Benefits

Last week I was made head of our Lahore office - definitely not a promotion and the company pretty much had to beg me to take on the added responsibility. But, in spite of the lack of additional monetary compensation, there are two primary benefits to the new responsibilities. 1) I get a paper delivered to my desk every day. 2) The tea man now brings me a constant stream of tea.

I'm not sure if I've talked about the tea man before, but the position of "tea man" is pretty much a requirement for all Pakistani firms. It's an employment generation scheme which suits the huge disparity in incomes in Pakistan and feeding the egos of the tea recipients. At any rate, every office has at least one man who's sole purpose in life is brewing and delivering tea to the executives. Yes, it's weird, and goes a long way to explaining my landlady's disbelief that I actually know how to boil water (I have a tea man to do that! At the office at least.).

Things in Pakistan are not looking particularly good. Islamic fundamentalist youth are storming shopping centers and threatening video store owners, which must be a terrible quandry for the State Department since the videos are 100% bootleg. To condemn oppressive fundamentalism or the copyright infringers? They're of course taking the middle road, and staying silent. Who would have thought US copyright lawyers and the Taliban would be on the same team?

Meanwhile, the tribes in Waziristan are thrilled because for the first time in years their war drums are getting a workout. And no, I'm not using a colorful turn of phrase, they really are excited that they get to bang on war drums, something the Taliban hitherto had not allowed (too musical?). But the Taliban has approved a jihad against Uzbek militants in the area - something everyone can get behind, I guess...

At any rate, the uptick in fundamentalist activity has my middle class Pakistani friends and colleagues scratching their heads and shooting worried glances at each other while the government begs a crew of fundamentalist school girls to please stop kidnapping people and vacate the children's library. Chucking a bunch of schoolgirls in jail, regardless of their backing by stick-wielding men, is presumably perceived as too great a risk for sparking Ulema outrage. The big argument for the current military government is that it is the only force that can keep fringe elements at bay. Yet the Taliban operate with impunity, and they can't handle a group of militant schoolgirls. Hm...

More Cute Kids

Here's a pic of some kids who trailed after me in a Kabul slum as if I was the Pied Piper. I was there trying to get a story on a carpet manufacturer, who'd gotten a $15,000 loan from a microfinance bank we work with. With that loan, he'd created 600 jobs (results not typical, but impressive).

Positively deviant

Save the Children is doing this really simple, amazing, brilliant, obvious thing in Afghanistan, which costs very little so of course no donor will fund it. It's called "positive deviation." Basically, they go into a village where there's malnutrition (pretty much in all Afghan villages) then look for women who have healthy kids. They figure out what the mothers with healthy kids are doing, then train these mothers to work with the other village mothers and share their feeding/cooking techniques. This way, instead of importing infant formulas and frozen chickens from America, local women are sharing local solutions using local inputs. In the first village they tried this in, they ended malnutrition in twelve days. Yes, that's twelve DAYS.

This is the sort of aid work that *should* be happening all over the world, and let's hope we see more of it.

Military Aid

In the development world, aid workers tend to sneer at soldiers to provide humanitarian assistance (that old hearts and minds). I've been thinking about it a lot lately, since delivering the funds to Help Afghan Kids, an all-volunteer outfit run by the soldiers at Camp Phoenix. When we dropped off the money, the soldiers explained that they weren't funding the orphanages any more because they were quite well stocked -- so well supplied that local parents were committing their children to them to make sure they were fed and clothed. To prevent that from happening, the soldiers decided to provide aid to the village children instead, and they do it quite efficiently. A medical check-up at one of their temporary medical tents only costs $1 per child.

Now I totally get the idea that if soldiers are delivering aid, people might be more hostile to non-soldiers delivering aid, confusing the two. However, the soldiers seem a lot more accountable than the average development worker, who gets handed grandiose schemes from some guy sitting in Washington. First, if they don't get public services out, they run the risk of people becoming more hostile and shooting at them (a good incentive). Second, the soldiers actually are looking around at what's happening in their little neighborhoods and delivering the goods - i.e., they're coming up with local solutions to local problems. That doesn't happen as often or as easily when aid workers are working off 5-year plans from DC.

So all in all, I guess I come down in favor of military aid. It may not change the world, but sometimes I wonder if our big USAID plans are doing any good either. And at least the soldiers are getting what's needed to folks who need it.

Back in Kabul

I haven't been able to access blogspot from Pakistan, hence the lack of recent posts. However, I'm in Afghanistan for the next week and a half and enjoying myself immensely.

This morning I was woken up by a large explosion. I was too tired to figure out it was an explosion at the time -- I thought someone was rattling my door (it was the window rattling), cursed, and rolled over. Then my colleague called to tell me there had been a car bomb near the Serena. It turned out to be four gunpowder shops suddenly and unexpectedly going out of business in the old city, which I guess is a relief but at least 13 people were killed in the explosion. And if you're like me, you're thinking, "gunpowder shops?" Okaaaaaay.

Once it was clear that it was safe to leave the hotel, I went to my security debriefing, and the statistics were utterly depressing. Attacks in Afghanistan more than doubled in 2006, and it looks like they'll be worse in 2007 if the trend continues.

Then work (yes, I do work), then off to Camp Phoenix to drop off the funds my company raised for Help Afghan Kids, a project run by the US soldiers there. What a great bunch of guys. You can read more about their humanitarian projects at: http://www.taskforcewarrior.org. Or, check out one of their blogs at: http://www.taskforcephoenix5.blogspot.com. How great were they? They let us shop at the PX! Nutter Butters and Enduring Freedom t-shirts! Whoo hoo!

Vacation

I'm just wrapping up my three week vacation in California. By US work standards, three weeks vacation is disgustingly hedonistic. Coming from (and returning to) Pakistan, it doesn't seem nearly long enough. One of the highlights of this trip was a visit to La Nebbia (formerly Obester) winery, on highway 92 to Half Moon Bay. For $5, we got to taste eight different wines and keep the glass. Even more interesting was our chat with the owner, who was pouring - a woman about my age who chucked a career in Silicon Valley to follow her dream and run a winery - the California dream!