Monday March 12

It has been five days since we started out and finally we are going to do what we came for. We grabbed a substantial breakfast and some lunch snacks and drove across the city to the ministry of water. The Ministry is in a big building. The halls are concrete; cold dark and dirty. When we got there at 8:45 people were streaming in.

We had planned to teach two classes per day, an advanced class in the afternoon and a beginning class in the morning to a total of 20 people. As the classroom began to fill however, we realized that something was up. The plan had not been communicated. Everyone showed up for the Advanced class. (Of course we didn’t know this and taught the advanced material to everyone). The class had mostly ‘project engineers,’ some water management, two professors and two journalists (there to write a story about us). We received a long introduction that could have been anything (it was in dari). I introduced the class and then John gave the fist lecture. We were told everyone spoke English and that we didn’t need a translator. This was not the case. So after each very simple slide one of the professors stood and talked in his language for 5 to 10 minutes. I think this was helpful but it wasn’t our class. He talked to me before the class about how we should have taught at the University and I think he may have felt we were stepping on his turf as the senior hydraulic expert in the city. But he finally gave this up and John and I were able to give our lectures. I believe that some didn’t understand and one of our helpers it trying to scare up a translator.

We then found out that none of the students knew there were two classes (a morning advanced and an afternoon beginners). By the end of the class they all seemed to understand…but then they all showed up for the afternoon. So I gave a new lecture. It turns out that all of the students can come morning and afternoon…so I have to redo the class with about 30% more material. It is stressful, but they are all eager students. It makes me glad I can give them more information.

In all the class went quite well. My lively/humorous teaching style is not really an asset (I need to talk slowly and they either don’t think I’m funny or think it is rude to laugh at me) but my knowledge of the subject matter is. Most of the material is new to most of them.

After the class it took 2 hours for our ride to arrive. There are frustrating aspects to the culture here. But the clouds began to break and we saw the bases of some mountains. Since the ride to the ministry was across town I got to see much more of Kabul today. Goat herds in the streets, houses built high into the mountains, raw sewage etc… I am surprised how much like Nepal it is…less honking though. In the half hour ride my driver only honked 3 times. In Nepal it would have been 20+. The burkas are also a new twist.

They are building 2 new big mosques between our quarters and the Ministry. It is finally peaceful enough here to do major work like that. There is no doubt that the majority of Afghanis are better off today than when the Taliban owned 90% of the country.

It’s going to be another 12+ hour day.

The Iranian candy bars were removed from the shelves today.
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It is funny to me that I brought so much work to do in the evenings thinking, ‘I’ll be in Afghanistan, the classes are only six hours, after a little lecture prep I’ll have lots of time to count sand and read journals.’ I can hardly find time to e-mail my wife. I steal moments throughout the day to write this. Tomorrow is my most difficult lecture. Hopefully it will slow down after that.

Wednesday we conduct our first workshop. The computer situation is a little suspect. We only succeeded in loading the program on 2 of 5 machines we tried and when I ran a demo HMS crashed. This is really the last hurdle we need to cross.

All of the computers are infested with multiple nasties and none of them have virus software. I wonder if the people who write viruses understand that they have a far more debilitating effect on the developing world’s cyber infrastructure than America or Europe.