Today was frustrating. We went to AID with the intent to hash out the MOU as much as possible and it was basically a massive waste of time. I'm going to stop myself there because holy shit I wanted to scream.
The rest of the day was nice enough. MJ left and RK, Lydia, Basharat, and I spent a couple of hours trying to finalize the budget. Ended up passing it on to BH and hopefully he'll get us a final version by tomorrow. RK and I will be on our way out anyway but with any luck we'll be able to keep things on track for the Friday deadline for re-submission of the application. Looking like probably not, though.
Dinner with the aforementioned people plus Akhtar was really nice. We went to Taverna and who should be there but Tameeza! She was meeting up with what seemed to grow into a ladies' group of some kind.
Also there was a suicide attack on the National Directorate of Security right as we were arriving to the US embassy around noon today. NDS is a bit less than a mile from where we were. The boom was loud but we were unaffected except that we had to stay inside for a while (which we were going to do anyway) and one of our interlocutors excused himself for a few minutes to make sure his team was all safe. They were, of course, no one leaves the compound. On the way home from dinner we drove past the site and you could see the hole around the gate they'd targeted. Not sure whether anyone was killed apart from the attackers but lots of people were hurt by flying glass and stuff. We couldn't get back to the hotel after the attack because they closed off all the streets for a while, but everything is back to normal now.
Tomorrow will be a bit more fun, we have meetings with some of the agencies I don't know nearly as well, and then Focus in the afternoon, and then it's off the airport and home! Can't believe we've only been here 4.5 days.
The rest of the day was nice enough. MJ left and RK, Lydia, Basharat, and I spent a couple of hours trying to finalize the budget. Ended up passing it on to BH and hopefully he'll get us a final version by tomorrow. RK and I will be on our way out anyway but with any luck we'll be able to keep things on track for the Friday deadline for re-submission of the application. Looking like probably not, though.
Dinner with the aforementioned people plus Akhtar was really nice. We went to Taverna and who should be there but Tameeza! She was meeting up with what seemed to grow into a ladies' group of some kind.
Also there was a suicide attack on the National Directorate of Security right as we were arriving to the US embassy around noon today. NDS is a bit less than a mile from where we were. The boom was loud but we were unaffected except that we had to stay inside for a while (which we were going to do anyway) and one of our interlocutors excused himself for a few minutes to make sure his team was all safe. They were, of course, no one leaves the compound. On the way home from dinner we drove past the site and you could see the hole around the gate they'd targeted. Not sure whether anyone was killed apart from the attackers but lots of people were hurt by flying glass and stuff. We couldn't get back to the hotel after the attack because they closed off all the streets for a while, but everything is back to normal now.
Tomorrow will be a bit more fun, we have meetings with some of the agencies I don't know nearly as well, and then Focus in the afternoon, and then it's off the airport and home! Can't believe we've only been here 4.5 days.
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