Saturday March 10

I had trouble sleeping and got up at 6:30. Breakfast was the best free hotel breakfast I’ve ever had. Fried rice, yogurt, fruit, noodles, fresh juice, lean beef bacon and chicken sausages (yet more signs that we were in the Muslim world).

We got a shuttle to the hotel and got a UN humanitarian aid flight to Kabul. The flight was only about 2.5 hours. We were served an odd meal of whole eggs cooked in a middle eastern meat and bread crust. Of all the flights this would have been the one to be by the window…but I wasn’t. I did get to see some of the mountains from my seat, though as they peaked above the clouds. They were very dramatic. Afghanistan could have an amazing tourist industry if they hadn’t been one of the world’s most violent places for the last 30 years.

The airport was rustic and customs took a while. We had to fill out a form that never got used and John smiled and said ‘welcome to Afghanistan.’ We had another handler who took us to our ride. It was 3 Toyota land cruisers with armed soldiers. We put on body armor and helmets and drove about 20 minutes to Quelaa house, the Corps of Engineers compound. Everyone knew and like John there, but one guy was particularly friendly and took over our processing. He worked for USAID as well as the Corps and was John’s roommate during his last deployment. Dan had pulled some strings and gotten us an apartment in the USAID building. This meant no 6-to-a-cold-tent accommodations. After being at Quelaa house for 20 minutes, I was glad I was leaving. It had a very military feel to it. Uniforms were worn all the time and people were giving orders. USAID is much more laid back and more my style.

USAID is an interesting animal. They spend a very small portion of their money on water. We are here under power generation money. All of the hydraulics we are going to teach are supposed to focus on dam operation. The other thing I noticed is they do a lot of dam and coal burning work. The competing objectives of environment and development come together in their organization and environment gets the crap kicked out of it…and I’m not sure I disagree.

We went to dinner and I had lasagna, chicken soup and kiwis. John and Dan did a lot of reminiscing and busting on each other, but I started fading fast. We got home, I wrote a little and went to sleep at 10.

Tuesday March 26

I had trouble sleeping last night again so I went out and read on the marble steps again. I finished Descent into Hell. It was pretty good. The last 40 pages flew by. I had heard Charles Williams’ books were among the most difficult of the Inkling’s. It was ponderous at times but there was a lot of really interesting stuff. Today I started Robinson Caruso. It was written in the mid 1600’s and the guy who is responsible for First Things said he has read it many times and found it nourishing.

We got up at 5:30 to catch the army caravan at the Corps of Engineer’s facility that we were supposed to stay at. We showered, ate and made it there by 6:20. I don’t like it there. People were barking orders. It is just not a good place to be a civilian. We drove to the airport in a conspicuous, swerving, 5 land rover caravan with plenty of guns. John and I agreed that if we can bypass the Corps next time for even the few services they provided us (ride to and from the airport) it would be better. I’ll take less conspicuous over heavily armed every time.

The airport took a while but John positioned us in the waiting area to be early in line to board the plane. This was important because it was open seating. I got a window. But I didn’t utilize it for the first little while since I crashed while we were waiting to take off. I am continually impressed with my ability to sleep through take off and landing. This is one of the unexpected things I learned during my phd (courtesy of all the trips to Vicksburg), not unlike the most efficient way to count sand.

When I did wake up we were in the middle of the mountains. They are the Hindu Kush mountains and run down the center of the country northeast-southwest like a spine. They were pretty impressive and I could see the late snow pack I taught about. After we cleared the mountains, I also saw why it was important. They country is a vast desert apart from some thin corridors of green and civilization surrounding the rivers composed of snowmelt. The purpose of the dams we are training them to manage is to store the snowmelt and release it slowly through the summer in order to provide a steady supply of water throughout the year instead of a flood in the spring and nothing the rest of the year. It is really no wonder that hydraulic engineering is in this people’s lore.

When we left the river valleys behind we trade the desolation of a nevadaesqu dessert for the fist actual, sand ocean desert I have ever seen. The sand was reddish and started abruptly. The surface was covered with dunes such that, at flight elevation, it looked like the drained “after” of one of my fine sand flume experiments. Occasionally, volcanics jutted out dramatically, their dark and jagged forms the only variance in the red, undulating surface.

I didn’t do much cool in Dubai. We got in at 12:30 (customs took an hour) and I could have changed some money and gone somewhere…but I was tired, had a 2:35am flight. So I napped and worked out and ate at the hotel restaurant. The restaurant was as nice at the hotel. I got the only Middle Eastern thing on the menu which came with like 6 different Middle Eastern style meat. It was very good – and I got them to bring me a side of naan too, which might have been the best part. I can’t believe that on my way home, in a hotel restaurant, I ate my first Middle Eastern meal. The guy we had dinner with was going to Afghanistan to advise the new AID engineering chair (who we were really impressed with). He was talking about creating a position that would be essentially a technical advisory position within the Afghani government that he said someone like me from HEC might be really appropriate for and that it is the kind of position that you could bring a family with you. It sounded interesting. It seems like there will be more short term and long term opportunities. I’m pretty interested

The Dubai to Frankfurt short overnight was a slog of a red eye...but I felt ok afterwards. I slept quite a bit. I was a little embarrassed to be an American because the section of the airport with outgoing flights to the US had extra security and everyone got frisked. Not very friendly. Now the Frankfurt to San Francisco flight. 12 hours. I think the last flight I had that was that long was Amsterdam to Singapore when I went to Nepal.