The Story behind the picture-Marnie

Last week I left Kabul for a badly needed holiday in the US with family...However I prepare for it travel out of Kabul takes a year off of my life...In anticipation of difficulty I started confirming my travel arrangements the Saturday before Monday departure. I found out at Air India the schedule had changed and I had to leave the next day. This group picture of all of our staff in the Kabul office...was taken just before I left for my flight after a frantic 12 hours of preparation...and the usual unexpected antics on my staffs part such as Wasse, our gardener, caught 3 rare parrots in our fruit trees. On top of leaving all requisite authorization papers...Wasse wanted to discuss detailed plans for the parrot cage to be built. The look on my face captures my accurate feelings of the moment. I did manage to leave inspite of the snow. Miss them all now I am gone although I am of course getting a plethora of enigmatic e-mails about banking business where it appears that the Kabul Bankers have frozen our accounts because we still have Mary as a signator...and I am getting increasingly complex instructions as to how to conduct our finances, including a long list of ministries to get signatures from to be able to access any funding. All Items I could deal with easily in Kabul but impossible from here.

There is a phrase in Dari that goes "Zendagee de Afghanistan moshkeel ast"..or "Life in Afghanistan is trouble"....Going on my second year in Afghanistan...I have alot to say about that phrase -my retort is "Afghans make trouble not life!" Reflections upon coming home to my well-ordered civilized country? Living and working in Afghanistan is like having a prolonged stay with nosey, bossy loving relatives who think they are really funny and who spend a lot of time thinking up ways to irritate. Miss them already. Marnie