Warm Welcome

Friday, I spent the morning with a gender consultant who has 12 years experience working in Afghanistan. The country director of my NGO arranged the meeting to give me an opportunity to network and ask questions about my career trajectory, opportunities, etc. . . It was really nice of Tilly to arrange the interview, but the woman really wasn't very helpful. She told me not to bother pursuing a career in Afghanistan (wasn't planning on it) because there are too many gender people here -- then she suggested I try Sudan. I could have come up with that on my own . . .

Later I met Nathan at a restaraunt down the street, where we talked about work. Eventually, Waise and his friend Sharna joined us. Sharna is an Australian NGO worker who was helping Waise conduct interviews for his documentary at the international military base (I guess the soldiers are pretty excited to talk to a woman). We shared baba ghanoush and humos and talked about various experiences in Kabul. Sharna's been here for about a month, and I guess her first night here a missile accidentally landed in the garden of their compound. Apparently Sharna has developed an amazing ability to sleep through anything -- she attributes it to 5 months in Morocco. This, combined with her jetlag, let her sleep right through the explosion. It wasn't until her roommate woke her up that she smelled the burning deisel and realized what was going on . . .

There were three stray missiles. One landed in a park, one landed in my County Director's friend's compound, and one landed in Sharna's compound. Nothing like a warm welcome. . .

Sharna was also telling us that she went to a party at the Italian embassy, which ended up getting busted by the police for the noise. She said the police entered the compound in the middle of a strip tease being done by the off duty Italian security guys on one of the balconies of the building. That couldn't have helped the reputation of foreign workers in Afghanistan. . .

*** Blurry picture from Kabul. I haven't been able to get many good ones from the moving car yet.

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I haven't really been talking about the security situation here, but by all reports the security in Kabul is increasingly uncertain. There was another suicide bombing this morning - at the Ministry of Interior. It is unclear how many people were injured/killed at this point. The blast was at 8am; I was sleeping and didn't hear anything (I'm not close to the MoI). This is the 65 suicide boming in Afghanistan this year, according to our security officer. The provinces of Kandahar and Helmut have been hotbeds for the insurrgency in the last few years, but more and more of the bombings are finding their way into the capitol city.