Final note from Mazar e-Sharif

It is so hard to believe, but here I am, at the end of a string of goodbye parties and packing sessions, I am writing my final post from Mazar e-Sharif, for now. My time up here has been some of the most rewarding months of my life, both professionally and personally. I have met people with a resilience and will to survive I did not think existed. Now, as I rip pages out of forlorn notebooks, and donate stationary, colleagues keep popping their heads into my office, offering best wishes and home-made crafts in the form of almonds strung into a necklace, homemade yogurt and a hard white home made ball of cheese.

I am nostalgic but also inspired. What I am most proud of is the team spirit we fostered, where people learned the importance of dialogue and "putting heads together". According to the staff what they will remember from me is the fact that "my door is always open", and "I don't like I problems, I like solutions". In addition to one female who proclaimed she will always remember my standard response when someone walks into my office "what can I do for you".

I will miss my friends, and the crazy nights dancing the night away at one of the bi-weekly Mazar Social Club gatherings, a self-driven solution to a rather entertainment-challenged city. And who could forget Sebastien's Tenderloin at the Royal Oak English Restaurant. So many nights spent eating steak and drinking Becks in what fast becomes one's home away from home in the approved restaurant-deprived Mazar. I remember fondly Fridays a the WFP pool, followed by long sessions surfing the web on the Oak’s wi-fi, while sharing G&Ts with girlfriends, discussing previous and future conflict postings. I said this in Baghdad, and I'll say it again, it is remarkable how much faster friendships and other relationships are fostered and strengthened in these environments.

With that, "goddafis Mazar e-Sharif, Tashakor, Tashakor".

Turning another page

It's Friday, it's the start of Eid al-Fitr, it's Afghanistan. I am in my room in Mazar e-Sharif, the northwestern city where I have lived for the past six months. Outside the sun is setting, above me, on my roof, the footsteps of the neighbors' children engaging in the national past time of kite flying rambles on incessantly as it has all day. The weather is turning cooler now, the house is quite. I am the only expat in the house at the moment, and even I am not slated to be here for long.

My current contract ends in two weeks, and I have had the agonizing task of making the decision not to stay on here. Not because I don't find the work extremely satisfying, and working with the people unbelievable gratifying. It's just that I have now been apart from my husband for nine months, and frankly, that is getting a bit old. Compromises, I suppose, is what makes the wedding wheel turn after all.

That being said, the dozens of people coming into my office this past week sharing their exasperation with my decision, did not make it any easier. I suppose it is better than the alternative, but still, how do you explain to a team of nine engineers and site managers, with whom you've spent hours and hours on project cycle management and other forms of project capacity building, that you are in a matter of speaking, abandoning them? I nearly burst into tears when one of my guards brought my dinner to my room one night with a look of defiance when he said "Susan inja nie?" (Susan, here, no?) with an indication of both hands waving away? I tried desperately to explain in what little Dari I had picked up that my "family" was in Kabul and I had to leave...

Fortunate for me, my two large projects (the construction of roughly 600 shelters, schools, clinics, road, latrines and potable water for landless refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees (from refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran) is closing at the end of the month, so I will be able to see this through. But still, I have fostered strong friendships, relationships, and professional connections up here and work well with all of my colleagues at the UN, Red Cross and other partner organizations, only to pull up, pack up and move to Kabul.

I have started looking in Kabul, but have not made a firm commitment to anyone, I want to be sure that I select something that will not render me a paper pusher in the capital, with zero or no interaction with the provinces and the people. Ideally I will shift into a Kabul-based position with a lot of travel to the provinces, with a focus on providing access to justice for vulnerable people in Afghanistan.

I am ecstatic to announce though that in three weeks today (enshallah), I will be having dinner with Hannelize in Dubai, on my way to South Africa for some serious R&R in Plett with my parents, and then the Cape with my sister (who decided to pick on me today for joining facebook and hence neglect my blog....) Watch this space for the next page.

What I do

Picture above: A carload of children and women in burkas make their way home after school in a taxi-cab in Kabul

8 May, 2007

Many people have asked me who I work for and what I actually do in Afghanistan. I work for a Paris-based non-governmental organization, or NGO, called the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED). ACTED has been in Afghanistan for over thirteen years and is one of the largest implementing partners in the country. Initially all projects were "relief" oriented, but in line with ACTED's mandate, we primarily focus on the implementation of sustainable development projects that can be self-sustaining in the long run. Among our interventions (both relief and development) we do emergency relief for earthquakes, floods and returning refugees in the form of shelters as well as non-food items (NFIs); ACTED is also the largest facilitating partner for the World Bank funded National Solidarity Program (NSP) that aims to establish local Community Development Councils (CDCs) that will represent rural communities on their development needs and aim to prioritize and physically implement various projects once approved by ACTED and the World Bank, all of this is done under close guidance of expert engineers, provincial managers as well as expat staff. ACTED is also working with UNESCO to establish an Afghan cultural center under the auspice of ACTED's cultural branch, BACTRIA, to be located in the historical town of Mazar e-Sharif, home of the famed Blue Mosque.

My position with ACTED is that of Area Coordinator for Northern Afghanistan. This position will have me based in Mazar e-Sharif, and reporting directly to our Country Director in Kabul. At the moment it appears that I will oversee a team of approximately four expat staff and over three hundred local (or national) staff ranging from office-based finance and HR people, to field engineers and provincial managers.

I have had the pleasure to travel to some of our project sites in the north, but have not made it out west toward Mazar and plan to move up there on Saturday. The drive up from Kabul to Phuli Khumbri and then on to Kunduz in the northeast is beautiful across the majestic Hindukush mountains. (See First Impressions).

I just returned today from yet another trip up north where we visited with some of the beneficiaries of one of our shelter projects aim to provide shelter and community to returning refugees from neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran. These communities are considered to be extremely vulnerable with little or no hope of regaining their previous land, which have in most cases been annexed and integrated by families and communities that remained in the country during the recent wars. I will elaborate more on this project, which incidentally I will be managing, and provide some interesting images to give a better idea of the wealth of cultures and people of this nation.

If you are interested in more information about ACTED, may I suggest their official website: http://www.acted.org/. For specific information and some informational articles on our work in Afghanistan specifically, please see the ACTED Afghanistan reporting team's blog: Updates from Afghanistan.

The people I see on the Hindu Kush...

Photo right: breakfast of lamb kebabs, fresh bread and strong tea at the foot of the Hindu Kush.

Headed back over the pass. This time it is only myself, the driver and our HR local manager returning from vacation. It is an absolute magnificent day for a drive in die Hindu Kush. In any other situation, this could be a great trek on an adventure vacation that Chris and I would surely be first in line to sign up for. With something of a National Park feeling to it, the mountains rise up and pierce the bright blue sky.

Through the open windows on the backseat of the old Toyota with its rug-covered seats, I watch people go by as we crawl up to the top of the world at an angle surely a few degrees outside the normal road standard. The river changes lanes on the mountain as herders steer their cattle in green pastures on the left, while a group of turbaned men sit down a la Monet for a picnic edge-side.

Soviet-era tanks litter the hillside along with the green flags planted sporadically in memory of Northern Alliance soldiers who perished in these parts while fighting against the Taliban in the 1990s. All remnants of the impossible-to-forget recent history that only adds a thin layer on the disaster that is Afghanistan's past.

Photo left: A decorated truck emerge from one of the landslide tunnels with the 22,000 foot mountain tops in the background.

It is cool up here. A pleasant relief from the 36 degrees Celsius weather in Phuli Khumbri. The Toyota chuggs along past brightly painted long-haul trucks, so decorated I am told for protection, a tradition originating in Pakistan. The smells are many - over the driver's Super Seven cigarette smoke there is a strong rubber presence as the trucks make the hours-long descent in their lowest gear. Sweet-smelling soap of vehicles being washed road-side permeate my nostrils as I close my eyes and take it all in. There is still the dust. There is always dust. But not nearly as bad as it can be. We are almost to the top, past another group of men. The scent of hash trails them as they throw a glance in our direction, but only briefly.

This time of year is also the time when the Kuchis ("those who are on the move"), a nomadic tribe of Baluchi and Pashtu speaking tribes of Afghanistan are out in force. You can spot them easily across the pastures and hillsides. Simple little tents made of white canvas perched on traditional Afghan rugs and nothing else. Their brightly colored costume-like outfits turn the green fields into a paint palette of bright fuchsias, reds, oranges and blues. The men coax small herds of sheep roadside while women and children gather around a water source with a myriad of water jugs.

Chugg-chugg up the mountain. I am mesmerized by this place with the people from all over. Mongolians, Pakistani, Indian, Asian, Uzbek, Tajik...a world in a country. Being excluded from lunch based on my gender by a provincial politician who visited a refugee shelter site with us that afternoon, I suddenly realize that I am quite hungry...I start to look forward to dinner in one of the Kabul restaurants with Chris where we can talk about it all over a glass of wine.

Photo: Green pastures along the Salang Pass