Heading Back to Kabul

Today is my 11th day here in Bamyan. It’s 8:35 in the morn­ing and a beau­ti­ful day here. I have packed every­thing and sit­ting on my bed in my hotel room. I am leav­ing for the air­port in half an hour. When my col­league and I were com­ing to Bamyan we booked round trip tick­ets with Part­ners in Avi­a­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy (Pactec). They have flight to Bamyan on Sun­days and Wednes­days. The prob­lem is that I am going to par­tic­i­pate in an inno­va­tion lab in Islam­abad, Pak­istan. After I bought the round trip tick­ets for fly­ing back to Kab­ul on the 26th, I found out that my flight to Islam­abd is on the 24th from Kab­ul Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. I tried to change my flight with Pactec to Sun­day the 24th but I could­n’t do so. Then I met this lady from the Provin­cial Recon­struc­tion Team (PRT) here in Bamyan and she said that I show up at the airstrip today in about 30 min­utes to see if she could get my on an Embassy Air flight. It’s a fun­ny way of fly­ing some­where. When I go to the dirt air­port of Bamyan, I need to talk to the pilot and tell him about my prob­lem and then they’ll decide whether I can get on it or not. I know it’s fun­ny but if I get it it’ll be my first time in a heli­copter. If could­n’t get on this Embassy Air then I will have to take the dan­ger­ous road tomor­row to make it to my Islam­abad Inno­va­tion Lab on the flight the fol­low­ing day. Now I need to ask the hotel man­ag­er if I can bum a ride to the air­port which about 10 min­utes from my hotel. I hope I get on the heli­copter flight today. 🙂

From Bamyan with Love

This is a con­ve­nience store own­er right across from Bamyan Uni­ver­si­ty. Drink­ing tea in his “Love” glass.

Fun with the Screamers at the City of Scream

Last Fri­day, Una and I went to Shahr-e-Ghol­gho­la which means the city of scream in Dari. It’s a beau­ti­ful old city ruins on top of a hill with a won­der­ful view of the whole city of Bamyan. We hiked to the very top of the hill and met a fam­i­ly. An old man came to vis­it Shahr-e-Ghol­gho­la with his chil­dren. He was a police­man who was sta­tioned on top of this hill a few years ear­li­er. Then on our way back down on the oth­er side of the hill we came across a bunch of the cutest and very fun kids. They were all shep­herds who had left their sheep behind and came to run down the hill­side with me. The lit­tle kids were so tough that they ran down these real­ly steep hill­sides that Una thought that I should­n’t try to run on as an adult. The scream­ers showed us around and explained to us the dif­fer­ent parts of the Shahr-e-Ghol­gho­la. We explored some caves. We went into this one real­ly deep and very dark cave where we could­n’t find the end of it. We saw a dead dog at one point and then made a U‑turn and came out. They accom­pa­nied us all the way through to the end of the old city ruins. At the end the scream­ers asked us to bring them hard copies of the beau­ti­ful pho­tos that we took with them.

They had told us that they would be by that hill when­ev­er we come dur­ing the day. These kids take care of their sheep all day in a pas­ture by the hill and they nev­er go home for lunch or any­thing. They have break­fasts and din­ner. They are all one team and very fun togeth­er. They play togeth­er, run togeth­er and lead their groups of sheep togeth­er. They were wear­ing too lit­tle clothes in this harsh sea­son in Bamyan. A cou­ple of day lat­er, Una and I print­ed the pho­tos for them and took back to the city of screams where we had met and promised to meet again.
Una bought them a cou­ple of blan­kets to keep them warm when they are out in cold. She also brought them some juice and cook­ies. We came to the city of scream­ers with all the stuff. We could­n’t find the scream­ers. I screamed the scream­ers names in the city of screams. I found one of them and then a cou­ple of more. We gave them their pho­tos and every­thing and said good­bye until next time.

Shahr-e-Gholghola-The City of Screams

From the plaque:
Shahr-e-Ghol­gho­la (“City of Screams”) is a for­ti­fied urban site dat­ing from late Sas­san­ian (6th c. AD) through to the Ghorid peri­od (12th-13th CC.). The citadel on this hill site was the heart of the Islam­ic city of Bamyan fol­low­ing the decline of Bud­dhism here from the 8th cen­tu­ry AD.
Shahr-e-Ghol­gho­la is believed to have been destroyed by the Mon­gols under Genghis Khan, who invad­ed it in 1221 and mas­sa­cred all the inhab­i­tants. The site’s name is said to date from this massacre.

Presentation to BU Staff and the Students

When my col­league­U­na and I arrived in Bamyan Uni­ver­si­ty (BU here­after), we met with the deputy chan­cel­lor of the uni­ver­si­ty in the after­noon since the chan­cel­lor had been to Kab­ul for his health check­up. As I explained in my ear­li­er blog, we did a needs assess­ment sur­vey of BU back in April of this year and then we were able to raise some funds for their inter­net, solar pow­er and com­put­er labs facil­i­ties. We arrived here on Octo­ber 12th, 2011. The fol­low­ing day, we pre­sent­ed a more detailed overview of the fol­low­ing 10 days of train­ing and equip­ment instal­la­tion to the uni­ver­si­ty staff and the stu­dents. Since I am giv­ing a train­ing in the open source, Open­StreetMap and Crowdmap, I pre­sent­ed a lit­tle infor­ma­tion about those two. Una is train­ing the uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and some pro­fes­sors in social media. She talked about what she plans to teach the trainees. Today was the 16the and the sec­ond and last day of Open­StreetMap train­ing. I enjoyed teach­ing the stu­dents and pro­fes­sors to use smart phones to col­lect gps data and to work around Open­StreetMap. It’s 11:05 and as I am typ­ing I am sit­ting in the restau­rant of the hotel that I am stay­ing in (for bet­ter inter­net con­nec­tion) and Una is work­ing is putting fin­ish­ing touch­es to her pre­sen­ta­tion on social media train­ing for tomor­row. After 2 days of social media train­ing, I will have anoth­er 2 days of Crowdmap train­ing with the uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and professors.

Inventory for Bamyan University

This is from Thurs­day at Bamyan Uni­ver­si­ty. We are mak­ing an inven­to­ry list for the equip­ment that we have brought with to the uni­ver­si­ty in our Bamyan Uni­ver­si­ty project (more details in my pre­vi­ous blog). Pro­fes­sors Joya and Motamid are help­ing me with it. Pro­fes­sor Joya has got his mas­ter’s degree in Edu­ca­tion and Lan­guage Learn­ing from Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty. I love work­ing with Bamyan Uni­ver­si­ty staff.

We were send­ing all these equip­ment from the cap­i­tal Kab­ul through Par­wan to Bamyan which has been a very dan­ger­ous way late­ly. There have been sev­er­al kid­naps and rob­bing. I have a smart col­league who put all the 40 lap­tops and smart phones and inter­net modems in these met­al trunks and locked them all. We rent­ed part of this big Russ­ian truck that reg­u­lar­ly makes trips to Kab­ul from Bamyan and brings back sup­plies to the stores of Bamyan Bazaar. They put all these trunks in the back of the truck under oth­er sup­plies so that any poten­tial rob­bers on the way would­n’t see it. Every­thing made it to the uni­ver­si­ty alright and before us.
We labeled all the lap­tops and the smart phones and record­ed their ser­i­al num­bers on a spread­sheet. I asked Pro­fes­sor Abidy, our main con­tact at the uni­ver­si­ty to get bat­ter­ies for the label mak­er. He brought the AAA Chi­nese bat­ter­ies with a brand name of SQMY which looks like Sony with the first glance. The life of the bat­ter­ies was from turn­ing the label mak­er on to typ­ing “A‑1” and press­ing print but­ton. They died. We had to walk to Bamyan main bazaar, about 10 min­utes from the cam­pus to get good qual­i­ty Energizers.

Kabul Attack Building

One month ago less than a dozen of Tal­iban attacked Kab­ul city.
Look at all those bul­let marks on one of the build­ings that they hid in in the first pho­to. They were fir­ing out of this build­ing. This build­ing is still under con­struc­tion. It’s already very pop­u­lar all over the coun­try and world­wide. Nice name for the build­ing. Kab­u­lAt­tack Plaza! They don’t need to rename it or do fur­ther mar­ket­ing for it :-). Here is an inter­est­ing link: Tal­iban and NATO-led forces engage in war of words on Twit­ter.

Watch Out! You are hiking in Afghanistan

When you are hik­ing in Afghanistan, don’t always rely on the white paint­ed rocks. You should use your own bomb deters, too. Una and I were hik­ing at this sup­pos­ed­ly dem­ined area near the Bud­dha in Bamyan when we saw an unex­plod­ed bomb half buried in the dirt. Only the tail was stick­ing out and I almost almost stepped on it. It was twi­light and I gave the near­by police a shout. They did­n’t both­er to come at first. Then Una took off her yel­low sock and put it next to the bomb. Then we walked down to the police and told them about it. They said, “we’ll do some­thing about it tomorrow.”

This Time in Bamyan

Back in April of this year, my col­league, Una and I came to Bamyan for a needs assess­ment sur­vey at Bamyan Uni­ver­si­ty (here­after BU). The uni­ver­si­ty is locat­ed in the provin­cial cen­ter. The num­ber of stu­dents as per last April was over 1700. Its aca­d­e­mics are fac­ul­ties of Edu­ca­tion, Social Sci­ences, Agri­cul­ture, Geol­o­gy. And fac­ul­ties of Com­put­er Sci­ence, Jour­nal­ism and Health to open in 2012. We took a tour of BU’s old and new cam­pus­es. BU’s new cam­pus that was under con­struc­tion in our last trip is the most remote uni­ver­si­ty I have ever seen. My col­league vis­it­ed the girls’ dorm since I a man and not allowed into the girls’ dorm. Pho­to of ther­mal water heat­ing sys­tem at the girls’ dorm: I was impressed by the young and tal­ent­ed fac­ul­ty mem­bers of the uni­ver­si­ty. They have been extreme­ly help­ful and friend­ly. The aim of our vis­it was to assess the elec­tric­i­ty sit­u­a­tion at uni­ver­si­ty and then see how we could help. The uni­ver­si­ty has big gen­er­a­tors but the the donors who donat­ed these gen­er­a­tors to them did not think about the fuel costs. One of the biggest chal­lenges for the uni­ver­si­ty is their fuel costs for the gen­er­a­tors. They have very lim­it­ed funds for it and they can’t run them more than four hours a day. They need to run the four com­put­er labs they have for the uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and the fac­ul­ty from at least 8am to 4pm. Insuf­fi­cient sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty. Anoth­er mis­take that the pre­vi­ous donors have made is that they donat­ed desk­top com­put­ers to them which require a lot of elec­tric­i­ty. In addi­tion to not­ing their elec­tric­i­ty prob­lems, we noticed that they need­ed more com­put­er labs and inter­net for the over­whelm­ing num­ber of stu­dents. The new cam­pus had no com­put­er lab or inter­net when we vis­it­ed. Anoth­er great chal­lenge of the uni­ver­si­ty was lack of local IT exper­tise. At the end of our 5‑day sur­vey at BU, we shared our find­ings with our big boss­es in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Luck­i­ly, they were able to fund two com­put­er labs for the uni­ver­si­ty with a total of 40 ener­gy effi­cient lap­tops, a com­plete solar sys­tem for the two com­put­er labs and inter­net for one of the two labs. My col­league and I were also able to raise some mon­ey to finance two pro­fes­sors from Bamyan Uni­ver­si­ty and a few more peo­ple from oth­er orga­ni­za­tions to attend a 2‑week inten­sive train­ing on web­site man­age­ment in the cap­i­tal, Kab­ul which end­ed last Fri­day. Here we are again we arrived in Bamyan yes­ter­day morn­ing. We came here a few days ahead of the solar engi­neers to train the uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and the staff in a bunch of tech tools, social media and map­ping tools and apps. There was also mon­ey bud­get­ed for 15 smart phones that we pur­chased in this project. It’s impor­tant for the stu­dents and the pro­fes­sors of social sci­ences depart­ment and oth­ers to learn how to use them when they are train­ing in social media and map­ping. We had a brief meet­ing with the deputy chan­cel­lor of BU late after­noon yes­ter­day and we’ll dis­cuss our sched­ule for the train­ing and an overview of the plan with them in more detail lat­er this morn­ing. They will also help us to iden­ti­fy stu­dents for the train­ing today. My awe­some col­league asked them to keep in mind gen­der bal­ance in iden­ti­fy­ing the trainees. They’ll be trained in four dif­fer­ent things: 1. Start­ing on the 16th, 2 days of Open­StreetMap train­ing which I will be giv­ing (Bamyan on OSM will hope­ful­ly look like Jalal­abad on OSM one day). 2. Then 2 days of social media and blog­ging train­ing that Una will be giv­ing. 3. After that 2 days of train­ing in Crowdmap (an Ushahi­di ini­ti­at­ed plat­form for dis­as­ter response and reports). 4. And final­ly when the solar engi­neers arrive on the 21st of Octo­ber, we’d like the trainees to be present there and see how they install the solar gear and the com­put­er lab. It’s 2:45 in the morn­ing and I need to get some shut eye. But please look at the pho­to blog of Una about our yes­ter­day’s won­der­ful trip: Transitionland.wordpress.com/back-to-bamiyan/

What is democracy?

I was in Dara-e-nur dis­trict of Nan­garhar yes­ter­day. It’s a very remote dis­trict in the mid­dle of nowhere. All moun­tains. I saw this guy who was rid­ing on his motor­cy­cle along with three oth­er friends. I asked them, “why are you four peo­ple rid­ing on one motor­cy­cle?” They said, “it’s democ­ra­cy.” You do what you want and feel like doing.