this post was brought to you

By the lack of internet at the Focus office.

It’s hot but not unbearably so. Despite the heat, last night was my first solid night’s sleep of the trip.

Apparently they’ve never heard of flypaper in Pul-i-Khumri. Little house flies zip around everywhere in the Focus office, except in the lunch/training room, which is air conditioned so they keep the door closed.

Whine whine whine.

This morning Jamshed, Kelly, Tameeza and I went to meet with the provincial director of the Afghan National Disaster Management Authority. He was very welcoming and also on board with the work shop that’s envisioned. The problems here are really deep. I guess that ought to be pretty obvious. They became more apparent during the second meeting of the morning, with UNAMA. What’s envisioned in the proposal is quite different from what’s actually needed, which is fine. But it’ll be interesting to see how the workshop turns out next week. The turnout should be good, but if the other UN agencies can’t get down here from Kunduz (only UNAMA is present in Baghlan), then it may not be as effective or useful as it should.

Actually, Kelly just told me that if he had his druthers, he wouldn’t hold the workshop at all if the other UN agencies can’t send anyone. The problem is that if there’s a big disaster that requires a supra-provincial response, like an earthquake, the UN agencies will come in and try to set up their own system, ignorant of whatever systems and actors are already in place here. A major point of the workshop would be to get everyone on the same page with respect to planning for such an event and if the big guns aren’t there, then the whole thing is diminished.

Lunch was more chicken and rice. I went for it and ate a few slices of (peeled) cucumber, too. We’ll see how that turns out. Hoping for a good outcome because it’d be nice to be able to eat a few veggies now and then. Now I’m sitting in the office with Kelly and Jamshed (who, by the way, is the Regional Program Coordinator for Focus) typing away in Apple’s Word knockoff, Pages, because the internet won’t connect and I can’t do any work.

The connectivity thing is ridiculous. It’s not like there’s no internet access here or insufficient bandwidth. But apparently only 10 people are allowed to be on Focus’s firewall at once. That is absurd. The guest house, on the other hand, was surprisingly quick last night and this morning. That may sound like a whine but isn’t; it’s a legitimate issue. “It’s hot” and “there are flies” are whines.

Anyway I’m going to go meet with Tameeza and Beth, the M&E tools consultant, now. Hopefully that’s going a little more smoothly than Kelly’s work.

...

It’s now several hours later. Kelly and Jamshed are trying to finalize the planning for the workshop. The M&E tools meeting was constructive -- Beth isn’t set up to do everything that’s needed and the team is farther behind on M&E than I imagined (more on this in another post, or maybe not for aforementioned reasons). But she has done quite a lot and she and I will be able to sit down tomorrow and make the first baby steps toward having a working MIS manual.

Tameeza and I then sat down in her office, closed the door and had a very frank discussion about which I will give no details, again for reasons mentioned in earlier posts, but this time a lot more so. I’m not sure how much help I can really give her at the end of the day, but I can at least broach some of what she brought up back home and see if there’s really anything we can do about it.

Kelly and I are both still unable to get online. He’s still got a ton to iron out with Jamshed but I’m nearing the end of my ability to get anything done, as evidenced by the fact that I’m writing this again, so I’m thinking about going back to the guest house. He’s in his element, actually, basically training Jamshed as they try to get the agenda together for next week. It’s fun to listen to someone who’s an expert both in his subject matter and at teaching.

Changing subjects, I can’t wait to get back to Kabul and then to get to Pakistan and then to get home. I miss home like I haven’t before. This trip isn’t long but being in P-i-K (they call it PLK here for some reason) makes it feel longer. Simply put, because of security and because I don’t speak the language, there’s not much to do here other than work, watch TV, read, and chat. The TV I talked about in my last post, work is okay but you can’t do it all day, reading is lovely but if I read all weekend I’ll finish my books* and then be screwed and my chatting partners are limited. Kelly and Beth are nice but decades older than I am. Tameeza doesn’t live at the guest house, Hanif isn’t here yet and everyone else in the guest house has limited or no English. Maybe Hanif will know more to do around here. I should have brought some playing cards...note to self.

Tameeza, being a woman, is even more limited than I am. Beth, being a woman and being white, may be even more limited. All that aside, I can totally imagine living out here or someplace like it, given an interesting and challenging enough job and a few people to socialize with. It’s an adventure and a challenge and that still appeals to me in a way it probably won’t in ten years. It’s good to push myself because I think my natural tendency is to not do that. It’s the same thing with the dunking.**

I leave next Wednesday, which means five more full days here, two of which will be taken up entirely by the workshop, one of which will be entirely workshop prep and one of which will be a weekend-type day, I think. Wednesday will be 5-9 hours in the car, then a meeting at AKFA. Thursday will be probably catching up on stuff that doesn’t get done the first three days of next week. Friday will be more in-depth discussions with Tameeza. Saturday will be flying to Pakistan. Pakistan will mean a trip to the field -- fingers still crossed for the heli and Gilgit -- and the final countdown to home. Also the Serena. And then the long trip home.

That makes it all sound a lot shorter. Home two weeks from today.

On the other hand, my initial few days of existential stress, compounded by jet lag and shitty nights of sleep, has abated and I’m glad I’m here. Tameeza does needs help because she has far too much to do -- she’s doing two people’s jobs, which I didn’t realize before I got here -- and I can, if nothing else, make sure Kelly and Beth are on track with expectations. My trip report this time around is going to be a lot more substantial than the previous two. If I can actually get this stuff done with Beth, if Tameeza and I can realign the budget and the work plan and see how to line up the M&E plan with the work plan, if Nadeem and Karim and I can finish the budget realignment and possible NCE prep in Pakistan, then by golly I will have accomplished a lot.

*I already finished Illuminations. My thoughts: Beautiful but about 80% of it went over my head. Too many people are seriously, academically obsessed with Rimbaud for there not to be depth there, but I just didn’t get a lot of it. Same goes for Devils, for that matter. 300 pages in, as I’ve already told most of the readership of this blog, I simply didn’t care about any of the characters or what was going to happen to them. Maybe I’ll come back to it later in the year but god it was just a slog. Funnily enough, now that I’m thinking about it, I want to pick it up again.

The other books I brought along are the previously discussed Morning and Evening Talk, which continues to be lovely and will bear re-reading if I run out of reading material, and The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. Quite looking forward to that.

**Which is obviously suffering more than anything else as a result of this trip. I will come home weaker than I left and have to accept the setback. Other than bodyweight stuff, I can’t do anything out here. My diet is less than ideal. I’ll probably lose weight, i.e. muscle mass. There’s nowhere to practice jumping so whatever meager progress I’ve made at RFD and movement pattern learning will regress. All that sucks. But I am pleased with myself for not giving up, despite the excruciating slowness of progress at the best of times and the periodic extended setbacks caused by trips. Just reinforces my resolve to work even harder and better, when I get home, toward my random goal. I will fucking get there.