a funny realization

MJ and RK both emailed back with comments on the draft I finished and sent around 12:15 this morning. I appreciate the quick turnaround and it means I can get stuff to the teams here before I embark on the journey home. It does mean that I have to work now, but that's okay. I'm having a bit of trouble focusing. After hitting "publish" on my last post, I watched an entire 12.5km biathlon race (just over 30 minutes), attempted to nap (just over 30 minutes) and now have spent the past hour editing the draft in extremely distracted fashion. Many breaks to check Facebook, read articles, check the start times of the NFC and AFC championship games (if I'm awake at 1 AM and can find a decent feed I'll be able to watch kickoff of the former), read other articles, check Facebook again, etc. Chalk it up to a week straight of work and boredom: my mind is a-wandering.

Back to work in a second, but I wanted to add a funny observation I made this afternoon that had eluded me until today: Almost no one here wears glasses. I took my contacts out and switched to glasses before leaving for the museum earlier and the act of putting them on alerted me to the fact that pretty much no one on the street, none of the staff of the hotel (except the manager, who's Pakistani-Canadian), none of my Tajik colleagues - nobody wears them. It's curious. Too bad I'm leaving so soon or I'd ask someone here about it.

museum of national antiquities

Well, I just figured out what's on the agenda for tomorrow. Apparently the Museum of National Antiquities is a treasure and not to be missed, and it's around the corner from the Serena. Or so says the internet. We'll see what actually happens tomorrow. But now I've got a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Cool.

UPDATE: Sunday afternoon - 19 January

The Museum of National Antiquities absolutely ruled. I was the only visitor there when I arrived. You have to take your shoes off or wear plastic booties to walk around, I guess to save on vacuuming costs. It's a pretty big place and mostly unheated, and they're very electricity-conscious. A young woman stayed in range of me the whole time, turning on lights in rooms ahead and turning them off behind me. She sang Koranic verses quietly to herself pretty much the whole time I was on the ground floor. The museum is medium-sized, certainly not small: a main hall with a little gift shop on one side and then five or five-and-a-half display rooms with many cases in each. There are thousands of artifacts on display, organized roughly chronologically. The ground floor starts about 4500 BCE and works its way clockwise to the 8th century CE, then things pick up in the 9th century CE on the second floor and end about the 15th century.

The curation is a bit strange: They don't seem to be very discriminating about what goes in the cases. If we have twenty little clay horse figurines that are all more or less the same, what the hey, let's put 'em all in there. The displays can also be quite crude. The jewelry and coins and other small items are mounted on rough blocks of packing styrofoam, some of the pottery is pretty roughly plastered together, and a few of the pieces have permanent marker right on them!

But there's also a lot of interesting information, some of it even in English, and there's some pretty arresting stuff. For example:
1. A complete human skeleton, partially unburied but otherwise in dirt, found with bracelets and other jewelry on in a tomb in the southern part of the country
2. A tiny bronze statue from ca. 300 BCE of a man playing a flute on a small pedestal, which the wall copy explained was an altar to the Marsiya, a Greek river god.
3. Many, many other items from a fort and temple that housed #2, called Takht-e Sangin. The temple was dedicated to Oxus, god of the Amu Darya River. There were beautifully carved bone and ivory flutes and scabbards next to a bunch of the nails and door knockers from the ruins. Central Asia spent a good chunk of its history as a stage in a major trade route, and the syncretism between the Bactrian and Greek cultures 2000+ years ago (and later with Hindu/Buddhist and finally Islamic cultures) is obvious.
4. Speaking of Hindu/Buddhist, there's a huge statue of Shiva, missing the top of its torso and head. Probably seven feet across at the base.
5. On the stairs to the second floor, there's a life-sized statue of a prone lion that used to have a goddess sitting on it. In her place there's a weirdly primitive painting of what she must have looked like, together with the rest of the lion.
6. Beautiful wall paintings from thousand-year-old buildings depicting scenes of people hunting and relaxing.
7. Black and dark grey toaster-oven-sized stones covered in etched Arabic script.

But the coup de grace is the statue of Buddha. In the first room to the left after you climb to the second floor, it is literally stunning - it stopped me in my tracks. The Buddha, reclining with his eyes closed and a peaceful look on his face, is 42 feet long and nine feet high at the shoulders. He is beautifully rendered, with supple folds in the fabric of his tunic and carefully carved hair. The statue was discovered in the '60s and finally restored by the government of Tajikistan, together with ACTED and some other international experts, about 12 years ago. It's all the more breathtaking because the room in is itself only about 50 feet long and 12 feet high. The statue fills and dominates the space. It is awesome.

So I feel like I got my 20 somoni's worth (about $4).

Now I'm back in the Serena, thinking I was going to be clever and download a movie to watch, but it's going to take longer to download than I have hours left in this room. Some stuff at work blew up at the end of this past week and continues to explode today. I won't go into detail, none of it is directly related to me, but it's quite embarrassing for a number of the people involved.

Guess I'll read a bit, maybe take a nap, go to the gym, who knows what-all. Pack, of course. My flight's tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM, and 22 hours and change later I'll land at 6:45 PM. The strange miracle of rapid intercontinental travel. 

not writing, cobbling together

The boss-man is an atrocious writer, without any sense of flow or organization. He can think through an argument well enough and what we're trying to put together isn't that complicated, but his written word vomit is pretty terrible, even when edited. This is particularly irritating when it replaces something coherent that I'd written previously.

Also, the worst part about working alone in a faraway land on the weekend is that there's no one to complain to. Hence the whine above, for which I apologize.

writing day

Caught Claire before she fell asleep this morning (her night, obviously), which was good. Breakfast with Alim, a bit of lazing around, and now I'm going to head downstairs and get to writing and editing. Hopefully this doesn't take more than four hours, but we'll see.

There was a major attack on a restaurant in Kabul last night. It's called Taverna; I've eaten there six or seven times. A suicide bomber blew himself up out front and then two accomplices sneaked in through the back door and started shooting people. Fourteen or more killed, mostly expats, unsure how many wounded. It's always sad when people are killed violently - this is no more sad than a wedding party being killed by a drone strike - but this is scarier and hits closer to home than other attacks because it's a place I'm well familiar with, that I have memories at. It's where the crazy dog lady who was feeding the strays food from the restaurant came over to our table and talked for forty-five minutes unbroken about the problems dogs face in Kabul and her work trying to get them adopted by Americans and other expats leaving Kabul for home. No one I know was at the restaurant during the attack, thank goodness.

That "thank goodness" always gives me pause. I know intellectually that the lives of my friends and colleagues are no more or less valuable than the lives of people I don't know, but obviously the death of someone I know would affect me much more deeply than a stranger's. Nothing unusual in that. But it still seems odd that it even occurs to me to say "thank goodness" in the aftermath of mass murder.

Anyway, on to work, time to close down the internet browser and buckle down. Here goes.

suprise visitors

Last night Yodgor invited me to dinner at the Chinese restaurant in the Hotel Tajikistan, which is right across the street from Rudaki Park. I walked into the weirdly spacious but low-ceilinged hotel lobby and who should be there but Dr. Najmiddin and Romin, the regional manager and deputy regional manager of AKF in Afghan Badakhshan. I'd met them both last year at the start-up workshop in Kabul. Lovely guys, and Romin has one of the greatest voices I've ever heard in person. Matter of fact, another top-ten voice, Shodmon, works for us here in Tajikistan. But Romin's voice is top-two for me. Deep but with unexpectedly high overtones and incredibly musical. The word mellifluous comes to mind. The food was whatever but it was great to sit around with those guys and Yodgor (and a few others) and hear about what's going on, what the potential is for Badakhshan and the border areas.

This morning I panicked briefly when I woke up to an email that my ticket change had gone from $300 to $1400, but MJ approved the change anyway, so panic subsided. I've spent the day catching up on normal work and going over updates to the MIAD proposal with the health and rural development teams. Need to call my colleague at FMFB to get his updates and education will come in tomorrow, by early afternoon if I'm lucky. Tonight and tomorrow will be spent integrating everything, creating the summary budget, and combining all the backup information for the summary budget (each department or agency has its own way of breaking things down). I should be able to get that out tomorrow and then take Sunday mostly off. Home on Monday!

more on names

I had lunch with Daler from PE yesterday and in the car on the way to the restaurant I asked him about names. Tajiks have some of the best names I know of: Oistamo, Dilafruz, Mehrafruz, Malohat, Dilovar, Khudoberdi, etc. Apparently Daler means "brave and skillful," Oistamo means "gentle moon," Dilafruz means "lights up the heart," Mehrafruz means something like, "polite heart." Malohat Daler didn't know, he thought it was Arabic. Didn't get to ask about Dilovar or Khudoberdi. Or Hakimbek or Nazarbek.

Names are fun.

trueblood

One of the guys who was in our meeting with State/AID yesterday is the head of the economic growth office for USAID Central Asia. His last name is Trueblood. After the meeting, as we were making our way back out of the embassy, I asked him if he was, by any chance, Quaker. He smiled and said that no one had asked him that question in a long time, but no, he was not. A relative of his had done some genealogical research and done the whole family tree and he was clearly really interested by it. He said he'd read Elton Trueblood's book many years ago and while in grad school in Minnesota had seen Elton speak right before he (Elton) died. And he maintains Elton Trueblood's Wikipedia page.

He clearly could have kept going - and he was so warm about the whole thing that I'd have loved to stay and keep talking with him about it - but the train was leaving the station. Oh well. A funny and unexpected side story on an otherwise pretty businesslike week.

net neutrality

http://www.juancole.com/2014/01/ruling-endangers-internet.html

This is terrible, terrible news.

an early return?

Today was more meetings, as expected. We started with education at 8:30. Very uncomplicated. Then I had a break while the senior people went off and talked amongst themselves, then US Embassy for a meeting wit the Deputy Chief of Mission and some USAID colleagues. Very nice, everyone on board, hurray hurray. 

The US Embassy is a horror show, a caricature of itself. It's way out on the outskirts of town. It's behind a bunch of high walls and pylons and has its own service road. To get there by car you have to go through a gate, then zigzag through huge road blocks, then go through an airlock-style double gate set in a 20-foot double wall. And that's only if you're a fancy person with diplomatic privileges, which I was today courtesy of the group I was with. Commoners have to get out of their cars before the first gate and walk to a guardhouse, then turn in their passports, get scanned, have escorts come meet them, etc. It's all a bit ridiculous in a small, relatively peaceful and low-crime country like this one. And it sends a pretty clear message of "FUCK YOU STAY THE FUCK BACK." The forest of satellite dishes and radio antennas on the roof doesn't do much to help the image, either.

And the building itself is hideous, a kind of pale yellow block with a pale grey block rising up to make the top floor. It's four or five stories tall and pretty big - at least 200 people work there, I think. There are no windows above the ground floor, just openings that look like industrial vents. I'm sure they're bombproof and all that. What a joke. The British embassy has tight security but at least it's in town and blends in with its surroundings. The Turkish embassy is quite beautiful and catty-corner from the Serena. Oh well, we are special.

After the meeting everyone split off to do various things. Beate and I went for lunch, which was quite nice. We had Indian at the place on Rudaki Avenue, Salaam Namaste. Butter chicken and garlic naan, mmm. This afternoon more agency-by-agency meetings to talk about health, access to finance, and the AKF Afghanistan work in Takhar and Kunduz, which across the river from the new districts for AKF Tajikistan. The last one in particular was good because I had no idea what we were doing there! I've been so focused on Badakhshan (and Baghlan to a lesser extent) since I started at AKF that I barely know which other provinces we work in. 

One of the upshots of the State/AID meeting today is that our timeline is a bit slower than we thought: They've specifically asked us not to start working on a full proposal until their internal budget is set. Originally I'd planned to spend next week writing a full first draft of the main documents (technical narrative, budget, budget notes). But since that's not happening I'm going to cram several days' worth of meetings into two days and get a new concept note done by Saturday or Sunday and then head home on Monday. Not a done deal yet but things are moving that direction. Here's hoping, even though that means the next three days will suck on a grand scale!

Sorry for such a boring post, the fun stuff I've learned in the last couple of days don't bear posting online, even on an anonymous blog. Off to the gym now (holy crap it's 8:30) and then more emails and then bed. And dinner.

meetings

I'm wiped out so this will be short.

Last night I went down to the weird New Year's thing (remember, it was January 13th). It was loud and dissonant, at least to my jet-lagged ear, so I stayed approximately 20 seconds before retreating to my room and getting room service.

Today was meetings wall-to-wall and then a call and other work when I got back to the Serena. The meetings were mixed: encouraging in the morning with DFID (who aren't involved yet but sound very enthusiastic and also have a reasonable amount of funding they'd like to dedicate to our project) and less encouraging in the evening with USAID (who are involved and enthusiastic but strapped for cash in Tajikistan and unable to give us all that much). In between a useful meeting with our sister agencies all together, which spelled out in detail just how difficult it's going to be to pull this program together given budget constraints.

That's all for now, MJ leaves tomorrow so hopefully I'll have a bit more energy for a longer post tomorrow or Thursday night.

back in the (former) ussr

I have discovered the secret to sleeping while sitting up: sleep for four or four and a half hours over the course of 48. Apparently that'll really knock you out, even in the middle of the afternoon on a bumpy road.

The trip over was mostly fine, despite my inability to sleep more than the aforementioned four hours on the IAD-IST flight. I watched "The Prestige," which was pretty good, and "No Country for Old Men," and read a lot of Postwar. MJ was able to get me into the business class lounge at IST, which is a huge step up from waiting among the commoners. Free food, free wine, comfortable chairs, limited crowd, and an awesome grand player piano plinking out soothing tunes. Gotta try to get Star Alliance Gold status this year.

In contrast, the IST-DYU flight sucked. I was in a middle seat and there were some serious screamers nearby. Not a wink of sleep. And while Postwar continued to be good, I watched "A Good Day to Die Hard," which was a step down from the movies on the IAD-IST leg. Oh well, whine whine.

Tajikistan then lived up to its Soviet history at immigration. I got my visa easily enough but then walked back out of the consulate to a snaking, amorphous line leading up to a single immigration officer, who took an almost unbelievably long time with each person. I'm talking up to five minutes each. I ended up just giving up and getting in the citizens-only line, which had two (still quite slow) officers. No one batted an eye at that. On the plus side, I met a really cute family from North Carolina who are here with Global Partners, the same outfit that employs the couple I met at the Khorog Serena in November. It's the service arm of the Wesleyan church, which is apparently pretty dang evangelical, but none of the GP people I've met have said word one about "exalting Jesus Christ." They're here doing humanitarian work, whatever that means in a country that's not in a state of emergency. Maybe they're proselytizing, I don't know. They do seem quite dedicated. This couple has been here eight years with three kids, the oldest of whom might have been nine.

So while the it took well over an hour to get through the not-very-long line, and I was tired, it could have been worse. As a British guy who switched to the citizens-only line right after I did pointed out, the Tajiks may be slow but everyone is in pretty good spirits. No one cursing anyone out or yelling, just kind of patiently going through the motions.

After checking into the hotel I had about 45 minutes before MJ wanted me to meet him for breakfast. You may be surprised to learn that this was mild thrill: I fully expected to have to be ready right away and was prepared not to even check in. But I showered, brushed my teeth, lay down and quasi-slept for half an hour. Then Yodgor came, and Beate, and a guy named Alim who is quite strategically placed in the Network, if I may be so vague.

Breakfast over, we drove three hours or so to Qumsangir, a district on the Tajik-Afghan border. We visited with the first deputy governor of the district (like a Chief Administrative Officer at the county level in the States) and some other senior officials, saw what's planned to be a Free Economic Zone next to the Panj River, went to a kindergarten and grade school with a proud library of 403 (!) books (including one by MAPK TBEN, aka Mark Twain). We are spoiled indeed in the USA. Lunch was actually quite tasty: Plov (rice pilaf), fried dough thing stuffed with potato, black tea, and salad that you could not have paid me to eat because I'm not trying to start this trip off with diarrhea if I can avoid it. We had a moment of excitement when an electrical fire started up right outside the window next to our table.

After lunch we had one last stop, with the jamat. This was a funny event: Men trickled in over the course of the hour or so that we were there so that by the end there were probably 50 there. The only women were Beate, who was with us and is German, and a woman who is the district superintendent of schools. This was disappointing and a little weird. But the superintendent made up for it partially by dominating the meeting. The dynamic in the room was really interesting. I'm frankly a little too tired right now to get into it but I will try to get some reflection down tomorrow.

On the drive home, I slept for probably an hour and a half of the three hour drive. A good hour of it was solid, too, not in-and-out dozing. Now I'm back in the hotel, barely compos mentis enough to get this post out. Russia TV is on in the background, informing me of all of the Russians who have a good chance to medal at Sochi. I'm going to go to the gym to get a bit of blood flow going and to stretch well. There's an oddly-timed New Year's celebration going on in the main hotel restaurant, with live music. Guess I should at least check it out.

More mañana.

blood meridian

The language is beautiful but I found myself caring not even a tiny amount about any of the characters or what might happen to them. I may try to pick it up again later but for now I'm moving on.

books read 2014

From now, gonna list books I don't finish with as x.5. They won't count toward totals but it'll be interesting to see how many I start and put down.

0.5 Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy (partial)
1. Postwar, by Tony Judt
2. Stoner, by John Williams
3. The Giant, O'Brien, by Hilary Mantel
4. The Aleph, by Jorge Luis Borges
4.5. Selected Poems, by WH Auden (partial)
5. The Maker, by Jorge Luis Borges
6. The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt
7.5. The Call of Cthulu and Other Stories, by HP Lovecraft (partial)
7. Devil in the Grove, by Gilbert King
8. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
9. A Delicate Truth, by John Le Carre.
10. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, by bell hooks
11. A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin
12. The Gifts of the State and Other Stories: New Writing from Afghanistan, ed. Adam Klein
13. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Chandler
14. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky (ongoing serial, third time through to date and I skipped and skimmed a bit this time, counting as a full book because it's hundreds of thousands of words long by now)
15. Murphy, by Samuel Beckett
16. The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. LeGuin
17. God Loves, Man Kills, by Chris Claremont
18. Shadow and Claw, by Gene Wolf (this is technically two volumes -- The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator -- but they're bound together, so counting it as one)
19. I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, ed. Eliza Griswold
20. The Animal Family, by Randall Jarrell
21. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Alan Moore
22. The Map that Changed the World, by Simon Winchester (audiobook)
23. Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, trans. Philip Pullman
24. The Blood Telegram, by Gary Bass
25. Sword and Citadel, by Gene Wolf
25.5 Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon (partial)
26. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle
27. A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle
28. A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L'Engle
29. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, by Susan Sontag
30. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
31. In the Freud Archives, by Janet Malcolm
32. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
33. Notes from No Man's Land, by Eula Biss
34. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
35. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (second time)
36. O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather
37. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt