no chitral

Very sad news today. The government administration in Chitral has decided that security is too tense right now for American citizens to come to the district. Basically, we don't need their permission, but they told our guys up there that it would be a major headache for them to protect me while I'm there. So frustrating! But I'm not in a position to insist on going and if AKF thinks it's too unsafe, it's too unsafe. There was a brief hope that I could go to Gilgit instead, but the next flight is on April 9. Oh well.

I'm watching the Pakistan-India match right now. India got off to an incredibly fast start but Pakistan has gotten a few key wickets in the past 20 minutes and the pace has come back to Earth a bit. Watched in the hotel's little sandwich shop for the first two hours, which was fun. The staff are all glued to the TV and I think they were tickled that an American would be in there watching just as intensely.

Karim, Nusrat and I met just after noon with a woman from OFDA's regional office in Bangkok. OFDA is interested in funding disaster risk reduction in Pakistan but they basically need people to tell them how to do it. It was a little frustrating because I had to defer (obviously) to Nusrat and Karim, and they were talking past the OFDA rep a little bit. That may dominate my first couple of weeks back, though, if FOCUS decides there's an overlap with what OFDA can do.

Then, while I was eating lunch and watching the match, the OFDA rep, who's named Andrea, came in and sat and chatted for a little bit. She was in between meetings. Apparently she'd just read our proposal for Gujarat this morning! But mostly we talked about other things, including, obviously, the match. I got to show off my new knowledge a bit.

Anyway, time to turn my attention back to the match.