inside, got the ticket agent to print my ticket and had a little kid run it back out to me so I could go through. Saved. The. Day. We chatted a bit once I got inside, after I had finished thanking her profusely. Turns out she's American but her parents are Afghan. She now works in Iraq for USIP and was just finishing up her first-ever trip to Afghanistan, which she took as R&R. Oh, and she speaks Arabic, too.

The trip to Dubai was smooth after that and now here I am, waiting to check in for the last leg. Not much looking forward to it. Next time I post it'll be from home!

my first day off!

Is today! Yesterday was jammed full of meetings at AKF, just making the rounds and trying to gather as much intel as possible about what they're doing over here in natural resource management, education, civil society, etc. etc. I also had a meeting at USAID, which is on the US embassy compound and I have never seen a more heavily-fortified place in my entire life. Like whoa.

More about that another time, I have to go eat breakfast and then I'm going to take advantage of the day by going shopping with Keith, the head of monitoring and evaluation of AKF, and Andrew, the head of NRM. Andrew has been here for seven years, speaks excellent Dari and is evidently extremely knowledgeable about the shopping here. He collects rugs and is somewhat of a connoiseur of them. Should be a fun time.

hurray!

THE WIZARDS WON THE DRAFT LOTTERY! THE WIZARDS WON THE DRAFT LOTTERY! HELLOOOOOO JOHN WALL!

If they pick Turner, I will be sad. But they can't, they have to pick Wall. Please, please, please let them pick Wall.

breakin' out of focus

Another attack this morning, this time more coordinated, but it was against the US base in Bagram, so not even inside Kabul. Still, after a week and a half of calm visit, things have picked up a little bit. But I went out last night for the first time, with some AKF people, a couple of people from IFES, and a guy named Robert, who used to work for CHF in Sudan as a Program Manager or something and with whom I corresponded occasionally but never spoke to or met. He was very nice and quite charitably mentioned some offhanded whatever about how I'd helped them on proposals or something. I may have done so somewhat but it was nice of him to give the impression that my role was less admin/logistical at CHF than it was. And Silja, who used to run CHF's enormous Pakistan program, works for IFES so of course all those people knew her. Small freaking world. It was a really nice time, excellent to have a steak (not rice and chicken or ground beef!) and a couple of beers (alcohol!) with some native English speakers. The steak wasn't half bad, either. The place we went is less than 100m from the front door of the guest house, so I just walked home with another guy who's staying there. Kind of wish I'd gotten a lift as the street was quite muddy and now my shoes are dirty, haha. I've decided once and for all that I'm going to get a shoeshine in the Dubai airport. It will be my first ever, haha.

This morning I went over to FMFB to meet with the head of microfinance over there, Karim. We chatted for about an hour and a half, just a general overview of where they're coming from and where they're going. And then we talked a bit about Afghanistan in general, and what he thinks really needs to happen in order for security and stability to come. I won't go into too much detail here but it was a very interesting conversation. There was a story in the NYT yesterday that he took issue with in particular.

Anyway, now I'm back at the FOCUS office. Everyone is meeting about the DIPECHO project, which is also being extended but with have I have nothing to do. But Alix just forwarded me approximately 18 million emails from my work accounts, which I still can't access, so I'm just going through those bit by bit. That's enough work for now. This afternoon we'll do the programmatic work shop, insh'allah.

oh my god

So there was a suicide attack in Kabul today. Bad one, too. But it was in a different part of the city from where I am so I didn't even hear the blast or find out about it until a couple of hours later. Everyone is taking it completely in stride, so I'm not particularly worried about it.

The thing that has freaked me out is, well, first read this story.

Read it? Okay, I was on that plane on Sunday, less than 24 hours before it crashed into the mountains with 43 people on board. THAT has freaked me out. The brother of the FOCUS regional program manager for Badakhshan, Safdar, with whom I had dinner in Faizabad three days ago, was on the plane.

So I told Yousef last night about my cheeseburger yearning, and this morning he apparently told the admin guys here to order me one for lunch. I didn't ask for him to do that, and honestly I'd rather wait until I get home to have one. And I DEFINITELY do not want to be the only person having food brought from outside. But Aziz (one of the admin guys) came up and asked whether he should order just one or if anyone else would be eating one and I tried to tell him that I didn't want one, and that I didn't even ask for one for myself, let alone did I know whether anyone else wanted one. This feels too special or something and I hate that shit. But Aziz's English isn't great and Yousef is at prayers, so I ended up just saying, "Fuck it," (to myself) and saying, "Yes, sure go ahead and order one," (to Aziz). I'm sure Yousef thought he was doing me a nice favor and the thought counts for a lot in this context. If everyone were ordering cheeseburgers this wouldn't be a problem. Now I'm just whining and I should be happy that I'll be getting to eat something other than the Afghan staples.

UPDATE: I'm relieved to report that the burger was truly awful and barely deserved to call itself a burger. And there was no cheese. Thank god.

back in Kabul

Yesterday was pretty leisurely: I just woke up, ate breakfast, packed and went to the AKF office for a bit, then headed to the airport for the trip back to Kabul. Expectedly, the flight was delayed by an hour and a half or so. Unexpectedly, there were a ton of expats waiting to fly. Apparently, starting last week, flights in and out of Faizabad have been cut dramatically and it's only by luck that I could go when I did. They're building a new, paved airstrip, which is great because the current one is just corrugated steel strips. The next flight isn't until this coming Sunday, so anyone who wanted to get back to Kabul this week had to leave yesterday. It was nice to chat with Americans. They were all very friendly and one even knew my colleague Andrea from when she worked here with Hopkins. A few of them were with an adventure travel company that's been working with the AKF-sponsored guest houses in the Wakhan that I drove past.

The flight was cloudy and uneventful and then I pretty much came right back to the office, with a quick stop at the guest house to drop off my stuff. At dinner met and chatted with a Canadian guy who's doing new product development for FMFB (First Microfinance Bank - largest microcredit operation in Afghanistan, owned by AKFED). Sida is his name, although I have no idea if I'm spelling that right. After dinner I ended up watching the last half of Frost/Nixon and some sports (cricket, soccer, Nadal-Federer). Towards the end one of the Afghan guys who's staying at the house while he takes English classes joined me and we chatted a bit. And I finished Speak, Memory. Awesome book. I've had headaches the past two evenings, incidentally. Not sure what that's about.

Today has been quite slow so far, after an infuriating while trying to have a conversation with M&D I came to the office. We didn't have internet until about 30 minutes ago; apparently the rather mild storm they had yesterday and the day before was causing all the connectivity issues. It's still coming and going now. So I did some other boring but necessary stuff. We're waiting for Maiwand to get back from Mazar-i-Sharif so we can start in on the budget and financials workshop. Hope he's back soon cause it's almost noon. But hey, that's Afghanistan, I guess. You have to assume that everything will be delayed.

Oh, and cheeseburgers have been ordered for lunch :-)

May 14 and 15

NOTE: These posts were written on the day indicated but I didn’t have internet until just now. If you can make it all the way through them, enjoy.

Friday, May 14

Last night, at dinner, after about thirty minutes of being the only non-Dari speaker at a table full of 10 or 12 of them, it turned out that the guy immediately to my right and immediately across from me both spoke great English. The one across from me, Mohammed, tutors AKF staff in English and the one to my right, Abdul Nasir (who, funnily enough, had better English) teaches IT skills to AKF staff. They both grew up in Pakistan, I assume as refugees although I didn’t ask. Anyway, they were both extremely friendly and engaging. The conversation ended up running for two and a half hours; we talked about everything from the 9/11 conspiracy theory that the US government did it (apparently quite widely accepted in Pakistan) to homeopathy to health care reform. The guy to my right had studied homeopathy in Pakistan. The internet is an amazing thing. At any rate, it was a really stimulating conversation.

I slept pretty well and woke up at the entirely reasonable hour of 7 AM. Breakfast was pretty plain, even by Afghan standards: flat bread and honey and Nescafe. Then Iqbal came by and we were off to see some School Emergency Response Team (SERT) practice sessions, first at Ishkashim Girls’ School and then at a coed school at a small village about 30 minutes away. Basically, what happens in the drills is that everyone assembles as if they were at school (today is Friday, weekend here) and then a school leader calls out through a megaphone that there’s been a disaster. Everyone assembles in their various teams –information, logistics, search and rescue, first aid– and snaps into action. The search and rescue teams go into a classroom that has been upturned for the purpose and finds someone lying on the ground. Some of the members have shovels and picks in case they need to get something heavy off. They put the “victim” on a stretcher and carry them outside to the waiting first aid team, which does a quick triage and then applies disinfectant and bandages and so on. Once their done, they carry the body to the logistics team, which has arranged for a vehicle to take the victim to the clinic. The information team is running around recording everything: age of victim, types of injuries, etc.

The girls had learned much earlier, under CBDRR I and practiced a lot more, so they were quite impressively quick and well-organized. The coed school had just been trained, under the DIPECHO grant. So they were a bit more discombobulated, but had a couple of very good actors as “victims.”

We took a quick detour to a craft shop of items made by hand by materials found in the hills around here (lots of semiprecious stones) and then I got dropped back off at the guest house for lunch.

After lunch, we piled back in the Land Cruiser and drove off into the Wakhan Valley. It’s dry, dusty and rocky. Even the cultivated land is full of rocks. The people up here are subsistence farmers and shepherds for the most part; although AKF has recently started to help some people turn their houses into guest houses (basically bed and breakfasts) for adventuresome tourists. Apparently this is starting to catch on. Anyway, our ultimate destination was the first major village in the Corridor, about 60km (2 hours) from Ishkashim. There we saw a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) demonstration of a more complex emergency: earthquake plus rock fall. This team had drilled quite a lot and was very impressive and fast. We also saw a mitigation project there, a flood retention wall built entirely by hand from local materials.

After each drill and visit, Iqbal introduced me to the assembled people and we had a chance to thank each other: them to Iqbal and me basically for caring and helping them learn things that have made helped them enormously, and me to them for allowing me to visit and providing me with hope and encouragement that the work I do in an office in DC actually makes a difference somewhere. It hit home these past couple of days why field visits are so important: Our offices in the US are so far removed from the purpose of our work, and that can make it difficult to find motivation and easy to get cynical or discouraged. But coming out here, seeing everything that I’ve read and written about actually happen, is just an amazing experience. It’s also quite humbling to watch Iqbal and the other staff here. Not to take away from what I do at work, because without that the rest wouldn’t be possible, but what I got to see today was the really important part of the whole chain. Very cool.

Hopefully I’ll get to continue my conversation with Mohammed and Abdul Nasir tonight at and after dinner, and then tomorrow it’s back to Faizabad. So much time in the car for such a short trip, but it was worth every second, every jolt as we crossed a stream or shuddered across some rocks.

Oh, and rest assured: there are photos and videos of everything.

Saturday, May 15

So last night, sure enough, the conversation picked up where it had left off with my new friends. We ate dinner and then watched a bunch of TV –Korean soap operas translated into Persian and censored (women’s bare legs, arms, and anything below the collarbone), Afghan Idol (what a trip that was), Al Jazeera and BBC in English– and just kept up a patter the whole time. A bunch of the other men at the guest house joined and it was just a “nice time,” as Mohammed kept saying.

This morning, woke up, ate, packed, and then after some goodbyes to Iqbal, Mohammed and Abdul Nasir, it was off to Faizabad. Didn’t take as many pictures this time, but it was surprising just how different the view was A) from the other side of the car and B) from the other direction. Pics would generally have been the same, though. But we crossed the place where the road had been completely washed out utterly without incident or even my noticing it. I was kind of disappointed, to be honest, haha. The trip was shorter, 6.5 hours on the dot, and after a quick lunch here I am back in a bedroom at the FOCUS guest house. Gonna try to get some exercise in a little bit, the thought of how out of shape my already-out-of-shape self will be when I get home is mildly depressing. Oh, and take a shower. No running water in Ishkashim. Tomorrow it’s back to Kabul around mid-day. My flight is scheduled for noon but we’ll see…

ishkashim

Iqbal, the Ishkashim CBDRR project coordinator, got to Faizabad last night. We left early this morning for the 8-hour drive to Ishkashim. What an adventure. Road was washed out, many people waiting, we crossed anyway. Drove through half a dozen flocks of sheep, with the shepherds walking alongside beating them out of the way of the car. Forded ten or more streams. All through a beautiful valley, approaching the snow-capped Hindu Kush. Now in Ishkashim, at the FOCUS office. Saw a great presentation by Iqbal and Ejaz (the DIPECHO-CBDRM program manager). Met most of the staff here. Iqbal and Ejaz both speak excellent English, too, which helps. I would have gone crazy on the drive if I hadn't had someone to talk to, especially someone who knows the area well.

Oh and we stopped at a community where FOCUS has done major work, including a canal to divert water around the village instead of allowing it to seep into the soil and foundations of the houses, where it was making everything unstable. Met the key religious guy there and the head of the CERT (community emergency response team). I'm in a daze. Also, we were as high as 10000 feet today and now around 8500, so that might have something to do with it.

Tomorrow we're going to check out some school trainings and drills and then go up into the Wakhan Corridor to see mitigation projects. For now, time to head out of here and back to the guest house.

bagh-i-babur and faizabad

Well, yesterday afternoon I went to Bagh-i-Babur (Babur's Gardens) with Noor. Freaking awesome guy, that Noor. We took a long route around Kabul to get there; it was neat to see parts of the city I hadn't in the first few days. I'd been confined pretty much to Wazir Akbar Khan, the somewhat upscale neighborhood where all the AKDN offices are ("white powder money" people with armed guards live across the street from both the Guest House and the FOCUS office, which somewhat paradoxically makes the respective streets relatively safe).

The gardens are beautiful, it makes me proud to be a part of AKDN when I see the fruits of a project like the restoration that AKTC did six or seven years ago. Urban oasis, indeed, especially given that the rest of Kabul is dusty and drab. I've got pics that I'll upload as soon as I'm back in the States. Also there are restored versions of Babur's tomb (the man himself was an important king ~500 years ago, died in India but loved Kabul so much that they transporte his remains there to be buried), the marble Shah Jahan mosque and the Queen's Palace, which had an exhibit of gorgeous early-19th-century British drawings of Kabul on display. Noor and I wandered around a bit and then had some hand-made ice cream. Some students were smoking hookah on a little slope nearby and motioned me over while Noor went to pay for the ice cream (called shiriakh). Noor came back and when I told him he said, "Oh, let's go over, it would make them very happy." So we did. One of them spoke a little English but most of the time we just sat and they talked with Noor while he translated. Nice guys, engineering students.

This morning I left for Faizabad. The airport must be the safest place on Earth: my bags got searched three times and x-rayed and I got frisked five times. The flight was late but no big deal, the waiting room had plenty of good people-watching and I'm really enjoying Speak, Memory. All Afghans in the domestic room, with two or three exceptions. Very informal, too, when a flight was ready to leave a guy would just come in from the tarmac and yell, "Herat!" or something and then people would crowd into some buses and roll on out to the plane.

The flight was awesome. We went over some really high (glacier-covered) peaks. Beautiful the whole way. Faizabad itself is pretty, although nobody here speaks much English except the AKF logistics/security guy. And no internet in the guest house (I'm at the AKF office). Speaking of which, it's late and I should probably roll on out. Leaving for Ishkahsim at the crack o' dawn tomorrow. Will report more later!

cursed internet

Well, yesterday was a day of mighty struggle to get and stay online. The IT guys from AKF (FOCUS doesn't have its own) were on leave yesterday or something, so one of the admin guys here, Gul, signed me on with his username. But for some unknown reason, it's on a timer and just cuts out after a while. What the fuck. And then at the guesthouse I couldn't get online at all, but it was such a tease: the wifi connection was recognized by my computer but there was something messed up with the firewall or something. Anyway, Yousef, the Canadian financial guy, showed me how to fix it this morning (I think). And the IT guys are coming today to set me up properly in the office. Oy.

Anyway, apart from that yesterday was nice. The weather is beautiful, 70s and dry, and it even rained for a few minutes yesterday, which killed the dust for an hour or two. Just like Santiago, the mountains in the distance are way more beautiful when you can actually SEE them. I've been reading the Sphere Project Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response, which Maiwand had sitting on his desk, in the down times when I can't get online. Very interesting, practical info. I'd skimmed sections of it before but never given it a good read. Currently I'm working on "Minimum Standards in Food Security, Nutrition and Food Aid" - i.e. the bit that I find most interesting. The first section was "Common Standards" (the ones that apply to all sectors), then "Hygiene Promotion and Water and Sanitation." Not a bad use of time given the options, honestly.

I've got my plane ticket to head to Faizabad tomorrow and it looks as though I'll be able to get to Ishkashim and the border after all. There was a security incident in Warduj a bit over three weeks ago, so they weren't letting cars through for a while, but things are stable enough now that even marked cars are allowed (and I'll be in an unmarked car, you can be sure). The guys here are fanatical about security and won't even go themselves if things are unsafe, so if they say it's okay, it's okay. I'm excited to see some of the program activities. Apparently I'll be mostly seeing DIPECHO-funded (i.e. EU) stuff because they're a little ahead of my grant in terms of the schedule: past the evaluation stage and into the actual work. I'll take lots of pictures.

I'm still working off the jet lag somewhat, but I think today I'll finally be on a normal-ish schedule. Napped from 6-7 last night and then had no trouble falling asleep later after a call with Nashir (CEO of FOCUS Afghanistan) at 9. That's pretty unheard of for me.

day two

Got to Kabul yesterday morning. Missed my driver at the airport so I caught a ride with a couple of locals who work for IRD. After a brief adventure, they dropped me off at the AKF offices on Wazir Akbar Khan (a major street). Nice guys, especially the English-speaking one.

Met with Kevin, the CEO of AKF,A right after I got in, then went around and met everyone. The HR guys, Cipta and Donny (both Indonesian), and the admin guys, Ramin and I-forget-the-other-one's-name (both Afghan), are really friendly. Took a trip to the Ministry of the Interior to register with the government, which was interesting. The driver took a reeeally long route back -- expats have to be driven everywhere by the local drivers and the route changes every time as a precautionary measure. The streets here are unlike anything I've ever seen. Choked with dust (the air literally smells like an old bookshelf), full of cars and people moving around without much rhyme or reason, mostly unpaved and really, mostly rutted so much that even a Land Cruiser pitches and yaws like a rowboat in a hurricane. And there are AK-47s everywhere. Cops, Afghan army, private security.

Anyway, then it was back to the AKF office to get my computer fixed, and then to the guest house to put my luggage down, take a shower and have some lunch. The shower was, surprisingly, scalding. Then over to the FOCUS offices to meet everyone (except Maiwand, the program manager, who's in Islamabad waiting for a UK visa). Did some work, then back to the AKF offices to pick up my computer. One of the IT guys, whose name I also forget (I'm going to have a hard time with names...there are a lot of staff and a lot of them have longish names that I don't catch on the first go-round), came back with me to the guest house to hook me into the wifi here. He's really friendly, too, and speaks good English. He studied in India and a lot of his family lives in Toronto. We talked about a lot of things, including how Kabul has changed since he was a little kid and about differences in marriage traditions in Afghanistan and the US/Canada. Really interesting conversation.

Talked with Claire and watched some TV. Dinner was awkward as crap because it was me and eight Afghans, only one of whom speaks any English at all. It was silent. I ate as fast as possible and then absolutely passed out at like 8:50.

Woke up at 4:30 this morning, ended up Skyping with Alix from AKF USA, and Vale, of all people. She's going to get engaged. Holy crap. Then did a few exercises, ate a much friendlier breakfast with the two Afghans I spent the most time with yesterday (waiting around at the AKF office and riding from one place to another). They're HIV educators in Kandahar, but they're on their way to spend a month in Pul-i-Khumri for training. The one that speaks English (kind of) is nice and this morning I introduced him to granola. He is a big fan and ended up having two big bowls. There's no brewed coffee, just Nescafe, but whatever.

Okay, that's enough for now. The car is coming to get Yousef and I in fifteen minutes and I need to get dressed and get my stuff together for the day. More later.

dxb

Hello from beautiful Dubai International Airport! Not much to report, really, except that wifi is free and a cup of decaf costs six dollars. I would almost consider getting a day room (I'm eligible for reimbursement because my layover is over 8 hours) just to have somewhere to stow my stuff, but it's not worth it. I can check in in four hours so I think I'll just wander around, check out the duty-free shops and then plant myself somewhere

I'm traveling with one of the little netbooks from work. Do not see the appeal. It's not that much lighter or smaller than my laptop and so much more awkward to type on. Oh well, shouldn't complain too much.

Oh, one last thing: running list of things I forgot to bring:
1) cell phone charge
2) rain jacket
3) any kind of jacket or warm anything except my green sweater

Oops