Saturday March 24

This morning I left to meet my car and the gate was buzzing. There were at least 20 men in different uniforms with guns and a hummer with a gunner at alert. Busses of Afghans were being dropped of. I was told I couldn’t go anywhere. I got in touch with the motor pool and he said they were just having trouble getting to me and before long I got picked up. Apparently it is ‘education day,’ in Kabul and President Karzai was visiting a school right next to our compound. People say it is so safe in Kabul because the warlords consider Karzai the warlord of this city and so they don’t come on his turf…but that his power does not extend into the outer regions.

I noticed recently that you can see the ancient wall rising above the crest of a mountain from the south gate of our compound. I’m not a big fan of the plan to put a wall up between us and Mexico. It seems like a quixotic task, as the ancients (and the Germans) have demonstrated.

I had much more luck talking with my driver this morning. A couple of descent questions and he talked the whole time. He was the oldest of 9 and so he stayed in Kabul during all of the wars to support his family. He has been to the US 2 times with the US government. The first time was to Alabama. He said he got back and told his friends America was just like rural Afghanistan. The second time he went to DC and said he basically understood what all the fuss was about. He can’t read though his English is quite good. He said the worst part about not being able to read was to not be able to keep the mullahs accountable. During the war all the combatants were claiming to be Allah’s righteous warriors. He wanted to be able to study for himself.

The class started pretty well, though of the four lectures I had hopped to finish today, I finished precisely 80% of one by lunch. Early on I made a mistake with one of the plots and one of the professors called me on it. So I was feeling like I had lost some credibility which is always tough for me to bounce back from. Also, the two professors still coming (which are very gracious, thankful and kind – not as bristly as the professor who stopped coming) seem to both be hydraulics professor so they had more to say today. Usually, I would talk, my translator would translate and then one or both of the professors would say something (and then sometimes the translator would say more). I generally thought it was good though. The students are eager but at a level where careful explanation and repetition could be useful. The professor I have talked the most with, and that did the most explaining, approached me afterwards. He studied at an English high school and his English is very good. He said I did a very good job of explaining the concepts, but that the translator had forgotten stuff. We agreed that it must be really hard to be a translator and remember everything.

Early in the afternoon my translator got a cell phone call and took it. It was even a little more awkward than a student taking a cell phone call in class – but I’m being a cultural learner. Afterwards the minister of water showed up and talked to someone. After that I noticed that there was a lot of chattering going on and that I was being ignored. Then the translator said, ‘One of our co-workers, a very close friend to most, just lost his mother. Many of us are very upset and are thinking of leaving.’ I encouraged them to do so, still being a cultural learner, and over half the class left. The translator stayed, but he will go to the ceremony tomorrow. My seven day RAS class is getting the crap kicked out of it. We’ll be lucky to do one workshop.

Another thing about the cell phones. I think it is a really interesting bit of technology to introduce into a relationship based culture like this. My understanding of middle eastern culture is that relationship trumps schedule and people fully concentrate on the relationship they are tending to at the moment. Introduce a cell phone that allows some relationships to trump others, and it makes for a very interesting dynamic. Students are always taking calls in class and chatting.

On the way home I got Sha Mamood (a fun name to say), an animated driver. It didn’t take much to get him talking. He pointed out historic and interesting buildings on the way. He worked with a de-mining operation before driving for AID like a couple of the other drivers. He spoke so poorly of the Taliban. Granted, many of my interactions have been with government and US employees, but none of them have had much good to say about the Taliban. He said he saw one beat a woman, to which he said, “That is just not acceptable in our culture.” Ours either Sha Mamood.

He said that houses that sold for $10,000 during the war are going for $300,000 US dollars. What!? Apparently the area we drive through used to be the upscale part of town but it was totally annihilated during the war(s). Now its really popular. Um…still looks pretty third worldy.

Dan just called. Jason and Beth are in and should be at the compound in a few minutes.