Tuesday was the official opening of the accounting course, though we’d been in session for a few days. The Chancellor of the university and several other university people were to attend a presentation ceremony along with the students, the instructors, and some US government people. Mary and I met with the Chancellor beforehand—he’s actually just occupying the seat for Ashraf Ghani, this really impressive Afghan fellow who was being mentioned as a potential successor to Koffi Annan. Anyway this current fellow is a mountain of a man, not too concerned with his physical appearance (unshaven and poorly dressed—on the day of the ceremony!). His droopy eyes and slow speech seemed to indicate a general lack of effort, though his huge meaty hand seemed like it could crush mine if he cared to be bothered about it.
Mary and I met with him before the ceremony and had ideas about mentioning how we need the classroom carpeted and the bathrooms cleaned. But I think we both ended up being a bit intimidated and could only manage small-talk niceties. Haroun, the Afghan-American fellow with Pragma who had been here with us for a few days, prepared some background information for the Chancellor so he could deliver a speech with some kind of substance during the ceremony. Instead, the Chancellor just read both pages in their entirety—droning on and on as people lined up photos and politely didn’t eat the cookies that had been carefully arranged on plates all around the u-shaped tables. He finished talking, turned the mic over to the minister of education, grabbed a cookie and tea, and leaned back to bask in the glow of the people gathered all around for this ceremony. The fact is that the university created several barriers to the project going forward, but I had the sense that now it was going forward they wanted to stake out as much of the credit as possible.
USTDA is the government body that provided the funds for the program, but they didn’t send a rep to the ceremony. Instead, three USAID guys came and one of them delivered some words about how important accounting is and how all the students would get jobs upon completing the course. Everyone filtered out soon afterward, and it was all I could do to stuff a couple cookies down the pie hole before heading over to the library building where our classroom is located. Someone cut the ribbon and then they got the heck out of there—I can’t really blame them, it’s cold!
Mary and I met with him before the ceremony and had ideas about mentioning how we need the classroom carpeted and the bathrooms cleaned. But I think we both ended up being a bit intimidated and could only manage small-talk niceties. Haroun, the Afghan-American fellow with Pragma who had been here with us for a few days, prepared some background information for the Chancellor so he could deliver a speech with some kind of substance during the ceremony. Instead, the Chancellor just read both pages in their entirety—droning on and on as people lined up photos and politely didn’t eat the cookies that had been carefully arranged on plates all around the u-shaped tables. He finished talking, turned the mic over to the minister of education, grabbed a cookie and tea, and leaned back to bask in the glow of the people gathered all around for this ceremony. The fact is that the university created several barriers to the project going forward, but I had the sense that now it was going forward they wanted to stake out as much of the credit as possible.
USTDA is the government body that provided the funds for the program, but they didn’t send a rep to the ceremony. Instead, three USAID guys came and one of them delivered some words about how important accounting is and how all the students would get jobs upon completing the course. Everyone filtered out soon afterward, and it was all I could do to stuff a couple cookies down the pie hole before heading over to the library building where our classroom is located. Someone cut the ribbon and then they got the heck out of there—I can’t really blame them, it’s cold!
That night was scheduled to be Haroun’s last night in Kabul before returning to the US, so we went to dinner at Samarqand, which is a pretty nice place serving western as well as central asian dishes. We also learned from some fliers posted around that they have salsa night on Wednesdays, which are supposedly pretty good. Haroun’s cousins were also at dinner and it was pleasant to relax and have some “normal” conversation that wasn’t about accounting or doing charades in an attempt to express oneself to speakers of other languages.
Below are photos of the classroom. It looks nice, with computers all over--technologically advanced and whatnot. Thing is, the computers and big flat screens are often in the way during lecture or when we're working problems--the keyboards take up desk space when students are trying to take notes and the flat screens block students from seeing the dry-erase board. You also can't see the absolute mess of wires underneath each table--the guy that networked the computers didn't map network drives to the main machine in the other room, didn't install the printer on all machines, and didn't get all the copies of MS Office registered. So in teh end, the computers may be more of a hassle than their worth... You can also see that the students keep their coats on during class because the room is quite cold.
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