January 8, 2009 Day Two of this extended holiday that frames my first week in Kabul! Afghans ordinarily work a six-day week with Friday as the weekend. This week, the powers-that-be declared that Wednesday and Thursday of this week would be work holdiays since Ashura, yesterday's Muslim holiday, fell on a Wednesday and Thursday is a half-day for Afghans anyway (but not for ex-pats!). So this is the second day of a three-day work holiday for me, and I have only been here one week! I am trying to hunker down in hopes of gaining some early mastery of my job, but I am tempted by the beautiful day outside and the views in every direction.I am living in the elegant foreign workers' Guest House in the photo above while I work with USAID's Afghanistan Rule of Law Project. The house is spacious with three floors and a basement where we eat our meals. The second and third floors of the house are ringed with porches that offer dazzling views of TV Mountain in the near distance and the Hindu Kush in the background. My colleagues and my housemates are one in the same. We live together and work together. It's a nice group.
My office, pictured at right, was formerly a private residence. From what I am told, it is more typical of Afghan homes than our guest house as it (the office) has a spacious courtyard with space for a garden, whereas our Guest House occupies most of the lot it is perched on, with only a very small plot of grass for a yard.I am the Performance Monitoring and Reporting Specialist for USAID's Afghanistan Rule of Law Project which brings together US lawyers, judges, law professors with their Afghan counterparts to rebuild and restore Afghanistan's Justice Sector. (Details can be found at http://afghanistan.usaid.gov/en/Activity.85.aspx.) I am responsible for preparing scheduled progress reports for USAID on the full scope of work accomplished weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly. Our office is in another neighborhood of Kabul. We are driven there and back every day. Most of the staff are Afghan locals and kinder, more professional colleagues one could not ask for.
