Back to Faizabad

Two days after returning to Kabul, I was back on the milk-run plane to Faizabad. We hosted the program quarterly meeting, bringing together national staff from two other agencies who are implementing projects under the same grant in other parts of the country. Many had never been to Badakhshan before. The first day was spent in a very hot, stuffy meeting room in the closest thing to a hotel Faizabad has to offer - and where the other agencies' staff stayed. Though one would think, if you are going to have a conference room in a hotel, public toilets might be a bright idea. As it was, one of our guests kindly let me use his room's bathroom.

The following two days were spent on field trips. We revisited the two canal sites Peter and I went to on our last visit - it was interesting to see the progress. Though we also noted that perhaps some construction site safety training might be in order. OSHA would have a conniption.

On the second day we also visited the calf/lamb farmers participating in a "fattening" project. I was the only visible female over the age of 9 in a crowd of men and starring boys. After the formal meeting, and a visit to a farmer's outhouse - an adventure complete with a guard dog which made a rabies immunization seem like a good idea - we went to watch a calf being weighed. Soon, however, my oddity gathered more attention and a herd of children were peering and giggling at me. Pete helped me say a few things in Dari and then we got a rare group photo - generally you sneak photos because they are camera shy and as it is, don't smile for photos. But they seemed to enjoy looking at themselves in the photo afterwards.

It was a long and tiring week. And to stretch it out, our flight back to Kabul was delayed but we got a glimpse inside the relationship between the Faizabad airport and the German military. The military were working on the the airstrip and because the plane had missed its landing window (during their lunch break), it had to wait in Kunduz until they were done with their work before it could land. The airport operator had to call a man appropriately named "Rolf" to get permission to use the runway. Fortunately, Rolf was cooperative and we got back to Kabul three hours late.