It was a busy week. Normally I like to reflect and write on key themes in my time here, but with the current state of things I can’t keep up with the reflections, and if I don’t begin writing, I will lose memory of what has gone on. So, conclusions can come later, today I’ll just write you a rough account of how my day went yesterday.
5am: The neighbor’s cat is in heat again, and her yowling has woken me. Quickly Dave and his family and his villages’ situation comes to my mind (read “The Mudslide Story”), and I spend some time thinking about it and trying to decide what should be done. A week prior I had been to the NATO camp to meet with a USAID rep and ask them to get involved. There were lots of reasons why they couldn’t get involved, of course. I have been waiting for weeks for the UN disaster management cluster meeting to happen, and it is scheduled for this morning. I really don’t want to go to a meeting on my weekend, especially after a 12-hour day yesterday, capping a 60+ hour workweek. I doubt that this group of organizations will have any positive response for Dave’s village. Still I have all these reasons in my head why they should do something, not least of these being their mandate for humanitarian assistance. So, I better go, in case there’s a chance I can successfully lobby them to give aid. I give a last thought about how our supporters back home would probably be happy if we just bailed out Dave and his family, and I cringe at the thought. Maybe I’m wired all wrong, but it’s harder for me to think about saving one family and leaving the rest of the village at risk, when I believe there is a better way to respond so that all at risk are helped, and the causes for their vulnerability are dealt with as well. But for that, I need the help of bigger aid organizations, so it’s settled, I will go to the meeting this morning.
9am: I remember that we’re under tightened security after the Qur’an burning, so I better make some calls and find out if there’s anything going on. I call a couple sources and our team leader, everything seems peaceful, so I can go to the meeting. I call Dave and ask him to pick me up and drive me to the meeting at the governor’s conference room. He’s thrilled to hear that I’m going to take his case to this meeting. What have I set him up for? There’s no promise that anything will come from this meeting.
10am: I arrive at the governor’s compound, and have to pass security. Two guards interrogate me in the local language, search me thoroughly, give me dirty looks (all the meanwhile letting several local man with turbans walk right in). Should have brought my ID I guess. I get to the conference room: 49 empty chairs, and 1 guy from another NGO. A meeting agenda was waiting on the table, written only in the local language, so I poke through it with my 2nd grade reading ability. When am I going to find the time to learn to read better? 15 minutes later, they all start to shuffle in. When there are nearly 30 around the table, the vice-governor shows up, taking the place of the governor who was run out of town (or so the rumor goes).
10:30am: The vice-governor is well into his explanation of the survey of 120 families that are homeless because of flooding, and my phone starts to ring. First it’s my local colleague, telling me that protests have broken out in town, going around the park. Then my team leaders calls and confirms the protests. Then it’s Dave, my driver, who had been waiting on the street between the governor’s compound and the park, in our white NGO vehicle. He says that the protesting crowd is targeting white NGO vehicles, smashing windows and lighting them on fire. Being warned of this by the police, Dave took off, put promised to come back for me with our red vehicle. Around the room, others are becoming aware of the protests, and the leader of the meeting addresses it by saying, “yes there’s protests targeting NATO and other associated foreigners, they won’t come here.” 1 Italian man and I are the only foreigners in the room. Alright well, my driver is gone, they say it’s safe here, I guess I just sit tight here.
The meeting goes on, but it does not go well in my opinion. Although this cluster is called “Disaster Management”, the only topic the leader wants to discuss is the immediate response for the 120 flood-victim families. I try to empathize and imagine what it would be like to have my home destroyed by a rush of water, and how tough it would be especially now while the nighttime temps are still in the 20s. Everyone agrees something must be done, but the vice-governor is not satisfied with the specifics, so he calls for a round robin, and each person around the table states how their organization will help. One by one the NGO leaders offer food, blankets, tents, and clothes. The UN groups offer to help with the collaboration and transportation. One NGO rep says that he does not have anything to offer, and he gets completely chewed out and told to come up with something. The Italian has a translator, so he doesn’t have to talk. Now it’s my turn, so I give it my best in the local language, “Honorable leaders, I represent a small NGO that does not typically engage in relief activity because it complicates our development work. However we are prepared to do a variety or resilience-building and damage control activities such as rock flood walls, to prevent the number of flood-destroyed homes from increasing.” I thought I had done alright, but the vice-governor shook his head and said that we needed to keep our attention on the immediate need, and not these other things that are done every year in places that don’t need it. I didn’t argue, and I knew that my chance to lobby for disaster mitigation for Dave’s village was also not going to happen. The meeting went on, but never reached the point of considering how to keep the number of 120 homes from growing in the coming 3 months when more floods are likely.
After the meeting ended I chatted privately with a couple guys that I knew, to ask them if they could help with Dave’s village. When they heard it was a village at the foot of a hill they quickly said, “Well, in that situation we view it as a human cause. Those people have dug into the mountain to make their walls, so they have brought the danger upon themselves.” I briefly argued the point that the majority of flood-damaged houses are built on marginal land that should also be zoned for no buildings. Ha, land-zoning, this country is a long way from that. I also urged them to remember that disasters prevented saves more lives than these blanket and tent distributions in the aftermath. It seemed they didn’t have ears for me.
11:45am: Meeting is done, now how do I get home? I call my driver, he says town is a wreck, but is trying to get back to me. I call a couple other informants, they give me enough info that I trust I can get out of the gov compound and away from the park quickly. I tell the dirty-look guards to have a nice day, blend into a group of men my age on the sidewalk, fold my hands behind my back and walk just like they do until I reach the corner, see my driver, jump in, and we’re off. The bazaar is crazy busy, lots of police trying to appear to be doing something, rickshaws weaving in and out of traffic, carts with oranges and chickens and yarn and hairbows trying not to get hit while crossing the road, and fortunately, we don’t see anyone that appears to be protesting.
1pm: Got home, had a nice lunch with my wife while the boy was being watched by the neighbor (the one with the cat in heat… hmm I guess I better not poison her cat if she babysits my kid). Now I’m going over to pick him up, and my guard and the one from next door are having tea in my yard. I greet them, ask them what the morning gossip is, and they point to the sky. A big Apache helicopter roars over us, toward the NATO camp. We all look toward the camp and see a thick, black plume of smoke going up from the camp. They ask me what is going on. I say, in the basest of terms, “how should I know?” Went home and put the boy down for his nap, and thought for a while about whether we should prepare for something to happen. Prepare for what though? Normally when we think evacuation, we think that if it gets really bad, we can always evacuate into the camp, but now it’s the camp that is on fire. Hmm, what is plan B? Lay low I guess, and have a bag and a car ready to split out of town if we have to.
2:30pm: I’m working in the yard with my guard. We’re just finishing the disassembly of my homemade swingset when I get a call from our team leader. She says that the protestors had broken into the first parking lot in the NATO camp, smashed up some cars, and lit them and a fuel tank on fire. That explained the black smoke. She said the camp itself hadn’t been breached, and no one had been killed, although at least a dozen young men (protestors) had been injured and hospitalized. What now? It seemed to be over, although there were now rumors of meetings between the big mullahs and the government to decide what would be a fitting protest for tomorrow.
3:15pm: Driver Dave is back to help me move some big things out of my yard and into the yard we will be moving into. For one of the trips I ride in the back to steady the load. As I get out of the gate I see a couple of the cute little kids from next door. They greet me politely and with smiles as always. Then another boy from my street, not more than 7 years old, comes toward me yelling “death to America” over and over again. I don’t pay him any attention. The other kids all along the street hear him and join in. The group of yelling, chasing kids grows for the whole 200-meter trip. What do I feel right now, in this moment? I look at the kids, and I see kids. Not just any kids, but the kids I have seen and interacted with for the past 15 months. I know them, they know me, I know they’re not going to do any harm to me, but why are they saying this? I remember the words of an older teammate that I respect very much. He once told me that in insecure places, the best way to understand the sentiment of the religious leaders is to listen to the children. I think this friend was probably right, but still, these kids are not going to do anything to hurt me, they haven’t picked up rocks. We reach the destination and I get off the back of the truck and just talk to the kids as if they weren’t yelling and acting angry. Their yelling stops, they return to playing, and I go about my work with Dave and my guard.
3:30pm: We’re still working at moving some things between the yards (from within, not on the street) when a mix of firecrackers and AK-47 fire goes off outside the gate of the new yard we are moving into. The other 2 guys and I head to the back of the yard where there is another exit. After a minute the firing stops and just the hollering of young men continues. My guard tells me that the office guard just returned from the bazaar and reported that people there were really stirred up. I make his concern crack into a smile when I say, “So now is not a good time for me to go get a haircut, I really need one?”
6:30pm: To end the day I spend a half hour in the sauna. I review the day in my mind. It went differently than I expected, but I’m not upset. I didn’t get much done, but nothing too bad had happened, and that was good. It’s hard to know what tomorrow will hold, but I don’t feel that being nervous or afraid will do anything. Despite all of these things that seem so unfortunate and out of control, I feel at peace and alright with being here.
30 hours later: It’s now Friday night, and for those that might have been concerned about what Friday would bring, it was a quiet day. A little more gunfire on the streets, and definitely some protests took place, but not like yesterday’s attack on the camp. The longer we are here, the more we learn to just stay inside when things are questionable, and not freak out when anything happens, because just as quickly as these incidents spring up, they die back down just the same.
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