stop your nincompoop nonsense

You ain’t doing me no favors.  The power goes off at midnight, six hours later I go outside and see city energy is available (a light is on when it is available) and yet we ain’t getting any.  Everyone is alright with the way they live, they can’t imagine it ought not to be like this, I should do everything I can to help those who want to flee.  Including me.  Flee.

Fezel and I took a walk at six thirty through the neighborhood of huge homes with big gardens full of eggplant, tomatoes, mint, corn, sunflower.  I asked him who are these rich Afghanis, he didn’t know.  I suspect they live in Dubai.

And a morning check at FB leaves me bumming.  Everyone is where they want to be except me.  This place is a dump, the last place I worked was a dump.  Can’t I be somewhere nice?  Everyone has their families and friends around them.

And it is absolutely impossible to abscond here.  For now.  Really?  Are you thinking this isn’t what you  signed up for, no it isn’t.  And why should I stay.  What obligations do I have here, none.  So I leave a gap in my resume, I can’t help the dental hygienist in Nepal, I can’t help the young boy going to school in Kathmandu, I can’t send and save money, what the hell, this all sucks.

I think I’ll lie down.  I have my first TOEFL class in nine hours.

12:58pm

Without electricity the PDI house sits still in its internal shade.  All windows open permit the occasional un-refreshing breeze.  Go outside for a quick smoke and make it fast.  How in the world could this not be the hottest month.  So says Wali July is the worst.  And June is worse than July. And Ramadan next year will encompass all of June.  Just stay away, students.  You do yourself no benefit by coming here, unable to think straight, parched, wobbly.  Stay home, go to your Mosque and pray for strength.  How can you learn English grammar when you can’t keep your eyes open? 

Rezek came into the room with a mug of outstanding Kandahari chai and a big piece of bread.  I gave him my new pedometer with a pictorial manual.  I bought it thinking I could measure the places I’d hope to trek and record.  There’s no bleeping way I’ll stay here long enough to do any trekking.  It’s a sad conclusion, I was hyped, naively so, into thinking peace in Afghanistan was closer than ever before but they’re not even close.   

And I’m not even close to thinking I’ll stay more than a year.

4:09pm

A nice lunch of eggplant and yogurt with bread and a cool yogurt drink stuck around long enough but in the end it came quickly out my end.  The hottest time of the day is upon us.  Imagine living like this in Al-Ain or Dubai.  I wouldn’t stay there either.  I keep telling myself just suck it up, come September temps will cool and all will right.  No, not all will be right.  I cannot prepare the Toefl far in advance because I don’t have the energy and future unprepared lessons make me ill.  I think I am ready today and the next class.  But Thursday’s lesson is in the ether and next week I’ll have to review speaking.  How am I going to do what I need to spend quality comfortable time and figure it out.  May God grant me the wisdom to help and may God bring cool air.

I am not an idealist.  To quote Chuck Daly, I'm a pessimist which is an optimist with experience. 

7:57pm

The first TOEFL class went well.  No one had books.  The new edition was ordered and they haven’t arrived and we don’t know when so….we do have extras so we ran down two flights of stairs and in the office picked up 13 copies of the big book, which we quickly learned are not originals and page 554 is not where it should be.

And veering off my long planned lesson I listened to the men’s objectives and they are smart cookies, vying to go abroad for that MBA in finance in Ann Arbor or Stanford, or they want that coveted Fulbright Scholarship, they’re motivated and I can’t tell them they should stay here because the tourism industry needs you guys.  I couldn’t say it.  In fact their desire is motivating me to help them get out.

Last week’s violence in Kabul looks like the same old story on the news but here it felt, well, depressing.  Enduring, ignoring, fleeing. Tonight I talked with a nice fella who spent a year in Ypsilanti.  100 years ago Afghans didn’t know or care about the world around them.  These new ambassadors, like Wali, see a better way of life and would be so happy if their country went that way.  And if it doesn’t and they are mired in their foolish tribal Islamist nincompoop nonsense for the unforeseen future, then I’ll do what I can to help you get to Happy Valley.  In fact I have a cousin who graduated from the bog.  Maybe I’ll give him a call….