A Whole New World

Yipee – I have just been handed a piece of paper that, fingers crossed, will free me from the hotel and get me into a serviced apartment tomorrow!! I cannot wait to move from the hotel, and to particularly be able to cook for myself again. Now all I need is my stuff that is due to arrive next week, and I am set.

Even though I have been out of Afghanistan for six months now, some things are still an adjustment. Loud noises can still sound like gunshots or explosions and guns still make me incredibly nervous. What is strange, however, is adjusting to a new office where security is not the first thing you learn about (in Afghanistan, the security department was the first port of call for all newcomers – you were shown the security procedures before you were even shown your desk!) Here, nobody checks under our cars with mirrors when we enter the office or home, we don’t have call signs, nobody tracks our movements – it takes some getting used to!

I was sad in Afghanistan that, due to security restrictions, I was hampered in what I could write about. I could never tell you whereabouts in the country I was, or even at times, what I was specifically doing. Afghanistan is a world where you travel early in the morning, to blend in with the local cars, but cannot use a vehicle from your organisation. You must check in constantly with head office, but must use a code to reveal your location. Monitoring of our project work can change from week to week, depending on the security situation, and there would be days when we couldn’t leave the compound. Yet the endless sense of humour of the Afghans helped us to stay positive amidst such restrictions on our work.

I am looking forward to a different situation in Uganda, and to being able to tell you much more about my day to day life here. I am looking forward to sharing my stories and adventures as I begin to take on whole new tasks. I am currently working on a proposal for monthly food distribution to 400,000 people!!! And that is just in one district – I have never been involved in relief distributions on the scale that I will be doing here – the number of beneficiaries, the tonnage of food that we are moving is amazing. I am really excited to be getting into it – I am going to the field next week for some distributions and cannot wait to get back out to field life.

But since arriving back in another national office, I have been thinking a lot about Afghanistan again. I still miss it a lot – I thought I was past that, but obviously not completely. I have been missing my colleagues, in particular – some of those wonderful Afghans who welcomed me into their lives so warmly. I miss the amazing countryside, I miss the daily frustrations that would just make us laugh. So many small memories in my mind that pop up – seemingly from nowhere. They may find their way onto these pages (screens?) through the coming months.

An amusing trait that I picked up is the habit of saying Inshallah. I wrote about this while I was there – it translates as “God’s Will” and is the answer to just about everything in Afghanistan. We would say to someone “have a good day” and they would answer “Inshallah”. Or if we said, “we hope your new marriage is very happy” they would answer “Inshallah”. The expats took to using this expression, slightly ironically, but also as a reflection of how we heard it everywhere. And it is not one of those things that goes away – I almost said Inshallah to someone this morning. And I really don’t think it would go down very well in this fervently Christian country! Must make sure I don’t trot that out too often…

But in the meantime – I really need to get a more comfortable chair to sit in!