An afternoon of overcast skies, a distant rumble, a few
seconds of spit cool breezes and I have to teach in four hours. For all it’s
challenges, having an office in a bedroom is far better than the alternative
that waits if I return to Kabul. For
one, in Kabul I’d have to share a cramped office with five other people. Behind me I have a bed! What a luxury in some places. And a kitchen two seconds away with enough
tea to keep me out of bed.
I must apply for a student visa within four months of
arriving in Belgium which would be 20 September, roughly. In order to do this I must go personally to a
Belgian Embassy (Abu Dhabi) no later than May 20. I don’t know if I can do that. If I could go the first week of June or the
last week of May that would be possible and maybe the embassy would be lenient with
the four month time considering where I’m bloody coming from.
But to go earlier, *#%$, it ain’t gonna happen. The
skies darken, Rezek cooks liver, I should show him how I like it cooked. Fezel is in there with him, he taught Rezek
how to cook some basic dishes and for the most part he’s done a good job. Except for a bad chicken here and there, my
meals have kept me alive relatively well.
Come to think of it, the New Whig Party will disappear
when Trump is ousted, don’t think for a minute he’ll officially register his
gnarly movement, the brawling hordes will return to their hollows, trailers and
mental institutions and probably not even vote.
6:19pm
The toefl students pray in the hall after an hour of
lessons and the rain falls hard. This
week I have missed at least three worthy sunsets because I am in this stupid classroom
just ten meters away from the roof. I
see the golden orange reflect and deepen off the windows of the building outside. I don’t hear my students speak because I’m
wishing I was in the gold. Sigh, what to
do.
7:05pm
Perhaps the E. Orthodox Church is closer to the mysterious
core than the Roman Catholic Church.
After the reformation the RCC purged and we like to believe 500 years
later today’s church is better off though Satan unleashing sexual predators with
collars into the church and God not being able to stop it until his little
children suffered so much they left God, is just horrible.
Is that just too bizarre to understand? On God’s home-turf evil frolicked.
Tonight was a student’s last night and he gave me a
hug. I was his first native English
teacher and he was encouraged and out the door he goes, good luck, always ask
for help when you need it.
3.9.16
A clear, bright and clean morning appreciated more after
an exuberant morning class. Talk
politics and every Afghan has an opinion:
‘Yes, Americans want Afghanistan to fight.” Yes, and Americans would like more access to
your heroin, of course it’s a conversation class, the CIA are not promoting
instability so they have a reason to remain in the area. The only Americans who should be in
Afghanistan are tourists. You don’t want
our help in mining the two trillion dollars underneath your feet, fine. You don’t need China or the others to take
you out of this ridiculous and absurd theater that cannot find a way to
end. People here like to fight. The educated, the uneducated. People cling to pashunwali because it
provides a minimum of perceived protection, order in the chaos, not so much
since the Taliban who abused or ignored and manipulated the oral code, but it
gives at least in someone’s wistful limited hindsight, security.
Fifty percent of Americans don’t pay taxes. I don’t because I don’t work in the US. Big Corporations don’t pay either but they do
work in the US. Who’s wrong? I follow the law, I am not breaking it. Big corporations are apparently following the
law though sending money to off shore islands to avoid taxes has to be
inherently and morally wrong, right? The
government should sock those who do that, increase their property, state, local
and so on taxes, hit ‘em hard, close any bloody loopholes and explain to them,
once again, when you pay your share of taxes you are helping the American
People. You have to trust a government
who keeps all revenues in the public eye and those revenues we can see improves
our quality of life. Please, I am
assuming, most Americans would rather not think about politics and corruption
and taxes, they’d rather think about family, they’d rather think about nature
and love and trekking, and swimming and playing baseball.
The CIA doesn’t need to be here, if in fact it is here,
though I’d be naïve to think not I guess.
And Pakistan doesn’t need to be here either but that is
an inevitability. I hate
to think today’s generation of leaders keep thinking like their
predecessors. Nothing changes if you don’t
think differently. I think it’s time to
go to work.
Good morning KDR.
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