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 :-)