he lead instructor in person for the first time this morning--she arrived late last night without my knowing because I was dead asleep. We all thought night landings weren't possible at Kabul Airport because it is strictly visual (no radar, etc.), but I guess we were wrong...We visited the university today and the drive is not short. Went there at 3 or so and returned at 4 and traffic held us up quite a bit. Sitting in traffic kind of makes me nervous. And of course there are street kids all over the place and that's sad. Haroun told me there are 30,000 street kids in Kabul (whose population is about 4 million). And it is darned cold out there these days--this is apparently the coldest winter since the 60's.
So tomorrow we begin to understand how daunting is the task. The classroom is decent, not great--the students will each be seated at a new computer, so that's a pretty good thing. We don't know how much English they will speak and there is no translator lined up right now. Hopefully things will go OK...
I'm nearly up to speed on sharing video here, so stay tuned. I have updated some old posts, so you might want to review them--I do hope to add some more commentary about Moscow if I get the chance. Please do feel free to leave comments--Claudia (US Mil, 1yr in Afghanistan), Ray (PhD poli sci), Jordan (PhD poli sci), Wyeth (US Mil, 3 tours Iraq), Chris (US Mil, 1 tour Iraq, MA Security Affairs), Nicole (State dept), whomever--if you've got some interesting insight, please don't hesitate.
I've posted some photos to flickr, primarily for the folks who were stuck in Baku with me. You can find them here.
We've had a few meals courtesy of the resident cook. Makes me feel a bit weird having this poor guy serve me--and he gets a bit wound up if you try to take care of things yourself. Aziz is from Afghanistan and is Hazara, which apparently means "thousand" in reference to the thousand men Gengis Khan left in Afghanistan after sweeping through--he looks quite Asian, so that seems to make some sense. Shy fellow and doesn't speak any English, so I'm trying to drop some of my phrases on him...
Last night I walked a couple blocks with Haroun (Afghan American who works for Pragma and is here for a few more days) to an Italian place. I was nervous. But our house is surrounded by World Bank houses, the Pakistani Embassy is nearby, as well as the US Embassy, so the area is really locked down. We walked by the HQ of DynaCorp, which is the private company that is in charge of training the Afghan police force, apparently. The guards there were very nice about pulling the barbed wire away to let us through... The restaurant was fairly busy, though the Croatian staff seemed like maybe they'd been enjoying the local hashish.
4 comments:
Great post I can almost picture it. I guess it's ALMOST like every other 3rd world country. Can't wait to hear about your students.
This is one crazy adventure! I love your comment "But our house is surrounded by World Bank houses, the Pakistani Embassy is nearby, as well as the US Embassy" -- I'm not sure if this denotes safety; seems sort of like pitching your tent in the Alaskan wilderness right next to somebody's meat locker...
Scott is as funny as you are. Where is his blog!?
I guess I hadn't thought about it that way--the embassies mainly mean lots of security guards. An attack, if there is one, will occurr at one of the hot spots for Westerners, or a crowded market, or they will just grab someone(s). With the news lately about Pakistan funding the Taliban, though, your point may be more prescient that you meant it to be...
Scott is funny--usually puts a good spin on things...I'll never forget after I found out about my disc herniation: "This definately sucks, there's no question about it, but think of it this way--it's an opportunity for a great comeback story."
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