raise your hands

The solar power ran out at one in the morning.  The pattern is evident, in August and most likely June and July, with temperatures similar to those in Dubai and Muscat, the people in Kandahar suffer greatly.

And I have a choice, unlike most here, of leaving.  I know, I just got up from another fitful night.  I went down around nine thirty with the swamp cooler blowing swamp water but I itched, I was robbed of sleep with itching and flies and finally rested only to hear the deadness of no energy.  I did sleep for five hours or so, another pattern, so for the rest of the morning we sweat.  I have to prepare for my lessons, good luck avoiding the drowsys. 

No, I can’t stay another year.  I suppose the first teacher found the same problem, the people are good, the conditions are appalling. 

The swamp cooler springs to life at eight in the morning.  Where does the power come from I don’t know but I’ll find out.  I sit between this swamp thing and a floor fan and I am comfortable.  A cup of coffee, toast with peanut butter and apple jam and I actually feel ok to work.

8:56pm

Watching TED talks inspires and gets me thinking in a solitary life there is no one to stop me except myself.  What do I want, Mel Robbins asks, the activation energy is there to force me to do something I want to do that changes my lives and makes us happy. 

My life is on auto pilot and I can't unleash, it's madness, it's a restless kind of auto pilot, doing what I know I can do but not what I want to do.  What is stopping me.

Everything I know isn’t enough to pursue.  Fear, laziness, auto pilot thinking stops me and every year that drifts by leaves me further from what will make me happy.  It’s sad I couldn’t speak to someone in Leuven.  I followed instincts which left me not doing what I wanted to do.  Fear is a terrible no good bummer emotion.

I still think opportunities come through networking, talking to the links that will lead me to the job, to the city, to the home I always imagine but never get closer to. And whom should you be speaking with?  Why aren't you speaking with those who could show me the way?  I don't know.  I'd get on the horn right now if it led me out of here on the flight.

Am I happy here in the deserts of Afghanistan,  I look at a twelve month calendar and I get depressed.  If I am not pursuing what I want to do I will be looking for another same kind of job in one year’s time.  Believe me, eating the same food, teaching the same books, pacing the same blue carpet, sleeping on the same lumpy mattress, I'm already thinking how stir crazy I'll become and I haven't even been here a week.

I have no trouble with the locals, in fact I like them. Yesterday I wrote down two dozen words of their language, hoping to bring myself closer to them.  My students want to practice English and after the first class they wanted to talk religion:

Student:  Are you a Christian, sir?

J:  I am a Catholic.

Student:  Christians don’t believe in Allah, teacher.

J:  Of course we do, it’s just a word, the word God in Arabic is Allah.  They are the same.

Student:  You believe in Allah…

J:  I believe in God, Allah, Om…

Student:  Om, teacher, is Hindu.

J:  It is Hindu and Buddhist, God without a face or voice or body.

Student:  You believe in Issa…

J:  yes, and Miriam.  You know Miriam, the most recognizable woman’s name in the Koran.

Student:  yes, Issa’s mother.

J:  Ah yes, Mother Mary, she is my mama, oh sweet Mama Mary come to me, there will be an answer let it be.

Raising hands, looking up, singing, the students start nervous murmurs of laughter and slowly they back off.  Don’t ask me questions about faith and religion unless you want to see an isolated middle aged man get nutty.

 I should go to bed now, tonight’s energy is sponsored by the city.  Like in Nepal they use load shedding, where parts of the city get energy for six hours or so and then another part gets energy.  Tomorrow we will most likely not get city energy.  In Nepal the government posts the schedule so you know when you’ll get electricity.  No one knows what time it comes on during the day but they do know it comes every other day.  This is the second time today we’ve received city energy, most likely it will quit in the next two hours and I’ll wake up in my silk cocoon and begin sweating. 

They say it gets real chilly here starting in October and they break out the gas space heaters.  I can’t wait because there’s nothing else to do if I choose to remain on auto pilot which I don’t want.