Kick It Off

First official kick off meeting for the project I’m working on here.  It was, in the words of my State Department peers, a “good meeting.”  Of course, like all meetings, there’s no telling how good the meeting will be unless it actually results in well, results for the construction of the road.

Sometimes in these events it’s easy to forget why we’re here, which is actually to help the Afghan people.

Imagine that.

Today at lunch was kind of interesting…I was asking one of my Afghan colleagues what kind of sweets were good to eat in this country, like what kinds of things would be good to serve as refreshments at a meeting, and I was telling them all about the t-shirt cannon, and how this was used at sporting events in the United States, and that I thought it might be a good mobile community outreach program to shoot candies out of the vehicle with a t-shirt cannon.

One of them politely told me that he thought that maybe a tray would be a better way to serve the candies, at which point I said yeah, that would be great, and then I could let the kids run alongside the truck and try to get the candy.

I think he understood that I was joking. 

Regardless, that was the first time I’ve had much of a conversation with any of my co-workers, and I hope that it won’t be the last time.  I’m more than likely moving out to the hinterlands in about 2 months, so maybe I’ve missed some time here, but who knows?  Lots can be done to build some decent working relationships with people around here.  We don’t seem to talk that much with our Afghan colleagues, or even to each other.  Oddly, they seem to spend a lot of time talking to each other.

Maybe they’re on to something?