Sunday March 11

Slept fitfully until 3:30 then finally got up, showered, and took my laptop and books to a patio behind our apartment. Its cold, I can see my breath, and it is raining a little. I am beginning to think that cold tolerance is one of my thyroid symptoms (this turned out to be true). It just doesn’t bother me.

I have been thinking a lot about Nepal. It has been exactly 10 years as evidenced by having to get my passport renewed. I left Nepal feeling that I needed to get something that poor Asians could use. And here I am, invited to a country I have cared about for a while to share the things I have spent 10 years learning. But it is too short a stay to offer the holistic package I’ve wanted to bring. I think Afghanistan would be a great place for us if it wasn’t for all the fighting. It makes me think Pakistan might work out well for us.

Its 5 am and I can hear the call to prayer through the renewed light rain. Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all.
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We watched NCAA basketball during breakfast. The time zone has advantages. Our main contact, Dan, here is a Wisconsin fan so I doubt I will be missing any big games.

Security seems to be really good in Kabul. Apparently there are some streets people keep off, but otherwise it’s really pretty safe. Most of the USAID folks don’t even wear their body armor or helmet when in transit (not me though…I’m all about my body armor when advised).

Today is a work day but the class doesn’t start until tomorrow. We had a meeting about the
Kajakai project and spent much of the morning talking about it and chasing data. It is a pretty cool project that was supposed to be built in ’79 before the Soviets invaded. Then we spent some time working on our lectures as we waited for several hours for our contact who supposedly printed out the student notes…nope. We spent the afternoon preparing the binders of notes for the students rather than prepping the lectures themselves. It was pretty stressful. At one point I had broken all three copiers owned by the Corps and USAID.

We worked a solid 12 hour day today. It seems fairly common around here, but it was rough given the jet lag and three nights of rocky sleep. It has been a rough time to give up soda for lent. It is free and I could use it. But I face my jet lag unmedicated and feel oddly heroic for it. Once in a while I use the cravings to meditate on the darkness of my unregenerate life and the longing for Jesus to make things right in the world and in my heart.

I think that this kind of work attracts odd people. Three separate discussions over meals today were about a friend made in Afghanistan who got divorced. I find some of them a little abrasive.

It’s been raining today in Kabul. It’s nice, but as Bilbo would say ‘I want to see the mountains again.”

My body armor makes it difficult to get in and out of vehicles. I kind of have to awkwardly roll out of my seat. It made me admire my pregnant wife.

The USAID house is empty. Part of me is sad. It would have been interesting to hang out with the notoriously bohemian crew. Part of me is relived to just lay here in my bed without social pressure to interact with high energy do gooders (and I do mean do gooders in the most bureaucratic sense possible).

I found out today that the embassy stocks a hard liquor store. I thought it was illegal to consume alcohol here but apparently it only is if you get your paycheck from the Department of Defense. I expressed my surprise to Dan who replied “USAID folks couldn’t do what they do without several drinks every night.”

The embassy café was selling candy bars made in Iran. This was strangely hysterical to those of us at dinner.

I seem to be listing random 1-3 sentence thoughts rather than journaling. I’ll blame the 12 hour jet lag

It has started to ever so slightly snow.

Monday March 19

John took off at 6:30 to work at AID. I got up around 6 and tried to call my wife…and got through. After being cut off after 30 seconds, we talked for 9 minutes and 48 seconds. It was good to hear her voice and flirt a little ‘in person.’

I got a moterpool driver at 8 for the first time by myself. I tried to make small talk with Abdul like John does, but couldn’t think of questions after, ‘are you from Kabul’ and ‘Does it usually rain this much this time of year.’

I got to the ministry and after waiting to be let in (happens every day) I tried to load RAS onto some of the machines. This went poorly. There were problems with the install file on the computers. I often get e-mails from internationals that say, ‘your program won’t install.’ Now I believe them. The computers are so old, unstable and virus ridden that it could be anything causing the problem.

Then I spent the morning reviewing the workshops step by step as they followed along, at their request. This only left 4.5 days for hydraulics after the holiday (we originally gave it 7 days) which we planned to start after lunch. Then my phone rang. It was John. There had been a suicide attack. They were bringing me in for at least the rest of the day. Down to 4 days for hydraulics. I was shuttled to the CAFÉ (which I found out stands for Compound Across From the Embassy – I thought it was weird that the whole compound should be named for its small cafeteria). They are in lock down so I could be here for a while. I still think it is really safe. Jalalabad road was the culprit yet again. I was very far away. I would have felt very comfortable just teaching the rest of the afternoon.

Wisconsin lost (as did Texas, my other finals team). So much for missing Badger greatness over here. They were playing the end of the game time delay while I was running at the gym. It was cruel. I knew they lost but every time it looked like they were out of it Kamron Taylor would do something heroic. They interviewed him yesterday while he was studying and he said it was hard to study because if they loose the next game his ‘career’ is over. I must be wild to peak in what you want to do at like 20. Those guys who don’t go on the NBA will never be the kind of superstars they are now again. I wasn’t ready to be done with this team. They were really likable.

So it seems that we are on lockdown tomorrow because of the bomb. It appears that it was a very targeted attack on the ambassadors convoy, such that the only way they could have known about it was with inside information. That is why everyone is being cautious. I say just let me take a cab. We are down to 4 day for RAS…now 3. What I can accomplish that is worthwhile in 3 days is questionable…and now I am off for 4 days. I say off, we are actually on duty all days but Friday. I am not going into AID though. I am squeezed into a cubicle with John there and it is really distracting. I will set up at the kitchen table here and catch up on some flume stuff that has been on the back burner for far too long. It will be a bit like an unexpected 4 day sabbatical to focus on my PhD stuff. Still, I was working so hard and putting in so many hours that I was going to ask Jeff for another day of comp. Now I think it’s awkward because I am getting 3 days of flume work in on AID’s $.

It is a good thing Fenske didn’t come. Today would have been his first day teaching. It would have been a half day and then we would have crossed town after a bombing only to be off 4 days before we taught 3. It would have been pretty disturbing and it wouldn’t have been worth it for the 2 - 3 lectures he would have ended up giving. Actually, I am feeling really confident in the lectures. I could have done it pretty easily.

I had another story idea today. It has been about 15 years since I have tried to develop and record story ideas. But I thought it would be interesting to explore the life of a man who decided not to have an affair and went to a monastery for a while to ‘rehab’ from an addiction to himself. I think the space of clawing back from the brokenness of an affair that didn’t even happen and the realization that chemical addicts are not the only ones that require rehab from inward focus would be interesting to explore. I’m not sure why I am all of a sudden interested in this again. I think it is connected to thinking about re-exploring composition and guitar. I want to create (or co-create as the case actually would be) as an act of worship and cultural engagement. I think this is connected to the last story idea I had, where the guy woke up each day in a life formed by different choices. I still can’t surrender to a life as an engineer.