4:40pm
A dark afternoon is very cool and wet, a generator a
generation away chugs clearly with the window open. I know, I know, I am blessed to have such
time to stand at my window on a cool London kind of spring day wet with the quintessence of life. Use it wisely and I try when it comes
to being ready for a class here, that’s for sure. As for various options before me in the
coming year, I am not wise without help and ya.
That’s it.
I listened and took notes for the first 55 minutes of tonight's movie, typed them up to distribute to tonight’s class, then
Wali showed me how to add subtitles and wo he has a treasure of good high
quality videos so I took a few and then it was a good lunch of leftover meatballs,
potatoes, rice, lamb, meste, and then in the blowing cold and rain Rezek took me on his bike to the KS for a box of juice, fig newton like bars, a jar of peanut butter and a packet of low cal Korean cigarettes but I could not find popcorn and learned it’s only available in the
bazaar. Ok, maybe next time.
"If I were stranded on a deserted island with nothing but a
solar coffee maker and grinder and supply of coffee I’d prefer this New Guinea
Peaberry. Or Kona coffee. Does starbucks serve Hawaiian coffee?" I don't know.
A cold evening it will be, good for movie watching I tell
ya, I wish I wasn’t a teacher tonight.
8:30pm—Ok, I’m glad I was a
teacher tonight.
Do you wonder sometimes if you’re unintentionally and perhaps naively trying to encourage
them to be positive in spite of a dearth of solutions to their country’s huge
ridiculous insurmountable obstacles. No, not all the time. But I do think they need something.
They need ideas, they need to think differently. The Taliban are the same blood as those I sit
with every day, they know them better than I ever will and I won’t pretend to
know 1% of the real story going on this place, but dammit I do get a little
irritated when fatalistic attitudes fail to come up with ideas no one has
thought of. Connecting with your enemy,
changing his heart, hey I told them their Islam hasn’t improved the situation
for the last damn 35 years or so, what the hell, I took one by the scruff of
his jacket and reminded him his generation knows nothing of the Hippy Trail
only 35 years ago, that’s right, darnit let's do something!
Ya, seeing Walter hike in ‘ungoverned Afghanistan’ the
students chuckled but I told one man who comes with his son to the class that I
wanted to do that, trek through Nuristan and I want to meet mountain people with
blue eyes.
Where do you start?
How do you turn the heart of your enemy who looks a lot like you? How do you get a people who know better than
you to reconsider the customs, the traditions, how do you get them to reconsider
and revise and update those pre-Islamic pashtunwali, mutually common sense laws which are for the common good, laws everyone is happy living
under, and end such terribly distrustful habits and impoverished interpretations that hold them within evil's reach. Education?
Yes. Mom’s best cake? It can’t hurt. How about a new hadith that tells them to
stop the corruption and the disbelief and embrace accountability and a faith
that denies dishonest politicians and business people from making gains at the
expense of the community. The common good. Surely that's a start.
And keep politics out of the mosques.
I don’t know.
Rogue Wave – Lake Michigan.
Ok, I give, which one is the band’s name? Cool song.
And this song’s good too.
they’re Canadians, eh?
I’m encouraged.
9:34pm—A day off tomorrow,
wow I long to not do anything scheduled.
But I do do have things to do, right?
Ya, a teacher’s job never ends.
Plans for post-Kandahar also never end and it feels like in previous
jobs I don’t know my next whereabouts until I’m a month away from leaving. Let’s not do that this time but you never
know, right? An indecisive man making
plans is a bit of a crapshoot.
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