Incredible shrinking world

So my life was not terribly expansive to begin with. When not traveling to a field office, I rotated between the office and the guesthouse with occasional excursions to the ooooh grocery store or aaaaah restaurant. And lately there has been some necessary Christmas shopping - where you are followed by small boys asking you to buy a map, or a pack of chewing gum and they keep saying "madame, madame, I am your bodyguard". Not sure if it's amusing for them or if there is a monetary game at play.

Anyway, life is small. It seemed inconceivable that it could get smaller. But it has. The Kabul office is bursting at the seams - a good thing in terms of program growth but bad in that our office can't grow. We needed a temporary solution to the desk deficit. The answer took shape in the form of the Asmara satellite office. The first floor of my guesthouse has a large room which, until last week, contained a rather nice, but lonely pool table. Now, it contains my program's office. Essentially I can wake up, roll down the stairs and be sitting at my desk. And I have to say, I really like this arrangement for a variety of reasons, namely INTERNET! Because we are an office, we are the only guesthouse with internet. So, on second thought, my Kabul world may have closed in but my connection to the outside world has cracked wide open.

(Photo: Rare clear view from the top of the guesthouse over Kabul at sunset)