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.