
Flying business class only added to the experience. Beginning with the fine wines and Middle Eastern buffet in the top flight private lounge at JFK to the free chauffeured cars to the hotel in Dubai, the experience was second to none. The cocooned seats, simulated starry skies on the airplane roof, Internet connectivity on the plane and 150 channels of on demand movies, radio and games on a 14" screen in the seat added to the experience. At 33,000 miles a round trip, I'll be a gold status customer on my second go. Free upgrades here I come!


During a previous trip to Haiti I began to keep a list of things which are common to developing, post-conflict, or just plain forgotten parts of the world. European, Caribbean, Asian; I have come to find that it makes no difference, as the requirements of living encourage their existence. Kabul is no different. Items on this list include;
- wild dogs wandering the streets, sometimes in packs
- mostly muddy, unpaved or broken roads
- second hand cars of all kinds and conditions imported for resale
- public transport as single vehicle enterprise
- buildings made of preformed concrete slabs or unfinished masonry
- rusty steel where concrete won't do
- retail sales as cottage industry, mostly street vendors or kiosks
- people sitting or walking about without much else to do, generally watching those that do
- few or no utilities; water, electricity or gas. Thus no heat, light or working toilets.
- landscapes stripped of anything consumable
- packs of children or older women begging for handouts from foreigners
- wooden carts with used tires for wheels drawn by beasts of burden (or people)

But the hardships are all worth it because of the people. I am fascinated by people's values, beliefs and behaviors, which is a good thing as I get paid to observe and measure them. Kabul was full of interesting experiences.
The employees in our office are a cross-section of Afghanistan. Divided into the two primary language groups of Pashto and Dari, many of them have to work at communicating with each other. English is rare and not well spoken. Russian is slightly better. German is unheard of. As with all my other experiences working outside native English-speaking countries, the result is people speaking whatever language accomplishes the goal best, regardless of whether it is native. Abdul our accountant speaks halting German and worse English, so I found myself using German with him. My colleague speaks fluent Russian, which a number of the Kabuli staff speak, so there was some of that flying around at times. And depending on which field team staff you were talking to, you would need a Dari or Pashto translator respectively. The pace of company staff meetings is often painfully slow due to language issues.

There are other customs which I learned about on this trip through work on one of our projects novel enough to mention here. They have apparently persisted for a long time and are traditional sentences handed down by tribal elder councils, or Jirgas. They include the burning of an offender's house, blood money, collective social boycott, and giving a women from the offender's household to that of the victim.
More pleasantly, I also enjoyed the custom of sitting on carpet-strewn floors to interview a new supervisor for one of our field operations. In Afghanistan it is obligatory to treat a visitor as an honored guest. It is also customary to sit in a circle or with backs to the walls of a room with the honored person across from the door. So imagine an interview of one person in a room, on the floor, in a circle of 10 people, where interviewer and interviewee are 15 feet apart, conducted in three or more languages (Russian, Dari and Pashto). That the applicant was dressed in traditional garb with turban just added to the novelty.

So much for this posting. My next installment will probably be from Cairo in March. Looking forward to it!