Clever Sonologists and CSTC-A

Time is marching on – somewhat slowly – as my eagerness to make the journey home grows! My major news of the week is that I found a great cheesecake at my favorite café in town, Chaila, I read Winterson’s The PowerBook and loved it, I’ve started to read The Book of Negroes and am loving it, I have watched two Clive Owen movies this week and I’m making progress on my online supply chain management course. The weather in Kabul is lovely but difficult to enjoy, except for catching a sunbeam behind a walled compound. The warm weather has also brought the microbes back out of their frozen slumber, and it took a couple of days in bed this week to remind me to continue to be more vigilant about what I eat again. Tariq has been enjoying his studies at the American University of Afghanistan, and since he has shown his boxing videos among his classmates, has acquired quite the following. He especially loves his writing teacher Sovino, and is currently getting prepared for a formal presentation this Sunday in front of his class.

Tariq and I went to CURE Hospital this week for the second doctor’s visit of my pregnancy (can you believe that?) and the ultrasound showed that the little kiddo is healthy and happy. Even though we told the sonologist we didn’t want to know the gender, both of us were scouring every inch of the screen to find a clue! The clever sonologist foiled our efforts and the gender remains a mystery. The kid has earned the nickname “Little Kickboxer” from my friends because of all the moving around that he or she is now doing!

Working life has been a bit chaotic these last weeks with many changes to our personnel and working environment. As with everything in Afghanistan, our co-renter the Afghan International Chamber of Commerce dissolved and decided to move out of our building with a week’s notice. A lot of effort went into finding us a new office location, and we’ve secured a lovely space in a relatively upscale building in downtown Shar-e-Nau, with floor to ceiling windows. Unfortunately I won’t get to work there, as the space will take several weeks to customize and furnish. In the meantime we’re working out of the conference room of a small local motel. On a very positive note, I gave a presentation on Peace Dividend Trust and local procurement at a CSTC-A vendor day conference this past Thursday. CSTC-A is a division of the US Military responsible to rebuild the Afghan National Security Forces (police, army, border guards) and stands for “Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan”. The presentation was very well received by the military contracting officers and the hundreds of Afghan businessmen present. I was flooded with positive feedback and requests for more information after the conference closed. It felt especially great because it has been quite some time since I’ve been asked to speak for such a large group and I must admit I was nervous beforehand. This experience fuelled my desire to continue with speaking engagements at every opportunity. There were many interesting military characters at the conference, and the attached picture shows me with my Canadian Projects Director Ainsley, Colonel Victoria of the US Air Force, and an Economic Policy Analyst named Pat from the Pentagon (and freshly arrived from fieldwork in Iraq).

With three weeks to go, I’m busy wrapping up my life in Kabul at work, among friends, and at home. Since Tariq has been primarily looking after our dog Che these months, I handed the decision over to him about whether we should bring him home to Canada with us. Tariq decided that the dog should stay here because his grandpa wants to take care of him. Even though it will be hard to say goodbye, I think that this will be all for the best because Che is very large, powerful and unsocialized. He’s better off here and we have no doubts he’ll be very well taken care of by grandpa. I am so excited to travel to Germany for a week. The order and cultural charms of Europe will be balm to the soul after the long months here, and after that I have long walks and long swims in the spring air of Kelowna to look forward to. I’ll have just enough time to sort out a new living space and get ready for the big new arrival in our life! Tariq is planning to follow me home a month later after he finishes his semester at the university.