We had an awesome day today. It started with a visit to the local girls' school to celebrate teacher's day and the installation of the new playground equipment that a member of our team helped raise money for. Here is the link to the site in case you missed it in an earlier post ("Help Educate Afghanistan's Girls" on Facebook.com). This is a really noble effort. Today the whole neighborhood/village around the school celebrated the school's teachers with a party and gifts. They invited us to participate to recognize Larry for all the help with school supplies, backpacks, books, and the new playground. All this has been funded through private donations from the US. Gina is thinking of organizing a complementary effort to provide additional supplies from the Colorado area. If you're interested, stay tuned to this channel and more details will be on the way.
That's Larry there by the slide with one of the neighborhood boys. It was a nice gathering. All the local kids, and most of the parents and grandparents that were available attended. The village/neighborhood elder presented Larry with a nice gift, a beautiful green and blue "Karzai" coat.
Interacting with the kids and locals was really a treat. The girls were quite shy and didn't know what to make of us. In many cases our uniforms and required body armor and weapons scared them a bit. It is unfortunate, but standing orders require this whenever we leave the compound. The boys from the neighborhood were drawn to us however. The boy in the blue t-shirt in the left of this picture followed me around like a magnet the whole time, and the little boy in the most excellent outfit came up and asked to shake my hand. Of course I taught them both the bump and high five. Behind me you can see the new school building being built by the government.
Working at NMAA is certainly rewarding, but being able to do something for the local community in a country with a security situation like this is just icing on the cake.
We violated our rules a little bit today as I took a few representative pictures of a typical Kabul neighborhood. This picture was taken a few blocks from the Girls' school compound. It is very representative of all the suburbs of Kabul I've seen so far. Everyone is rebuilding and trying to make the best lives for themselves and their families that they can. Many houses are in compounds behind gates and walls, and the majority are in varying states of construction and repair. Pavement is rare, which only adds to the terrible dust problem. Getting to the school today would not have been possible without high clearance vehicles. Larry and I were actually discussing the cost to have the road repaired and graded. Infrastructure is really way behind. The next picture is the ditch full of sewage adjacent to the street picture. I thought twice about posting it, but thought it would provide the most representative view.
On the way back to NMAA we got held up a bit by a herd of goats and their Kuchi keepers. The Kuchi are a nomadic tribe here in Afghanistan that come down to the valley floors and set up camp during the winters and then move up to mountain pastures for summer. They appear to be breaking their camp and starting the migration to higher elevations as spring comes to an end. This picture is just one of the goats with the contrasting backdrop of a modern gas station being constructed. There are signs of recovery, building, and modernization everywhere, but they all appear to be going slowly.
Oh yeah, and at work today I did some things too. In addition to mentoring the CS department, I've become the NMAA IT guy. Today I helped set up the computers and software in the new English lab with the two NMAA full time IT contractors, Meti and Masood. We hope to finish up tomorrow. I linked up with some of the civilians teaching English to the Afghan Air Corps crews to provide instructor training for the systems on Wednesday. I hope we can get everything operational tomorrow. Things look good. I also helped make sure the planned relocation of our microwave network connection to the MOD downtown won't break our VoIP phones. We came up with a cut-over plan that should ensure continued phone connectivity after the microwave shot is relocated.
I'll close with a final picture of our gathering today. Behind me are all the female students of the school with the old school on the left and the new construction on the right. As I've said before, having three girls of my own, seeing the Afghan people put so much effort into educating their next generation of women is one of the most promising signs I've seen here. It is truly a beautiful sight!
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