pabitra

...is my Indian colleague's name. And now, a post I wrote earlier today:

On the way from Kabul to Baghlan, you drive through Parwan province. At one point, the road crosses over the Ghorband River, which bisects Ghorband district in the western part of the province before merging with the Panjshir on their way to Kabul. This morning we got an email from AKDN security saying that, due to some AOG (armed opposition group) activity in the Ghorband Valley, all AKDN staff are restricted from moving around on the roads in the area until further notice. No attacks in the province in a couple of weeks, but apparently the AOGs are just moving around freely. Nobody likes that except them.

Now, I don't have any idea what that means for me, because the Ghorband Valley is mostly west of the Kabul-to-Pul-i-Khumri road. Also, the report arrived three days late and I'm not leaving until Wednesday, so it's very possible that the situation will be completely different by the time I need to head back through there. Some folks, including Beth, Yousef and Noor N (the latter two were here to meet with Tameeza about the no-cost extension we'll propose to OFDA), left just now. So I guess everything is alright.

Beth bought everyone some pastries before she left, which was very sweet. I had a piece of a dry pound-cake-type thing and a puff pastry with lemon sugar icing in the middle and sesame seeds on top. Not bad and now, for the first time in days, I’m not craving Coke.

In other news, the internet is down again. Nasim the AKF IT guy came by and apparently Focus’s ISP is down. Seems the issue is that Focus has a shitty ISP and very little bandwidth, because they don’t want to pay for better service. At least, they haven’t wanted to. They’re finally looking into upgrading. Hopefully it’ll get resolved soon -- i.e. they’ll upgrade their damn service -- and they can go about doing work without having to deal with stupid little issues like the ISP crashing. For what it’s worth, Nasim seems to know what he’s about and his English is quite good, probably better than most or maybe all of the staff here.

Having no internet sucks because it really limits what I can get done, but at least it’s the weekend so I won’t reconnect to find that 84 billion unread emails have invaded my inbox.

In the meantime, I’ve been fiddling with the information/data flow chart I made the other day, per a suggestion from Tameeza to include the stockpiles. Kind of a brain fart that I forgot about them earlier. It’s still a work in progress and is of course not of very much use on its own. Also, I started trying to write up parts of an MIS manual, basically just cribbing from the manual developed for another project. Not a good way of going about things but A) I can’t do anything else because everyone’s gone for meetings and, as I said, no intertubes; and B) it’s probably better than nothing and when, someday, they do hire an M&E person it will be a starting place.

Tameeza, Ali and Jamshed went to meet with the provincial head of ANDMA just now, to try to make sure he’s really on board for this workshop. Although I have nothing personally or professionally riding on it, I do want the workshop to actually be helpful and useful. [REDACTED] I think it will be.

Also, I managed to talk with Claire last night and the connection via Skype was brilliant! We could see each other, movement was a bit delayed but we had nearly an hour with only the slightest hint of choppy reception. Talking to (and seeing) her was lovely, obviously. I vented a bit and dominated the first part of the conversation, then she gave me her update. Her last day at work was on Friday and she leaves for New Orleans, with her family, in a matter of hours, so it was a good time to catch up. Gonna try to call home in a few hours, when I get back to the guest house, so I can talk with Dad on Father’s Day! Dad, if for some reason we don’t connect:

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY FROM PUL-I-KHUMRI!

Two-point-five days to go.