Arrival

Well, I'm here! It was a brutal flight. Twenty-two hours in the air, no time to check my blood sugar. By the time I arrived in Dubai it registered 283! Then shock set in. USAID had reserved a room for me at the Dubai International Hotel. I naively thought it would be covered. It wasn't; $248 for three hours, but it had a nice bidet. No, I didn't use it. But after an hour's rest I was back on a plane to Afghanistan.

What I've seen of Kabul, it is not a beautiful city. To be sure there are beautiful places within it. Parks, gardens and the several mosques we see on the route from the hotel to ASMED are each one more exquisitely more gorgeous than the last. The newest, Sharia Mosque is huge and ornately decorated. I don't know that I've ever seen more shades of blue in one building.

Days are hot and dusty, the air so polluted as to be truly unfit to breathe for some. Like Tucson, mountains surround the Capitol. One, sorta smack in the middle, called Radio and TV Hill predominates. The crest is spiked with perhaps 2 dozen aerials and half as many buildings. Some days it's impossible to see even the largest of them due to the haze.

As one might imagine in a third-world country there is staggering poverty. Yet in among the hovels of the poor are resplendent residences of the "haves". I marvel at the contrast.

Dervishes have taken over my electronic devices! The first night a power surge blew out the borrowed converter, The hotel manager was persuaded to seek a replacement at the bazaar. He returned with a Soviet-era monster looking rather like a kettle-bell. At least it works.Internet connectivity isn't to the level I expected. The result is that I've found it difficult to get posts on this site. The ISP at the hotel is, of course, Afghan--so when I try to blog there the thing goes all Farsi on me. I'll be restricted to blogging from the "compound". Oh, well. One of the managers here did me a solid and helped get this thing back on track. Props to Fridoon! So, please bear with me and have patience-- we are all, for the duration, on Afghan time. Pictures next...